“Florent Schmitt will not have left this earth without taking away, like a viaticum, the certainty of his genius.” — Bernard Gavoty At the time Florent Schmitt passed away on August 17, 1958 at the age of nearly 88 years, he was considered by many to be the doyen of French composers. One of the […]
Tag Archives: Henri Dutilleux
When the composer Florent Schmitt died in August 1958 at the age of nearly 88 years, many prominent musicians, scholars and journalists wrote words of tribute honoring the last of the “grand generation” of French composers that had included, among others, Debussy, Dukas, Ravel, Roussel, Koechlin, Pierné, Cras, Rabaud, Ropartz and Tournemire. Along those lines, […]
“Very difficult string writing and very little-known — but it’s a fine work and ought to be played.” — Henri Dutilleux, French composer During the extraordinarily long musical career of Florent Schmitt — which spanned 70 years from the late 1880s to the late 1950s — the composer created works for many combinations of instruments. […]
Published in English and French versions, the book is available for viewing and download free of charge. Recently, the music publishing firm Durand-Salabert-Eschig (part of Universal Music Publishing Group) released a book titled A French Touch: Rediscovering a Uniquely French Symphonic Repertoire. Researched and written by French musicologist and author Nicolas Southon, the slender volume (44 pages long) […]
Within Florent Schmitt’s musical output are a half-dozen works that feature the violin. Perhaps the most significant of them is his Sonate libre, Op. 68, a work he composed in 1918-19 at Artiguemy, his country retreat in the Hautes-Pyrenees. The formal title of the music is a real mouthful: Sonate libre en deux parties enchaînées, ad modem Clementis […]
The French pianist Élizabeth Herbin has long been a champion of the music of her father, the composer René Herbin (1911-1953). This includes making recordings of his music, including one featuring Herbin’s Quartet #1 for Piano & Strings, composed in 1949. That celebrated recording, on the Gallo label, also contains two works by Florent Schmitt: […]