Cesar Franck

César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was born on December 10, 1822, in Liège, then part of the newly created United Kingdom of the Netherlands. His father, a bank clerk with theatrical ambitions for his sons, enrolled him at the Royal Conservatory of Liège at age eight and took the family to Paris in 1835 so the boy could enter the Paris Conservatoire.

He won first prizes in fugue and organ at the Conservatoire, but his father withdrew him before he could compete for the Prix de Rome and pushed him into a touring career as a piano virtuoso that did not flourish. He broke with his father in 1846 over his marriage to the actress Félicité Saillot Desmousseaux and settled into a quiet Parisian life of teaching and parish music.

He served as organist at the basilica of Sainte-Clotilde from 1858 until his death, where the new Cavaillé-Coll instrument shaped his harmonic language, and he was appointed professor of organ at the Paris Conservatoire in 1872. His pupils included Vincent d'Indy, Henri Duparc, Ernest Chausson, and Louis Vierne, who together formed the so-called Franck circle.

His mature works, written largely after age sixty, included the Symphony in D minor (1888), the Violin Sonata in A major (1886), the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra (1885), the Piano Quintet in F minor (1879), and the String Quartet in D major (1889). He was struck by a horse-drawn omnibus in May 1890 and died of complications from the injury in Paris on November 8, 1890.

The name César is the French form of the Roman Caesar, traditionally linked to a Latin word meaning head of hair. He gave the name a central place in late Romantic music, and it remains a distinguished choice for sons in French- and Spanish-speaking families.