How many people, even organists, realize that this piece was Franck's lament for the loss of Alsace and part of :Lorraine to Germany resulting from France's humiliating defeat in the totally needless Franco-Prussian War?
@@Engineer9736 Au contraire, mon vieux. Every high school and college course in world history covers the tragic Franco-Prussian War and its devastating outcome of the loss of Alsace and most of Lorraine to Germany, and the suppression of the French language and the imposition of the German language - -- a situation not remedied until the Treaty of Versailles which formally ended World War I in 1919. Unfortunately, in the United States, neither French nor German is taught now in high schools, both being deemed not sufficiently challenging, and replaced by the far more difficult Spanish or occasionally by Russian or Chinese.
Beautiful playing.
How many people, even organists, realize that this piece was Franck's lament for the loss of Alsace and part of :Lorraine to Germany resulting from France's humiliating defeat in the totally needless Franco-Prussian War?
I guess not even 0.1% of the people on the globe heard of these wars, so then it’s difficult to realize something about that.
@@Engineer9736 Au contraire, mon vieux. Every high school and college course in world history covers the tragic Franco-Prussian War and its devastating outcome of the loss of Alsace and most of Lorraine to Germany, and the suppression of the French language and the imposition of the German language - -- a situation not remedied until the Treaty of Versailles which formally ended World War I in 1919. Unfortunately, in the United States, neither French nor German is taught now in high schools, both being deemed not sufficiently challenging, and replaced by the far more difficult Spanish or occasionally by Russian or Chinese.
Maybe the allusion to Schumann's "Des Abends" is not coincidental, then.
I'm organist and I didn't know about that. Could you give me more information?
@@douglasbruce4991 WOW. I would like to know more. Where can I find more information about this?
Interesting to compare the countersubject (3'24"" ff) with Schumann's "Des Abends" (Fantasiestücke) which like the piece, has moments of polyrhythm.