Five French composers, 2015

Five French composers, 2015

August 10, 2015.  Five French composers.  We missed some interesting anniversaries last week and several more are coming in the next several days.  Out of these we’ve selected a group of composers that have two things in common: all of them are French and all were born within 50 years in the second half of the 19th century or early in the 20th. They are, in chronological order, Cécile Chaminade, Gabriel Pierné, Reynaldo Hahn, Jacques Ibert and André Jolivet.  While none of them reached the level of Debussy or Ravel, all were very talented.

 

Cécile Chaminade, the only woman in this group, was born on August 8th of 1857 in Paris.  Her Cécile Chaminadefirst music lessons came from her mother, a pianist and a singer.  Later she studied composition with Benjamin Godard. She started composing very young (when she was eight, she played some music for Georges Biset) and gained prominence with the publication of Piano Trio in 1880.  An excellent pianist, she toured England many times, playing mostly her own music and became very popular there.  In 1908 she went to the US, the country of “Caminade fan clubs” and played in 12 cities.  Between 1880 and 1890 Chaminade composed several large orchestral compositions and also music for piano and orchestra.  In the following period she scaled down, limiting herself to piano character pieces, of which she wrote more than 200.  Many of them are charming though they became dated even during her time (Chaminade lived till 1944).  Here’s her Automne, it’s performed by the British-Canadian pianist Valerie Tryon.

 

Gabriel Pierné was born in Metz, Lorraine on August 16th, 1863.  In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian war, Metz was captured by the Germans, and the Piernés fled to Paris.  Gabriel entered the Paris Conservatory, where among his teachers were Jules Massenet (composition) and Cesar Frank (organ).  In 1910 Pierné, who was also a prominent conductor, let the orchestra during the premier of Stravinsky’s The Firebird, which was staged by the Ballet Russes.  His own music was not as adventuresome: it was influenced by Camille Saint-Saëns and, to alesser degree, Debussy and Ravel.  Here’s the first movement (Allegretto) of Pierné’s Sonata op.36 for violin and piano.  The young French violinist Elsa Grether is accompanied by Eliane Reyes on the piano.

 

Reynaldo Hahn wasn’t French by birth but he took on the French nationality later in his life.  He was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on August 9th of 1874.  His father was a German-Jewish engineer, his mother came from a Spanish family.  When Reynaldo, the youngest of 12 children, was four, the family moved to Paris.  In 1885 Hahn entered the Paris Conservatory, where one of his teachers was the same Jules Massenet.  At the Conservatory Hahn befriended Ravel and Cortot, and through them, many writers and musicians.  A closeted homosexual, Hahn met a young writer, Marcel Proust in 1894; they became good friends and lovers.  Hahn is best known for his wonderful songs, but that wasn’t his only creative genre.  Between 1902 and 1902 he wrote 53 “Poèmes pour piano,” which he collected under the title of Le Rossignol Éperdu (The Distraught Nightingale).  Here’s the piece no. 37, L'Ange Verrier (The glass Angel); it’s performed by the pianist Earl Wild.

 

Jacques Ibert, probably the most popular of the five, was born on August 15th of 1890.  We’ve written about him a number of times, so to commemorate we’ll play his Concertino da Camera for Alto Saxophone and Eleven Instruments from 1935, transcribed for saxophone and piano.   Xavier Larsson Paez is on the saxophone, with Yoko Yamada-Selvaggio on the piano.

 

André Jolivet is the youngest and the most adventuresome of the five.  He was born on August 8th of 1905 in Paris.  In his childhood he studied the cello but never went to the conservatory (he did study composition with Paul Le Fem, a composer and critic).  In his youth Jolivet was influenced by Debussy and Ravel, but it all changed when he became familiar with atonal music: in December of 1927 he attended a concert at the Salle Pleyel during which several Schoenberg piece were performed and that changed his life.  Soon after he became a pupil of Edgard Varèse, an influential French-American avant-garde composer.  He also befriended Olivier Messiaen, who, being better known in those years, helped Jolivet by promoting his music.  We’ll Jolivet’s Concerto pour Ondes Martenot.  Ondes Martenot (Waves of Martenot) is an early electronic instrument, invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot.  The soloist in this recording is Jeanne Loriod, the sister of Yvonne Loriod, the second wife of Messiaen.  The composer conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique de l`ORTF.