Frank Martin (composer)

Born into a Huguenot family in the Eaux-Vives quarter of Geneva, the youngest of the ten children of a Calvinist pastor named Charles Martin, Frank Martin started to improvise on the piano prior to his formal schooling. At the age of nine he had already written a few songs without external musical instruction. At 12, he attended a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion and was deeply affected by it.

Respecting his parents' wishes, he studied mathematics and physics for two years at Geneva University, but at the same time was also studying piano, composition and harmony with his first music teacher Joseph Lauber (1864–1953), a Geneva composer and by that time a leading figure of the city's musical scene. In the 1920s, Martin worked closely with Émile Jaques-Dalcroze from whom he learned much about rhythm and musical theory. Between 1918 and 1926 Martin lived in Zurich, Rome and Paris. Compositions of this time show him searching for an authentic musical voice of his own.

In 1926 he established the Chamber Music Society of Geneva which, for the next ten years he conducted, as well as contributing on the clavichord and piano. During this period he was also teaching musical theory and improvisation at the Jaques-Dalcroze Institute, and chamber music at the Geneva Conservatory.

Martin's music was often inspired by his Christianity. In this regard, his compositions stemmed from "the individuality rather than universality of his faith ... certainly broader than Calvinism".[1]

The Petite Symphonie Concertante of 1944–45 made Martin's international reputation, and is the best known of his orchestral works, as the early Mass is the best known of his choral compositions, and the Jedermann monologues for baritone and piano or orchestra the best known of his works for solo voice. Other Martin pieces include a full-scale symphony (1936–37), two piano concertos, a harpsichord concerto, a violin concerto, a cello concerto, a concerto for seven wind instruments, and a series of six one-movement works he called "ballades" for various solo instruments with piano or orchestra.

Among a dozen major scores for the theater are operatic settings of Shakespeare's Der Sturm (The Tempest) in August Wilhelm Schlegel's German version (1952–55) and of Molière's Monsieur de Pourceaugnac (1960–62), and the satirical fairy tale La Nique à Satan (Thumbing Your Nose at Satan; 1928–31). His works on sacred texts and subjects include the large-scale theater piece Le Mystère de la Nativité (The Mystery of the Nativity; 1957/1959) and are widely considered among the finest religious compositions of the 20th century. Swiss musician Ernest Ansermet, a champion of his music from 1918 onwards, recorded many of Martin's works, including the oratorio In Terra Pax (1944), with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.[2]

Martin based his mature style on his personal variant (first used around 1932) of Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, but he did not abandon tonality. Lean textures and habitual rhythmic vehemence distinguish his style from Schoenberg's. Some of Martin's most acclaimed music comes from his last decade. He worked on his last cantata, Et la vie l'emporta, until ten days before his death. He died in Naarden, the Netherlands, and was buried in Geneva at the Cimetière des Rois.

Martin's music is widely performed in continental Europe, and to a much lesser extent, in the United Kingdom.[1]

• King, Charles W. (1990). Frank Martin: A Bio-Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-25418-5.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Frank Martin (composer).

• The Frank Martin society
• Martin, Frank in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.