Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Charles-Valentin Alkan (November 30
1813–March 29 1888) was a France|French
composer and one of the greatest virtuoso pianists
of his day. His compositions for solo piano are
among the most fiendishly difficult ever written
and are relatively rarely performed.

Image:Charles-Valentin_Alkan.jpeg|right|thumb|Char
les-Valentin Alkan

==Biography==

===Life and career===

Alkan was born Charles-Valentin Morhange to a
Jewish family in Paris. He and his brothers used
their father's first name, Alkan, as their last.
Charles-Valentin Alkan spent his life in and
around Paris, and died there, 74 years old.

Alkan was a child prodigy. He entered the Paris
Conservatoire at the age of six, where he studied
both piano and organ. His teachers included Joseph
Zimmermann, who also taught Georges Bizet, César
Franck, Charles Gounod, and Ambroise Thomas.  At
the age of seven, he won a first prize for
solfège, and at the age of nine, Luigi
Cherubini described his technique and ability as
extraordinary.  His opus number|opus 1 dates from
1828, when he was 14 years old.

In his twenties, he played concerts in elegant
social circles and taught piano. His friends
included Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin, George
Sand, and Victor Hugo. By the age of twenty-four,
he had built a reputation as one of the great
virtuoso pianists of his day, rivalling the other
touring virtuoso composer-pianists of the day such
as Sigismond Thalberg, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, and
even Liszt. (Liszt once stated that Alkan had the
most perfect technique he had ever seen.)  Because
of various personal problems and reverses, he then
withdrew into private study, with only occasional
forays back into the limelight, for the remainder
of his life. In spite of his early fame and
technical accomplishment, he spent most of his
life in obscurity, performing in public only
occasionally. There are periods of his life about
which little is known, other than that he was
immersed in the study of the Bible and the Talmud.
Pianist Elie-Miriam Delaborde (1839–1913) is
often considered to be his illegitimate son.

A biography, Alkan: The man, the music (originally
in two separate volumes), was written by pianist
and Alkan champion Ronald Smith.

===Death===

According to an often-repeated story, possibly
apocryphal, Alkan died when a bookshelf collapsed
on him in his home — apparently as he
reached for a volume of the Talmud, which he had
placed on the highest shelf, in the position
closest to Heaven.

==Music==

Like Chopin, Alkan wrote almost exclusively for
the piano. His music requires a dazzling and
almost inhuman virtuosity to perform.  One of his
pieces most often heard today is the bizarre
Marche funebre sulla morte d'un papagallo (Funeral
march for a parrot), for three oboes, bassoon and
voices, which is one of his few non-piano works to
survive. Other notable compositions include the
Grande Sonate Les Quatre Ages (opus 33), depicting
the Four Ages of Man, and the two sets of etudes
in all the major and minor keys (opus 35 in the
major and opus 39 in the minor).  These last match
even the Transcendental Etudes of Liszt in scale
and difficulty. Numbers eight, nine and ten of
opus 39 together form the Concerto for Solo Piano,
which takes nearly an hour to play and presents a
great challenge to the performer. Number four,
five, six and seven together constitute the
Symphony for Solo Piano.  He also wrote a set of
variations Aesop's Feast and a programmatic piece
Le Chemin de fer (1844) which may be the earliest
composition giving a musical picture of a
railroad.

Musically, many of his ideas were unconventional,
even innovative. Some of his multi-movement
compositions show "progressive tonality" which
would have been familiar to Carl Nielsen (for
example, the first chamber concerto begins in A
minor and ends in E major).  He was rigorous in
avoiding enharmonic spelling, occasionally
modulating to keys containing double-sharps or
double-flats, to the annoyance of pianists who are
forced to deal with aberrations such as occasional
triple-sharps.

Alkan seems to have had few followers. One
composer who does appear to continue Alkan's
direction is Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, although
Sorabji claimed that his model was Ferruccio
Busoni. (Sorabji did, however, promote Alkan's
music in his reviews and criticism, and composed a
work with a movement "Quasi Alkan".)
Alkan had admirers, among them Busoni and Anton
Rubinstein, who dedicated a concerto to him.
Debussy and Ravel both studied his music under
teachers who knew Alkan personally and noted their
debt to his examples.

For many years after his death, Alkan's work was
almost completely forgotten. There has been a
steady revival of interest in his compositions
over the course of the twentieth century. His
works have been recorded by Egon Petri, John
Ogdon, Raymond Lewenthal, Ronald Smith and most
recently Jack Gibbons, Marc-André Hamelin, and
Stephanie McCallum among others. He is buried in
the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris.

===Notable compositions===

* Op. 10 Two Concertos da camera
** No. 1 Concerto da Camera in A minor
** No. 2 Concerto da Camera in C-sharp minor
* Op. 12, Trois Improvisations dans le style
brilliant
* Op. 13, Trois Andantes romantiques
* Op. 15, Trois Morceaux dans le genre pathétique
* Op. 16, Tre Scherzi
* Op. 25, Alleluia
* Op. 26, Marche funèbre
* Op. 31, Préludes
* Op. 33, Grande Sonate Les Quatre Ages
* Op. 35, Douze Études dans tous les tons majeurs
* Op. 39, Douze Études dans tous les tons mineurs
** No. 1 Comme le vent
** Nos. 4-7 Symphony for solo piano
** Nos. 8-9 Concerto for solo piano
* Op. 45, Salut, cendre de pauvre!
* Op. 52, Super flumina Babylonis (Paraphrase of
Psalm CXXXVII)
* Op. 61, Sonatine
* Op. 63, Forty-eight Esquisses
* Op. 69, Impromptu sur le Chorale de Luther
* Op. 76, Trois Grande Études for piano
** Fantaisie in A-flat major for the left hand
** Introduction, Variations and Finale in D major
for the right hand
** Mouvement semblable et perpetuel
(Rondo-Toccata) in C minor for hands reunited

==External links==

*http://www.alkansociety.org AlkanSociety.org
*http://alkan.bluestealth.com The Alkan Site
*http://www.chopinmusic.net/forum/composer.php?c=a
lkan Alkan biography and recordings
*http://www.grovemusic.com/shared/views/article.ht
ml?from=search&session_search_id=281443720&hitnum=
1§ion=music.00579 Grovemusic.com Great web
page of the Grovemusic with a biography from HUGH
MACDONALD
*http://piano.francais.free.fr/alkan/04_partitions
_en.html Piano Francais Some Alkan sheet music,
manuscripts and biography on
http://piano.francais.free.fr/alkan/04_partitions_
en.html
*http://www.musicologie.org/Biographies/alkan_c_v.
html Some Alkan sheet music and biography
*http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/11/may93/alka
n.htm The Strange case of Charles-Valentin Alkan
*http://www.alkansociety.org/links.htm More links
from the Alkan Society
*http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=139925
Alkan's community at Orkut