Grande Pièce Symphonique

Grande Pièce Symphonique, Op.17, FWV 29, is an organ work by French composer César Franck. Written in 1860–62, it is the second and, at an average duration of 25 minutes, the largest piece from Six Pièces pour Grand Orgue. It is dedicated to the composer Charles-Valentin Alkan.

The Six Pièces are an important work of the composer, marking the beginning of the second period of his career and predicting the flowering in his later creative life. His long struggle on the comic opera Le Valet de ferme (1851–1853) ended with a disastrous failure of the production and a disappointment, which paralysed Franck’s activity as a composer for several years. The influence of the phantastic new Cavaillé-Coll organ at Sainte-Clotilde, Paris, for which he was appointed first organist in 1859, encouraged him to resume composing. Japanese composer Akio Yashiro found out that, in comparison to the c major Fantaisie Op.16 (Six Pièces, No. 1), Franck now makes extensive use of all possibilities of the organ.

Grande pièce symphonique is written in a single movement, which may be divided into three parts, the second of them being the Andante with a scherzo-like middle section. This feature of the work, sometimes referred to as "organ symphony", has induced comparison with his later chef-d’œuvre, the Symphony in D minor. Yashiro regarded this work as prototype of the symphony, based on the following four reasons:

In addition, Yashiro pointed out that this work shares several features with some of composer's later masterpieces.

The work’s dedicatee, the virtuoso pianist and composer Charles Valentin Alkan, had written a symphony for solo piano a few years earlier, as part of the Douze Études dans tous les tons mineurs, Op. 39, published in 1857, which also included the celebrated concerto for solo piano. Franck highly praised Alkan and arranged some of his piano pieces for organ. The score was published as part of the “Six pièces pour Grand-Orgue” by Mme. Maeyen-Couvreur, Paris. Around 1878, there was a reissue by Durand.

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