Wigmore intro

Fortunate in his lifetime to have access to a large private income, Chausson has suffered for it since his death. He was able to amass an important early collection of impressionist paintings and to make his home on the boulevard des Courcelles a meeting place for the more progressive poets and painters as well as musicians of the day - to which the envious reaction has long been that, as a composer in circumstances like that, he must have been an amateur. In fact, there was no more conscientious professional in Paris at the time and there were few more accomplished. But the source of his high artistic principles, which he inherited largely from César Franck, has counted against him too.

Most French composers born in the second half of the nineteenth century, Debussy and Ravel included, owe something to César Franck. Coming to music comparatively late in life, Chausson studied composition first with Massenet, which was an education, and then with Franck, which was an inspiration. However, although he was a fervent member of the “bande à Franck” - alongside Henri Duparc and Vincent d’Indy, to mention two other Wagner disciples who had abandoned the legal profession for music - he was no slavish imitator. His Symphony in B flat,though clearly modelled on Franck’s Symphony in D minor, avoids some of the more laborious aspects of cyclic construction and has its own, less effusive melodic personality. But for the bicycle accident which so unfortunately killed him in his prime, as his unfinished String Quartet in C minor confirms, he would have gone on to develop a more austere style and a more classically orientated aesthetic - in parallel with, though obviously someway behind, Debussy’s development in the same direction.