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One of the major purposes of the Musical Kaleidoscope project is to help restore the great European classical music tradition, bringing great works and important eras out of obscurity and into the light and to raise one of the World's most important music traditions to its rightful place in our culture as one of the finest examples of important and uplifting music that the world has known.

With exception to some of our great composers, among them Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert and Brahms, so much of the tradition of European and Russian classical music, dating back to the 9th century, is still unknown to most people. Contemporary radio and television has ignored masterpieces of art, literature, drama and music, and society has fallen back into a state of cultural stagnation, largely due to the influence of modern music and art based on discord and chaos, and a contemporary popular-music culture that for the most part lacks substance and true value.

Don Robertson        

César Franck is France's greatest composer. This is a fact little understood, as this composer was disregarded and ignored in his own time by the music intelligentsia despite his huge popularity with the young composers who would go on to expand France's great romantic music tradition that began with Franck himself. Franck's unrecorded music and unavailable scores I had pursued since the 1970s. Born in Belgium, a young musical prodigy, his father brought him to Paris hoping the young man would become a wealthy pianist, instead, young Franck retired to the organ loft in the Basilique Sainte-Clotilde de Paris, developed a new musical language and composed sublimely beautiful music. Each visit to Paris, my first stop, as a pilgrimage, I guess, to visit Sainte-Clotilde, with the magnificent monument to the composer in the park in front. On this occasion in 2009, I returned to Sainte-Clotilde video this wonderful Parisian choir, the Stella Maris Choir of Paris performing the music of Hungarian composer Kodály Zoltán (Zotlan Kodály 1882 – 1967) who developed an incredibly successful public music education system in Hungary during the 20th century. Here we hear the choir singing a composition based on the familiar Advent Song.

The French composer Maurice Duruflé was one of the 20th century's greatest composer. He attained the position of titular organist for the great St-Étienne-du-Mont cathedral in Paris in 1929 and held this position until his death in 1986. Duruflé did not compose many works, but the music for orchestra, piano, choir and organ that he did compose is of the highest quality in beauty and inspiration. He was a devout Christian and used themes from Gregorian chant widely in his compositions and in the improvisations that he performed for services. His most famous composition, the beautiful and inspired Requiem Opus 9 composed in 1947 has gained world-wide recognition. In my 2009 trip to Europe, I set aside a day to visit St-Étienne-du-Mont, where Duruflé was so instrumental, to create a pun, as a pilgrimage, and to film and photograph the interior of this magnificent edifice for this video. The music that I have provided is from a long-play recording that I acquired in 1976 of the composer conducting the Kyrie from his own Messe cum jubilo, Opus 11, composed just ten years before.

While I was filming the interior of the beautiful Église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont de Paris for the proceeding video in 2009, I was invited by Père Jacques Ollier, the Curé of church, to return on the following Sunday to sit in the organ loft during the morning mass. This is a very special privilege that I was most happy to accept. The following Sunday I returned, camera in hand, and met and then filmed the amazing organist (and composer) Thierry Escaich improvise the sortie at the end of the mass. Organ improvisation in French church services is a tradition that was made especially important by Cesar Franck, whom organists around the world consider, along with Johan Sebastian Bach, to be the greatest of all composers for the instrument. An article on the subject can be found here. Born in 1965, Thierry Escaich studied organ, improvisation and composition at the Paris Conservatory, winning eight first prizes, He has taught improvisation and composition there since 1992.

Joseph Guy Ropartz was a student of César Franck. When he died in 1955, Ropartz and his music sunk into oblivion. For three decades following my 1974 discovery of Franck and his students I tried to find traces of this composer, but could not find any of his music either recorded or in the form of sheet music or scores until about 2004. Ropartz is still almost completely unknown today, even in France; however, there are signs of revival. I was able to find a single small book and a number of compact disc recordings on my 2007 and 2009 trips to Paris, and after returning home, was over joyed to realize had discovered obviously one of the greatest composers of the 20th century and a true continuer of the tradition of the also-ignored master, César Franck. I wrote an article in 2010 about this composer called "Guy Ropartz: A Truly Forgotten Great Composer" It can be read on my Music Futurist blog.

Great Classical Music Must Now Be Supported!

As I stated at the top of this page, own of the goals of the Musical Kaleidoscope Project is help restore the great European classical music tradition, bringing great works and important eras out of obscurity and into the light and to raise one of the World's most important music traditions to its rightful place in our culture as one of the finest examples of important and uplifting music that the world has known. In addition to my article on Guy Ropartz, in 2010 I also wrote an article Nero Fiddles While Rome Burns: A Cold Saturday Night in Nashville with Hilary Hahn