Global InformationSongs of Emmanuel Chabrier information
The French composer Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–1894) wrote music in many genres, including opera and operetta, piano, orchestral music, and songs with piano accompaniment.[1] The songs cover most of his creative years, from the early 1860s to 1890, when the illness which would kill him prevented much composition.[n 1] He came late to music as a profession, but – although being an exceptional pianist – he had no trappings of a formal training: no conservatoire studies, no Prix de Rome, "none of the conventional badges of French academic musicians, by whom he was regarded as an amateur" (in the best sense).[2]
There are forty-three published songs by Chabrier. He began composing these mélodies when he was about twenty-one; the first nine were written between 1862 and 1866. Chabrier never set any verse by his friend Verlaine (although they did collaborate on two opéras-bouffes Fisch-Ton-Kan and Vaucochard et fils Ier), but among the better-known poets whose verse Chabrier did set in these early songs were Théodore de Banville ("Lied") and Alfred de Musset ("Adieux à Suzon").[3] Chabrier gave up his job at the Ministry of the Interior in 1880; as a full-time composer he set texts by Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Catulle Mendès, Edmond Rostand and his wife Rosemonde Gérard, as well as lesser-known poets, and these songs were often intended for notable singers, such as Lucien Fugère, Émile Engel, Jeanne Granier, Ernest Van Dyck and Paul Lhérie.[4]
In a 1891 letter to Madame Colonne, wife of the famous conductor, Chabrier wrote "I'm not a natural writer of romances, which is unfortunate, because the song, agreeably warbled in salons is, at the present time, the only way for a French composer to more or less pay the rent."[n 2] None of his songs were a commercial success.
- ^ Chabrier (Emmanuel). In: Larousse Dictionnaire de la Musique. Édition 2005, p. 193.
- ^ Crichton, Ronald. Chabrier – high spirits and a soft heart. Opera, September 1991, p. 1028-1033.
- ^ Johnson, Graham. Musique adorable! The songs of Emmanuel Chabrier. (The Hyperion French Song Edition). Booklet accompanying Hyperion CDs CDA67133/4, 2001.
- ^ Delage, Roger. Emmanuel Chabrier. Fayard, Paris, 1999. Catalogue des oeuvres, pp. 685–715.
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