The music of Jean Françaix …

Jean Françaix clearly fits into the genealogy of French music, continuing the traditions of Debussy, Poulenc, Milhaud, Roussel, Chabrier … but at the same time he was very much an individualist. After having been taught by Nadia Boulanger, he went on his own independent and highly successful way. Right up to his death he retained an ability to come up with new and surprising ideas. Jean Françaix’s music has a striking freshness, intelligence and style. These have earned him the affection of generations of musicians and music-lovers ever since the publication of his first mature works around 1931-32.

(Source : Archives Family Françaix

He first gained international recognition in 1936 at the Baden-Baden Contemporary Music Festival. He presented his Concertino in competition with Stravinsky, who performed his Concerto for Two Pianos at the same festival with his son Sviatoslav [Soulima]. He was so successful that Stravinsky held the Concertino responsible for the cooler reception given to his own piece. “Fortunately”, he wrote later, “Stravinsky honoured me with his friendship, and we ended the evening on good terms in an excellent restaurant”.

His work belongs to the French school of “giving pleasure” so dear to Debussy. One can already discern the origins of this aesthetic choice in a “profession of faith” he committed to paper at the age of 12:

“… to raise the tone of our everyday lives, my Father used to invite artists from Paris to visit us from time to time. That is how, at the age of 12, I was able to listen to the famous Capet Quartet, whose main pastime was ambling through Beethoven’s last quartets. They finished me off with a stodgy Brahms quartet during which I fell into a deep sleep before they had even reached the 2nd theme of the first movement.

On waking, I resolved to make sure that the music I was dreaming of composing would never bore anybody.”

Throughout his long composing career, Jean Françaix remained true to his resolution by writing music that “revived the forgotten freshness of childhood” (Bernard Gavoty). His jollity, his love of melody and his refusal to write atonal music alienated him from the mainstream of 20th century composing, but he never wavered from his original course; he was quite pleased to describe himself as an old stick-in-the-mud, but he would never give up his independence for the sake of a fashion or doctrine. When Bernard Gavoty asked him in 1957: “You are aware of people’s objections and misgivings about contemporary music. Do you think any of these objections are justified?”, his answer was characteristically humorous:

“I would like to be Lesage’s Lame Devil and go around lifting up people’s roofs and looking into their houses when contemporary music is being played on the radio. I bet you only four or five people are still listening to it after the first ten minutes, and they will be the composer and the most devoted members of his family. Real contemporary music will only triumph once it is no longer contemporary, in fifty years’ time, once the passage of time has released it from the cycle of wild successes and disastrous flops. I’m thinking about the many false Stravinskys around nowadays, who produce nine-tenths of so-called contemporary music, masquerading under a variety of titles. Twenty years ago we were swamped with false Debussys; there’s nothing new under the sun.”

Jean Françaix always expected his audiences to approach his music with the same independence of spirit, as emerges from an introduction he wrote to a recording of some of his chamber music:

“It’s difficult for a composer to talk about his own works. If he praises them, he is accused of boasting; if he disparages them, he is considered guilty of false modesty. If he dissects them into theme A, theme B, musicologists will applaud, but musicians will find him boring. If the work is of any value, it will need no explanation; if it is of no value, no esoteric commentary will render it any better since 0+0 will always add up to 0.

All I ask my listeners is to open their ears and be brave enough to decide whether they like my music or not. I don’t want any intermediary between me and my listeners trying to sway their judgement one way or the other. They should remember they are free human beings, not obedient automata. I want them to crush snobbery, fashion and envy with the power of common sense and to enjoy my music if it gives them pleasure; which of course I hope it does (…)”

We think it’s a fairly safe bet that more and more music-lovers will follow Jean Françaix’s recommendation and experience the pleasure his work procures in such generous quantities.

 

A concise biography of Jean Françaix...	Jean Françaix by Jean Françaix...	The clarinet Concerto...
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« Profession de foi » of Jean Françaix at the age of 12.
(Source : Archives Family Françaix)

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