La Source, Op.44

Alphonse Hasselmans was the middle member of three generations of an influential family of Belgian and French musicians. His father Josef (1814-1902) was a violinist and conductor as well as harpist, although it was in the last capacity that he did most for the development of music by founding two major schools of harp playing - one by way of his German pupil Louis Grimm, the other by way of his son Alphonse. Louis Hasselmans (1878-1957), Alphonse’s son, was a cellist, a member of the Caplet Quartet for six years, and then founder and conductor of the enterprising Hasselmans Concerts in Paris. Alphonse was the only composer among them, however. While writing music was not his primary activity but a kind of supplement to his work at the Paris Conservatoire - where he succeeded his teacher Ange-Conrad Prunier as professor of harp in 1884 - he was highly accomplished in the art and left a considerable body of original pieces and arrangements for the instrument he understood probably better than any of his contemporaries.

The best known of all Alphonse’s compositions must be his concert study La Source (The Spring), which resourcefully exploits the liquid associations of the harp and its characteristic figurations in a delightfully fresh evocation of running and splashing water. After a short introduction, it flows through a sustained textures of arpeggios with a pretty melody picked out above them. Constructed with every evidence of spontaneity, it rises to a climax, plunges into a brief cadenza, resumes its regular rhythm and ends by gushing through the whole range of the instrument.

Gerald Larner©2002