ans
who, though born elsewhere, have become thoroughly identified with
French thought and standards; and there is much in his music which
finds a parallel in the literary qualities of another Belgian artist,
Maeterlinck, for in both is that same haunting indefiniteness, that
same symbolic aspiration. Nothing in Franck is rigid, square-toed; his
music is suggestive of a mystic idealism, the full expression of
which, from its very nature is unattainable. Franck's outward life was
simple, without excitement or diversion of any kind. When he was not
giving lessons or composing, he was active in the service of the Roman
Catholic Church, in which he was a devout believer. For a number of
years he was organist at Sainte Clotilde, and his style thereby was
influenced strongly. A distinct note of religious exaltation runs
through much of his music; for Franck was a fine character, of
spotless purity of life and of such generosity and elevation of soul
that his pupils looked upon him as a real father and always called him
"Pater Seraphicus." He was universally acknowledged to be the greatest
improviser on the organ since Bach himself. Even Liszt, who heard him
in 1866, left the church, lost in amazement; evoking the name of the
great Sebastian as the only possible comparison.

Franck's services to the development of music are twofold: 1st, as an
inspired composer of varied works, which are more and more becoming
understood and loved; 2d, as a truly great teacher, among his notable
pupils being d'Indy, Chausson, Duparc, Ropartz, and the gifted but
short-lived Lekeu. In Franck's music, fully as remarkable as the
content--the worthy expression of his poetic nature--is its organic
structure. He was the first composer of the French School to use
adequately the great forms of symphonic and chamber music which had
been worked out hitherto by the Germans: Bach, Haydn, Mozart,
Beethoven, etc. If during the last thirty years, composers of the
modern French School have put forth a number of instrumental works of
large dimensions (chamber music, symphonies, symphonic poems and
pianoforte sonatas), it is to Franck more than to any other man, by
reason of his own achievements in these fields and his stimulating
influence on others, that this significant fact is due. A striking
feature of Franck's music is the individual harmonic scheme,
fascinating because so elusive. He was a daring innovator in
modulations and in chromatic effect; and has,