Déodat de Séverac (Saint-Félix-de-Caraman, Haute-Garonne, July 20, 1872 ? Céret, Pyrénées-Orientales, March 24, 1921) was a French composer who was profoundly influenced by the musical tradition of his native Languedoc. He is noted for his vocal and choral music, which include settings of verse in Provençal and Catalan as well as French poems by Verlaine and Baudelaire. His compositions for solo piano have also won critical acclaim, and many of them were titled as pictorial evocations and published in the collections En Languedoc and Baigneuses au soleil. A popular example of his work is The Old Musical Box in B-flat major, but his masterpiece is the suite Cerdanya (written 1904?1911), filled with the local color of Languedoc.
He left his native Toulouse to study in Paris, under Vincent d'Indy and Albéric Magnard at the Schola Cantorum, an alternative to the training offered by the Conservatoire. He worked as an assistant to Isaac Albéniz and returned to the south of France. An opera, Héliogabale was produced at Béziers in 1910.
SHEET MUSIC