Florent Schmitt looks to the France of antiquity: Quatre poèmes de Ronsard (1941).

In May 1924, a new edition of the French magazine La Revue musicale hit the newsstands — one that was devoted to the  legacy of Pierre de Ronsard, among the most celebrated poets in all of French literary history. The brainchild of Henry Prunières, founder and editorial guiding light of the magazine, the May 1924 […]

Substance as well as style: The Quartet for Strings (1948) of Florent Schmitt.

“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. […]

Elegance and Class: Florent Schmitt’s Quartet Pour presque tous les temps (1955)

One of the final works created by the French composer Florent Schmitt was a quartet he titled Pour presque tous les temps. It is one of the last numbered compositions in Schmitt’s entire output (#134 out of a total of 138 opus numbers) and was completed in 1955, three years before the composer’s death. Schmitt was known […]

Florent Schmitt’s Valedictory Composition: Symphony No. 2 (1957)

“Here we have it, ladies and gentlemen: France’s missing symphony from the 1950s … It is almost impossibly beautiful, with some of the most kaleidoscopic sound-staging and effective bass sonorities you will encounter. Florent Schmitt’s Second Symphony was never precisely lost, to be sure. It’s actually the Francophone fifties which seemed to disappear and turn […]