Symphony on a French Mountain Air, Op. 25

Composer: D’INDY, Vincent
  • D’Indy completed his Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français in 1886.1
    • The work is subtitled Symphonie cévenole (Cévennes Symphony). The Cévennes is a mountain range in the south of France.
  • The symphony’s theme is taken from a folk song D’Indy heard while researching the folk music of the Ardèche region of France, beneath the Cévennes mountains.2 D’Indy’s family came from the Ardèche region.3
  • Though it is termed a symphony, not a concerto, it is scored for piano and orchestra.4
  • This symphony uses cyclic form (i.e., one theme recurs in multiple movements of the work). In this case, the theme is used in each movement; in fact, the three movements form an extended theme and variations structure.5

Sources

  1. Robert Orledge and Andrew Thomson, “Indy, (Paul Marie Théodore) Vincent d’,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed February 23, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000013787.
  2. Daniel Jaffé, program notes for D’Indy: Symphony on a French Mountain Air, Op. 25, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Louis Lortie, Charles Dutoit, Symphony Center, March 2015, accessed February 23, 2021, https://cso.org/uploadedFiles/1_Tickets_and_Events/Program_Notes/ProgramNotes_Ravel_Rapsodie_espagnole.pdf.
  3. Robert Orledge and Andrew Thomson, “Indy, (Paul Marie Théodore) Vincent d’,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed February 23, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000013787.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Andrew Deruchie, The French Symphony at the Fin de Sièle: Style, Culture, and the Symphonic Tradition (Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 2013), 161.

Cut IDs

42605 43698 43966 18350