Charles-Valentin Alkan

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Charles-Valentin Alkan

Charles-Valentin Alkan^[a] (November 30, 1813–March 29, 1888) was a French composer and one of the greatest virtuoso pianists of his day. His attachment to his Jewish origins is displayed both in his life and his work.^[1] He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of six, earning many awards, and as an adult became a famous virtuoso and teacher. Although early in his life he was social and good friends with prominent composers Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin, his popularity was compromised by an emerging misanthropy in the later half of his life, and he lived as a recluse in Paris until his death.^[2]

His compositions for solo piano are some of the most difficult ever written, reviewed as "ferociously" and even "impossibly" difficult to play.^[3][4] His most notable compositions include Grande sonate: Les quatre âges (Op. 33), a sonata depicting the four ages of man, and Douze Études dans tous les tons mineurs (Op. 39), a large work containing his Symphony for solo piano (No. 4-7), Concerto for solo piano (No. 8-10), and Le festin d'Ésope (No. 12), an etude of theme and variations.^[5]

[edit] Biography

[edit] Life and career

Alkan was notably antisocial and rarely performed in the public

Alkan was born Charles-Valentin Morhange on November 30, 1813 in Paris, rue des Blancs-Manteaux, to Alkan Morhange (1780–1855) and Julie Morhange née Abraham.^[6] He was the second of six children, one elder sister and four younger brothers, and his father supported the family as the proprietor of a private music school in Le Marais.^[2] His opus 1 dates from 1828, when he was 14 years old.^[7]

In his twenties, he taught and played concerts in elegant social circles, and was friends with Franz Liszt, George Sand, Anton Rubinstein, and Victor Hugo.^[2] In the 1840s, he lived next to Frédéric Chopin,^[3] and after Chopin died in 1849, most of the students transferred to Alkan.^[2] By 1838, at just 25 years old, Alkan had reached the peak of his career. He often performed with Chopin, and was famed as a virtuoso rivaling Liszt, Sigismond Thalberg, and Friedrich Kalkbrenner.^[8] Liszt once stated that Alkan had the most perfect technique he had ever seen.^[9] At this time, (which coincides with the birth and childhood of his presumed son, Elie-Miriam Delaborde), he withdrew into private study and composition for six years, returning to the concert platfrom in 1844. In 1848 Daniel Auber, the head of the Conservatoire, replaced Zimmerman (whom Alkan had hoped to succeed) with Antoine Marmontel, Alkan's pupil. This, along with Chopin's death in 1849 caused Alkan to return to seclusion for 25 years.^[8]

In spite of his early fame and technical accomplishment, Alkan thus spent much of his life after 1850 in obscurity, performing in public only occasionally. In his last decade he emerged to give a series of 'Petits Concerts' at the Erard piano showrooms, which featured music not only by himself but of his favourite composers from Bach onwards. He was occasionally assisted in these concerts by his siblings. Those attending included Vincent d'Indy.

Alkan

There are periods of Alkan's life about which little is known, other than that he was immersed in the study of the Bible and the Talmud. It appears from his correspondence with Ferdinand Hiller that Alkan completed a full translation into French of both the Old Testament and the New Testament, from their original languages. This has been completely lost, as have many of Alkan's compositions. Amongst the missing works are some string sextets and a full-scale orchestral symphony, quite different from the Symphony for piano solo in opus 39, which was described in an article in 1846 by Léon Kreutzer, to whom Alkan had shown the score.

The pianist Elie-Miriam Delaborde (1839–1913) is generally believed to be Alkan's illegitimate son; his mother has not been identified. He was taught by Alkan in his youth and performed and edited many of Alkan's works; like his father he was a notable pédalier player.

[edit] Death

Tomb of Charles-Valentin Alkan, Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris.

Alkan died in Paris in 1888 at the age of 74. For many years it was believed that his death was caused by a bookcase falling on him in his home, brought down as he reached for a volume of the Talmud from a high shelf. This apocryphal tale, which appears to have been circulated by Delaborde, has been effectively disproved by Hugh Macdonald, who reports a contemporary letter from one of Alkan's pupils explaining that Alkan had died following being trapped beneath a falling port-parapluie (a heavy coat/umbrella rack).^[10] The story of the bookcase may have its roots in a legend told of the Rabbi Aryeh Leib ben Asher, known as 'Shaagat Aryeh', rabbi of Metz, the town from which Alkan's family originated. Alkan was buried on Easter Sunday (April 1) in the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris.^[2]

A myth also circulates about an alleged obituary of Alkan, cited as fact in Ronald Smith's biography of the composer and since widely quoted, credited to the magazine 'Le Ménéstrel', beginning with the words "Alkan is dead. He had to die in order to prove his existence." No such obituary appeared in 'Le Ménéstrel' and none has been located to date in any other contemporary journal.

[edit] Music

See also: List of compositions by Charles-Valentin Alkan

Like Chopin, Alkan wrote almost exclusively for the keyboard, although in Alkan's case this included the organ and the pédalier (a piano with a pedal board), of which he was a noted exponent. Some of his music requires a dazzling virtuosity, examples of his compositions calling for velocity, enormous leaps at speed, long stretches of fast repeated notes, and the maintenance of widely-spaced contrapuntal lines. Notable compositions include the Grande sonate Les quatre âges (Op. 33), depicting the Four Ages of Man, and the two sets of etudes in all the major and minor keys (Op. 35 and 39, respectively). These are held by some to surpass even the Transcendental Etudes of Liszt in scale and difficulty. The opus 39 collection contains the Symphony for Solo Piano (numbers four, five, six and seven), and the Concerto for Solo Piano (numbers eight, nine and ten). The concerto alone takes nearly an hour to play, and presents a great challenge to the performer. Marc-André Hamelin said of Alkan's music:

"The aspect of Alkan that is most apparent when people who don't know him listen to him for the first time is that his music is difficult to play... But in a way, I wish that it did not take a formidable technique to play... But the great musical worth of Alkan's music makes it worthwhile to master those difficulties, even though it would take a lot of time."

Alkan's original sheet music have several idiosyncratic features, including nonstandard key signature and pedal notation.

Number twelve of Op. 39 is a set of variations Le festin d'Esope ("Aesop's Feast"). He also composed other programmatic pieces, such as Le chemin de fer ("The Railroad", Op. 27) which may be the earliest composition giving a musical picture of a railroad.

His chamber music compositions include a violin sonata, a cello sonata, and a piano trio. One of his most bizarre pieces is the Marcia funèbre, sulla morte d'un Pappagallo ("Funeral march on the death of a parrot", 1859), for three oboes, bassoon and voices.

Musically, many of his ideas were unconventional, even innovative. Some of his multi-movement compositions show "progressive tonality" which would have been familiar to the later Danish composer, Carl Nielsen (for example, Alkan's first chamber concerto begins in A minor and ends in E major). He was rigorous in avoiding enharmonic spelling, occasionally modulating to keys containing double-sharps or double-flats, so pianists are occasionally required to come to terms with distant keys such as E# major and the occasional triple-sharp.^[b]

Alkan seems to have had few followers, although his admirers included Ferruccio Busoni and Anton Rubinstein. The latter dedicated a concerto to him. Debussy and Ravel both studied his music under teachers who knew Alkan personally and noted their debt to his examples. The composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji promoted Alkan's music in his reviews and criticism, and composed a work with a movement entitled Quasi Alkan. Alkan's organ compositions were known to César Franck, Camille Saint-Saëns and others and their influence can be traced in the French organ school up to the present day.

For many years after his death, Alkan's work was almost completely forgotten. There has been a steady revival of interest in his compositions over the course of the twentieth century. Works by Alkan have been recorded by Egon Petri, John Ogdon, Raymond Lewenthal, Ronald Smith, Jack Gibbons, Mark Latimer, Stephanie McCallum and Marc-André Hamelin.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Alkan Society website, including complete and regularly updated discography
• Pictures of Alkan and his family (his father, his mother, his sister Celeste, his brother Napoléon, and his son Elie-Miriam Delaborde).
• Free scores by Charles-Valentin Alkan in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Kunst der Fuge website: many of the piano works in MIDI files
• Free Alkan scores and manuscripts
• "The Myths of Alkan" by Jack Gibbons
• The Strange case of Charles-Valentin Alkan
• Unriddling Alkan
• Bibliography and Discography
• Alkan was listed in the International Music Score Library Project