Franck was of another temper. The impulse that drove him to make music
was not so weak and pliable. It could not be barbered and dapperly
dressed and taught to conduct a clouded cane elegantly in the _rue de
la Paix_ or the _allee des Acacias_. It was too hot and wild and shy a
thing, too passionately set in its course, too homesick for the white
fulgurant heights of Heaven to negate itself at the behest of French
society and conform to what the academicians declared to be "la vielle
tradition francaise." Franck was too much an artist in the spirit of La
Fontaine and Germaine Pillon and Poussin and the others who formed that
tradition, and who would be assailed in its name fiercely were they to
reappear to-day. Moreover, he was of the race of musicians who come to
make music largely to free themselves of besetting demons, of the
sinister brood of doubts and fears and woes, and win their way back
again into the bosom of God. He was the simple, heart-whole believer,
the poor little man lost in the shambles, shaken and wounded by the
"terrible doubt of appearances" and by the cruelty of things, yearning
to cry his despair and loneliness and grief to the ears of the God of
his childhood, and battling through long vigils for trust and belief and
reconciliation.
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