Symphony in D minor (Franck)

[1] That year, he was a founding member of the Société nationale de musique, established in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War by Camille Saint-Saëns and Romain Bussine to promote French music.

Urged on principally by his student Henri Duparc, Franck "made an effort to study one of the Wagner scores every summer during the last period of his life.".

[2] Indeed, Franck dedicated the symphony "to my friend Henri Duparc," the student who had principally urged him to deepen his knowledge of Wagner's operas.

[13] Franck's symphony was first performed on 17 February 1889 in the concert hall of the Conservatoire by the orchestra of the Société conducted by Jules Garcin.

Le Figaro commented, "The new work of M. César Franck is a very important composition and developed with the resources of the powerful art of the learned musician; but it is so dense and tight that we cannot grasp all its aspects and feel its effect at a first hearing, despite the analytical and thematic note that had been distributed to the audience".

"[18] At a later hearing of the work, Le Ménestrel balanced criticism and praise: it found the music gloomy and pompous, with little to say, but saying it "with the conviction of the Pope pronouncing on dogma".

[19] Nonetheless, Le Ménestrel judged the work a considerable achievement, worthy of a musician with noble tendencies, though one who had made the excusable mistake of "aspiring to a pedestal a little too high for him".

[20] From the 1920s to around the 1970s, the symphony was popular with audiences and was frequently performed by leading U.S. orchestras, but since then it has substantially declined in prominence and is no longer part of the orchestral canon.

[22] In a departure from typical late-romantic symphonic structure, the Symphony in D minor is in three movements, each of which makes reference to the initial four-bar theme introduced at the beginning of the piece.