For music-lovers who aren’t very familiar with the music of Florent Schmitt, they may well think that the composer is German. Or at the very least, they might assume that the music bears a strong resemblance to Germanic musical style.
Of course, for those who are more familiar Schmitt and his artistry, they know that any “German” musical influence falls well-behind French influence for the simple reason that Florent Schmitt was a French composer through and through. His entire musical education was in France — first in Nancy and later at the Paris Conservatoire where his teachers included Théodore Dubois, Jules Massenet and, most importantly, Gabriel Fauré.
Moreover, Schmitt “came of age” in a musical Paris that was rebelling against the perceived notion of Teutonic hegemony in classical music. Claude Debussy of course — but also composers like Édouard Lalo and Emmanuel Chabrier — had been charting new courses in music distinctly removed from the Wagnerian and Brahmsian traditions.
… And if there were potent outside musical influences in France, more often they came from the Russia of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
In the case of Florent Schmitt, while it is true that his music conveys an “epic” sense far more than other French composers of his time, his style seems to echo the power, opulence and color of Hector Berlioz or the Russian “Mighty Five” more than it does, say, Richard Strauss.
American Composer Kenneth Fuchs
Schmitt’s large-scale choral work Psaume XLVII, dating from 1904, is a case in point: The American composer Kenneth Fuchs has noted the special position this piece holds in the French repertoire, writing:
“The Psalm is unusual for French music because it has such a big profile. Even Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, at its largest moments with chorus and orchestra at full throttle, doesn’t quite have the ‘hugeness’ of this piece. The Psalm’s language is not Germanic — but the dimensions somehow are.”
Despite the musical currents and “atmospherics” in Paris at the time, for any serious student of classical music it was impossible to escape exposure to the Germanic tradition completely; indeed, many a budding French composer or musician would make the pilgrimage to Berlin or Weimar or Bayreuth.
Schmitt did the same — sort of.
Villa Medici, Rome
During his Prix de Rome period, which at four years lasted far longer than the tenure of the typical prizewinner, Florent Schmitt traveled all across Europe as well as in North Africa and the Near East.
The fruits of those travels manifested themselves in a noteworthy string of “orientalist” compositions — significant enough that in the several decades that followed, Schmitt would be considered the foremost orientalist composer not only in France, but in the entire world.
Still, Schmitt’s time of travels in Germany and Austria-Hungary around 1900 did result in one striking musical creation: a suite of eight waltzes he composed for duo-pianos in the period 1902-05 which were published as a collection under the name Reflets d’Allemagne, Opus 28 (Reflections of Germany).
With one exception, each of the waltzes in the suite was given the name of a prominent city in Germanic Europe, with shifting moods that combine to create a musically engaging piano set — full of interesting contrasts throughout.
The movements are as follows:
- Heidelberg
- Coblentz
- Lübeck
- Werder Island
- Vienna
- Dresden
- Nuremberg
- Munich
Far meatier than mere “musical postcards,” each of these numbers are small gems that puts the musical sophistication of Florent Schmitt on full display. They take as their point of departure Schumann (by way of Fauré), but go much further. As the writer and musicologist Michel Fleury has remarked of the eight movements that make up the suite:
“Their discreet smile seems to comment on the composer’s tender amusement at Germanic customs — ceremonious, pompous or, to the contrary, saturated with nostalgia and effusion [as] scenes of Romantic Germany file past.”
Maurice Ravel
Reflets d’Allemagne began life auspiciously, with none other than Maurice Ravel joining Schmitt as the piano duo featured at the premiere public performance of the suite in Paris in 1906.
Over the years, Reflections of Germany has achieved greater fame and popularity than many of Schmitt’s other sets of piano music. The composer himself performed the score with some regularity — including new arrangements he made of the music for piano duet and also for piano solo, the latter of which was included in the programs on the composer’s American concert tour in 1932.
Likewise, Reflets d’Allemagne has fared rather well on commercial recordings. Among the more recent and most widely circulated renditions are those by Christian Ivaldi and Jean-Claude Pennetier (on the Timpani label), the Invencia Piano Duo (Andrey Kasparov and Oksana Lutsyshyn, on NAXOS Grand Piano) and Leslie De’Ath and Anya Alexeyev (on Dutton-Epoch).
The individual movements of the suite pop up on piano recitals with some regularity, too. Numerous excerpts have been uploaded on YouTube such as this one featuring pianists Mami Kino and Jean-Roch Lyeuté, and this one from a piano teachers’ conference recital program in Japan.
As with a number of other Schmitt orchestral compositions that began life as piano scores, Reflections of Germany would be orchestrated by the composer several decades later — in this case for a ballet production that was mounted at the Théâtre National de l’Opéra-Comique in May 1932.
The new ballet carried a shortened title Reflets (“Reflections”). The choreography was by Robert Quinault — who also danced in the production along with prima ballerinas Mariette de Rauwera and Colette Salomon — with the ensemble conducted by Élie Cohen.
The orchestral version of Reflets has been less fortunate on recordings compared to the versions for piano. Florent Schmitt himself made a recording of the ballet’s final two movements in the early 1930s (“Nuremberg” and “Munich“) in a Pathé release that also featured the composer’s own “vocal autograph” at the end of the recording.
That historic recording is available today on the Timpani label. The two movements have also been uploaded on YouTube as well (links are included in the paragraph above — accessible to American viewers only).
No other commercial recordings exist of the orchestral version of Reflets — either as a complete work or individual excerpts. However, three of the movements (“Dresden,” “Werder” and “Munich”) were performed at an October 1958 memorial concert honoring Florent Schmitt six weeks following the composer’s death — a concert that was also broadcast.
Désiré-Emilie Inghelbrecht
Relegated to the archives of the ORTF for over half a century, the recorded broadcast was finally made available to the public in 2015. Featuring the legendary Désiré Inghelbrecht leading the French National Radio Orchestra, it can be considered a definitive interpretation of one of Schmitt’s most engaging and melodious scores.
The Inghelbrecht/ORTF performance of the three excerpts can be heard here. The entire 1958 memorial concert, which includes a total of five Schmitt compositions, is available for audition on French INA website and also can be purchased as a high-res download.
Listening to these historic recordings, the clear and immediate conclusion is that the orchestral version of Reflets d’Allemagne deserves a modern (and first-ever complete) recording. Who among Florent Schmitt’s most ardent advocates — Leon Botstein, Lionel Bringuier, Stéphane Denève, JoAnn Falletta, Sascha Goetzel, Jacques Mercier, Yan-Pascal Tortelier — is ready to take up the cause?
