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Cesar Franck Chorales

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Paradise

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Re: Cesar Franck Chorales

PostTue Jun 01, 2021 6:16 am

I just discovered this subject.

You talked about the massed 8 feet stops founds, in fact this is a characteristic of romantic french organs, that Callinet, Cavaillé-Coll, Mutin, and some others in Europe, created to get close to the orchestra.
The mix of : Montre 8' (which is not an english Diapason !), Bourdon 8', Gambe 8', with coupled keyboards, create an unique sound.

So, on other organs, the 8' founds stops are not powerful enough, forcing to add some 4' stops.

On early romantic french organs, mixtures are very few in numbers, often one single Fourniture 3 or 4 ranks not sharp at all, even on a 40 stops organ, one Quinte 2 2/3, one 2' (Octavin 2' at the Récit), often no Doublette 2' at the Grand-Orgue...
The Cornet survived, luckily.
The Mixtures are present to imitate the old baroque style, even not with the intent of playing Bach who was rarely played in the XIXth century.
On later romantic, like Cavaillé-Coll, organs became bigger, and the Mixtures came back timidly to enlarge the possibilities, lighten the tutti.

Sorry for my poor english...
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JulianMoney-Kyrle

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Re: Cesar Franck Chorales

PostTue Jun 01, 2021 11:01 am

Paradise,

Your English is very clear.

When I am learning a piece it is very helpful to understand what the composer would have expected of the performer and the organ, and to use that as a starting point for developing my own interpretation.
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Paradise

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Re: Cesar Franck Chorales

PostThu Jun 03, 2021 7:38 am

You are right, the most important is to know, or guess, the composer intents : registration, phrasing, and tempo.

So you must adapt the registration according to the original composer organ, and also to your own organ which is not necessarily the same in terms of style.

With Hauptwerk and the Caen Cavaillé-Coll sample, it is a dream of finding the original sounds.

I have played on a real 40 stops CC (exactly a Callinet/CC/Mutin), the chorus of 8' founds are marvellous, the reeds are powerful (16/8/4 at the Great and at the Swell), the Flûte Harmonique enchanting.

Of course, no virtual organ can really vie with a real organ.

Regards.
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Paradise

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Re: Cesar Franck Chorales

PostMon Jun 21, 2021 8:17 am

Last point :Franck's works are called CHORALS, not CHORALES. :wink:
Chorale (feminine gender) means choir.
A Choral (male gender) is a musical form. :)
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Re: Cesar Franck Chorales

PostMon Jun 21, 2021 9:59 am

I finally decided to learn some Franck (after playing mostly baroque music for 40 years, now retired), and began with his 3rd Choral, which I am working on with the Caen sample set.

I came upon this very useful PDF document of articles taken from The American Organist. The long article by Rollin Smith (probably using excerpts from his book which I haven't read) goes into great detail about Franck's registration. Among other things Franck was careful to replan his registration on different organs, using assistants to stand in the room and comment on the different stops he would fiddle with.

I really recommend reading these articles for anyone wanting to explore the subject. I tried to attach the document but couldn't figure out how to do it. The link is here:
https://organ.music.unt.edu/sites/defau ... educed.pdf.
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JulianMoney-Kyrle

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Re: Cesar Franck Chorales

PostTue Jun 22, 2021 2:36 am

Paradise,

I have just checked my score and the title is "Trois Chorals". I had never noticed, so thank-you for pointing out the difference.

By the way, in English, the words male and female refer to biological sex (although these days the definition has been enlarged to include how people choose to identify themselves) whereas the linguistic genders are masculine and feminine (and neuter for Latin and German, though there are languages with others such as animate and inanimate). However, many native English speakers are unaware of this distinction as the masculine and feminine genders are by-and-large reserved for animate objects and everything else is neuter (also very few English are fluent in another language). There are some exceptions, such as ships (and when I was young, cars) being feminine.

There are also regional differences - in rural Wiltshire, where I come from, the masculine pronoun " 'e" is frequently used for inanimate and even female nouns: " 'e be a nice cow", and indeed sometimes the feminine pronoun can creep into a sentence rather randomly: "Er be a grand bull". This is quite different from the Yorkshire "ee" which is an interjection, as in the commonly-used expression "ee bah gum". There is a story of a Yorkshireman commisioning a tombstone for his deceased wife. When he went to collect it the stonemason had inscribed "Lord, she was thin" instead of "Lord, she was thine" (the second person singular is used quite a lot in Yorkshire, as are the archaic "ought" and "naught", often rendered "owt" and "nowt"). "Tha's forgot the 'e' ", he said". The stonemason apologised and told him to return the following day. When he did so, the amended epitaph read "Ee Lord, she was thin."
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RaymondList

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Re: Cesar Franck Chorales

PostTue Jun 22, 2021 8:04 am

Interesting. My Schirmer edition is “Three Chorales for Organ”.
Ray
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mnailor

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Re: Cesar Franck Chorales

PostTue Jun 22, 2021 8:29 am

Several publishers have it "Chorale". The manuscript I saw online for #1 says "Choral".
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Paradise

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Re: Cesar Franck Chorales

PostSun Jun 27, 2021 4:35 pm

The original word is 'Choral(s)', in french, term used also for JS Bach, Buxtehude...
Of course, when the term is translated, the written form can be different from the original, I am French and I don't know english subtleties. :wink:
It is not important, just a little remark. 8)

@robsig I go and learn too the Third Choral, the First one seems a bit more difficult.

Anyway, the 'Trois Chorals' are sooo wonderful ! :)

I learned the 'Prélude, Fugue, et Variation', and I am finishing the 'Pastorale'.

César Franck is really an enchanter !
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mnailor

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Re: Cesar Franck Chorales

PostSun Jun 27, 2021 10:28 pm

English and American dictionaries pretty much agree on the definitions below, where "choral" is an adjective and "chorale" is a noun. It seems that we use the two words very differently from French, but it's nice to quote titles in the original language if possible. So you can understand why we imagined that Franck wrote "Three Chorales", because that's English for what he wrote. Both of my print editions say "Trois Chorals", which I never noticed before.

I'm glad you pointed this out! Thank you.

Meaning of choral in English: (Oxford)
choral
Pronunciation /ˈkɔːr(ə)l/
ADJECTIVE
1Composed for or sung by a choir or chorus.
‘a choral work’
More example sentences
1.1Engaged in or concerned with singing.
‘a choral scholar’
More example sentences
Origin
Late 16th century from medieval Latin choralis, from Latin chorus (see chorus).

Meaning of chorale in English: (Oxford)
chorale
Pronunciation /kɒˈrɑːl/
NOUN
1A stately hymn tune, especially one associated with the German Lutheran Church.
‘Fervent disputes were aroused by prayer in the vernacular, chorales after Protestant models, mixed choirs, and organ-playing.’
1.1A musical composition consisting of or resembling a harmonized version of a chorale.
‘It's not a huge piece, more a quiet reflection starting from the chorale and developing a certain drama midway through, with a moment of inspired clarity at the end, as high chords soothe away the preceding tensions.’
2US A choir or choral society.
‘In addition to his work at WOI Radio, Compton sings in his church choir, assists with Iowa State's Chamber Singers student chorale and serves as organizer/agent for an a cappella men's vocal group, The Music Men.’
Origin
Mid 19th century from German Choral(gesang), translating medieval Latin cantus choralis
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Paradise

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Re: Cesar Franck Chorales

PostMon Jun 28, 2021 2:40 pm

Alright, so we can say that the translation of the french 'Choral', for the musical form, to english, is 'Chorale' (except for the adjective form), and for 'Chorale' (name form) it is 'Choir'. :wink:
If I have correctly understood. :mrgreen:

It is explained here : https://www.wordreference.com/fren/chorale
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RaymondList

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Re: Cesar Franck Chorales

PostMon Jun 28, 2021 3:41 pm

Now I've begun to search for someone from France visiting my area. I need them to pronounce 'Chorals' for me in true French fashion! :D
Ray
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Paradise

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Re: Cesar Franck Chorales

PostTue Jun 29, 2021 5:29 am

RaymondList wrote:Now I've begun to search for someone from France visiting my area. I need them to pronounce 'Chorals' for me in true French fashion! :D

:D

That's possible !

Anyway, the 'ch' , here, is pronounced 'k', like for Chœur (Choir in english) or for 'chorus', 'chorégraphie', cause of the greek etymology.
The 's' of the plural is not pronounced in french.
For most of the words, 'ch' is pronounced 'sh' (chapeau/hat, château/castle, chat/cat).
The problem for an english speaker is the 'r' :mrgreen: , pronounced but not rolled like in spanish, and not guttural like in german.

I'll try to make for you a short mp3 in which I'll say the word 'choral'. :wink:
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