Jean Françaix (1912-1997)
Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano (1992)
In 1936, after the debut of a Concertino for piano by the young Jean Françaix at the Baden-Baden Chamber Music Festival, a critic wrote, “After so much problematic or labored music, this Concertino was like fresh water, rushing from a spring with the gracious spontaneity of all that is natural.” This aptly summarizes the music of the prodigious French composer Jean Françaix particularly against the backdrop of the 20th century avant-garde. He eschewed atonally and other modern experiments remaining content with the general label “neo-classical” if any “isms” needed to apply. Françaix came from a musical family: his mother was a singer and teacher, his father, a composer, pianist, musicologist and director of the Le Mans Conservatoire. Ravel wrote to Françaix’s father after encountering the young Jean, “Among the child’s gifts I observe above all the most fruitful an artist can possess, that of curiosity: you must not stifle these precious gifts now or ever, or risk letting this young sensibility wither.” Françaix studied with the legendary Nadia Boulanger who regarded Françaix as her finest student and would play or conduct many premieres from her fine pupil. Françaix was a superb pianist winning a first place award from the Paris Conservatoire and he applied his musicianship on many tours playing chamber music with the Trio Pasquier and piano duets with his daughter. Françaix’s compositional output is substantial spanning all the major genres and a cache of nearly 30 chamber works for a variety of ensembles, many featuring the clarinet. One could do no finer by Françaix than the two works paralleling Mozart’s: a sparkling clarinet quintet (1977) and a trio for clarinet, viola and piano (1997). The latter, composed when Françaix turned 80 reinforces the adage that “music is the place where you never grow old.”
Françaix’s music arises from the formative influences of modern French music: Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc and Boulanger. His style almost feels like a time capsule of the 20’s and 30’s, the “interwar” period so full of bristling rhythm, whimsy, neo-classical cabaret, the circus, jazz and burlesque. A modern, almost hilarious drive counterpoised with tender, lyrical nostalgia summons the image of Chaplin and the urbane sparkle of Gershwin. The clarinet becomes a perfect vehicle for this range of sentiments, its tone so flexible, human and sincere, by turns zany, melancholy and finally just supremely tuneful. Françaix deploys clarinet, viola and piano with brilliant sense of color and texture achieving a range of new sonorities as each of the distinct instrumental timbres with idiosyncratic figurations combine into composite patterns.
The Trio comprises five movements in a kind of suite, even a French Märchenerzählungen. A slow, atmospheric, slightly sorrowful prelude rises in a single gesture towards resolution followed by a swift, dashing Allegrissimo that suddenly melts into Chaplinesque parody of Tango before scurry away in a burlesque march with touches of Stravinsky and Jazz. At the center is fantastic sectional scherzando dance with a recurring melody based on a five-note motif and yet another section with a swaying three-note waltz idea. Both themes reprise in passing towards the end of the finale. The Largo forth movement is the slow, poignant moment of repose, smoky, languid and sensual with a romantic Franco-Iberian sensibility particularly evocative of Ravel. The finale is a jaunty burlesque full of musical play, effervescent textures and frenetic rhythms with the winning Scherzando theme from the third movement humorously making a brief entrance amidst the jocular confusion. With an unerring sense of color, motion, humor and repose, Françaix’s trio is indeed, “like fresh water, rushing from a spring with the gracious spontaneity of all that is natural.”
