The new release on the Urborigène Records label, performed by French pianist Clément Canonne, includes two world premiere recordings plus an unpublished 1950 piano sonata that later became the wind composition Chants alizés. Music-lovers who are familiar with the music of Florent Schmitt know that a significant number of his compositions were written for the […]
Tag Archives: André Caplet
Bruno Belthoise and Grégoire Pont are revitalizing the stories of French children’s ballets more than a century after their creation. It’s interesting to note that four of the most important composers from France’s “Golden Age” each wrote music for ballet productions based on children’s topics. Not only that, the music for all four of them […]
Several months ago Sébastien Damarey, a faithful reader of the Florent Schmitt Website + Blog, sent me a very interesting historical artifact — an interview with Florent Schmitt that was published in the January 25, 1929 issue of the French arts magazine Le Guide du concert et des théâtres lyriques. What makes this article particularly […]
Like many composers who came of age during the late 1800s, French composer Florent Schmitt’s formative years were influenced by the prevailing musical currents of the day. In the case of Schmitt, Schumann was an early influence, as was Wagner. But by the time Schmitt entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1888, other influences were making […]
Throughout his long composing career spanning from the late 1880s to the late 1950s, Florent Schmitt would return again and again to the human voice. While he never composed an opera, he wrote voluminous pages of music in every other form that features solo and mixed voices. Tellingly, the composer’s Opus 1 and his final Opus 138 […]
In the early years of the 20th Century, several French composers would pen some highly interesting composition that have given harp players some great repertoire items in the ensuing decades. The composers in question were Claude Debussy, André Caplet, Maurice Ravel … and Florent Schmitt. And the instigation was the arrival of the chromatic harp […]
The popularity of large-scale works like Psalm XLVII, La Tragédie de Salomé and Dionysiaques would make one think that Florent Schmitt cared little for intimate subject matters as inspiration for his compositions. But the reality is different. While it’s true that the more grandiose and dramatic scores of the composer tend to be the ones […]