Half Belgian, half French, Cesar Franck was a Romantic composer and organist who was the chief figure in a movement to give French music an emotional engagement, technical solidity, and seriousness comparable to that of German composers. As a composer Franck fulfilled his potential only in the last 10 years (1880–90) of his life. His Symphony in D Minor (1888), Variations symphoniques (1885), Piano Quintet in F Minor (1879), String Quartet in D Major (1889), Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano (1886), and several organ pieces mark him as one of the most powerful French composers in the second half of the 19th century. His music is marked by soaring, almost improvisatory melodic flights.

Certainly his early years as performer and composer of virtuoso music left an indelible mark on his musical taste, as can be heard unmistakably in the last movement of the Prélude, aria et final for piano (completed 1887) and even momentarily in the Variations symphoniques for piano and orchestra. On the other hand, some of his weaker music represents an almost excessive reaction against superficiality and aspires to emotional intensity at all costs, drawing for the purpose on the examples of Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, and, more remotely, the mighty Beethoven.

Franck died, partly as the result of a street accident, in 1890. The new seriousness of French music in the last quarter of the 19th century derived entirely from Franck and his pupils. Much has been made of his angelic sweetness and simplicity of character, his selflessness and innocence in the ways of the world. These traits are reflected in a blandness of manner, and they proved a handicap when Franck was faced with the necessity of producing strongly contrasting musical ideas, as in the oratorio Les Béatitudes (written during the 1870s and performed posthumously) and the symphonic poems Le Chasseur maudit (1882; The Accursed Hunter) and Les Djinns (1884). On the other hand, the Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano and the Variations symphoniques remain as all but perfect monuments of a warm and noble musical nature and a strong, thorough craftsmanship that have survived all changes of taste and emotional attitudes.