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Composers of today
A comprehensive biographical and critical guide to
modern composers of all nations
David Ewen
New York : The H. W. Wilson company, 1936.
FLORENT SCHMITT was
born in Blâmont, in the département of
Meurthe-et-Moselle, France, on September 28, 1870. Both
his parents were Alsatians. His father, a musician who
was deeply interested in church music and who during his
entire life was hostile to Wagner, first aroused an
interest in music in Schmitt. Music appealed to Schmitt
from boyhood, but it was not until his seventeenth year
that he decided to devote himself exclusively to its
study. The decision finally reached, he began the study
of the elements of the art at Nancy and then, in 1889,
entered the Paris Conservatory, studying harmony with
Theodore Dubois, counterpoint and composition with
Massenet, and later with Gabriel Fauré. The prescribed
military service disturbed his study, but after it had
been resumed he succeeded, in 1897, in winning the
second Prix de Rome. Three years later he proved even
more successful, his cantata Sémiramis capturing the
first Prix de Rome.
The Prix de Rome enabled Florent Schmitt to satisfy a
life-long yearning to travel. He visited the principal
cities of Europe, toured thru North Africa and went as
far east as Turkey. These travels helped him to
understand a background and atmosphere which he was to
utilize later on in one of his most successful works, La
Tragédie de Salomé. During his travels, his pen was by
no means idle. In Germany, he composed a series of
neatly-constructed waltzes, suggested by the towns thru
which he passed; in Turkey he composed a symphonic-poem
for band, Selamlik. And in Rome he created some of his
better-known works, including his Musique de Plein-Air,
Le Palais Hanté and the Forty-Sixth Psalm, for solo,
chorus and orchestra.
Shortly after his return to Paris, a concert of his
works-in December Important recordings of music by
1906-gave musical Paris its first realization of the
enormous talent which he possessed. From that time on,
he marched to fame and recognition in a straight line.
On November 9, 1907, Loi Fuller danced and mimed the
title-role of his masterpiece, La Tragédie de Salomé.
And in April 1909 his greatest work, the Quintet,
created a sensation in Paris.
It was the Quintet which established Schmitt as one of
the great modern composers of France. M. D. Calvocoressi,
whose sense for perceiving masterpieces has always been
keen and alive, wrote in the Comoedia Illustré
immediately after the concert: "The Quintet is one of
the most moving, most generous and revealing creations
of the past few years." And Poueigh: "Endowed with a
nobility of thought realized with the utmost of skill,
this work of enormous dimensions… deserves to be
considered among the highest manifestations of
contemporary chamber-music."
"Florent Schmitt," explains P. O. Ferroud, "has a strong
bias towards the severer forms of composition, due
partly to his studies. . . . A leading feature of his
work is a strength which sometimes produces violence and
even brutality. On the other hand, the gentler side is
not lacking; he can paint tenderness, sorrow and despair.
. . . Above all, he follows no set methods of composing;
it is no exaggeration to say that he has a horror of all
attempts to fashion ideas according to rule."
"His music," referring once again to M. D. Calvocoressi,
"remains free from the abstract intellectuality and
formalism that are so dangerous to all arts, and reveals
a temperament loving sounds and rhythms for their own
intrinsic beauty; it possesses that inwardness, that
effusive lyricism thru which it at times differs from
the music of the 'Impressionist school'. . . . He does
not scruple to use, at times, the simplest and so to
speak the most massive dynamic effects; he shuns neither
grandiloquence, nor insistence, nor any of the plain, if
effective, means of classical art, never to be met with
in the works of a Debussy or a Ravel. But with him they
are never mere rhetorical expedients, and nowise
resemble the stereotyped airs and graces of the post-classicists.
In fact, that straightforward idiom, that epic diction,
being natural to Schmitt in some of his moods, appear in
his music alive and original."
From 1922 until 1924, Florent Schmitt was the director
of the Conservatory of Lyons. Since that time he has
lived in Paris, dividing his time between teaching and
composition. He has been, during the past two decades,
one of the staunchest allies of modern music. He was one
of the earliest musicians to recognize talent in Erik
Satie, and to support his music. When Stravinsky's Sacre
du Printemps was given its first performance, Schmitt
was one of the very few who recognized in this work the
voice of a genius. When Schönberg's Five Pieces for
Orchestra inspired dissension and debate in Paris, it
was on the side of the composer that Schmitt fought
fiercely and bitterly. His ear is always alert for new
voices, and new composers with something vital and
original to contribute have always found him a willing
and eager ally.
He has only one powerful diversion: travelling.
Otherwise, he spends his winters in Paris, and his
summers in the heart of the Pyrenees.
Florent Schmitt visited America in 1932, appearing
thruout the country in programs devoted to his major
works.
Principal works by Florent Schmitt:
ORCHESTRA: Musique de Plein-Air; Le Palais Hanté; Rêves;
Légende; Dionysiaques.
THEATRE: La Tragédie de Salomé; Antoine et Cléopâtre; Le
Petit Elfe Ferm-l'Oeil; Salambô.
CHAMBER MUSIC: Lied and Scherzo for Double Wind Quintet;
Sonate Libre; Quintet.
Pieces for piano; songs.
About Florent Schmitt:
Aubry, Georges Jean-. French Music Today; Ferroud, P. O.
Autour de Florent Schmitt; Hill, E. B. Modern French
Music.
Important recordings of music by Florent Schmitt:
COLUMBIA: La Tragédie de Salomé (Schmitt).
FRENCH VICTOR: Dionysiaques..
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