LDV176.8

19 ANDRÉ ISOIR Sensitive as he was to the influence of his contemporaries, Franck’s three mentors remained Bach, Beethoven and Wagner: Bach, for his contrapuntal vitality, his art of combining different voices and his dramatic use of fugue; Beethoven for his acute sense of form where each element is perfectly integrated, and for his melodic construction, in which he gives the motif pride of place - his theme is a subject even before being a melody ; and lastly Wagner, present in the chromatic atmosphere of Franck’s harmony as well as in many of his musical gestures (the opening of the Cantabile is an echo of the Prelude to Tristan ), adding a truly theatrical sense to his architecture and bringing to it a vivid intensity.