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César Franck

César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck (10 December 1822 – 8 November 1890) was a French Romantic composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher born in present-day Belgium.

He was born in Liège (which at the time of his birth was part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands). He gave his first concerts there in 1834 and studied privately in Paris from 1835, where his teachers included Anton Reicha. After a brief return to Belgium, and a disastrous reception of an early oratorio Ruth, he moved to Paris, where he married and embarked on a career as teacher and organist. He gained a reputation as a formidable musical improviser, and travelled widely within France to demonstrate new instruments built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.

In 1858, he became organist at the Basilica of St. Clotilde, Paris, a position he retained for the rest of his life. He became professor at the Paris Conservatoire in 1872; he took French nationality, a requirement of the appointment. After acquiring the professorship, Franck wrote several pieces that have entered the standard classical repertoire, including symphonic, chamber, and keyboard works for pipe organ and piano. As a teacher and composer he had a vast following of composers and other musicians. His pupils included Ernest Chausson, Vincent d'Indy, Henri Duparc, Guillaume Lekeu, Albert Renaud, Charles Tournemire and Louis Vierne.

Child and student (1822–1842)

Franck was born in Liège, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, to Nicolas-Joseph Franck, a bank clerk whose family came from the German-Belgian border, and Marie-Catherine-Barbe Franck (née Frings), who was from Germany. Although young César-Auguste, as he was known in his early years, showed both drawing and musical skills, Nicolas-Joseph envisioned him as a young prodigy pianist-composer, after the manner of Franz Liszt or Sigismond Thalberg, who would bring fame and fortune to his family. His father entered Franck at the Royal Conservatory of Liège, studying solfège, piano, organ, and harmony with Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul and other faculty members. César-Auguste gave his first concerts in 1834, one before Leopold I of the newly formed Kingdom of Belgium.

In 1835, his father resolved that the time had come for wider audiences, and brought César-Auguste and his younger brother Joseph to Paris, to study privately: counterpoint with Anton Reicha and piano with Pierre Zimmerman. Both men were also professors at the Paris Conservatoire. When Reicha died some ten months later, Nicolas-Joseph sought to enter both boys into the Conservatoire. However, the Conservatoire would not accept foreigners; Nicolas-Joseph was obliged to seek French citizenship, which was granted in 1837. In the interval, Nicolas-Joseph promoted concerts and recitals in Paris featuring one or both boys playing popular music of the period, to mostly good reviews.

Young Franck and his brother entered the Conservatoire in October 1837, César-Auguste continuing his piano studies under Zimmerman and beginning composition with Aimé Leborn. He took the first prize in piano at the end of his first year (1838) and consistently maintained that level of performance. His work in counterpoint was less spectacular, taking successively third, second, and first prizes between 1838 and 1840. He added organ studies with François Benoist, which included both performance and improvisation, taking second prize in 1841, with the aim of competing for the Prix de Rome in composition in the following year. However, for reasons that are not explicit, he made a "voluntary" retirement from the Conservatoire on 22 April 1842.

His withdrawal may have been at his father's behest. While César-Auguste was pursuing his academic studies, he was, at his father's demand, also teaching privately and giving concerts. "It was a hard life for him, . . . and not made easier by the ill-tempered and even vindictive behavior of his father . . . ." Concerts performed by young Franck (some with his brother on the violin, some including Franck's own compositions) were at first received well, but increasingly Nicolas-Joseph's commercial promotion of his sons antagonized the Parisian musical journals and critics. César-Auguste's technical abilities as a pianist were acknowledged; his abilities as a composer were (probably justly at this point) felt to be wanting. The whole situation was aggravated by what in the end became a feud between Nicolas-Joseph and Henri Blanchard, the principal critic of the Revue et Gazette musicale, who lost no opportunity to castigate the aggressive pretensions of the father and to mock the "imperial" names of the elder son. This animosity, "undoubtedly personal", may well have caused Nicolas-Joseph to decide that a return to Belgium was in order, and in 1842 "a peremptory order" to young Franck compelled the latter to leave the Conservatoire and accompany him.

Teacher and organist (1842–1858)

The return to Belgium lasted less than two years. Profitable concerts did not arise; the critics were indifferent or scornful; patronage from the Belgian court was not forthcoming (although the King later sent César-Auguste a gold medal) and there was no money to be made. As far as Nicolas-Joseph was concerned, the excursion was a failure, and he brought his son back into a regime of teaching and family concerts in Paris, which Laurence Davies characterizes as rigorous and low-paying. Yet there were long-term benefits for young Franck. For it was from this period, extending back into his last Conservatoire years and forward beyond his return to Paris, that his first mature compositions emerged, a set of Trios (piano, violin, cello); these are the first of what he regarded as his permanent work. Liszt saw them, offered encouragement and constructive criticism, and performed them some years later in Weimar. In 1843, Franck began work on his first non-chamber work, the oratorio Ruth. It was privately premiered in 1845 before Liszt, Meyerbeer, and other musical notables, who gave moderate approval and constructive criticism. However, a public performance in early 1846 met with public indifference and critical snubs for the oratorio's artlessness and simplicity. The work was not performed again until 1872, after considerable revision.

In reaction, César-Auguste essentially retired from public life to one of obscurity as a teacher and accompanist, in which his father reluctantly concurred. Young Franck had commissions both in Paris and in Orléans for these activities, and for the composition of songs and small works. He had offered some compositions to celebrate and strengthen the new Second Republic of 1848; the public received some of them with interest, but as the Republic gave way to the Second Empire under Louis-Napoléon, they dropped out of use. In 1851 he attempted an opera, Le Valet de Ferme, with a libretto of "abysmal literary quality" and a hastily sketched score. Franck himself was to say towards the end of his career that "it is not worth printing." All in all, however, this obscurity may have been restful for him after his previous life in the spotlight: "Franck was still very much in the dark as to what his vocation was." However, two crucial changes in these years were to shape the remainder of his life.

The first was an almost complete disruption of relations with his parents, especially his father. The main cause was his friendship with, and later love for, one of his private piano pupils, Eugénie-Félicité-Caroline Saillot (1824–1918), whose parents were members of the Comédie-Française company under the stage name of Desmousseaux. He had known Felicité from his years at the Conservatoire, and her family home had become something of a refuge for him from his overbearing father. When in 1846 Nicolas-Joseph found a composition dedicated to "Mlle. F. Desmousseaux, in pleasant memories" among César-Auguste's papers, he tore it up in the latter's presence. César-Auguste went directly to the Desmousseauxs', wrote out the piece from memory, and presented it to Félicité with a dedicatory line. Relations worsened with his father, who forbade any thought of betrothal and marriage (French law required parental consent to marriage for a son younger than 25), accused César-Auguste of distressing his mother and shouted at him about a then notorious husband-wife poisoning case as being the most likely outcome of any match by his son. His mother's role in the dispute is unclear: she was either mildly supportive of her son or stayed out of the conflict. On one Sunday in July, César-Auguste walked out of his parents' house for the last time with nothing except what he could carry, and moved to the Desmousseauxs', where he was welcomed. From that time on, Franck termed himself and signed his papers and works as César Franck or plain C. Franck. "It was his intention to make a clean break with his father and to let it be known he had done so . . . . He was determined to become a new person, as different as possible from the other."

Under Félicité's parents' friendly if vigilant eyes, he continued to court her. As soon as he turned 25 in 1847, he informed his father of his intention to marry Felicité, and did so on 22 February 1848, the month of the Paris revolt. To get to the church, the party had to climb over the barricades set up by the revolutionaries – with, d'Indy says, "the willing help of the insurgents who were massed behind this improvised fortification." The elder Francks were sufficiently reconciled to the marriage to attend the ceremony; they signed the register at what had become César's parish church, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.

It was the second great change that had made Notre-Dame-de-Lorette become Franck's parish church: his appointment there as assistant organist in 1847, the first of a succession of increasingly more important and influential organ posts. Although Franck had never shone at the Conservatoire as organist in the same manner that he had as pianist, he had wanted an organist's position, not least because it provided a steady income. He now had occasion to match his Roman Catholic devotion with learning the skills needed for accompanying public worship, as well as the occasional opportunity to fill in for his superior, Alphonse Gilbat. In this position he won the favorable attention of the church's Abbé Dancel, who in 1851 moved to the new church of Saint-Jean-Saint-François-au-Marais (a small church in Le Marais district), as curé and two years later invited Franck to assume the position of titulaire, or primary organist. Franck's new church possessed a fine new organ (1846) by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who had been making a name for himself as an artistically gifted and mechanically innovative creator of magnificent new instruments. "My new organ," Franck said, "it's like an orchestra!" Franck's improvisatory skills were now in much demand, since liturgical practice of the time required the ability to take the plainsong music sung for the Mass or the Office and to develop from it organ music fitting into the service between texts sung or spoken by the choir or clergy. Furthermore, Franck's playing ability and his love of the Cavaillé-Coll instruments led to his collaboration with the builder to demonstrate the latter's instruments, Franck travelling to towns throughout France to show off older instruments or play inaugural concerts on new ones.

At the same time, a revolutionary change was occurring in the techniques of French organ performance. The German organist Adolf Hesse (1809–1863), a student of Bach's biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel, had demonstrated in 1844 in Paris the pedal technique which (together with a German-style pedal board) made the performance of Bach's works possible. This was totally outside the scope of the kind of playing which Franck had learned from Benoist at the Conservatoire; most French organs did not have the pedal board notes required for such work, and even France's own great classical organ tradition dating from the period of the Couperins was at that time neglected in favour of the art of improvisation. Hesse's performances might have been treated simply as a short sensation for their dazzling virtuosity, but that Hesse's pupil Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens (1823–1881) came to Paris in 1852 and again in 1854. Lemmens was then professor of organ at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, and was not only a virtuoso performer of Bach but a developer of organ teaching methods with which all organists could learn to play with precision, clarity, and legato phrasing. Franck appeared on the same inaugural concert program as Lemmens in 1854, much admiring not only the classic interpretation of Bach but also the rapidity and evenness of Lemmens's pedal work. Léon Vallas states that Franck, pianist before he was organist, "never wholly acquired the legato style himself"; nevertheless he realized the expansion of organ style made possible by the introduction of such techniques and set about the task of mastering them.

Titulaire of Sainte-Clotilde (1858–1890)

In his search to master new organ-playing techniques he was both challenged and stimulated by his third and last change in organ posts. On 22 January 1858, he became organist and maître de chapelle at the newly consecrated Sainte-Clotilde (from 1896 the Basilique-Sainte-Clotilde), where he remained until his death. Eleven months later, the parish installed a new three-manual Cavaillé-Coll instrument, whereupon he was made titulaire, Théodore Dubois taking over as choirmaster and assistant organist. The impact of this organ on Franck's performance and composition cannot be overestimated; together with his early pianistic experience it shaped his music-making for the remainder of his life. Norbert Dufourcq described this instrument as "unquestionably the constructor's masterpiece up to this time". Franck himself told the curé of Sainte-Clotilde: "If you only knew how I love this instrument . . . it is so supple beneath my fingers and so obedient to all my thoughts!". To prepare himself for this organ's capabilities (including its thirty-note pedal), Franck purchased a practice pedalboard from Pleyel et Cie for home practice to improve his technique, as well as spending many hours at the organ keyboard. The beauty of its sound and the mechanical facilities provided by the instrument assisted his reputation as improviser and composer, not only for organ music but in other genres as well. Pieces for organ, for choir, and for harmonium began to circulate, among the most notable of which was the Messe à 3 voix (1859). The quality of the movements in this work, composed over a number of years, is uneven, but from it comes one of Franck's most enduring compositions, the communion anthem "Panis angelicus". More notable still is the set of Six Pièces for organ, written 1860–1862 (although not published until 1868), particularly the Pastorale for its characteristic drone effect. These compositions (dedicated to fellow organists and pianists, to his old master Benoist, and to Cavaillé-Coll) remain part of modern organ repertory and were, according to Rollin Smith, the first major contribution to French organ literature in over a century, and "the most important organ music written since Mendelssohn's." The group includes two of his best-known organ works, the "Prélude, Fugue et Variation", op. 18 and the "Grande Pièce Symphonique", op. 17.

His increasing reputation as both performer and improviser continued to make Franck much in demand for inaugural or dedicatory recitals of new or rebuilt Cavaillé-Coll organs: Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély's new instrument at Saint-Sulpice (1862) and later for organs at Notre-Dame, Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, and La Trinité; for some of these instruments, Franck had acted (by himself or with Camille Saint-Saëns) as consultant. At his own church, people began to come to hear the improvisations for the Mass and the Office. In addition, Franck began to give "organ-concerts" or recitals at Sainte-Clotilde of his own works and those of other composers. Perhaps his most notable concert arose from the attendance at a Sunday Mass in April 1866 of Franz Liszt, who sat in the choir to listen to Franck's improvisations and afterward said "How could I ever forget the man who wrote those trios?" To which Franck is supposed to have murmured a little sadly, "I fancy I have done rather better things since then.". Liszt organized a concert at Sainte-Clotilde to promote Franck's organ works later that month, which was well received by its listeners and well reported in the musical journals. Despite his comment about the trios, Franck was pleased to hear that not only Liszt but Hans von Bülow was including them in concerts in Germany on a regular basis. Franck reinforced his understanding of German organ music and how it should be played by hearing Anton Bruckner at Notre-Dame in 1869. He began to have a regular circle of pupils, who were there ostensibly for organ study but showed increasing interest in Franck's compositional techniques.

Franck continued to write compositions for choir in this period, but most were never published. As was then common even for Conservatoire-trained musicians, he had never become familiar with the polyphonic music of earlier centuries. Franck composed his liturgical works in the then-current style, which Davies characterizes as "secular music with a religious bias". Nevertheless, he was encouraged to begin work (1869) on a major choral work, Les Béatitudes, which was to occupy him for more than ten years, the delay partly due to the interruptions of the Franco-Prussian War. The war, like the 1848 Revolution, had caused many of his pupils to disappear, either because they left Paris or were killed or disabled in the fighting. Again he wrote some patriotic pieces which, in the harshness of the times, were not then performed. He and his family experienced economic hardships as his income dropped and food and fuel became scarce. The Conservatoire was closed for the academic year 1870–1871. But a change was coming in how French musicians regarded their own music; particularly after the war they were looking for an Ars Gallica that would be distinctly French. The term became the motto of the newly founded Société Nationale de Musique, of which Franck became the oldest member; his music appeared on its first program in November 1871.

"Père Franck", Conservatory professor, composer (1872–1890)

Franck's reputation was now widespread enough, through his fame as performer, his membership in the Société, and his smaller but devoted group of students, that when Benoist retired as professor of organ at the reopening of the Paris Conservatoire in 1872, Franck was proposed as successor. There is some uncertainty as to who made the nomination to the government; at different times Saint-Saëns and Theodore Dubois claimed responsibility, as did Cavaillé-Coll. What is certain is that Franck's name was at the head of the list of nominees—and that the nomination exposed the embarrassing fact that Franck was not a French citizen, a requirement for the appointment. It turned out that Franck did not know that when his father, Nicolas-Joseph, became a naturalized French citizen to enter his sons into the Conservatoire as students, they were counted as citizens only until age twenty-one, when they were obliged to declare their allegiance to France as adults. Franck had always regarded himself as French from the time of his father's naturalization. In fact, he had unknowingly reverted to his birth nationality of Belgian upon becoming a legal adult. Franck went through the naturalization process at once; his original appointment on 1 February 1872 was regularized in 1873.

Many of his original circle of students had studied or were studying at the Conservatoire. Among the most notable in later life were Ernest Chausson, Vincent d'Indy, Henri Duparc, Augusta Holmès, and Louis Vierne. This group became increasingly tight-knit in their mutual esteem and affection between teacher and pupils. d'Indy relates that independently but unanimously each new student came to call their professor Père Franck, "Father Franck". On the other hand, Franck experienced some tensions in his faculty life: he tended to teach composition as much as he did organ performance and improvisation; he was considered unsystematic in his teaching techniques ("Franck never taught by means of hard and fast rules or dry, ready-made theories" ), with an offhand attitude towards the official texts and books approved by the Conservatoire; and his popularity among some students provoked some jealousy among his fellow professors and some counter-claims of bias on the part of those professors when judging Franck's pupils for the various prizes, including the Prix de Rome. Vallas says that Franck, "with his simple and trusting nature was incapable of understanding . . . how much back-chat of the nastier kind there could be even in a Conservatoire whose atmosphere he himself always found kindly disposed towards him."

He was now in a position to spend time composing works for which ideas had been germinating for years. He interrupted his work on Les Béatitudes to produce (among many shorter works) the oratorio Rédemption (1871, revised 1874), the symphonic poem Les Éolides (1876), the Trois Pièces for organ (1878), and the piano Quintet (1879). Les Béatitudes itself finally saw its first performance in 1879. As with many other premieres of Franck's larger choral and orchestral works, it was not successful: the work was highly sectionalized and lent itself to performance of excerpts rather than as a whole. There was no orchestra available, and those sections that were performed were accompanied by piano. Further, even d'Indy points out that Franck seemed incapable of musically expressing an evil contrasting to the virtues expressed in the Gospel beatitudes: "This personification of ideal evil--if it is permissible to link these terms—was a conception so alien to Franck's nature that he never succeeded in giving it adequate expression." The resulting "impression of monotony", as Vallas puts it, caused even Franck's devoted pupils to speculate on Les Béatitudes' viability as a single unified work.

Franck was finding, in the 1880s, that he was caught between two stylistic advocates: his wife Félicité, who did not care for changes in Franck's style from that to which she had first become accustomed and encouraged him to write commercially successful music; and his pupils, who had a perhaps surprising influence over their teacher as much as he over them. Vincent d'Indy is quoted as saying "When [Franck] was hesitating over the choice of this or that tonal relation or over the progress of any development, he always liked to consult his pupils, to share with them his doubts and to ask their opinions." In turn, one of Franck's students recounts that Mme Franck remarked (with some truth) that "It is you pupils who have aroused all the hostility shown against him." In addition, there were some discords within the Société Nationale, where Saint-Saëns had put himself increasingly at odds with Franck and his pupils.

How exactly all of this turmoil may have played out in the composer's mind is uncertain. It is certain that a number of his more "advanced" works appeared in this time period: the symphonic poems Le Chasseur maudit (1882) and Les Djinns (1883–1884), the Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue for piano (1884), the Symphonic Variations (1885), and the opera Hulda (1879–85). Many met with indifferent success or none, at least on their first presentations during Franck's lifetime; but the Quintet of 1879 (one of Saint-Saëns's particular dislikes) had proven itself an attention-getting and thought-provoking work (critics described it as having "disturbing vitality" and an "almost theatrical grimness" ).

In 1886 Franck composed the Violin Sonata as a wedding gift for the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. This became a resounding success; Ysaÿe played it in Brussels, in Paris, and took it on tour, often with his brother Théo Ysaÿe at the piano. His last performance of the piece occurred in Paris during 1926, with the pianist on that occasion being Yves Nat. Vallas, writing in the mid-twentieth century, says that the Sonata had "become Franck's most popular work, and, in France at least, the most generally accepted work in the whole repertoire of chamber music."

The continuing ambiguity of esteem in which Franck was held may be shown in the award which Franck's circle had thought long delayed in its presentation. On 4 August 1885, Franck was made a Chevalier of the French Légion d'honneur. His supporters were indignant: d'Indy writes that "it would be wrong to suppose that this honor was bestowed upon the musician, the creator of the fine works which do honor to French art. Not in the least!". Instead the citation was simply as "professor of organ" having completed more than ten years in that post. Vallas goes on to state: "Public opinion made no similar mistake on this score" and quotes a journal usually opposed to Franck as saying that the award was "above all things an act of homage paid justly if a little tardily to the distinguished composer of Rédemption and Les Béatitudes."

The dissension between Franck's family and his circle of students reached a new height when Franck published Psyché (written 1886–88), a symphonic poem based on the Greek myth. The controversy (not confined to Franck's immediate acquaintances) was not over the music, but over the philosophical and religious implications of the text (based on a poetic sketch by a certain Sicard and Louis de Fourcaud). Franck's wife and son found the work too sensual, and wanted Franck to concentrate on music wider and more popular in appeal "and altogether more commercial". D'Indy, on the other hand, speaks of its mystical significance, saying that it has "nothing of the pagan spirit about it, . . . but, on the contrary, is imbued with Christian grace and feeling . . . ." D'Indy's interpretation was subsequently described as revealing "some embarrassment, such as a newly timid Sunday-school teacher would feel if abruptly called on to acquaint riotous adolescents with The Song of Solomon."

Further controversy arose with the publication of Franck's only symphony, that in D minor (1888). The work was badly received: the Conservatoire orchestra opposed, the audience "ice-cold", the critics bewildered (the reactions ranged from "unreserved enthusiasm" to "systematic disparagement"), and many of Franck's fellow composers completely out of countenance towards a work "which by its general style and even certain details" (for example, use of an English horn) "outraged the formalist rules and habits of the stricter professionals and amateurs." Franck himself, on being asked whether the symphony had any basis in a poetic idea, told Louis de Serres, a pupil, that "no, it is just music, nothing but pure music." According to Vallas, much of its style and technique can be attributed directly to the centrality of the organ in Franck's thinking and artistic life, and Franck profited from the experience. "He confided in his pupils that from thence on he would never write like that again."

In 1888, Franck tried his hand again at another opera, Ghiselle. It was more sketched out than composed and Franck never completed it. In contrast, a massive String Quartet was completed and performed in April 1890, and was well received by public and critics. There had been other recent successes, including his own performances as concert pianist in and around Paris, an enthusiastic reception of a revival of Psyché of a couple of years earlier, and performances of works by various of his pupils. In addition, he was still playing Sunday improvisations to usually large congregations at Sainte-Clotilde. He had in mind major works for organ and possibly a cello sonata.

Illness and death
In July 1890, Franck was riding in a cab which was struck by a horse-drawn trolley, injuring his head and causing a short fainting spell. There seemed to be no immediate after-effects; he completed his trip and he himself considered it of no importance. However, walking became painful and he found himself increasingly obliged to absent himself first from concerts and rehearsals, and then to give up his lessons at the Conservatoire. He took his vacation as soon as he could in Nemours, where he hoped to work on the proposed organ pieces as well as some commissioned works for harmonium. During the vacation, he was able to start on both projects.

While Franck could not complete the harmonium collection, the organ pieces were finished in August and September 1890. They are the Trois Chorals, which are among the greatest treasures of organ literature, and which form a regular part of the repertory today. Of them, Vallas wrote: "Their beauty and importance are such that they may be properly considered as a kind of musical last will and testament." A more recent biographer, R. J. Stove, has written in similar terms: "The sense of Franck bidding a protracted good-bye is evident throughout. ... It is hard, it is well-nigh impossible, to believe that the Chorals' composer retained any illusions about his chances of full physical mending."

Franck started the new term at the Conservatoire in October, but caught a cold mid-month. This turned into pleurisy complicated by pericarditis. After that, his condition rapidly worsened and he died on 8 November. A pathologist writing in 1970 observed that, while Franck's death has traditionally been linked to his street injury, and there may have been a connection, the respiratory infection by itself could have led to a terminal illness. Given the lack of antibiotics, this "could not be considered an unusual pattern for pneumonia in a man in his seventh decade." But this verdict has been subsequently queried: "no doubt about the 'proximate cause' was ever voiced by the two persons most likely to know, namely, Franck and his wife; nor was such a doubt ever voiced by those outside Franck's immediate household who dealt with him between July and early November 1890. ... Franck's punishing workload, 'burning the candle at both ends' over decades, could well in itself have impaired the bodily resilience he needed to fight off even a minor injury."

The funeral mass for Franck was held at Sainte-Clotilde, attended by a large congregation including Léo Delibes (officially representing the Conservatoire), Camille Saint-Saëns, Eugène Gigout, Gabriel Fauré, Alexandre Guilmant, Charles-Marie Widor (who succeeded Franck as professor of organ at the Conservatoire) and Édouard Lalo. Emmanuel Chabrier spoke at the original gravesite at Montrouge. Later, Franck's body was moved to its current location at Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris, into a tomb designed by his friend, architect Gaston Redon. A number of Franck's students, led by Augusta Holmès, commissioned a bronze medallion from Auguste Rodin, a three-quarter bust of Franck, which in 1893 was placed on the side of the tomb. In 1904, a monument to Franck by sculptor Alfred Lenoir, César Franck at the Organ, was placed in the Square Samuel-Rousseau across the street from Sainte-Clotilde.

Music
Many of Franck's works employ "cyclic form", a method aspiring to achieve unity across multiple movements. This may be achieved by reminiscence, or recall, of an earlier thematic material into a later movement, or as in Franck's output where all of the principal themes of the work are generated from a germinal motif. The main melodic subjects, thus interrelated, are then recapitulated in the final movement. Franck's use of "cyclic form" is best illustrated by his Symphony in D minor (1888).

His music is often contrapuntally complex, using a harmonic language that is prototypically late Romantic, showing a great deal of influence from Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. In his compositions, Franck showed a talent and a penchant for frequent, graceful modulations of key. Often these modulatory sequences, achieved through a pivot chord or through inflection of a melodic phrase, arrive at harmonically remote keys. Indeed, Franck's students reported that his most frequent admonition was to always "modulate, modulate." Franck's modulatory style and his idiomatic method of inflecting melodic phrases are among his most recognizable traits.

Franck had huge hands (evinced by the famous photo of him at the Ste-Clotilde organ), capable of spanning the interval of a 12th on the keyboard. This allowed him unusual flexibility in voice-leading between internal parts in fugal composition, and in the wide chords and stretches featured in much of his keyboard music (e.g., his Prière and Troisième Choral for organ). Of the Violin Sonata's writing it has been said: "Franck, blissfully apt to forget that not every musician's hands were as enormous as his own, littered the piano part (the last movement in particular) with major-tenth chords... most mere pianistic mortals ever since have been obligated to spread them in order to play them at all."

The key to his music may be found in his personality. His friends record that he was "a man of utmost humility, simplicity, reverence and industry." Louis Vierne, a pupil and later organist titulaire of Notre-Dame, wrote in his memoirs that Franck showed a "constant concern for the dignity of his art, for the nobility of his mission, and for the fervent sincerity of his sermon in sound... Joyous or melancholy, solemn or mystic, powerful or ethereal: Franck was all those at Sainte-Clotilde."

Legacy
Unusually for a composer of such importance and reputation, Franck's fame rests largely on a small number of compositions written in his later years, particularly his Symphony in D minor (1886–88), the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra (1885), the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue for piano solo (1884), the Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major (1886), the Piano Quintet in F minor (1879), and the symphonic poem Le Chasseur maudit (1883). The Symphony was especially admired and influential among the younger generation of French composers and was highly responsible for reinvigorating the French symphonic tradition after years of decline. This was also his first and only Symphony to be composed and performed, taking him a total of 3 years, and being first performed at the Paris Conservatoire in February of 1889. One of his best known shorter works is the motet setting Panis angelicus, which was originally written for tenor solo with organ and string accompaniment, but has also been arranged for other voices and instrumental combinations.

As an organist he was particularly noted for his skill in improvisation. On the basis of a mere twelve major organ works, Franck is considered by many the greatest composer of organ music after Bach. His works were some of the finest organ pieces to come from France in over a century, and laid the groundwork for the French symphonic organ style. In particular, his early Grande Pièce Symphonique, a twenty-five-minute work, paved the way for the organ symphonies of Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne, and Marcel Dupré, and his late Trois Chorals are a cornerstone of the organ repertoire, featuring regularly on concert programs.

Franck exerted a significant influence on music. He helped to renew and reinvigorate chamber music and developed the use of cyclic form. Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel remembered and employed the cyclic form, although their concepts of music were no longer the same as Franck's. Relating Franck as organist and composer to his place in French music, Rollin Smith states that "the concept of César Franck as organist and undisputed master of nineteenth-century French organ composition pervades nearly every reference to his works in other media."

title: César Franck


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Alvin Lucier

Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr. (May 14, 1931 – December 1, 2021) was an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. Much of his work is influenced by science and explores the physical properties of sound itself: resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media.

Early life
Lucier was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, the son of Kathryn E. Lemery, a pianist, and Alvin Augustus Lucier, a lawyer who was Mayor of Nashua. He was educated in Nashua public and parochial schools and the Portsmouth Abbey School, Yale University and Brandeis University. In 1958 and 1959, Lucier studied with Lukas Foss and Aaron Copland at the Tanglewood Center. In 1960, Lucier left for Rome on a Fulbright grant, where he befriended American expatriate composer Frederic Rzewski and witnessed performances by John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and David Tudor that provided compelling alternatives to his classical training. He returned from Rome in 1962 to take up a position at Brandeis as director of the University Chamber Chorus, which presented classical vocal works alongside modern compositions and new commissions.

At a 1963 Chamber Chorus concert at New York's Town Hall, Lucier met Gordon Mumma and Robert Ashley, experimental composers who were also directors of the ONCE Festival, an annual multi-media event in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A year later, Mumma and Ashley invited the Chamber Chorus to the ONCE Festival; and, in 1966, Lucier reciprocated by inviting Mumma, Ashley, and mutual friend David Behrman to Brandeis for a concert of works by the four composers. Based on the success of that concert, Lucier, Mumma, Ashley, and Behrman embarked on a tour of the United States and Europe under the name the Sonic Arts Group (at Ashley's suggestion, the name was later changed to the Sonic Arts Union). More a musical collective than a proper quartet, the Sonic Arts Union presented works by each of its members, sharing equipment and assisting when necessary. Performing and touring together for a decade, the Sonic Arts Union became inactive in 1976.

In 1970, Lucier left Brandeis for Wesleyan University. In 1972, Lucier became a musical director of the Viola Farber Dance Company, a position he held until 1979.

Personal life
Lucier was married to his first wife, Mary, until their divorce in 1972. He then married Wendy Stokes; they had one daughter and remained together until his death.

Lucier died at his home in Middletown, Connecticut, on December 1, 2021, at age 90, from complications of a fall.

Works
Though Lucier had composed chamber and orchestral works since 1952, the composer and his critics count his 1965 composition Music for Solo Performer as the proper beginning of his compositional career.

I Am Sitting in a Room
One of Lucier's most important and best-known works is I Am Sitting in a Room (1969), in which Lucier records himself narrating a text, and then plays the recording back into the room, re-recording it. The new recording is then played back and re-recorded, and this process is repeated. Since every enclosed area has a characteristic resonance (e.g., between a large hall and a small room), the effect is that certain frequencies are gradually emphasized as they resonate in the room, until eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the pure resonant harmonies and tones of the room itself. The recited text describes this process in action. It begins, “I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice…”, and concludes with “I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have,” referring to his own stuttering.

Other key pieces
Other key pieces include North American Time Capsule (1966), which employed a prototype vocoder to isolate and manipulate elements of speech;  Music On A Long Thin Wire (1977), in which a piano wire is strung across a room and activated by an amplified oscillator and magnets on either end, producing changing overtones and sounds needed;  Crossings (1982), in which tones play across a steadily rising sine wave producing interference beats; Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas (1973–74), in which the interference tones between sine waves create "troughs" and "valleys" of sound and silence; and Clocker (1978), which uses biofeedback and reverberation.

Awards
Lucier was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Plymouth University in 2007.

Discography

 * Orchestra Works, New World Records CD 80755-2, 2013 (contains "Diamonds for 1, 2, or 3 Orchestras," "Slices," "Exploration of the House")
 * Almost New York, Pogus Productions CD P21057-2, 2011 (contains "Twonings," "Almost New York," "Broken Line," "Coda Variations")
 * "Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra", Nick Hennies, on Psalms Roeba, CD #8, 2010
 * Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas, Nick Hennies, Quiet Design CD Alas011, 2010
 * Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas, 1-12, Lovely Music, Ltd. CD 1015, 2004
 * Navigations for Strings; Small Waves, Mode Records, CD 124, 2003
 * Still Lives, Lovely Music, Ltd. CD 5012, 2001 (contains "Music for Piano with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators," "On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon," "Still Lives")
 * "Music On A Long Thin Wire" [excerpt] on OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music, 2000. 3CD.
 * Theme, Lovely Music, Ltd. CD 5011, 1999 (contains "Music for Piano with Magnetic Strings," "Theme ," " Music for Gamelan Instruments, Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers")
 * Panorama, Lovely Music, Ltd. CD 1012, 1997 (contains "Wind Shadows," "Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums," "Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels," "Panorama ")
 * Fragments for Strings, Arditti String Quartet, Disques Montaigne, 1996
 * Clocker, Lovely Music, Ltd. CD 1019, 1994
 * "Self Portrait", on Upper Air Observation, Barbara Held, flute, Lovely Music, Ltd. CD 3031, 1992
 * "Nothing is Real" on Hyper Beatles 2, Eastworld, 1991
 * Crossings, Lovely Music, Ltd. CD 1018, 1990 (contains "In Memoriam Jon Higgins," "Septet for Three Winds, Four Strings, and Pure Wave Oscillator," "Crossings")
 * "Music for Alpha Waves, Assorted Percussion, and Automated Coded Relays", on Imaginary Landscapes, Elektra/Nonesuch 79235-2, 1989
 * Sferics, Lovely Music, Ltd. LP 1017, 1988
 * Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas, 5-8, Lovely Music, Ltd. LP 1016, 1985
 * Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas, 1-4, Lovely Music, Ltd. LP 1015, 1983
 * Music for Solo Performer, Lovely Music, Ltd. LP 1014, 1982
 * I am Sitting in a Room, Lovely Music, Ltd. LP/CD 1013, 1981/90
 * Music On A Long Thin Wire, Lovely Music, Ltd. LP/CD 1011, 1980/92
 * Bird and Person Dyning/The Duke of York, Cramps, 1975
 * "Vespers", on Electronic Sound, Mainstream MS-5010, 1971
 * "I am sitting in a room", on SOURCE Record #3, 1970
 * "North American Time Capsule", on Music of Our Time series, CBS Odyssey Records, 1967

Films

 * 1976 - Music With Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television. Tape 3: Alvin Lucier. Produced and directed by Robert Ashley. New York City: Lovely Music.
 * 2012 - NO IDEAS BUT IN THINGS. Produced and directed by Viola Rusche and Hauke Harder.

Listening

 * Lucier on UBUWeb – includes original 1969 recording of I Am Sitting In A Room.
 * Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums (1990) performed by Hildegard Kleeb.
 * Island (1998) performed by The Other Minds Ensemble at the Other Minds Music Festival in 1999 at Cowell Theater in San Francisco.
 * Nothing Is Real (Strawberry Fields Forever) (1990) performed by Margaret Leng Tan at the Other Minds Music Festival in 1999 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco.
 * I Am Sitting in a Room. Recreation in 2005, Internet Archive.
 * I Am Sitting in a Room (1969). Performance by Trevor Cox from 2014 using the acoustics of the Inchindown oil tanks that hold the world record for the ‘longest echo‛.

Movies

 * Music with Roots in the Aether (1975) from UbuWeb
 * NO IDEAS BUT IN THINGS, by Viola Rusche and Hauke Harder

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Alvin Lucier


text:
Viktor Klimenko (singer)

Viktor Savvich Klimenko (born 24 November 1942) is a singer who made himself known as the "Singing Cossack".

Biography
Klimenko was born in Karelia, to a Russian Kuban Cossack father, Savva Klimenko, and a Russian mother, Olga Glotova. A few years after his birth, his family moved to Finland. There, he became a musician and appeared in several films, mostly appearing as himself. The Eurovision Song Contest 1965 was his first appearance outside of Finland; his song didn't earn any points in the competition.

In 1970, Klimenko released the album Stenka Rasin across Europe. The album, containing Russian songs, went gold in the Finnish market—the first record to do so in Finland. Later, it was certified platinum. This success was followed by a decade of concerts around the world. Klimenko had nine more gold records and one more platinum record.

In 1973, he played in the Norwegian "comedy-humour-musical" Kofferten (Swedish: Ryck mig i vaskan), a co-operation between Sveriges Radio, BBC, YLE, and NRK.

Klimenko rebranded himself as a Gospel singer in 1980, after having a personal religious revelation.

Selected filmography

 * Vodkaa, komisario Palmu (1969)
 * Sauna (2008)

title: Viktor Klimenko (singer)


text:
User talk:An A & Yellow kewibe

Will you please stop writing junk, otherwise it might become necessary to block your access. jimfbleak 14:21, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:An A & Yellow kewibe


text:
N-Gage (device)

The N-Gage is a smartphone combining features of a mobile phone and a handheld game system developed by Nokia, announced on 4 November 2002 and released on 7 October 2003. It runs the original Series 60 platform on Symbian OS v6.1.

N-Gage attempted to lure gamers away from the Game Boy Advance by including telephone functionality. This was unsuccessful, partly because the buttons, designed for a telephone, were not well-suited for gaming. The original N-Gage was described as resembling a taco, which led to its mocking nickname "taco phone".

Nokia introduced the N-Gage QD in 2004 as a redesign of the original "Classic" N-Gage, fixing widely criticized issues and design problems. However, the new model was unable to make an impact, and with only 2 million units sold in its two years, the N-Gage and its QD model were a commercial failure, unable to challenge their Nintendo rival.

The N-Gage was discontinued in February 2006, with Nokia moving its gaming capabilities onto selected Series 60 smartphones. This was announced as the N-Gage platform or "N-Gage 2.0" in 2007, carrying on the N-Gage name.

Design

The N-Gage is used in a wide physical form with a 2.1 inch TFT display in the centre with a D-pad to the left and numerical keys to the right, among other buttons. This kind of design was roughly used before by the Nokia 5510 mobile phone.

Instead of using cables, multiplayer gaming was accomplished with Bluetooth or the Internet (via the N-Gage Arena service). The N-Gage also included MP3 and Real Audio/Video playback and PDA-like features into the system.

Besides its gaming capabilities, the N-Gage was a Series 60 smartphone, running Symbian OS 6.1, with features similar to those of the Nokia 3650 (it does not have an integrated camera, however). It was able to run all Series 60 software (other than those that require a camera), and Java MIDP applications as well. Its main CPU was an ARM Integrated (ARMI) compatible chip (ARM4T architecture) running at 104 MHz, the same as the Nokia 7650 and 3650 phones.

Development
Around 2000, gamers increasingly carried both mobile phones and handheld game consoles. Nokia spotted an opportunity to combine these devices into one unit. Nokia announced in November 2002 that they would develop the N-Gage, a device that integrated these two devices. Its original development codename was Starship.

Many of the preloaded ringtones and sounds were composed by former demoscene musician Markus Castrén, who worked at Nokia during mid-2002. For both the N-Gage and Nokia 7600, he wrote ringtones in a variety of popular dance genres, as well as creating a small set of sounds inspired by 1980s arcade games; he chose to compose those in a chiptune style as music in video games of the time did not stand out as sounding distinctively game-related.

The N-Gage had a reported development budget of more than $100 million. Games for N-Gage used to cost $600,000 to $1.5 million to develop.

Release
With a launch price of US$299, the N-Gage was not commercially popular. In its first weeks of availability in the United States, it was outsold by the Game Boy Advance 100 to 1. Within 17 days of the deck's release, popular retailers GameStop and Electronics Boutique began offering $100 rebates on the deck's price.

In February 2004, with the N-Gage failing to make a major impact four months on, CEO Jorma Ollila claimed that the device would be given until 2005 to be judged whether it was a success or failure.

In January 2005, UK sales-tracking firm ChartTrack dropped the N-Gage from its regular ELSPA chart, commenting that "The N-Gage chart, though still produced, is of little interest to anyone. Sales of the machine and its software have failed to make any impact on the market at all." Although only directly reflective of the UK market, this was interpreted by some as a serious blow to the N-Gage as a viable gaming platform. Despite this, Nokia reaffirmed their commitment to the N-Gage as a platform, to the point where a new version of the hardware was rumored after GDC 2005.

In November 2005, Nokia admitted that the N-Gage failed, selling only one-third of the company's expectations. The product was discontinued from Western markets in February 2006, but would continue to be marketed in India and parts of Asia. Nokia did continue N-Gage promotions at E3 2006. The last game to be released in the U.S. for the system was Civilization in March 2006 according to Metacritic. In October 2006, Nokia released the last game for the N-Gage QD, combat racer Payload.

As of August 2007, it was estimated that Nokia had shipped more than two million N-Gage game decks. The "N-Gage" brand name still had a poor reputation within the gaming media and among the few consumers who recognized the N-Gage brand, due to the weakness of the system's first games and the original model's limitations. Nokia had more than 50 games available for the system.

Sales
There is some disagreement in sources about the actual number of N-Gage decks sold. Nokia initially claimed 400,000 sales in the first two weeks the deck was available. However, independent market research firms Chart-Track and Arcadia Research claimed that the N-Gage had sold only 5,000 decks in the United States in that time, and 800 decks in the UK. German Magazine GamePro talked about 15.000 sold units by mid 2004 in Germany. Critics suggested Nokia was counting the number of decks shipped to retailers, not the number actually purchased by consumers. Nokia later admitted this was the truth.

In 2004, Nokia claimed in a press release that it had shipped its millionth deck, represented as a company milestone despite falling short of the company's initial projection of six million decks by the end of 2004. However, this number shipped does not give a reliable picture of the actual sales of the deck. Nokia ultimately shipped 3 million N-Gage decks by 2007.

Reception
Pocket Kingdom: Own the World received a handful of glowing reviews when it was released, and Pathway to Glory was Nokia's first self-published success. These games came perhaps too late to have much effect in improving the perception of the N-Gage hardware itself in the eyes of consumers or press. Nokia had projections of at least 6 million sold decks in three years instead of only 3 million.

N-Gage Classic
The original phone's design was considered awkward: to insert a game, users had to remove the phone's plastic cover and remove the battery as the game slot was next to it. Another feature was that the speaker and microphone were located on the side edge of the phone; this often resulted in many describing it as talking into a "taco phone" or "Sidetalking", or simply that they had one very large ear, because the user held the edge of the phone against the cheek in order to talk into it. Usual for a phone, but unusually for a game system, it had a screen taller than it was wide, with a size of 2.1" and resolution of 176 X 208, giving an aspect ratio of 11:13; at the time most televisions were 4:3.

N-Gage service
The new N-Gage, also referred to as N-Gage Next Gen or N-Gage 2.0, saw a change in concept as Nokia explained to the world during E3 2005 that they were planning on putting N-Gage inside several of their smartphone devices, rather than releasing a specific device. In August 2007, the new N-Gage platform was finalised and was released in April 2008. It was compatible on many Symbian S60 smartphones. The service was discontinued in October 2009.

Software
Before the launch of Nokia's first in-house N-Gage title, Pathway to Glory, a one level demo of the game was released to journalists to allow them to sample the game, and understand the concepts behind the turn based wargame. This demo was subsequently placed on the N-Gage.com website as a free download. Undaunted by the 16 MB download size, fans jumped on the Pathway to Glory demo. The success of the download paved the route for future titles. On June 6, 2006 Nokia announced that people also could buy the games digitally.

There are 58 full titles available for N-Gage, but only 56 of these saw North American releases. The titles that were not released in North America are: Flo-Boarding (Germany and UK only) and Sega Rally (Australia and Brazil only). All but three of these titles (Payload, Snakes, Virtua Cop) were available for retail purchase. These are:

Along with those listed above, one more game was bundled with the N-Gage (on the Support CD): an exclusive version of Space Impact Evolution X, that was later made available to Symbian S60v2 phones.

Cancelled hardware revision
In 2021 photos and information about a prototype for a cancelled hardware revision called the "N-Gage IC" was posted at the AtariAge forums by German collector Timo Weirich. The prototype is cosmetically similar to the base N-Gage QD but came with an integrated camera, a 123 MHz processor, Symbian OS 7.0 with Series 60 2nd Edition and USB mass storage as well as hardware MP3 decoding from the original model.

title: N-Gage (device)


text:
Talk:Nikolaus Pevsner

Untitled
I seem to recall some story about the Germans bombing Pevsner-listed places in WWII (An Outline of European Architecture was published in 1943) as revenge for British bombing of the German cultural heritage: true or canard? -- Anon.

Maybe thinking of Baedeker raids? Barnabypage 17:14, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Books
The list of buildings of... books is too big for this page, its not like thats all teh at Pevsner ever did. And, since Pevsner didnt write any of the Scottish, Welsh or Irish guide books, and the series now has a life of its own, can I suggest that the books are moved to their own article? I suggest Pevsner Architectural Guides, as this is the name used on the website http://www.pevsner.co.uk/. Buildings of England, etc, can still function as redirects. Jonathan Oldenbuck (talk) 13:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Very good idea. Barnabypage (talk) 10:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Done then. Jonathan Oldenbuck (talk) 12:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I remember a time ago the BBC had a series where well known people took one of his books as a guide to a county they where linked too to revisit the places he described it contained voice overs of text from the books would it be appropriate to include something on this somewhere? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.255.74.236 (talk) 15:25, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Best Known For...
I entirely disagree about what Pevsner is best known for - I would say that he's best known in the history of modern architecture for: 1. Pioneers of Modern Design 2. Editing the Architectural Review during the '40s & '50s when he promoted the Townscape movement68.173.55.22 (talk) 20:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * This is an interesting point. I think it's indisputable that within the UK he is best known for BoE. But perhaps that is not the case in other countries... Barnabypage (talk) 11:35, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Pevsner and Nazism
The current article states 'According to Games, he was an admirer of some of the economic policies of the early Hitler regime, but was caught up in the ban, etc.'. But the talk cited as the source (Games, 2002) makes no specific mention of 'economic policies'. It quotes an interview in the Manchester Guardian in which Pevsner speaks only in general terms of the 'idealism' in the movement. The two Pevsner articles it refers to are actually concerned with the Nazis' view of relationship between the artist and the state. The thrust of the Games talk is that Pevsner's admiration for National Socialism was broad, but no further sources are given. It might be less contentious to write 'Pevsner had some sympathy with Nazi theories of the relationship between artists and the state, and admired what he saw as the idealism of the movement in its early years. Nevertheless, he was caught up.....'

Any views? Lostwithiel (talk) 21:31, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

 * Games, in the introduction to Pevsner on Art and Architecture, says:
 * "Pevsner, it must now be said, was a keen supporter of the Nazis."
 * "During the 1920s and 1930s, Pevsner was as excited by the Nazis as his fellow countrymen, and for the same reasons."
 * "Pevsner's only point of conflict with Hitler, apart from Mein Kampf which he dismissed as mere propaganda, was on [the] point of modernism."
 * He also quotes an article in the Birmingham Post, which quotes Pevsner as saying:
 * ''There are things worse than Hitlerism; I think your Press in England does not realise that...There are many things in it which I greet with enthusiasm and which I myself have preached in my writings. I consider the compulsory labour which is to start next January an excellent thing...Hitler is planning public works on a vast scale to cure the unemployment problem, and I believe that he has the courage and will to do what he says. Then there is much that is Puritan and moral in the movement..."
 * It is true, then, that Games does not actually use the word economic. But it is quite clear from what he writes that he is asserting Pevsner's admiration for National Socialism was broad and extended way beyond issues of art and architecture. Barnabypage (talk) 11:32, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough - would one answer be to give the Games introduction as a source for this statement, as it contains more detail than the Cambridge talk? PS Your point on what Pevsner is best known for is interesting - in Italy he would seem to be best known for his writings on modernism, and modern design in particular - understandable, really, as the BoE are aimed primarily at a British audience: they probably aren't the first guide that visitors would buy? I suppose it depends on who he is best known to. To architects, town planners and students of history of art it might well be Pioneers or the Architectural Review, but to the general public it would surely be the BoE.Lostwithiel (talk) 12:34, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

 * That seems fine to me - I don't have the time to do a detailed edit right now but here is the bibliographical detail for the Games intro.:
 * http://www.amazon.com/Pevsner-Art-Architecture-Stephen-Games/dp/0413772438
 * Barnabypage (talk) 12:41, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks - I'll put in the reference. (New user of Wikipedia, so not quite sure of the form!)   Lostwithiel (talk) 12:45, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Have deleted the quotation from Christopher Bray's review of Susie Harries's book. In the Bray review, this sentence refers not to Pioneers, as implied here, but to an early Pevsner letter to his wife, and has no particular relevance to Pevsner's writing on modernism, which is the subject under discussion. The material contained in the sentence is opinion rather than fact, and cannot be considered encyclopedic. The insertion of this sentence is simply a means of flagging up the single really awful review of Harries's book. The review is also (uniquely) highly critical of Pevsner, and thus a citation of it, when no other reviews are cited, can be challenged on the grounds of lack of neutrality. Lostwithiel (talk) 13:27, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Forgive my intrusion. I just spotted "The review is also (uniquely) highly critical of Pevsner, ..." in your response above and I challenge your exclusion of this highly critical material on the grounds of relevance and balance. This material should be included and I urge you to reconsider its inclusion. See also my comments below --Senra (Talk) 01:22, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
 * My objection to the inclusion of this particular review of the Harries biography (by Christopher Bray) is that it offers an interpretation of Pevsner's character and behaviour which is far more unfavourable than any of the other reviews of the book. If this review is to be cited, then, in the interests of balance, the many others (which all interpret his character and behaviour more positively) should also be cited -but the point of an encyclopedic entry on Pevsner is surely to give the facts of his life, not a survey of critical opinion about him ?
 * In this context, could you give more detailed reasons why you feel this highly critical material should be included ?
 * I would agree with your suggestion that the article be submitted for impartial peer review.
 * Thanks.Lostwithiel (talk) 11:41, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I had issue with your apparent one-sided non-neutral reasoning—"(uniquely) highly critical", "relevance" and "balance"—for removing this from the article. We should include material in an encyclopaedia, even when we do not personally agree with it. Otherwise there is bias. In addition, having now briefly read Chris Bray's review of Susie Harries Nikolaus Pevsner: The Life, I see no reason to exclude parts of the review in the Pevsner article. Bray says at one point "John Betjeman thought the man he called 'Herr Doktor Professor' duller still—less a writer than a scholarly accumulator of lifeless, recondite details" though Bray himself later admits "Nobody who spends a goodly part of their leisure-time walking the English landscape—as I do—is ever far from a copy of the relevant Pevsner". I urge you once again to reconsider the careful and balanced inclusion of even "(uniquely) highly critical" material. I did feel Bray's review gave me a picture of Pevsner as I imagined him—driven, boring and unfeeling—and my view is that Bray was not at all as highly critical as you seem to believe. I will now be reading Harries book, which frankly, is one urpose of a review :) --Senra (Talk) 00:03, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Brief review
An informal review of this article was made and some changes to its format (not its content) have occurred as follows There are still some external links in the article e.g. in Publications. These should be converted to references. Unable to fully determine if some of the further reading material was also referenced in the body of the article. If so, such further reading entries should be removed. See Further reading for more information.
 * Moved the from the top of the article to the infoxbox. Image license not checked
 * Re-formatted references using relevant citation templates
 * Converted some external links within the body of the article to wikilinks - see also MoS#External links
 * Converted the rest of the external links to references

Consider reviewing the following to further help the development of this article
 * Manual of Style (MoS)
 * MoS layout
 * Consider adding material from:
 * Submit this nice article to Wikipedia Peer review
 * Submit this nice article to Wikipedia Peer review
 * Submit this nice article to Wikipedia Peer review

Contact me on my talk page if you require any assistance with the above --Senra (Talk) 00:53, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://archives2.getty.edu:8082/xtf/view?docId=ead/840209/840209.xml. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:54, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Article about Pevsner
This might be of interest:
 * Emilie Oléron Evans. Transposing the Zeitgeist? Nikolaus Pevsner between Kunstgeschichte and Art History. Journal of Art Historiography Number 11 December 2014.

peter_english (talk) 23:48, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Nikolaus Pevsner


text:
Limit (music)

In music theory, limits or harmonic limits are a way of characterizing the harmony found in a piece or genre of music, or the harmonies that can be made using a particular scale. The term limit was introduced by Harry Partch, who used it to give an upper bound on the complexity of harmony; hence the name.

The harmonic series and the evolution of music

Harry Partch, Ivor Darreg, and Ralph David Hill are among the many microtonalists to suggest that music has been slowly evolving to employ higher and higher harmonics in its constructs (see emancipation of the dissonance). In medieval music, only chords made of octaves and perfect fifths (involving relationships among the first three harmonics) were considered consonant. In the West, triadic harmony arose (contenance angloise) around the time of the Renaissance, and triads quickly became the fundamental building blocks of Western music. The major and minor thirds of these triads invoke relationships among the first five harmonics.

Around the turn of the 20th century, tetrads debuted as fundamental building blocks in African-American music. In conventional music theory pedagogy, these seventh chords are usually explained as chains of major and minor thirds. However, they can also be explained as coming directly from harmonics greater than 5. For example, the dominant seventh chord in 12-ET approximates 4:5:6:7 (albeit very poorly), while the major seventh chord approximates 8:10:12:15.

Odd-limit and prime-limit
In just intonation, intervals between pitches are drawn from the rational numbers. Since Partch, two distinct formulations of the limit concept have emerged: odd limit and prime limit. Odd limit and prime limit n do not include the same intervals even when n is an odd prime.

Odd limit
For a positive odd number n, the n-odd-limit contains all rational numbers such that the largest odd number that divides either the numerator or denominator is not greater than n.

In Genesis of a Music, Harry Partch considered just intonation rationals according to the size of their numerators and denominators, modulo octaves. Since octaves correspond to factors of 2, the complexity of any interval may be measured simply by the largest odd factor in its ratio. Partch's theoretical prediction of the sensory dissonance of intervals (his "One-Footed Bride") are very similar to those of theorists including Hermann von Helmholtz, William Sethares, and Paul Erlich.

See, below.

Identity
An identity is each of the odd numbers below and including the (odd) limit in a tuning. For example, the identities included in 5-limit tuning are 1, 3, and 5. Each odd number represents a new pitch in the harmonic series and may thus be considered an identity: C C  G  C  E  G  B  C  D  E  F  G  ... 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 11 12 ...

According to Partch: "The number 9, though not a prime, is nevertheless an identity in music, simply because it is an odd number." Partch defines "identity" as "one of the correlatives, 'major' or 'minor', in a tonality; one of the odd-number ingredients, one or several or all of which act as a pole of tonality".

Odentity and udentity are short for over-identity and under-identity, respectively. According to music software producer Tonalsoft: "An udentity is an identity of an utonality".

Prime limit

For a prime number n, the n-prime-limit contains all rational numbers that can be factored using primes no greater than n. In other words, it is the set of rationals with numerator and denominator both n-smooth.

"p-Limit Tuning. Given a prime number p, the subset of $\mathbb{Q}^+$ consisting of those rational numbers x whose prime factorization has the form $x=p_1^{\alpha_1} p_2^{\alpha_2}... p_r^{\alpha_r} $ with $p_1,...,p_r \le p$ forms a subgroup of ($\mathbb{Q}^+,\cdot$). ... We say that a scale or system of tuning uses p-limit tuning if all interval ratios between pitches lie in this subgroup."

In the late 1970s, a new genre of music began to take shape on the West coast of the United States, known as the American gamelan school. Inspired by Indonesian gamelan, musicians in California and elsewhere began to build their own gamelan instruments, often tuning them in just intonation. The central figure of this movement was the American composer Lou Harrison. Unlike Partch, who often took scales directly from the harmonic series, the composers of the American Gamelan movement tended to draw scales from the just intonation lattice, in a manner like that used to construct Fokker periodicity blocks. Such scales often contain ratios with very large numbers, that are nevertheless related by simple intervals to other notes in the scale.

Prime-limit tuning and intervals are often referred to using the term for the numeral system based on the limit. For example, 7-limit tuning and intervals are called septimal, 11-limit is called undecimal, and so on.

Beyond just intonation
In musical temperament, the simple ratios of just intonation are mapped to nearby irrational approximations. This operation, if successful, does not change the relative harmonic complexity of the different intervals, but it can complicate the use of the harmonic limit concept. Since some chords (such as the diminished seventh chord in 12-ET) have several valid tunings in just intonation, their harmonic limit may be ambiguous.

title: Limit (music)