Christopher Dawes

César Auguste Franck : A Holy Week Playlist

When César Augustus (’Caesar the Great’) reigned over the first Roman Empire a remarkable story - some have called it the greatest ever told - was begun with the birth of a boy in the City of David, who would save his people from sin and bring about another birth - that of a worldwide church. Centuries later, in 1822, a Belgian boy was born and named for the great Emperor - and he was destined to become one of the most important, defining voices in the music of that church. In addition to becoming titular organist at Paris’ beautiful Basilique St Sulpice César-Auguste Franck became professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, a teaching and administrative position that likely limited his own compositional output.

Indeed, little of Franck’s beautiful and genre-defining French organ music is explicitly sacred except by inherited connotation: but in this Holy Week dedicated to the culmination of Jesus’ ministry I have chosen and free-associated several works with his story. To be clear there is no indication whatever that Franck made associations like I have between his abstract compositions and this or any other story - he might very well have thought the notion to be completely absurd. But I invite you to join me in using this great man’s great music to uniquely illuminate a tale we all know - perhaps too well. Join me in following the young rabbi from Nazareth on his journey to Golgotha, through the music of the great Cesar Franck.