ABSTRACT
Performance practice and reception history need aligning in tandem as a methodological approach to the music of César Franck (1822–1890) if a clear assessment of this composer and his interpretation is to be extended beyond biography and speculation. Where can he be situated in the development of French music with the piano styles of Chabrier, Debussy, Fauré, and Ravel in the ascendant? Was he essentially a Germanic composer aloof from their developments: just an old-fashioned romantic not much French at all (he was after all Belgian)? Or, as many subsequent critics have suggested, was he hampered in all genres because the influence of his professional involvement with the organ was somehow infectious, imposing the idiosyncratic writing for this instrument on everything he wrote for others, and therefore in some way not a real piano composer?
