The music of Florent Schmitt features prominently in the new 2024 version of Abel Gance’s epic silent film Napoléon.

The new soundtrack, prepared by Simon Cloquet-Lafollye, includes nearly an hour of music taken from four Florent Schmitt orchestral scores. The epic film Napoléon is rightly viewed as one of the greatest cinematographic feats in motion picture history. And this distinction is even more impressive when we consider that Napoléon was a silent film produced […]

Florent Schmitt’s Quatre lieds (1912): Dark colors and wistful sonorities depicting cryptic, fathomless poetry.

Throughout his lengthy career as a composer, Florent Schmitt would return again and again to the human voice when creating his compositions.  Although Schmitt distanced himself from operatic projects (he created no operas of his own although he  prepared piano-reduction scores of several of Frederick Delius’ operatic scores), Schmitt lavished attention on sorts of other […]

Investigating the mystery – and promise – of Florent Schmitt’s “Poèmes des lacs” (Les Barques, Demande, Musique sur l’eau, Soir sur le lac, Tristesse au jardin — 1897-1901)

Recently, two documents have emerged that point to the existence of a long-forgotten grouping of Florent Schmitt’s mélodies that can stand alongside the song cycles of fellow-French composers Henri Duparc, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Maurice Delage and Louis Aubert. The grouping of Florent Schmitt mélodies carries the umbrella title “Poèmes des lacs,” and some details […]

Made for the stage: The incredible life and career of dancer and dramatic actress Ida Rubinstein … and her 20-year collaboration with French composer Florent Schmitt.

“A sphinx, an enigmatic being … nature steeped in demanding contradictions and seductive by that very fact … she seemed to come from another world — one where she would have been despotically sovereign.” — René Dumesnil, from a tribute article published in Le Monde, October 25, 1960 In every era, there are always a […]