Martin, Frank

Frank Martin
(b. Geneva, 15 September 1890 — d. Naarden, 21 November 1974)

Overture to Racine’s play Athalie

Frank Martin was one of Switzerland’s leading composers. His father worked as a Calvanist priest, and many of his more well-known pieces have biblical references. The Overture to Rancine’s Atalie from 1946 was composed during the 3 years Martin was writing his large-scale oratorio Golgotha. It is Martin’s first composition after he moved to the Netherlands with his family. Commissioned for a theater production for the centenary of the École des jeunes filles in Geneva, it serves as an incidental music to Jean Rancine’s 1691 tragedy about the biblical Athalie. For the same production, in addition to the overture, Martin created music for an orchestra to accompany two girls choirs, singing text by Rancine, including some antiphonal moments and others for solo voice. The music was written to match the textual accent and meter. Unlike The choral music, which was not subsequently published, the overture became a concert work in its own right, being performed for example at the BBC Proms in 1957. In 1984, Grzegorz Nowak conducted the Overture with the Biel Symphony Orchestra to win the first prize at the International Competition for Musical Performers, Geneva. The complete recording of this production can be found online.

The music is in Frank Martin’s iconic style, balancing on the line of modal and twelve-tone writing. The color and timbre changes are quite swift: Martin traverses many different moods in a relatively brief 9 minutes. The opening (Lent) is reminiscent of a tragic fanfare. The orchestra includes a harp and a piano, which are used percussively, at the beginning of the work they slowly alternate chords like heartbeats. The melody begins in the flute and the viola, always on the second beat, syncopated with a feeling of urgency. The entire orchestra then progresses from a slow dirge of steady quarter notes into a fast march in 12/8 (Vif). Here, the undercurrent of the triplet beat is present throughout, often as quick asides from the brass, beneath the original tragic melodic motive. The last part of the overture, marked Tres Lent et tranquille, is like a coda, quoting the lyric melody from end of the third act, “D’un coeur qui t’aime…” beginning in the cello, then accompanied by the harp and eventually nearly the entire orchestra occasionally interrupted by the piano playing deep A-octaves, as a pedal point.

Irma Servatius, 2017

Major references:
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/special-events-special-editions—1984-international-competition-for-musical-performers–geneva—first-prize-winner-grzegorz-nowak–se-8-1984-/6582752
Klein, Rudolf, “Frank Martin, Sein Leben und Werk” Wien 1960

For performance materials please contact the publisher Universal Edition, Vienna.

Read full preface / Komplettes Vorwort lesen > HERE