The effect, to be sure, of his special manner is somewhat to dilute the temper of his art, and to depress the humor.  It is thus that the pervading melancholy almost compels the absence of a “slow movement” in his symphony.  And so we feel in all his larger works for instruments a suddenness of recoil in the Finale.

One can see in Franck, in analogy with his German contemporaries, an etherealized kind of “Tristan and Isolde,”—­a “Paolo and Francesca” in a world of shades.  Compared with his followers the quality of stereotype in Franck is merely general; there is no excessive use of one device.

A baffling element in viewing the art of Franck is his remoteness of spirit, the strangeness of his temper.  He lacked the joyous spring that is a dominant note in the classic period.  Nor on the other hand did his music breathe the pessimism and naturalism that came with the last rebound of Romantic reaction.  Rather was his vein one of high spiritual absorption—­not so much in recoil, as merely apart from the world in a kind of pious seclusion.  Perhaps his main point of view was the church-organ.  He seems a religious prophet in a non-religious age.  With his immediate disciples he was a leader in the manner of his art, rather than in the temper of his poetry.

SYMPHONY IN D MINOR

The scoring shows a sign of modern feeling in the prominence of the brasses.  With all contrast of spirit, the analogy of Franck with the Liszt-Wagner school and manner is frequently suggestive.

The main novelty of outer detail is the plan of merely three movements.  Nor is there a return to the original form, without the Scherzo.  To judge from the headings, the “slow” movement is absent.  In truth, by way of cursory preamble, the chronic vein of Cesar Franck is so ingrainedly reflective that there never can be with him an absence of the meditative phrase.  Rather must there be a vehement rousing of his muse from a state of mystic adoration to rhythmic energy and cheer.[A]

[Footnote A:  The key of the work is given by the composer as D minor.  The first movement alone is in the nominal key.  The second (in B flat) is in the submediant, the last in the tonic major.  The old manner in church music, that Bach often used, of closing a minor tonality with a major chord, was probably due to a regard for the mood of the congregation.  An extension of this tradition is frequent in a long coda in the major.  But this is quite different in kind from a plan where all of the last movement is in insistent major.  We know that it is quite possible to begin a work at some distance from the main key, leading to it by tortuous path of modulation; though there is no reason why we may not question the composer’s own inscription, the controlling point is really the whole tonal scheme.  Here the key of the second movement is built on a design in minor,—­would have less reason in the major.  For it rests on a degree that does not exist in the tonic major.  To be sure, Beethoven did invent the change to a lowered submediant in a succeeding movement.  And, of course, the final turn to the tonic major is virtually as great a license.]