French composer, founder of Music Impressionism: Short profile of the life and works of Claude Debussy. He is mainly famous for piano music Clair de lune and orchestral La mer and Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.
French composer Claude Debussy reached his career peak when the late Romantics like Liszt and Wagner were coming to an end. He is often called a musical 'Impressionist' as aligned with French impressionism painters Monet, Renoir, and Degas.
Beginnings
Debussy did not come from a musical family but was encouraged to take up music at an early age. He was born on August 22, 1862 in St Germain-en-Laye. At the age of 10, he studied with Guiraud at the Paris Conservatoire.Initially, he planned to be a virtuoso pianist but he abandoned it when won the coveted Prix de Rome competition twice.
Early Impressions
In his early years, he travelled extensively to Vienna, Italy and Russia. He also spent some years in Rome but often he was not happy. He was known to be unsociable even as a youth.
I've chosen to feature Claude Debussy's "Clair de lune" beautifully performed on the piano by composer and pianist Sally Whitwell. Sal is an ARIA Award-winning Australian pianist.
Short biography of Camille Saint-Saëns, French composer known for Suite 'Carnaval
des Animaux' and the opera 'Samson et Dalila'
Camille Saint-Saëns, French composer, conductor, organist and pianist is best
remembered for his orchestral Carnaval des animaux (Carnival of the Animals). He wrote many lyrical Romantic and orchestral pieces.
He loved travelling and often arranged concerts.
He enjoyed Africa, Uruguay,South America, and Algiers where he died at 86.He married a much younger woman and had two sons but both boys died within six weeks of each
other. Composer Gabriel Fauré was not only his protege but a close friend, and in the Fauré
home, he assumed the “favourite uncle” role.
Charles Gounod and Igor Stravinsky were both born same day.
Charles Gounod (17 June 1818 - 18 October 1893), born in Paris, was a French composer, organist and conductor. His operas - best known is Faust - combine graceful melody and elegant harmonization. Gounod's Meditation on Bach's Prelude became successful and most popular with his "Gounod's Ave Maria" we often refer to as "Bach/Gounod Ave Maria." The piece was published 1853 under the name "Méditation sur le Premier Prélude de Piano de S. Bach". The original composition by Bach dates 1722. French romantic composer Charles Gounod layered his melody on a slightly changed version of the Prelude No.1 in C Major,from Bach's 'Prelude No. 1 in C Major, BWV 846', Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier. P
I'm familiar with few other "Ave Maria" creations and I have to admit that my two all-time favourites are "Ave Maria" by Franz Schubert and the one below by Bach/Gounod. Below, a then 14 year-old girl Elena sang Gounod/Bach's "Ave Maria." Elena sang
Marin Marais (31 May 1656 – 15 August 1728), was born and died in Paris. He is said to have brought viola da gamba playing to the highest level of perfection. He was a French composer and viol player who often conducted his own opera. He studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully, and with master of the bass viol Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe for few months.
In 1676, he was hired as a musician to the royal court of Versailles. Three years later, in 1679, he was appointed "ordinaire de la chambre du roy pour la viole", a title he kept until 1725.
French composers Gabriel Fauré and Jules Massenet share the same birthday.
Gabriel Urbain Fauré (12 May 1845 - 4 November 1924), was born in Pamiers. He was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher.
One of the foremost French composers of his day, his musical style influenced many 20th century composers. Among his best-known works are his Nocturnes for piano, the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clare de lune." He studied with Saint-Saens. His own pupils included Maurice Ravel, Enesco, and Nadia Boulanger.
His musical style influenced many 20th century composers. His harmonic and melodic language affected how harmony was later taught. Here's Faure Requiem Op.48 / Durufle Requiem Op.9
Gabriel Fauré (Composer), Robert Shaw (Conductor), Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus (Orchestra), Judith Blegen (Soprano), James Morris (Baritone) | Format: Audio CD. Accesed May 12, 2015. Sheku Kaneh-Mason playsFauré: Après un rêve for cello & piano. Accessed Mary 12, 2018.)
Jules Massenet (May 12, 1842 - August 13, 1912), French opera composer and teacher, is born in Montaud.
His two most frequently staged operas are Manon and Werther. He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music. He is best-known for his opera Thais, with that poignant and heartwarming "Meditation de Thais." French composer of the Romantic era, his compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he was one of the greatest melodists of his time.
Apart from his best known operas, Manon and Werther, his works were rarely performed, however since the mid-1970 his operas such as Thais, have been revived. Like many prominent French composers of the period, Massenet became a
professor at the Conservatoire. He taught composition there from 1878
until 1896, when he resigned after the death of the director, Ambroise
Thomas. Among his students were Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Reynaldo Hahn and Gabriel Pierné. (Antonio Pappano introduces the music of Werther (The Royal Opera). Accessed May 12, 2018. The great Luciano Pavarotti singing Massenet's Pourquoi Me Reveiller. From the 1986 25th anniversary concert at M.S.G. with Emerson Buckley conducting. Uploaded by uncjim. Accessed May12, 2019.)
French composer Germaine (Marcelle) Tailleferre (April 19, 1892 – November 7, 1983) was the only female member of ‘Les Six’, a group of French composers influenced by Erie Satie and by Jean Cocteau’s anti-Romantic aesthetic. She wrote operas, ballets, instrumental music and film scores.
Tailleferre was born in Parc-Sait-Maur near Paris. Despite her father’s opposition, she entered Paris Conservatoire in 1904. She studied with Maurice Ravel and Charles Koechlin. Her former tutor was Sautereau-Meyer.
Aside from being a composer, she was a piano prodigy who began to compose at age 5. She had an amazing memory and won numerous prizes.Her numerous works include the opera Il etait un petit navire (1951), and the ballet Le marchand d'oiseaux (1923).
Antoine (Joseph) Reicha was a flautist in his youth and an influential theorist. A Bohemian-born naturalized French composer, he was born on February 26, 1770, in Prague, and died on May 28, 1836.
Today, he is best known for his substantial contribution to the wind quintet literature in his day, twenty-five works (written in Paris) which were played all over Europe.
Reicha claimed in his memoirs that his wind quintets filled a void: "At that time, there was a dearth not only of good classic music, but of any good music at all for wind instruments, simply because the composers knew little of their technique."
André Grétry, French opera composer, famous for opéras comiques.
André Ernest Modeste Grétry (8 February 1741 – 24 September 1813) was a composer from the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (present-day Belgium), born of a poor musician father. He was a choir-boy at the church of Saint-Denis.
Gretry became a pupil of Leclerc in 1753 and later of the organist at St-Pierre de Liège, Nicolas Rennekin, for keyboard and composition and of Henri Moreau, music master at the collegiate church of St. Paul.
Of greater importance was the practical tuition he received by attending the performance of an Italian opera company. Here he heard the operas of Pergolesi and other masters.
French Composer Maurice Ravel, famous for Pavanne pour une infante defunte, the ballet Daphnis et Chloe, and Bolero.
French composer and pianistMaurice Ravel is known especially for the subtlety, richness and poignancy of his music. His works, primarily piano, chamber-music and orchestral works, have become repertoire staples.
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, France. He studies in Conservatoire de Paris. He was known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental music. Along with Claude Debussy, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music.
Ravel's piano compositions, especially his orchestrations, as in Daphnis et Chloe and his arrangements of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, are notable for their effective use of tonal color and variety of sound.
Conductor, Writer and Symphonist known For 'Symphonie Fantastique'
French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), is one of the founders of modern orchestration. Together with Liszt and Wagner, he was a major figure in the Romantic movement. He was inspired by literature and drama, with a theatrical quality.
(Louis) Hector Berlioz was born on December 11, 1803, an elder son of a provincial doctor. His father sent him to Paris to study medicine but instead, he entered the conservatory of music, where he won the Prix de Rome in 1830. He was expected to follow his father into medicine, and he attended a Parisian medical college before defying his family by taking up music as a profession.
His independence of mind and refusal to follow traditional rules and formulas put him at odds with the conservative musical establishment of
Paris. He briefly moderated his style sufficiently to win France's premier music prize, the Prix de Rome, but he learned little from the academics of the Paris Conservatoire. Opinion was divided for many years between those who thought him an original genius and those who viewed his music as lacking in form and coherence.
Les Six was a group of early 20th-century composers - five French and one Swiss - who lived and worked in the Montparnasse district of Paris. The group was named in January 1920 by music critic Henri Collet, who drew inspiration from Erik Satie and writer Jean Cocteau. Their music was a conscious reaction against the heavy German Romanticism of Richard Wagner and the lush impressionism of Claude Debussy, favoring clarity, brevity, wit, and contemporary influences like jazz.
The Members of Les Six:
Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) — Known for bitonality, polytonality, and absorbing jazz and Brazilian rhythms into his work.
Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) — The most famous member, known for his deeply melodic, zany, and poignant vocal, piano, and religious pieces.
Arthur Honegger (1892–1955) — Swiss-born; leaned more toward heavy counterpoint and symphonic structures, keeping some German Romantic influences.
Georges Auric (1899–1983) — Prolific composer of ballets, chamber music, and iconic film scores.
Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983) — The sole female member of the group, recognized for her delicate, neoclassic grace and dance rhythms.
Louis Durey (1888–1979) — The oldest member and the first to drift away from the collective (in 1921) to pursue a more independent, isolated path.
Key Concepts:
Mentorship: They were strongly guided artistically by writer Jean Cocteau and composer Erik Satie.
Individual Styles: Despite the collective branding, they did not share a single rigid ideology and quickly diverged into distinct, personal careers.
Jacques Duphly (January 12, 1715 – July 15, 1789), was a French harpsichordist and composer. Born in Rouen, France, he was the son of Jacques-Agathe Duphly and Marie-Louise Boivin. As a boy, he studied the harpsichord and organ, and was employed as organist at the cathedral in Evreux.
His teachers were Francois d'Agincourt and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. After his father died in 1742, Duphly moved to Paris, where he became famous as a performer and teacher. Pascal Taskin, a prominent harpsichord maker of the time, considered him to be one of the best teachers in Paris.
François Couperin (10 November 1668 – 11 September 1733), was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as Couperin le Grand ("Couperin the Great"), to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family.
He was also noted for his harpsichord and organ music, highly influential to Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).
Life in Brief
Couperin was born in Paris. He was taught by his father, Charles Couperin, who died when François was about 10, and by Jacques Thomelin. In 1685 he became the organist at the church of Saint-Gervais, Paris, a post he inherited from his father and that he would pass on to his cousin, Nicolas Couperin, and other members of the family. In 1693 Couperin succeeded his teacher Thomelin as organist at the Chapelle Royale (Royal Chapel) with the title organiste du Roi, organist by appointment to Louis XIV.
Brief biography of Jacques
Offenbach – his life, operettas and other works. Hailed as 'The Mozart of Champs-Elysees' and 'Father of French Operetta', he is famous for his masterpiece and only opera 'The Tales of Hoffman' completed by Giraud.
Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), French composer, cellist and impressario, of German origin, was one of the two outstanding composers in popular music of the 19th-century, the other one was Johann Strauss Junior. He is best known for his only opera Les contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffman) with its fantasy and appealing melody. Offenbach had a rare gift for catchy tunes particularly in dance rhythms. He had been dubbed as 'Father of French Operetta' and 'The Mozart of Champs-Élysees.'
Earlier Years
Jacques Offenbach was born on June 20, 1819, in Cologne, Kingdom of Prussia, the son of a synagogue cantor, Offenbach showed early musical talent. At the age of 14, he was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire; He found academic study unfulfilling and left after a year, but remained in Paris. From 1835 to 1855 he earned his living as a cellist, achieving international fame, and as a conductor. His ambition, however, was to compose comic pieces for the musical theatre. Finding the management of Paris's Opéra-Comique company uninterested in staging his works, in 1855 he leased a small theatre in the Champs-Élysées. There, during the next three years, he presented a series of more than two dozen of his own small-scale pieces, many of which became popular.
Jacques Hoffmann's The Tales of Hoffmann. Youtube, uploaded by Altea Media / I Love TV. Accessed June 20, 2024. Opera in 3 acts, with prologue and epilogue
libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on three short stories by E.T.A. Hoffman
premiered in Paris, Opéra Comique, February 10, 1881.
Director: Jean-Louis Grinda. Hoffmann: Juan Diego Florez. Chorus of the Monte-Carlo Opera
Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra
Musical direction: Jacques Lacombe.
The Composer
Offenbach's music was known for his cheerful and exuberant music. He career began with some years of experience as a solo and orchestral cellist, and a year study at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1850 he became a theatre conductor and five years later, he got his own stage works performed. He started working on Tales of Hoffmann in the 1870s leaving it unfinished when he died of a heart attack in Paris. The score was completed by Ernest Guiraud in 1881, with a posthumous premiere presentation.
In spite the popularity of Tales of Hoffmann, Offenbach's most significant achievements and international success lie in the operettas (“little operas”) he wrote in the 1860s forBouffes Parisiens (Parisian Comedy), a company he owned which staged shows in a small theatre he rented in fashionable Champs-Elysees.
Through him the operetta became an established International genre evolving into the 20th-century, heavily influencing Arthur Sullivan and Franz Lehar, among others.
He created more than hundreds of scores for the theatre, some of the noteworthy ones areOrphee aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld), best-known for its famous overture and can-can, La Belle Helene (Beautiful Helen), Barbe-Bleue (Bluebeard) and La Vie Parisienne (Parisian Life), La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein (Grand Duchess of Gerolstein) and Le Perichole.
Offenbach died in Paris, October 5, 1880.
Offenbach's Legacy
Jacques Offenbach is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Franz von Suppé, Johann Strauss II and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century,
and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st. The Tales of Hoffmann remains part of the standard opera repertory.
Offenbach's Operettas
Le
marriage aux lanterns1853
Les Deux
aveugles (The Two Blind Men)1855
Orpheé
aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld)1858(This was later revised)
La Belle
Hélene1864
Barbe-Blue
(Bluebeard)1866
La Vie
Parisienne1866
La
Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein)1867
La
Périchole1868
Madame
Favart(1878)
Offenbach's Opera
Les Contes d'Hoffman (The Tales of Hoffmann), orchestration was completed posthumously by Ernest Guiraud1880. This opera is based on the strange tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann, a German writer. One of Offenbach's most popular and enchanting melodies "Barcarolle" is included.
Brief biography of Eric Satie, French composer, occult founder, and mentor of 'Les Six' group of French composers.
French composer Eric Satie is mostly famous for his piano pieces such as Trois Gymnopedies (Three ‘Naked Feet’, 1888) for piano. He was mentor to the prominent group of young French composers called "Les Six."
Living a highly unconventional life, eccentric and a recluse, his way of life is echoed in his sad and comic works. Yet his music is never dull. His aesthetic of ironic simplicity, as in the Messe des pauvres (Poor People’s Mass), acted as a nationalist antidote to the perceived excesses of German Romanticism.
Early Life
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925) was born in Honfleur, Normandy,
a French composer of Scottish descent, with a French father and Scottish mother.
Aged 13, he moved to Paris and studied at the Conservatory and came into contact with intellectual circles through his friendship with the impressionist composer Claude Debussy. Previous to this he lived precariously by playing piano at cafes and cabarets. 'The Allegro' is a brief piano piece by Erik Satie. dated September 9, 1884, when Satie was 18. It is his earliest known composition. Starting with this first composition, he signed his name as Erik Satie.
The Religious Cult Founder
After composing Gymnopedies, he joined a religious-occult sect, later founding an order of his own, himself as high priest. His wry sense of humour were often revealed in bizarre titles of his works including Trois morceaux en forme de poire (Three Pieces in a shape of a Pear, 1903), The Dreamy Fish, and Trois embryons desseches (Three dried-up embryos).
The Composer in Prominent French Circles
In 1915 he started composing music for ballet Parade, commissioned from Diaghilev, in
collaboration with Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. At the same time he mentored the “Les Six” group of six young French composers, who, under his influence and Cocteau had achieved notoriety through their advanced ideas) and promoted the
concept of musique d’ameublement (furniture music), anticipating the impact of radio. His Parade also radically included background sounds of typewriter and sirens, and invented a new style of film music, for Rene Clair’s Entr’acte (Interval, 1924).
Later Compositions
His later works, between 1918 until 1924, included Socrate for voices and instruments,
two operettas, and two ballets, Mercure and Relache. He died from cirrhosis of the liver, after years of heavy drinking. Despite his radical ideas in musical content and style, Satie’s creative innovations had a great influence in
musical history.
List
ofMajor Works by Satie
Trois gymnopedies for piano, 1888
Trois gnossiennes for piano, 1890
Danses gothiques for piano, 1893
Messe des pouvres, a Latin Mass with psalms for voices and organ/piano, 1895
Jack-in-the-box, ballet, 1899
Trois morceaux en forme de poire, 1903
The Dreamy Fish, 1905
Trois embryons desseches (Three Dried-up Embryos), 1913
French composer Claude Debussy reached his career peak when the late Romantics like Liszt and Wagner were coming to an end. He is often called a musical 'Impressionist' as aligned with French impressionism painters Monet, Renoir, and Degas. 
