French music has often gone its own way (think Rameau, think Berlioz), but during the nineteenth century the proximity of the all powerful German musical culture tended to extend its influence across the Rhine, it can be sensed in many of the works of the composers mentioned below.
Among the more famous immediate musical antecedents of the Debussy age are such composers as Georges Bizet, Jules Massenet, Charles Gounod, César Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns. These represent what is maybe, not a lost generation, but one that is – at least to my mind – merely known for one or two works, while the remainder of their output is unfairly neglected.
Below are (almost random) samples of pre-Impressionist (Debussy hated the term Impressionist!) music: Saint-Saëns rarely performed Fifth Piano Concerto; Gounod’s Petite Symphonie (written at the behest of the flautist Paul Taffanel for the Société de musique de chambre pour instruments à vent (and with a starring role for the flute in the slow movement)); a trademark cyclic work from César Franck – his dramatic Piano Quintet in f-minor; and, finally, a chance to compare early Debussy – the opening of L’enfant prodigue, the cantata with which, at the age of twenty-two, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome – with the writing of Massenet – one of the more famous arias from the opera Werther.
Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No.5 in
F – the ‘Egyptian’
Allegro animato 00:00:00
Andante – Allegretto tranquillo – Andante 00:10:11
Molto allegro 00:20:30
Gounod: Petite Symphonie
00:10 Adagio et Allegretto
05:39 Andante cantabile
10:44 Scherzo. Allegro moderato
14:58 Finale. Allegretto
Franck: Piano Quintet in f
0:03 Molto moderato quasi lento – Allegro
16:25 Lento con molto sentimento
29:05 Allegro non troppo ma con fuoco
Massenet: Werther
Debussy: L’Enfant prodigue
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Pontarddulais!
The Art of Listening 