Talk:Charles-Valentin Alkan

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Contents

[edit] Etudes

I removed this sentence from the article:

These surpass even the Transcendental Etudes of Liszt in scale and difficulty.

"These" is referring to Alkan's etudes. I removed the sentence, because I have tried out Alkan's etudes and also know the Transcendental Etudes very well, and I don't think Alkans etudes come close to those by Liszt concerning difficulty, and in my opinion in musicality, too. Of course it depends on the abilities of the player, but I think one can generally say that Liszt's etudes are harder to play, which accounts especially for "Feux-Follets".

[edit] Wrong Alkan

I removed this paragraph from the article:

An interesting anecdote about Alkan's death: Supposedly he was reaching for his Torah on his bookshelf when it collapsed on top of him, killing him instantly.

This anecdote is about Charles-Valentin Alkan. Furthermore it is by many considered a myth. If anyone wants to write a couple of paragraphs about it in the correct article, do a Google Groups search for alkan bookshelf OR bookcase and you'll have plenty of research material.

Pladask 11:16, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Marcus2 moved this to Charles Henri Valentin Alkan, but I've moved it back here, as Alkan is hardly ever known by his full name (a quick check on Google will confirm this). --Camembert

[edit] Name Confusion

I have deleted the name "Henri" from the main article. Ronald Smith notes in his Alkan biography that there is no evidence of Alkan having the names "Henri" or "Victorin". He was registered as Charles-Valentin Morhange and soon adopted his father's name, "Alkan", as his last.

Regards, — AlkanSite

Ah, thanks for clearing this out. :-) — Pladask 23:43, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Sorabji link

I am puzzled by the claim that Sorabji "continues in Alkan's direction". Maybe so in his works' uncompromising difficulty, but I think this warrants further discussion at least - as it stands it gives a misleading idea of what to expect of Sorabji! I would favour removing the link from Alkan to Sorabji completely (although a link from Sorabji to Alkan does make sense). --RobertG 16:25, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Probably. (And outside of the Esquisses there is not much in Alkan like the constant use in Sorabji of Baroque textures/forms if applied to his own purposes... I think it's more accurate to say that Sorabji mostly 'followed' Busoni, Debussy, Bach via Busoni... and Alkan to a lesser extent if one considers his Frammenti Aforistici (sp?)...)
(continued.) Someone did make more of a case for a connection in a paper which I'm told was given to the Alkan Society but I don't have access to that; and Sorabji wasn't alone in admiring Alkan's work or promoting it in his music criticism of course, just at the time somewhat unusual. Schissel : bowl listen 12:46, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Links trimmed

I trimmed the external links. alkan.bluestealth.com could not be found. chopinmusic.net gave a 404 error, and I can't find anything about Alkan on the site. Grove music, while estimable, is a subscription-only service (disclosure: I don't subscribe) and in any case the link wasn't to the Alkan entry. musicologie.org/ is in French, hence inappropriate for English Wikipedia. We only need one link to the Alkan society. I think orkut.com was spam with nothing to do with Alkan. --RobertG ♬ talk 10:13, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Alkan's death

It seems pretty clear now that the story of the bookcase and the Talmud is fictitious. The question is, how did Alkan die? The real story needs to have the primary focus in the "Death" section, with mention of the apocryphal tale being secondary. JackofOz 01:37, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

The article in the online New Grove only mentions that the story "seems to have no basis in truth." They mention that there is an account of his death in de Bertha: (A. de Bertha: ‘Ch. Valentin Alkan aîné: étude psycho-musicale’, BSIM, v (1909), 135–47) but give no further details. Interesting that this would have been around for a hundred years, but the bookshelf story has been the only one with legs. Heck, I believed it until I started writing for Wikipedia. Antandrus (talk) 02:04, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
Me too, mate, me too. It's a lovely romantic story, and if it wasn't true, it should have been true. JackofOz 02:09, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
I believe Raymond Lewenthal wrote an article on this for the the Musical Times, but I wouldn't be able to relocate that given a year in which to find it. The link [1] does contain what I think did happen to Alkan, but is not itself sourced. (Only added to external links because of that old standby, "it's a start.") Schissel-nonLop! 03:04, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
Here's three in the Musical Times:
H. Macdonald: ‘The Death of Alkan’, MT, cxiv (1973), 25 only
H. Macdonald: ‘The Enigma of Alkan’, MT, cxvii (1976), 401–2
H.J. Macdonald: ‘More on Alkan's death’, MT, cxxix (1988), 118–20
None of which I have immediate access to, alas. I can go to the UCSB library when it re-opens after the New Year. Antandrus (talk) 03:09, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
Cheers, buddy. Whenever. The truth is out there. JackofOz 03:17, 24 December 2005 (UTC)


for those who are interested:
MacDonald's articles reveal the following.
1) There is a letter from one of Alkan's pupils which revels that he was trapped beneath 'une porte-parapluie' (an umbrella-stand - seems even more bizarre than a bookcase).
2) Despite this letter it seems that Alkan died in bed of illness, possibly in hospital.
I belieive that this legend was in fact 'transferred' to Alkan. The following was communicated to me by Rabbi Meir Salasnik.
Aryeh Leib ben Asher Gunzberg (1695-1785) known as the Shaagat Aryeh (The Lion's Roar) after his book, was rabbi in various communities, lastly in Metz, and lived a very long life for those times.
There is a cute story that a few months before his death, he reached for a book and the bookcase fell on him. After about half an hour he was rescued. He informed them that he would die within the year. They asked him how he knew. He replied that while he was under the books, all the authors of previous rabbinical works he had disagreed with made their peace with him. One rabbi, who had lived a couple of centuries previously, would not make his peace with him. So, he knew he did not have much longer in this world.
I can't remember where I read this story.
We know that Alkan's family came from Metz. As Alkan was, in his way, as disputatious as Shaagat Aryeh, switching the story to him might be undesrtandable.
I am chasing this up and expect to write about it in the next issue of the Alkan Society Bulletin.
Best regards,
Smerus 25.Dec.2005
Hello. I used to be the Webmaster of a now defunct Website called The Alkan Site. One of the more worthwile pages on my site addressed the controversy behind Alkan's death. I emailed a conductor by the name of Mark Starr who kindly provided a detailed answer to the question. The following is the excerpt from my page.
The mystery of Alkan's death was resolved definitively about a decade ago by the French Societé Alkan. A French musicologist (possibly Brigitte Sappey) discovered a long detailed letter by one of Alkan's female piano students, who arrived at Alkan's teaching studio for her lesson just hours after Alkan had expired. In the letter she elaborates that Alkan did indeed fall and injure himself while he was trying to retrieve something on a shelf. He had climbed up on a hall coat-and-hat stand - a typical, large fixture in many 19th Century French homes. Alkan lost his balance and fell - and books did fall on top of him (the student's letter makes no mention of the Talmud). However, it was the fall and not the books that severely injured him.
Alkan did not die right away. A doctor was sent for, arrived, and began treating Alkan's injuries. But as the final portrait of Alkan makes clear, by 1888 he was a very frail, old man. He eventually succumbed to his injuries and died several hours later.
The gothic detail of Alkan having been crushed by his copy of the Talmud appears to be a colorful invention of one of the pianists in Alkan's small circle of friends, probably Isidor Philip. In poor health in his final years, Alkan already knew his days were numbered. In the few months preceding his death, he got all his affairs in order -- including the making of an incredibly detailed will. He also had his manuscripts bound in leather (these invaluable documents have disappeared, never yet to surface.)
The amusing detail about the Talmud is apocryphal. Instead of complaining about the fabrication of this detail, it is better to be grateful to whoever made it up. Limited as Alkan's fame has been in the past, this is the one factoid that has spread his renown among the general public and even among musicians. The more interest in Alkan, and the more people that remember his name (and listen to his music), the better. - Mark Starr
Thanks for reading. --AlkanSite 06:36, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
So it was half-true after all. It seems a shame to burst all those bubbles now, just for the sake of silly old truth. (Moral dilemma ... what to do?) Thanks for this very enlightening information. JackofOz 08:43, 23 February 2006 (UTC)