French Piano Music, An Anthology

Book Dover Classical Piano Music English

Edited by  Isidor Philipp

 

Description

 

Piano music is as essential to France as the opera is to Italy or lieder to Germany. This anthology, a broad cross-section of French piano music, selects and presents 44 short piano works ranging from 1670 to 1906. Twenty-eight composers, all French or active in France, are featured: Jacques Champion de Chambonnières, Jean-Baptiste Lully, André Campra, François Couperin, André-Cardinal Destouches, Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, Jean-François Dandrieu, Jean-Philippe Rameau, François Dagincourt, Louis-Claude Daquin, Johann Schobert, François-Joseph Gossec, Charles-Henri Valentin Alkan, Georges Mathias, Camille Saint-Saëns, Léo Delibes, Théodore Dubois, George Bizet, Emmanuel Chabrier, Jules Massenet, Charles-Marie Widor, Gabriel Fauré, Benjamin Godard, Vincent d'Indy, Cécile Chaminade, Camille Erlanger, Gabriel Pierné, and this volume's editor, the well-known pianist, composer, and teacher Isidor Philipp. 

Some of the pieces are extremely popular and favorites with pianists at all levels. Others, although equally important, are more obscure. Included is a wide range of compositions: courantes, passepieds, sarabandes, gigues, gavottes, preludes, minuets, waltzes, romances, scherzos, caprices. Works of special interest include Rameau's The Hen, Gossec's Gavotte, Saint-Saëns' Song Without Words, Lully's Courante in E Minor, and Couperin's Les Papillons.