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Henri Baudelaire Symphony 86 in D Major

by Henri Baudelaire

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1.
1st Movement: Sonata Andante 04:39
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2.
2nd Movement: Adagio 06:08
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3.
3rd Movement: Badinerie & Trio 03:45
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4.
4th Movement: Rondo Allegro 03:51
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about

Henri Jean-Pierre Georges François Baudelaire was born towards the end of the 18th century in Paris, France, to wealthy banker Charles Jean-Pierre Baudelaire and his opera singer wife, Camille, the seventh of nine children. He showed an interest in music from an early age, and was a good singer with a talent for quick memorization. Charles, while not musical himself, was nonetheless one of the underwriters of a symphony orchestra, and young Henri attended many symphonies as part of his education.

In his teenage years, though still a lover of music, Henri began to gravitate towards mathematics and following in his father’s footsteps in finance and banking. It was here that he began composing, writing minuets and trios in his spare time and also as a break from his mathematic studies. It was at the age of nineteen that he composed his first symphony, which his father took note of and brought to the orchestra. The performance was successful enough that Henri continued to compose even more symphonies.

Baudelaire composed music at an astonishing rate as a young adult, focusing primarily on the symphony- composing, by his own count, 115- in addition to a handful of string quartets and a cello concerto. The majority of his symphonies were never performed, in part due to the unprecedented volume of them. The other main reason was that the bulk of them were derivative and borderline minimalist: Baudelaire used and reused a scant handful of melodies and themes across his entire body of work.

Baudelaire’s fifth symphony became his most well-known during his lifetime. It was written in jest and was completely silent, though in the score there were differences in the length(and even dynamics) of rests. As the concert-goers caught on to Baudelaire’s style, they cited having heard his fifth as an excuse for not attending- the origin of the phrase “I plead the Fifth”. There were some who joked the true purpose of the revolution was to keep Baudelaire from writing so many symphonies; but in any case, when the revolution finally caught up to the Baudelaire family, it was not kind to them.

The eighty-sixth was one of the more original of Baudelaire's later symphonies. It was written during an extended stay in Nice, with Henri there watching over his younger sister and nieces and nephew. From one of his surviving letters to his mother he wrote during this period, it is found that the recurring four-bar phrase made of just a few notes was actually written by his youngest niece, which Baudelaire overheard as she was playing about on the piano in another room. Though the symphony is solidly in the key of D major, it seems as if the revolution was still weighing on Baudelaire, which can be inferred from some of the unorthodox expression text and moments outside the third movement.

Although the fifth jokingly made it out, in truth the eighty-sixth was the only one of Baudelaire’s symphonies to survive the damage to the estate fully intact. This is due to Henri sending the manuscript to his young niece, who left for Nice with other relatives a short time before the others were damaged. It stayed in the attic of a countryside cottage for two generations before her descendant donated the score to a university, which is where it was found in the 20th century.

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released February 3, 2023

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Ben Anthony Texas

Composer and musician, self-taught and still learning and playing and having fun. Composing for various genres and instruments, usually shorter pieces.

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