Forward-looking Franck

It was good on his bicentenary to have proper coverage of César Franck (December), a composer whom I’ve learned to admire more in recent years. However, he should not be claimed as the first to use a cor anglais in a symphony (On Your Cover CD page). Haydn comes to mind (in his ‘Philosopher’ Symphony) but Franck would probably not have been aware of it. But he surely knew the first three symphonies of Berlioz, composed in the 1830s – each has a cor anglais in at least one movement, and its melancholy

aspect suits the tomb scene in Roméo et Juliette. Nor would I accept ‘died-inthe-wool traditionalist’ as a description of Franck, influenced as he seems

to have been by Liszt and

Wagner, the latter only nine years his senior. That surely makes him a latedeveloping contemporary of

these composers, who were among the modernists of their generation?

Julian Rushton, Huddersfield