All his
life, until the very last of his seventy years, Cesar Franck was obliged
to arise every morning at five o'clock in order to have a couple of
hours in which to be free to compose before the waxing day obliged him
to begin trotting from one end of Paris to the other giving lessons.
During his lifetime he had to content himself with half-prepared
performances of his works, had to resign himself to having composers of
operettas preferred to him when chairs at the _Conservatoire_ became
vacant, to receiving practically no recognition from a government
pretending with hue and cry to protect and encourage the arts. Had it
not been for the fervor and faithfulness with which Ysaye labored to
spread his renown, practically cramming down the throats of an unwilling
public the violin sonata and the quartet, the man would not have known
any success at all even during the very last years of his career. As it
was, his reputation spread only after he was dead. Then, of course, the
inevitable monument was erected to him.
Still, the future was with Cesar Franck as it has been with few artists.
The timeliness of his art was almost miraculous. Without a doubt, during
the years of his labor, the French were most ready for a musical
renaissance. The defeat of 1870 had, after all, braced the nation,
summoned its dormant energies.
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