Despite the long and glorious history of outstanding organist-composers at l’Eglise de la Sainte Trinité in Paris, France, featuring such notables as Alexis Chauvet, Alexandre Guilmant, and Olivier Messiaen, another fine composer, Charles Paul-Florimond Quef, remains in virtual obscurity. This author first encountered Quef’s music in L’Orgue moderne, a quarterly publication of organ music. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, L’Orgue moderne featured shorter organ works by many excellent composers who, in recent times, have been overlooked or neglected.1 Among those forgotten is Charles Quef, whose substantial legacy includes at least 47 sets of pieces from 75 opus numbers. In addition, several of Quef’s pieces lack any opus numbers, making it difficult to create an accurate catalogue of his works. It appears that many of these compositions never received performances outside of Paris or La Trinité, the church Quef served as organiste titulaire for 30 years.2
Quef’s life and career
Few details concerning Quef’s life can be documented. He was born in Lille on November 1, 1867, during the early years of the Third Republic. He had a brother, Maurice, a sculptor, to whom he dedicated two pieces (Opus 13 and 28, No. 2), and a sister, Marie. He attended the conservatory at Lille, taking the deuxième prix d’harmonie in 1890. In 1894, he attended the Conservatoire Nationale et Superieure de Musique et Déclamation in Paris, as an organ student of both Charles-Marie Widor and Guilmant; his studies there included improvisation, harmony, counterpoint, and fugue. During his student days, Quef served as organist at Ste. Marie de Batignolles and St. Laurent. After garnering prizes in organ and improvisation, including the coveted première prix in 1898,3 he spent the next two years as organiste de choeur at La Trinitè before being appointed organiste titulaire in November 1901.4 (Quef accepted this position following the sudden resignation of Guilmant, under circumstances examined more fully below.) Quef married Clara Cornélie Madeleine Luys, and they had two daughters, Amélie and Hélène; Quef dedicated his Opus 46 piano pieces to the latter.5 In 1903, Quef moved from the boulevard Clichy6 in Paris to Meudon, a suburb, and lived some 28 years on the rue Ernest-Renan. (See photo 1.) (Meudon was also the home of Guilmant and Marcel Dupré.) Quef served in the French army during World War I.7 (See photo 2.) Following his military service, Quef developed his skills as an organist and improviser at La Trinité. He remained active as both composer and performer, and after thirty years of service to La Trinité, he died at his Meudon home. The funeral services took place at the church of Notre-Dame de Bellevue, his home parish, and he was buried in the family grave at Meudon cemetery. (See funeral card.) He was awarded the Chevalier de la legion d’honneur posthumously, on July 2, 1933, exactly two years after his death in Paris.8
Composers frequently dedicate pieces to family, friends, and students. If one were to use this as a measure of Quef’s interpersonal relationships with the musical community of Paris, it would appear that he had very few close musician-friends. Only a handful of the pieces he composed after 1902 bear dedications to other French organists,9 and only three French composers (Lucien Bourgeois, Alexandre Guilmant, and Henri Libert) dedicated works to Quef.10 Despite the apparent lack of peer recognition, Quef seems to have enjoyed a moderately successful career as both performer and composer, as indicated in the following newspaper review:
Le 1re Fantaisie, de M. Ch. Quef, est assez brève de proportions; l’instrument soliste y brille en traits ingénieux sans cependant tenir le seul rôle intéressant; l’orchestre est vigoreux sans écrasement l’écriture élégante, la construction logique. C’est l’œuvre d’un musicien probe et non-dépourvu d’originalité. (The premiere Fantaisie of M. Ch. Quef is somewhat small in its proportions; the solo instrument shines with ingenious traits without holding the only interesting role; the orchestra is vigorous without overwhelming the elegant writing, the logical construction. It is the work of an honest musician who is not lacking originality.)11
Additionally, he performed with many of the prestigious conductors and orchestras in Paris and was active in many smaller concert organizations, though it appears he never took an active leadership role in any of these groups, with one exception. With the short-lived Orchestre Philharmonique de Paris, Quef served as the choir director for a group that sought to perform music for orchestra and choir, which conductor Lucien Wurmser felt had been sorely neglected.12 Unfortunately, this organization lasted for less than one concert season due to “the rough difficulties of life,” according to a contemporary source.13
Quef wrote music for the organ, harmonium, piano, choir, and solo voice, as well as for orchestral and chamber ensembles. He harmonized many sacred melodies for choir and composed accompaniments for solo popular songs.14 He also transcribed and arranged six of Handel’s organ concerti for organ solo and several movements of Handel’s Suites for violin and violoncello.15 Other transcriptions included adaptations of several classic funeral marches, including as the marche funèbre from Chopin’s Sonata in B-flat minor, in two volumes: one for organ and one for harmonium.16 Much of Quef’s music was published in musical quarterlies or little-known journals;17 he published some pieces independently, using his own copyright.18 Several English and Belgian firms published his works: two of his organ works appeared in a series known as The Modern Organist, edited by the eminent British musicologist A. Eaglefield Hull, as well as in the Belgian series Repértoire de l’organiste. Among Quef’s notable accomplishments, he ranks among the first French composers to write a film score, Vie de Jesus (1908), for the band cinématographique.
Status within the Parisian musical community
Although prolific and innovative, Quef remains little known. Until recently, only Henry Eymieu, a music critic and historian, ever provided biographical information on Quef, and that essay appeared in a little-known journal with a brief existence.19 In organists’ circles, his obscurity may be attributed to the fact that he never wrote the large symphonic organ works that established the popularity of Vierne, Guilmant, and Widor.20 In addition, he appears neither to have had many private students nor to have served on the faculty of either of the major French musical institutions of the time.
Another explanation for Quef’s fairly low profile might be found in the circumstances surrounding his predecessor’s decision to resign from La Trinité. Alexandre Guilmant had served as organiste titulaire at La Trinité for some 30 years. He abruptly resigned his post following a difficult struggle with one of the clergy over organ renovations performed by the Merklin firm, the arrangements for which were made by one of the parish priests. Guilmant found the changes unacceptable and refused to sign the official report (procès-verbal de vérification et de réception du grande orgue). According to Louis Vierne, Guilmant was so distressed by the situation that he saw no alternative but to resign.21 Quef, serving as organiste de choeur, signed the agreement accepting the changes; he was subsequently appointed as titular organist on December 1, 1901. This acceptance of the post caused quite a stir in the musical community, grievously upsetting some of Guilmant’s students and friends, including Vierne, one of Quef’s former teachers. Within this close-knit group of musicians, Quef appeared opportunistic.22 Yet Guilmant and Quef may have resolved any resulting tensions as early as 1902, when Quef dedicated his Prélude-Choral, Opus 25 to “mon cher maître, Alexandre Guilmant.” Though regrettable, this unfortunate situation in the organ community appears to have had little effect on Quef’s career during 1902, as he performed that year as organ soloist and with orchestra as part of the Associations des Grands Concerts, while other concert organizations gave several performances of his compositions.23 (A sample program appears as figure 1.)
Quef was among a handful of French organists who played his own organ works, as evidenced by a cursory examination of the service music repertoire listed for the churches of Paris between 1919 and 1923.24 However, his wide-ranging repertoire also included music of Bach, Handel, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, and Karg-Elert, among the great German composers, as well as music by French masters such as Clérambault, Franck, Saint-Saëns, Chauvet, Guilmant, Lucien Mawet, Widor, and Eugene Gigout.25 He also played music by composers Alan Gray (1855–1935) and William Faulkes (1863–1933); these men were most likely contacts from England where Quef and his music were known and respected, and where he gave at least one recital.26 By invitation from Guilmant, Quef performed at the Schola Cantorum in 1905.27 Also at the request of Guilmant, Quef frequently served as a member of the organ adjudication committee at the Conservatoire, and even provided fugue subjects for these examinations. Although few accounts of Quef’s playing exist, composer and organist Olivier Messiaen, who succeeded Quef as organist at La Trinité, commented that he played neatly and with precision and chose tasteful registrations.28 It seems clear that Quef earned considerable admiration as an organist.29
Musical style
Reviews of Quef’s orchestral and chamber music, though relatively scarce, generally praise his innovation and compositional skill as well as his musical depth and sensitivity.30 Many of the prestigious concert series of the time premiered Quef’s music.31 However, most of these works received a single performance and then fell into obscurity. The only non-organ works within his output that received more than one documentable public performance, according to present research, are the Suite pour instruments à vent et piano, Opus 4, and the Fantaisie pour piano et orchestre.32 From his earliest extant opus, the Suite, one can observe Quef’s fascination with counterpoint. In the second movement, Quef introduces two melodic ideas that he later combines in the closing section of the movement. In the five Pièces d’orgue, Opus 11 (1898), one finds both a fugue and a trio that relies on melodic imitation, in the style similar to the six organ sonatas of Bach (BWV 525–530). These early works attest to the composer’s solid training in traditional composition.
Another example of Quef’s use of complex compositional techniques can be seen in the aforementioned Prélude-Choral, Opus 25 (1902). Eymieu,33 in his sketch of Quef, makes special mention of this organ work because it combines traditional techniques with the new chromatic style so prevalent during this period. Compositional devices include augmentation and diminution, as well as double (invertible) counterpoint. This contrapuntally intricate work is based entirely on its opening melodic figure, making for a tightly constructed, economical work. Both economy of style and fascination with counterpoint continued to prevail in his music as he matured. (Messiaen noted that even Quef’s improvisations at La Trinité revealed a profound knowledge of counterpoint.) For example, in the Prélude funèbre et fugue, Opus 30, of 1903, the material used for the fugue subject comes directly from the prelude.
In the motet Ecce panis, Opus 71, the opening four-note motive permeates the entire composition. (See musical example 1.) The conciseness of the musical language may reflect the Neo-Classical movement that enveloped many French composers during the 1920s. Quef’s devotion to and refinement of contrapuntal techniques continued into the late works, such as the Sancta Maria, Opus 72/1, for choir and organ (1924), in which the outer sections begin imitatively. In addition, he published three organ fugues, more than many of his contemporaries (compare this to only one fugue by Widor and Vierne).34 The textbook style of his fugal writing reveals again his devotion to the techniques taught at the Conservatoire; André Gedalge, author of La Traité de la Fugue and professor of fugue at the Conservatoire, would have been proud!
In other works by Quef, one encounters a more Romantic spirit, embodied in titles such as Rhapsodie, Idylle, and Reverie. Evidence of Franck’s influence, namely the cyclic treatment of thematic material, also appears. For example, in the Suite, Opus 4, the opening theme of the Entrée returns in the final movement, Rondo-Final, here transformed into a dance tune. (See musical examples 2a and 2b.) This cyclic treatment occurs more subtly in the other chamber works. For example, in the Sonate pour violon et piano, Opus 18, an intervallic transformation links the first and last movements: specifically, the opening melodic tritone and fifth of the first movement are expanded to a sixth and a seventh in the opening theme of the last movement. (See musical examples 3a and 3b.) In Trio, Opus 34, for piano, violin, and cello, the opening tune of the first movement hauntingly recurs just prior to a dramatic coda that closes the third movement.
Reviews of Quef’s music, including those by the eminent English organist and editor Harvey Grace, offer glowing praise for the composer’s skill and imagination. Grace claimed that Quef was at his best when writing smaller pieces.35 Echoing this sentiment, French reviewer M. Courtonne praised the short works for harmonium, Impressions religieuses, Opus 54. The same writer criticized the state of religious music that merely represented a pastiche of Gregorian chant fragments, preferring Quef’s synthesis of a religious spirit with beautifully modern harmonic tints.36 The reviewer felt that “no organist, great or small, should be without this collection.”37
This essay offers only a preliminary survey of the music of Charles Quef; further research is required to place Quef in proper historical and musical context. Closer study of the music and other documentary evidence may further our understanding of Quef’s personal life, his career as performer and composer, and his substantial artistic contributions.
The author is deeply indebted to the staffs of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; and the British Library, London, England for their gracious help. Additional thanks go to musicologists Agnes Armstrong, Jean Kreiling, and Kurt Lueders for their invaluable assistance in the preparation of this article, and to the Center for the Advancement of Research and Teaching (CART) at Bridgewater State College for its financial assistance.
