Albert Roussel
Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel (born April 5, 1869 in Tourcoing , † August 23, 1937 in Royan ) was a French composer .
Life
Roussel, the son of a rich industrialist, lost his parents in early childhood. He grew up first with his grandfather, the mayor of Tourcoing, and then from 1880 with an aunt. Although he showed musical inclinations as a child and had two years of music lessons at the Collège Stanislas in Paris, he decided to join the Navy and joined the École Navale as a cadet in 1887 , which he left as a lieutenant in 1889 . But even during his navy time, which took him to the Far East , he retained his interest in music and made his first attempts at composition.
In 1894 Roussel quit his job and began studying music with Eugène Gigout . In 1898 he moved to the Schola Cantorum , newly founded by Vincent d'Indy , where he held a professorship for counterpoint from 1902 to 1914 . In 1902 he wrote his first important work, the Piano Trio op. 2, which was followed in 1906 by the first symphony Le poème de la forêt, composed of individual tone poems , and in 1908 by the first violin sonata. These "early" works (the composer was already in his mid-thirties) still clearly show the cyclical form propagated by César Franck and d'Indy.
In 1908 Roussel married Blanche Preisach and in 1909 went with her on a long journey through India and Southeast Asia . His impressions there are reflected in the opulent orchestral suite Évocations (1910–1911) and in the opera ballet Padmâvatî (1914–1918). They belong to Roussel's second creative phase, which was influenced by Impressionism , especially the style of Maurice Ravel . His most popular work, the ballet Le festin de l'araignée (The Spider's Feast) , is also Impressionist , a colorful tale of life and death in the insect world.
Although not in the reserve for health reasons, Roussel served during the First World War after working for the Red Cross as a transport officer from 1915 until he was declared incapacitated in January 1918. He retired to Perros-Guirec in Brittany to relax , where he finished Padmâvatî and wrote his second symphony between 1919 and 1921. It was considered difficult to access and was harshly rejected by the audience at the premiere in 1922. After that, Roussel turned to a lighter, clearer neoclassicism in his third creative phase .
In 1922 Roussel bought a house in Vasterival near Varengeville on the Norman coast. Despite his unstable health, his creative power was unbroken; a piano concerto (1927), two further symphonies (1930 and 1934), a sinfonietta (1934), a celloconcertino (1936), the ballets Bacchus et Ariane (1930) and Aenéas (1935) as well as important chamber music were written . In 1929, on his sixtieth birthday, he was celebrated as one of the leading French composers with a large Roussel Festival in Paris. Despite his individual style, he processed the new contemporary trends in his work and was admired by younger composers such as Francis Poulenc , Sergej Prokofjew and Bohuslav Martinů .
In poor health and exhausted from various organizational activities, he sought rest in Royan in the summer of 1937 and died there of a heart attack. According to his own wishes, he was buried in the Varengeville cemetery. In 1950 he was posthumously granted honorary membership of the International Society for Contemporary Music ISCM .
Works
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Web links
- Works by and about Albert Roussel in the catalog of the German National Library
- Sheet music and audio files by Albert Roussel in the International Music Score Library Project
- Albert Roussel Home Page ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- http://www.musikmph.de/rare_music/composers/m_r/roussel_albert/1.html
Individual evidence
- ^ Honorary members. ISCM , accessed June 30, 2020 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Roussel, Albert |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Roussel, Albert Charles Paul Marie (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French composer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 5, 1869 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Tourcoing , France |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 23, 1937 |
| Place of death | Royan , France |