Florent Schmitt: Le Palais Hanté (after Poe)

(http://poeforward.blogspot.com/2012/04/haunted-palace-published-1839.html)
no copyright infringement intended

The works of Poe were highly important in the literary life of turn-of-the-century France. Baudelaire translated his tales. Mallarmé put a collection of his poems into French; and it is not unreasonable to claim that Poe's are among the few works to gain, rather than lose, in translation.
His appeal was twofold. First, his haunting tales foreshadowed the inward-looking, psychologically probing movement emerging in Expressionist art and literature. Second, they are riddled with symbols, whether unconscious or not.. Not for nothing, did Princess Marie Bonaparte, a pupil of Freud, devote a massive book to interpreting Poe's work in terms of Freudian symbolism.
The symphonic prelude by Florent Schmitt (1870-1958) on Poe's poem The Haunted Palace was composed between 1900 and 1904. It is firmly in the post-Lisztian tradition of orchestral symphonic poems, with its mixture of tonally rootless sections and clearer melodies. The listener may muse on the various possible musical corollaries Schmitt creates to the several musical allusions in Poe's poem.

(Richard Langham Smith)

Florent Schmitt, Étude pour Le palais hanté, Op.49, 1904
Lent - Assez animé - Presque lent - Animé
The Monte-Carlor Philharmonic Orchestra. Georges Prêtre, conductor
(video by christomacin)

(Edgar Allan Poe)

(Florent Schmitt)

Florent Schmitt as viewed by Eugène Pirou

Florent Schmitt viewed by Eugène Pirou
source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Florent_Schmitt_1900.jpg)
no copyright infringement intended

I am wandering whether to consider Florent Schmitt an Old Master or a Musica Nova guy. Well, I know that the general acceptance of the term Old Master sends well back in time. On the other way, time is running pretty fast, and, as the saying goes, the older we get the more we feel how young we used to be. How to frame Florent Schmitt then? A student of Fauré and Massenet, who won the Prix de Rome in 1900, that's old enough. On the other hand, if we consider a work that Schmitt created in 1907 (the ballet La Tragédie de Salomé), his rhythmic syncopations, polyrhythms, percussively treated chords, bitonality, and scoring anticipate Stravinski's Rite of Spring (wiki). This should be a reason to consider Florent Schmitt at least a Musica Nova forerunner, I think.

Well, there will be a lot to say about Schmitt, his life was not devoid of very controversial aspects (to put it mildly), but I would rather stop here. It is his music that remains.

The image above comes from 1900: Florent Schmitt was just winning the Prix de Rome. The author, Eugène Pirou (who had made photos of the events during the Commune de Paris in 1871) was one of the early filmmakers, credited with the creation of some  of the first porno films in history. Here the sources of information are slightly contradictory: according to wikipedia his first movie was Le Coucher de la Mariée (1897), starring Louise Willy who was performing a striptease scene in front of her husband - according to Imdb, his first movie had been Les époux vont au lit (1896), starring the same Louise Willy who was preparing for bed while her husband was watching - as for Le Coucher de la Mariée, Imdb places it later, in 1899 - meanwhile Pirou had made other two or three movies ejusdem farinae.

• Le Palais Hanté (after Poe)

(Cinéma Français)

(Early Movies)

(Musica Nova)