Albéric Magnard - Suite dans le Style Ancien, Op. 2 (1/2) - 1, 2, 3

Albéric Magnard (1865-1914)
Suite dans le Style Ancien in G Minor, Op. 2 (1888)

I. Française (Allegro Giocoso)
II. Sarabande (Mesto)
III. Gavotte (Allegro)
IV. Menuet (Tranquillo)
V. Gigue (Energico)

Mark Stringer/Orchestre Philarmonique du Luxembourg

Magnard's Op. 2, the Suite dans le style ancien, was composed in 1888 -- his 23rd year -- preceded by a clotted piano piece and the three undistinguished piano pieces of his Op. 1. Around him hover no rumors of vast projects feverishly destroyed, as with Dukas, nor are there copious remains of juvenilia, as with Lekeu. This argues constraint prompted by insecurity and idealism. Insecurity may be answered by technique, and Magnard, after two years at the Conservatoire (where he took a premier prix in harmony), studied privately for four years with d'Indy, one of the most formidably equipped musicians in Europe, soon to transform the Schola Cantorum from a choral society to a prestigious music academy for which he would write the course. Magnard, like Roussel, absorbed the lessons of the master with such thoroughness that he taught counterpoint at the Schola. His idealism -- perfectionism or fastidiousness -- is a trait he holds in common with Dukas and Duparc, each of whom produced but a dozen masterpieces. Adopting the mien of other times and places as a path to the discovery of one's own voice has been a practice for as long as there has been poiesis -- "making," art -- and by the time Magnard ventured his own first orchestral essay he had before him the recent examples of Saint-Saëns' Septet for piano, trumpet, and strings, Op. 65 -- featuring a Menuet and Gavotte -- from 1881 and d'Indy's own Suite dans le style ancien, from 1886. It is possible, though unlikely, that Magnard could also have seen Fauré's unpublished example -- composed at the same age and similarly prompted -- of an Ouverture and Gavotte that found their way 50 years later into his 1919 divertissement, Masques et Bergamasques. Magnard follows d'Indy in adopting a pseudo-Baroque manner, heavy on contrapuntal working out and formal concision. Its five numbers are brief -- three playing something over two minutes, one nearly three, and the Menuet four and a-half. Commentators have termed the suite and the first symphony, which followed in 1890, "apprentice work" -- which they are -- and dismissed them as "turgid and thickly scored." This is harsh. The suite is, in fact, scored for chamber orchestra, and the orchestration revised at d'Indy's behest in 1889, demonstrating Magnard's penchant for reed instruments. His characteristic briskness is in place, while the suite at length reveals a creative force with much to say. It was first heard at the Royan Casino on August 18, 1890. Magnard also arranged it for piano duet. ~ All Music Guide

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• alberic
• magnard
• suite
• dans
• le
• style
• ancien
• orchestra
• d'indy
• schola
• chantorum
• french
• late
• romanticism