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Oscar Comettant: La permission des quintes

304 views · Published 23 April 2015 · 2:54 · Indexed 30 October 2026

Channel: PSearPianist · 2015 · Music

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Phillip Sear plays a musical joke by the intriguing French composer, pianist and writer Oscar Comettant (1819-98)
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The French pianist, composer and critic (Jean-Pierre) Oscar Comettant (1819-98) studied at the Paris Conservatoire, and wrote piano, chamber and vocal works.  He was best-known in his lifetime as a writer of books on music, and also his travels - he spent three years in the USA with his singer wife from 1852 to 1855 and visited Australia in 1888 as a juror at an international exhibition.  He was a keen observer of the piano industry, and famously estimated that in 1868 there were 20,000 people employed in piano teaching in Paris.  This piece is the second of '3 Méditations musicales', published in 1898.  The title translates as 'Fifths allowed'.  It relates to the academic musical rule that you cannot have parallel fifths, and is obviously intended as a musical joke, as it is dedicated to Comettant's friend, the Belgian bassoonist Jean-Théodore Radoux (1835-1911), who was the director of the Liege Conservatory at the time the piece was written.  It is prefaced by a verse, presumably by Comettant:

"De par tous les traités, il est expressement 
Défendu de jouer plusieurs quintes de suite.
C'est bien quand on les fait manoeuvrer gauchement 
Mais qui donc celles-ci mettraient-elles en fuite? "

I am not an expert translator, but I think it means (roughly):

"All the harmonic treatises expressly forbid consecutive fifths.  
That's good when they badly managed, but where would we be if there were none at all?"  If you have a better translation, please suggest corrections.

Thumbnail image created with Wombo Dream ( t.ly/zhJa ).
#frenchmusic #harmony 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------- Played by Phillip Sear
http://www.psear.co.uk (Email:  [email protected]  
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