Jean Françaix (1912-1997)
Discover Jean Françaix
Martin Jones (piano)
rec. 2011, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth, UK
Nimbus NI7732 [73]

“Lucidity and precision are the hallmarks of Jean Françaix, a brilliantly urbane pupil of Nadia Boulanger … the two-piano Huit Danses exotiques have a rhythmic and harmonic piquancy that rivals Milhaud.” The observations are those of the pianist and teacher James Gibb (1918-2013) in the chapter, ‘The Growth of National Schools’, which he contributed to Keyboard Music, edited by Denis Matthews (Penguin Books, 1972) – the words quoted (which occur on p.288) begin a very brief discussion of Françaix.

This new CD is a selection from (or perhaps one should say a distillation of) Martin Jones’ 3-CD set Françaix’s Music for Solo Piano, Duos & Duets, first released in 2012 (review ~ review). MusicWeb published a third review of the set, by Jonathan Woolf. He began his appraisal with the statement that “There is so much insouciant charm and harmonically spiced wit in these three CDs that it’s difficult to know where to start. The discs don’t progress chronologically and, in any case, dipping into and out of Françaix’s sound-world one set at a time is by far the best solution.” Praise thoroughly permeates his review, so that he writes of the “innocent sounding Scherzo from 1932 that rejoices in a conflation of music box and Ragtime” and his review concludes thus: “These sparkling, diverse pieces are all played with real Gallic verve by Jones and his two colleagues and the recorded sound is just right, and not too billowy. With a first-class booklet into the bargain, lovers of the Ravel and Satie-spiced, jazz-infused, rhythmically inexhaustible Françaix can entertain no reservations over this set.” Jonathan’s colleagues took differing stances. Paul Corfield Godfrey’s review was less admiring of the music, though Steve Arlott particularly relished the humour in many of Françaix’s compositions, though he concluded that“[D]espite my enthusiasm for his music I am forced to admit that a little goes a long way. After half an hour or so I look for something more satisfying to the soul.”   (review).

The young Françaix was very well taught by Nadia Boulanger – “Françaix received a thorough musical training from Nadia Boulanger, with results that might well be envied by certain of his more renowned elders” (David Drew, in European Music in the Twentieth Century, ed. Howard Hartog, (Pelican Books, 1965, p.288)) and he later studied with Isidor Phillipp. Even as a young man, Françaix had the self-knowledge to understand his own temperament and the instinct to discover the suitable style for that temperament. Having ‘found’ that style, Françaix largely adhered to it thereafter and made few changes to it in his later career. It is almost fully developed in the earliest work on this disc, the free-standing Scherzo, written in 1932 (when the composer was 20). The ‘Françaix manner’ is already distinctive, the brief piece being replete with wit and elegance, with the sense of dance never very far away; it makes attractive use of the top end of the keyboard, with some fascinating suspensions in the left hand – Françaix was obviously content with this piece of juvenilia, since he continued to play it throughout his career. With characteristic grace it was dedicated to Isidor Phillipp. So, too, was Cinq portraits de jeunes filles (1936), while the same year’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra carried a dedication to Nadia Boulanger.

Four of the Cinq portraits are presented here (all of which have affinities with the ‘character’ pieces frequent in the work of the harpsichordists of the French baroque such as Couperin): (1) La Tendre, (II) La Prétentieuse, (III) La Pensive and (V) La Moderne. All are depicted with Françaix’s characteristically sophisticated wit. La Tendre is a beautiful Baroque-inspired sicilienne; La Prétentieuse is represented by some fancifully decorative writing and a good deal of elaboration of melody; the thoughtfulness of La Pensive is represented by some fairly complex contrapuntal writing; La Moderne is permeated by the jazz rhythms of the 1930s, framing a slower central section which has something of the plaintiveness of the blues, before the piece closes with a rapid version of the opening bars of La Capricieuse – an effect ofsymmetry which is rather lost here, since La Capricieuse is the only one of the Cinq portraits not heard here. Even in its truncated form, however, this is a sophisticated sequence, its allusions demanding (and rewarding) close listening.

The disc opens with another of Françaix’s suites of short pieces – the Eloge de la danse,written in 1947. The work of Martin Jones is utterly perfect in this suite. It is entirely fitting that Françaix should have written ‘in praise of dancing’, since almost all of his works for piano are imbued with the spirit and rhythm of one dance or another. All six pieces making up the sequence of six pieces, as the suite’s subtitle (Six épigraphes de Paul Valéry) suggests,isrelated to a quotation from Paul Valéry’s observations on dancing. So, for example, the second of Françaix’s six pieces is a reflection on the following statement by Valéry: “Elle était l’amour … elle était jeux et pleurs, et feintes inutiles … les oui, et les non, et les pas tristement perdus”.  Françaix’s mildly flirtatious music captures many of these games and tears in a beautiful evocation of courtship, by turns eager and shyly hesitant. All six of these miniatures (the six together last less than eleven and a half minutes) are subtle and attractive. The closing piece has a positive mood, illustrating the following words by Valéry: “Voici la choeur ailé des illustres danseuses!… C’est un bosquet aux belles branches tout agitées par les brises de la musique!”.

Another highlight on the disc is La Promenade d’un Musicologue Eclectique, thougha fullappreciation of the work needs some imagination, so as to ‘realise’ some of the comic ‘stage directions’ provided by the composer. Even without ‘seeing’ it, La Promenade offers some brilliant parodies / pastiches, such as the ‘Hommage à Domenico Scarlatti’ or the ‘Petit Homage à la Musique Contemporain’, in which Françaix has some fun at the expense of his more ‘advanced’ contemporaries. There is more satire and a little less generous good humour in this piece. Françaix’s distance from serialism and other ‘modernist’ characteristics is perhaps most perfectly expressed in almost epigrammatic fashion by Françaix, which is quoted by Muriel Bellier in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London & New York, 1961, Vol.9, p.139): “In sum, Emanuel Chabrier is my good master” (!).

The reader who has stuck with me thus far will have realised that I am a lover of Françaix’s music. His neoclassical sophistication makes him one of the most quintessentially French of composers; he has affinities with Ravel, Poulenc, Debussy, Ravel and Satie (as well as some earlier French composers), but the resemblances are a matter of a partially shared aesthetic rather than of being ‘influenced’. He remains very much himself in all his music. Words like sparkling, scintillating and lucid seem inescapable in any attempt to describe his musical ‘manner’. More fancifully, I think one might say that there is something ‘champagne-like’ in his best works, which are crisp and, in the wine writer’s sense, dry.

By way of closure, I gently offer a small factual correction to Paul Corfield Godfrey’s remark about the cover picture. He observes that “The limited nature of Françaix’s is rather too well conveyed by the set cover of a clown balancing on a monocycle”. The figure in that image is Harlequin, not a clown. Indeed, in the Commedia dell’ Arte Harlequin was a figure by way of contrast with the rather stupid clowns.  Harlequin or Arlecchino was a complex figure, intelligent rather than foolish, with his intelligence mainly used in the futherance of his master’s love affairs – the chapters on Harlequin in Piere Louis Duchartre’s The Italian Comedy, translated by R.T. Weaver (New York 1929, Dover Reprint, 1966) are very informative on this subject. Many nineteenth-century French poets were fascinated by the figure of Harlequin and he remained a figure of great interest to poets and composers into the twentieth century. Debussy was very interested in Harlequin and it was not without good reason that Roger Nichols chose to highlight this figure in his account of early twentieth-century French music, The Harlequin Years: Music in Paris 1917-1929 . The choice of cover design made by Nimbusrecognises the inventive wit of Françaix, which he shared with Harlequin, and ‘places’ him firmly in the ‘modern’ French tradition.

Glyn Pursglove

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Contents
Éloge de la danse (1947)
15 portraits d’enfants d’Auguste Renoir (1972)*
Scherzo (1932)
La Promenade d’un Musicologue Eclectique (1987)
Nocturne (1994)
Cinq “Bis” (1955)
Huit Variations sur le nom de Johannes Gutenberg (1982)
Cinq portraits de jeunes filles (1936)
Huits danses exotiques, for two pianos**
Martin Jones (piano)
*Martin Jones and Adrian Farmer (piano)
**Martin Jones and Richard McMahon (pianos)