{"id":50178,"date":"2024-12-04T10:19:31","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T09:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/9fd7f990-104e-4417-9ff6-984b1eeb42de"},"modified":"2024-12-04T11:10:35","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T10:10:35","slug":"charles-valentin-alkan-the-child-prodigy-who-lived-as-a-hermit-and-influenced-chopin-liszt-and-ravel","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/charles-valentin-alkan-the-child-prodigy-who-lived-as-a-hermit-and-influenced-chopin-liszt-and-ravel\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles-Valentin Alkan: the child prodigy who lived as a hermit and influenced Chopin, Liszt and Ravel"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By <\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 04 December 2024 at 09:19 AM<\/p>

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Unusually among the virtuoso composer-pianists of the 19th century, Charles-Valentin Alkan spent much of his life as an apparent recluse. <\/strong>He shunned the concert platform in favour of keeping his own company, reading, studying and creating some of the most spectacularly demanding piano music ever written.<\/p>

Choosing a life like this meant that rumours flourished about him during his lifetime, as they have ever since. For instance, the story that he died when reaching for a volume at the top of one of his bookshelves, which then toppled forwards and crushed him, is now known to be a fabrication.<\/p>

<\/div> <\/figure> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-when-was-charles-valentin-alkan-born\">When was Charles-Valentin Alkan born?<\/h2> <p>Alkan was born in Paris on 30 November in 1813 as Charles-Valentin Morhange. He was one of six children of a music teacher who lived and worked in Le Marais, Paris\u2019s Jewish quarter; Alkan took his surname from his father\u2019s first name.<\/p> <p>Alkan’s musical ability was phenomenal from the start: he entered the Paris Conservatoire aged five, and gave his first public concert (as a violinist) at seven. His keyboard skills were so extraordinary that by his early teens he already had a concert-giving career, and was also helping out with teaching at his father\u2019s school, where one of his younger pupils was Antoine Marmontel (of whom more later).<\/p> <p>In 1835 his first substantially individual piano work appeared \u2013 12 <i>Caprices<\/i>, published in four sets of three pieces each, and presenting the Classically tinged brand of Romanticism that Alkan was to spend a lifetime developing.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/best-romantic-composers\">The best Romantic composers, from Beethoven to Rachmaninov<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Quasi Caccia, caprice pour piano, Op. 53, Charles-Valentin Alkan\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BFXM77H1ZYI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <p>Besides the free-flowing <i>bravura<\/i> figuration that came to him so naturally, the music has moments of striking originality too \u2013 as in the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/articles\/what-andante\/\"><i>Andante<\/i> <\/a><\/strong>first piece of the second set, featuring the rapidly rippling, repeated-note patterns that were less difficult to execute on the pianos of the time than on today\u2019s instruments, with their heavier keyboard action. By now Alkan was a Parisian celebrity, admired and liked by the composers <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/composers\/franz-liszt\/\">Franz Liszt<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/composers\/frederic-chopin\/\">Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin<\/a><\/strong> – as well as the latter’s lover <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/chopin-george-sand\">George Sand<\/a><\/strong>, Alexandre Dumas and other cultural leading lights of the day.<\/p> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-what-was-he-like\">An illegitimate child – and withdrawal from society<\/h3> <p>Then came the first of the periods of withdrawal from the limelight which gave him his reputation as a hermit.<\/p> <p>The birth of his son may or may not have had something to do with this. Elie-Miriam Delaborde \u2013 born in 1839, and himself to become a concert pianist \u2013 was the illegitimate child of one of Alkan\u2019s private pupils.<\/p> <p>While the paternal parentage was never confirmed (nor denied), the situation may perhaps have complicated a streak in Alkan\u2019s temperament that was already making performing in public difficult for him. His letters to friends indicate an often relentless self-analysis that was liable to bring about a mood where life itself could seem empty, even pointless.<\/p> <p\/> <p>Alkan\u2019s need for stay-at-home solitude may have related to some kind of depressive, obsessive-compulsive disorder, but the evidence we have is unclear. In company, his manner seems to have been generally straightforward and likeable: there was a warm friendship with Chopin, who shared something of Alkan\u2019s resistance to public appearances, himself preferring to play in semi-private salons.<\/p> <p>The few colleagues who managed to visit Alkan at home noticed no obvious signs of disconnected eccentricity \u2013 certainly nothing like the partly full chamber pot once observed under <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/composers\/ludwig-van-beethoven\/\">Beethoven<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s piano, or <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/composers\/erik-satie\/\">Erik Satie<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s vast collection of umbrellas.<\/p> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-most-famous-alkan-works\">Most famous Alkan works<\/h2> <p>In 1844 Alkan returned to the concert platform, and unveiled some of the music he had been writing down. This included two sizeable <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/chamber-music\">chamber music<\/a><\/strong> works, a violin-and-piano Grand Duo and a Piano <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/what-trio\">Trio<\/a><\/strong>, and an off-the-wall item for solo piano: <i>Le chemin de fer<\/i> appears to be the first time that a steam engine had been depicted in music, in this case with spectacular brilliance.<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Le Chemin de Fer [\u00c9tude Op.27 in D minor]|| ALKAN\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lUVvSXqNEG4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <p>The <i>Trois grandes \u00e9tudes<\/i> consisted of a <i>Fantaisie<\/i> for the left hand alone (extremely difficult), an <i>Introduction and Variations<\/i> for the right hand (if anything even more so), and a torrential <i>Rondo-Toccata<\/i> \u2018<i>pour les mains r\u00e9unies\u2019<\/i>. And this period saw the creation of two major masterworks.<\/p> <p>Each of the four movements of the <i>Grande sonate \u2018Les quatre \u00e2ges\u2019<\/i> depicts a different stage in the life of its imaginary hero, at the ages of 20, 30 (\u2018Quasi-Faust\u2019), 40 (\u2018A Happy Household\u2019) and 50 (\u2018Prometheus Bound\u2019). \u2018Quasi-Faust\u2019 features a fugal section in eight parts, of such notational and technical complexity that Alkan wrote out a parallel \u2018facilitated version\u2019, which is at least marginally less difficult to decipher.<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"12 Etudes in All the Minor Keys, Op. 39 (Alkan) - Sheet Music\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZG9pGzXmHjo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-what-does-alkan-s-music-sound-like\">What does Alkan’s music sound like?<\/h2> <p>This formidable achievement was completed alongside the 12 <i>Etudes dans les tons mineurs<\/i> \u2013 one in each of the 12 minor <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/musical-keys-explained\">keys<\/a><\/strong>, and between them exploring the full spectrum of Alkan\u2019s creative world. No. 8 (<i>Lento appassionato<\/i>), which sounds outwardly like an elegant, lute-like anticipation of the <i>F\u00eates galantes <\/i>sound-world of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/composers\/gabriel-faure\/\">Faur\u00e9<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/composers\/claude-debussy\/\">Debussy<\/a><\/strong>, again has each hand often playing alone, demanding an octopus-like stretch from both. And the driving ferocity of No. 5 (<i><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/what-does-allegro-mean-in-music\">Allegro<\/a><\/strong> barbaro<\/i>) prefigures <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/composers\/sergey-prokofiev\/\">Prokofiev<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s keyboard style by more than half a century. Meanwhile Alkan was becoming increasingly interested in his Jewish heritage.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/jewish-composers-suppressed-by-nazis\">Jewish composers suppressed by the Nazis: seven great voices we’re starting to hear again<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <p>Among the 25 <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/prelude\">Preludes<\/a><\/strong> Op. 31 for piano or organ are the unmistakably Jewish melodic inflections of No. 6, <i>Ancienne m\u00e9lodie du synagogue<\/i>. An orchestral Symphony in B minor, known to have been completed but later lost, opened with an <i><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/what-is-adagio-in-music\">Adagio<\/a><\/strong><\/i> section headed in Hebrew with the words from the Book of Genesis: \u2018And God said, Let there be light.\u2019 Shorter works from this period include the Hebrew invocation <i>Etz chajjim hi<\/i>, set in a simple, prayer-like manner for four solo voices.<\/p> <p>Then came a crisis. When the head of the Paris Conservatoire\u2019s piano department was due to retire, Alkan put himself forward for the post; but in 1848 the post went to his former pupil, Antoine Marmontel.<\/p> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-life-as-a-recluse\">Life as a recluse<\/h3> <p>Alkan was so furious that he again removed himself from public life. This time the withdrawal lasted for over 20 years, of which the first decade was much taken up with work on a colossal counterpart to the earlier set of minor-key studies. Published in 1857, the 12 <i>Etudes dans les tons majeurs<\/i> encompass, among much else, a self-contained four-movement piano <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/symphony\">Symphony<\/a><\/strong> of impressive sweep and grandeur.<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"> <figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"> Leaving the Conservatoire, 1899, by Jean Beraud (1849-1935). Pic: DeAgostini\/Getty Images – DeAgostini\/Getty Images <\/figcaption> <\/figure> <p>There is also a three-movement <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/what-concerto\">Concerto<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 combining the genre\u2019s solo piano and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/what-instruments-make-up-an-orchestra\">orchestral<\/a><\/strong> aspects, and technically and structurally so demanding (the first movement alone lasts for nearly 30 minutes) that few pianists have ever performed it. The set concludes with <i>Le festin d\u2019Esope<\/i>, a super-virtuoso sequence of 25 <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/what-are-variations\">variations<\/a><\/strong> and a coda, wittily portraying a panoply of the animals depicted in Aesop\u2019s fables.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/greatest-musical-variations\">The 7 greatest sets of variations ever written<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <h6 class=\"wp-block-heading\">‘So demanding that few pianists have ever performed it’<\/h6> <p>During these years Alkan also, incredibly, translated the entire Old and New Testaments of the Bible into French from the Syriac language.<\/p> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-lost-alkan-works\">Lost Alkan works<\/h3> <p>These too have been lost \u2013 probably among the huge collection of books and manuscripts which Alkan left at his death to his brother Napol\u00e9on, and which disappeared without trace soon after. A one-act opera, mentioned in a letter in 1847 as \u2018completed\u2019, has also vanished. Alkan emerged now and again from his self-imposed solitude \u2013 taking up and then soon abandoning an organist post at the local Synagogue de Nazareth, and giving a recital on the newly created <i>p\u00e9dalier<\/i> (a piano with an extra set of organ-like pedals).<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Charles-Valentin Alkan - Op.39 No. 8-10: Concerto for Solo Piano (Hamelin, 1992)\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/l78QnWhvEBA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <p>Other works from this chapter include the three-movement <i>Sonatine<\/i>; five sets of <i>Chants<\/i> (Songs), Alkan\u2019s take on <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/composers\/felix-mendelssohn\/\">Mendelssohn<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s <i>Songs without Words<\/i> following the same sequence of keys and moods; and a remarkable set of 48 <i>Esquisses<\/i> (Sketches), some of which seem to look decades into the future, towards the plucked-out-of-the-air manner of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/charles-ives\">Charles Ives<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p> <p>In 1873 Alkan once again returned to performing, initiating a sequence of \u2018Petits Concerts\u2019 involving chosen colleagues, among them Delaborde and another virtuoso composer-pianist from the younger generation, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/camille-saint-saens\">Camille Saint-Sa\u00ebns<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-when-did-alkan-die\">When did Alkan die?<\/h2> <p>The programmes for these ‘Petits Concerts’ included mostly <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/composers\/johann-sebastian-bach\/\">Bach<\/a><\/strong> and the classical composers (generally nothing later than Mendelssohn), and seem to have brought about a measure of old-age fulfilment for Alkan before his death at home in March 1888, aged 74 \u2013 perhaps even a sense of \u2018job done\u2019.<\/p> <p>His body was found in the kitchen under a coat rack, hence the popular belief that he met his death from a falling bookcase.<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Charles-Valentin Alkan - Toccatina Op. 75 (audio + sheet music)\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/H-NQpRJRGSc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <p>The last known composition by Charles-Valentin Alkan is a piano <i>Toccatina<\/i> dating from 1872 \u2013 the year of Delaborde\u2019s appointment as piano director at the Paris Conservatoire, which must have given Alkan some feeling of consolation after his own disappointment a quarter-century earlier.<\/p> <p>And he had evidently never lost his sense of humour, to judge from the scrupulously melodramatic <i>Marcia fun\u00e8bre, sulla morte d\u2019un Pappagallo)<\/i>, written in 1859 for two <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/what-soprano\">sopranos<\/a><\/strong>, tenor, bass, three oboes and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/instruments\/the-bassoon-a-guide-to-the-orchestras-largest-wind-instrument\">bassoon<\/a><\/strong>. A Funeral March in C minor for a dead parrot? Clue: Delaborde kept a famously large collection of parrots and cockatoos\u2026<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Published: Wednesday, 04 December 2024 at 09:19 AM Unusually among the virtuoso composer-pianists of the 19th century, Charles-Valentin Alkan spent much of his life as an apparent recluse. He shunned the concert platform in favour of keeping his own company, reading, studying and creating some of the most spectacularly demanding piano music ever written. 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He shunned the concert platform in favour of keeping his own company, reading, studying and creating some of the most spectacularly demanding piano music ever written.…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/50178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}