About this edition
Vincent d'Indy's Symphonie sur un Chant Montagnard Français, Op. 25, is one of the most distinctive symphonies to emerge from the French musical renewal of the late nineteenth century. Composed in 1886 and built around a shepherd's song d'Indy heard in the Cévennes mountains of south-central France, the work weaves this folk melody through all three movements using the cyclic method he absorbed from his teacher, César Franck. Its unusual scoring — a piano woven into the orchestral fabric rather than set against it as a concerto soloist — gives the symphony a luminous, pastoral color that has made it a beloved staple of the French repertoire, often performed under its popular nickname, the "Symphonie cévenole."
This edition reproduces the full orchestral score as issued by J. Hamelle of Paris, plate J. 3246 H., in a printing dating from around 1892. Hamelle was among the principal Parisian houses associated with the circle of composers around the Société Nationale de Musique, publishing landmark scores by d'Indy, Fauré, Chausson, and their contemporaries during the very years when French orchestral music was being reestablished as a serious concert tradition. As one of the earliest printed full scores of this symphony, the Hamelle edition remains the historical source through which generations of conductors and scholars have come to know the work.
About this edition:
- Full orchestral score
- Page size: 8.5 x 11 inches
- Reproduced from a historical public domain source
- Published by Purple 4R Publishing
Because the original Hamelle edition has long since entered the public domain, we're able to bring this historic score back into print — putting a faithful reproduction of d'Indy's own published score into the hands of today's conductors, orchestral musicians, students, and scholars.