Albéric Magnard

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Albéric Magnard (Image: unknown artist)

Lucien Denis Gabriel Albéric Magnard (born June 9, 1865 in Paris , † (probably) September 3, 1914 in Baron , Département Oise ) was a French composer .

Life

Albéric Magnard was the son of Émilie Bauduer and Francis Magnard (1837-1894), bestselling author and editor of Le Figaro . In 1869 he lost his mother to suicide. After military service and a degree in law, he went to the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied counterpoint with Théodore Dubois from 1886 and joined Jules Massenet's class . In 1888 he received a first prize in harmony. There he met Vincent d'Indy , with whom he privately studied fugue theory and orchestration from 1888 to 1892 ; Magnard's first two symphonies were written under the direction of d'Indy, the 1st symphony in C minor is dedicated to him.

At the same time he published sharp-tongued music reviews in Le Figaro , with which he created many opponents. On the other hand, he refused to benefit from his father's social relationships. After the death of his father in 1894 (whose memory he dedicated to Chant Funèbre op. 9) he also lost this literary platform. In 1896 Magnard married Julie Creton. In 1896/97 he gave counterpoint lessons at the Schola Cantorum, which d'Indy co-founded in 1894, and wrote his 3rd Symphony in B flat minor . It was around this time that Magnard's hearing began to deteriorate. This, and years of artistic disappointment, must have contributed to his increasing bitterness and loneliness.

He was financially secure thanks to his father's fortune: independent, not dependent on any musical compromises and not even willing to do so, he had great difficulties for years in getting his compositions to be performed. His friend Guy Ropartz , director of the Nancy Conservatory since 1894, performed several of his works. In 1899 Magnard organized a concert at his own expense, in 1902 he began to print his works himself (opus 8 to opus 20), which was to lead to great losses when his house burned in 1914. In the Dreyfus affair , Magnard sided with Émile Zola and in this context composed the orchestral work Hymne à la Justice in 1902 .

Ruins of Magnard's estate in Baron

At the beginning of the First World War , Magnard sent his wife and two daughters to a safe place while he stayed at the Manoir de Fontaines estate in Baron, which he had lived in since 1904 . When a German reconnaissance patrol entered it, he shot them and killed a soldier. The German soldiers fired back and set the house on fire. Magnard was killed in the process, and his body could not be identified later in the ruins. The fire also destroyed Magnard's unpublished scores, such as the early opera Yolande , two acts by Guercœur and a song cycle composed later. Ropartz, who performed the first act in 1908, reconstructed the lost acts from memory and performed the work several times again from 1931 onwards.

style

Magnard's style has ties to his French contemporaries, such as his affinity for modal expressions with Gabriel Fauré , and his predilection for canons, chorales and fugues with César Franck . The tendency towards rhythmic-metric changes and overlays refers to Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel , but Magnard rejected the Impressionism based on color effects , preferred an unadorned, factual style and felt obliged to Beethoven's classical music . Sometimes, as in the symphonies, there are passages that are reminiscent of Gustav Mahler . The occasional use of chorales also earned him the attribute of a "French Bruckner". However, Magnard's handling of the cyclical form corresponds more to that of Franck than of Bruckner . In his operas, Magnard used Richard Wagner's leitmotif technique .

plant

Magnard's extant oeuvre is not very extensive. The number of published works is just over 20, including 3 operas and 4 symphonies. Even if Magnard remained an outsider in the music business, at least the two surviving operas, the 3rd and 4th symphonies as well as the violin sonata and the string quartet are among the outstanding works in French music history around 1900.

Works with opus number

  • Trois Pièces pour Piano op.1
  • Suite dans le style ancien op. 2 for orchestra
  • Six Poèmes en Musique op.3 (songs; 1887–90)
  • 1st Symphony in C minor, Op. 4 (1889/90)
  • Yolande op.5 , opera (premier 1892; lost, reconstructed in 2018)
  • 2nd Symphony in E major op.6 (1893)
  • Promenades op.7 for piano (1893)
  • Quintet for piano and wind instruments in D minor, op.8 (1894)
  • Chant Funèbre op 9 for orchestra
  • Overture op.10 for orchestra
  • 3rd Symphony in B flat minor op.11 (1895/96)
  • Guercœur op.12 , opera (1897–1901)
  • Violin Sonata in G major op.13 (1901)
  • Hymne à la Justice op.14 for orchestra (1901/02)
  • Quatre Poèmes en Musique op.15 (songs)
  • String Quartet in E minor op.16 (1902/03)
  • Hymne à Venus op.17 for orchestra
  • Piano Trio in F minor op.18 (1904/05)
  • Bérénice op.19 , opera (WP 1911)
  • Cello Sonata in A major op.20 (1909/10)
  • 4th Symphony in C sharp minor op.21 (1913)
  • Douze Poèmes en Musique op.22 (songs)

Works without opus number

  • En Dieu Mon Espérance et Mon Épée pour Ma Défense for piano
  • À Henriette , song

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Jost: Magnard's chamber music in a historical context . In: Ulrich Tadday (Ed.): Albéric Magnard . Music Concepts 163, edition text + kritik, 2014, ISBN 978-3-86916-331-4 , p. 50

literature

  • Jens Malte Fischer : Magnard, Albéric . In: Ludwig Finscher (Ed.): MGG . tape 11 . Bärenreiter Verlag, 2004, Sp. 805-807 .
  • Ulrich Tadday (Ed.): Albéric Magnard . Music Concepts 163, edition text + kritik, 2014, ISBN 978-3-86916-331-4
  • Jens Malte Fischer: Classicist Wagnerism? Albéric Magnard and his operas "Guercoeur" and "Bérénice", in: JM Fischer, Vom Wunderwerk der Oper, Vienna 2007, pp. 113–155.
  • Simon-Pierre Perret / Harry Halbreich : Albéric Magnard, Paris 2001.
  • André Segond (ed.): Bérénice d'Albéric Magnard , program booklet of the Opera de Marseille, Arles 2001. The volume contains, among other things, a detailed biographical description of Simon-Pierre Perret, a tribute to Pierre Lalo (first published in Le temps 1941 - accordingly the distance to Wagner is emphasized here and the proximity to Rameau) and a detailed bibliography.

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Magnard, Albéric
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Magnard, Lucien Denis Gabriel Albéric (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French composer
DATE OF BIRTH June 9, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH September 3, 1914
Place of death Baron , Oise department