Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier (1841 – 1894) was a French
Romantic composer and pianist. His bourgeois family did
not approve of a musical career for him, and he studied
law in Paris and then worked as a civil servant until
the age of thirty-nine while immersing himself in the
modernist artistic life of the French capital and
composing in his spare time. From 1880 until his final
illness he was a full-time composer.
Although known primarily for two of his orchestral
works, España and Joy...(+)
Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier (1841 – 1894) was a French
Romantic composer and pianist. His bourgeois family did
not approve of a musical career for him, and he studied
law in Paris and then worked as a civil servant until
the age of thirty-nine while immersing himself in the
modernist artistic life of the French capital and
composing in his spare time. From 1880 until his final
illness he was a full-time composer.
Although known primarily for two of his orchestral
works, España and Joyeuse marche, Chabrier left a
corpus of operas (including L'étoile), songs, and
piano music, but no symphonies, concertos, quartets,
sonatas, or religious or liturgical music. His lack of
academic training left him free to create his own
musical language, unaffected by established rules, and
he was regarded by many later composers as an important
innovator and a catalyst who paved the way for French
modernism. He was admired by, and influenced, composers
as diverse as Debussy, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Satie,
Stravinsky, and the group of composers known as Les
six. Writing at a time when French musicians were
generally proponents or opponents of the music of
Wagner, Chabrier steered a middle course, sometimes
incorporating Wagnerian traits into his music and at
other times avoiding them.
Chabrier was associated with some of the leading
writers and painters of his time. Among his closest
friends was the painter Édouard Manet, and Chabrier
collected Impressionist paintings long before they
became fashionable. A number of such paintings from his
personal collection by artists known to him are now
housed in some of the world's leading art museums. He
penned a large number of letters to friends and
colleagues which offer an insight into his musical
opinions and character. Chabrier died in Paris at the
age of fifty-three from a neurological disease,
probably caused by syphilis.
Like many progressively-minded French composers of the
time, Chabrier was greatly interested in the music of
Wagner. As a young man he had copied out the full score
of Tannhäuser to gain an insight into the composer's
creative process. On a trip to Munich with Henri Duparc
and others in March 1880, Chabrier first saw Wagner's
opera Tristan und Isolde; he wrote to the personnel
director at the ministry saying he had to go to
Bordeaux on private matters, but in confidence
confessed that for ten years he had wanted to see and
hear Wagner's opera, and promised that he would back at
his desk the following Wednesday. D'Indy, who was among
the group, recorded that Chabrier was moved to tears at
hearing the music, saying of the prelude, "I have
waited ten years of my life to hear that A in the
cellos".
This event led Chabrier to conclude that he must
single-mindedly pursue his vocation as a composer, and
after several periods of absence he left the Ministry
of the Interior in late 1880. In a 2001 study, Steven
Huebner writes that there may have been additional
factors in Chabrier's decision: "the growing momentum
of his musical career … his high hopes for the
Gwendoline project, and the first signs of a nervous
disorder, probably the result of a syphilitic
condition, that would claim his life 14 years
later."
Chabrier died in Paris at the age of fifty-three from a
neurological disease, probably caused by syphilis.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Chabrier)
Although originally written for Piano, I created this
Interpretation of "Idylle" (No. 6) from "10 Pièces
Pittoresques" for Oboe & Piano.
SHEET MUSIC