The Music Man

When I was about 12 years old, I happened to be watching one of the young people‘s concerts which Leonard Bernstein hosted with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The piece they played was the symphony in D minor by a French composer named César Franck. I listened to all three movements of this piece and I was electrified. That piece captivated me as a young teenager and it still grabs my heart every time I hear it. Later in life I discovered his tone poem, “Les Eolides (The Breezes),” one of the most beautiful orchestral pieces I’ve ever heard.

Cesar Frank was the professor of composition and harmony at the Conservatoire Nacional a few blocks northeast of where I sit. All of his students appreciated his fatherly kindness, when many of their professors were just a wee bit too full of themselves. Not only was he a teacher, he was also a church organist, and he wrote some of the most expressive organ pieces ever composed. He played the organ every Sunday at the Basilica of Ste. Clothilde. We walked there from the University, and I was transfixed when I pushed against an ancient oak door and found that it gave way to allow me to enter the sanctum. We crept in and found one woman sitting and praying. We entered silently and took our seats halfway down the nave. We waited until the woman left, and then I turned around to photograph the organ. It is essentially the same instrument that Franck played, although it has been refurbished and enlarged twice since he died in 1890. We left this beautiful basilica feeling as though we had been in a holy place. I know it was for me.Read more