Symphony in D minor (Franck)

The Symphony in D minor is the most famous orchestral work and the only mature symphony written by the 19th-century Belgian composer César Franck. After two years of work, the symphony was completed 22 August 1888. It was premiered at the Paris Conservatory on 17 February 1889 under the direction of Jules Garcin. Franck dedicated it to his pupil Henri Duparc.

The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 soprano clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, harp and strings.

César Franck's fame and reputation rest largely upon a small number of compositions, most of them composed toward the end of his life. Of these, the Symphony in D minor was one of his last works. It was first performed only a year before Franck died.

The fact that Franck finally chose to write a symphony is itself unusual, given the rarity of the form in 19th-century France, which considered the symphony a mainstay of German music. It is likely that the genesis of the Symphony in D minor followed upon the success of his influential Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra composed in 1885.

Additionally, the success of several works by other French composers had nudged the symphonic form back into favour with the French concert-going public, beginning with the 1857 Symphony for piano by Franck's friend Charles-Valentin Alkan, with whom Franck had shared concerts in Paris in the late 1830s and to whom Franck dedicated his Grande Pièce Symphonique. The Third (Organ) Symphony by Camille Saint-Saëns and (although a work for piano and orchestra) the Symphony on a French Mountain Air by Vincent d'Indy, both written in 1886 and popularly received, had further helped to revive the symphony as a concert piece, almost dormant since the appearance of Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique in 1830. (An earlier piece, the Symphonie espagnole (1875) by Édouard Lalo is a violin concerto.) Both these works, however, sought to create compositional distance from the symphonic form and sound of the German romantic idiom (exemplified by Brahms and Wagner) through several "French" innovations, including integrating piano (and in the case of Saint-Saëns, the organ) into the orchestra, and using a cyclic thematic style.

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