Henry-Louis de La Grange

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Henry-Louis de La Grange (2010)

Henry-Louis de La Grange (born May 26, 1924 in Paris , † January 27, 2017 in Lonay , Morges district , Canton of Vaud , Switzerland ) was a French musicologist . He was biographer of Gustav Mahler .

Life

Henry-Louis de La Grange was born to an American mother (Emily Sloane) and a French father ( Amaury de la Grange ). His father was a senator, briefly Minister of State and Vice President of the International Aviation Federation . He studied humanities in Paris and New York and literature at the University of Aix-en-Provence and the Sorbonne. From 1946 to 1947 he studied at the music faculty of Yale University and then, from 1948 to 1953, privately in Paris - piano with Yvonne Lefébure , harmony, counterpoint and analysis with Nadia Boulanger .

La Grange began his career as a music critic in 1952, writing for Opera News, Saturday Review, New York Herald Tribune , The New York Times , Musical America, and Opus in the United States, and for Arts, Disques, La Revue Musicale, and Harmonie in France.

La Grange first heard Gustav Mahler's music, the Ninth Symphony, on December 20, 1945, when Mahler's student Bruno Walter conducted the first performance of the New York Philharmonic of this work. He had attended the concert because he was a great admirer of the conductor, but he knew very little about Mahler, who was not nearly as well known then as he is now. La Grange was surprised by the length of the symphony and the unusual style, and aroused his curiosity. Gradually he became more and more interested in the composer, and since 1953 his main interest has been the life and work of Gustav Mahler. His research led him to most of the major libraries in Europe and North America. He looked for and consulted the surviving witnesses from Mahler's life and time, met Alma Mahler in 1952 and became a close friend of her daughter Anna . During these years of research he put together a huge archive of documents of all kinds, which is one of the richest collections on Mahler and his era. His files and collection of autographs, documents and photographs now form the core of the Mahler multimedia library, which he founded together with Maurice Fleuret in 1986. Their large holdings of autographs, documents, books and recordings are now accessible to musicians, students and journalists from all over the world.

The first volume of his definitive Mahler biography was published by Doubleday in New York in 1973 and in 1974 by Victor Gollancz Ltd. in London. An expanded and updated French version was published by Fayard in 1979. A second and third volume followed by the same publisher, the entire work comprises around 3,600 pages. Unanimously welcomed as an international musicological event, this monumental work received the Deems Taylor Prize (US 1974), the prize for the best music book awarded by the Syndicat de la critique dramatique et musicale (France 1983), and the Grand Prix de Littérature musicale of the Académie Charles Cros (France 1984). Volume II of the revised, updated and expanded four-volume English version of “Gustav Mahler” was published by Oxford University Press in England and the USA in 1995 and was awarded the Prize of the Royal Philharmonic Society in London the following year. Volume III was published in 2000 and Volume IV in 2008. Albrecht Joseph , Anna Mahler's husband , was entrusted with the German translation. After one and a half years of work, the translator had to claim his fee for the previously unpublished work from the publisher in court.

For many years, Henry-Louis de La Grange lectured on Mahler and traveled with him to the United States, Canada, England, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Holland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Spain, Italy, Morocco and, in the Far East , Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand etc. He has also given guest lectures at Stanford University, Columbia University, Indiana University (1974–1981), Geneva University (1982), Leipzig University, The Juilliard School, the University of California in Los Angeles (1985), the University of Budapest (1987), the University of Hamburg (1988), the University of Oslo (1993), the Paris Conservatory and the Universities of Kyoto, Hong Kong , Wellington, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Boulder, and San Francisco (1998), and he taught a DEA seminar at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris (1986).

He also directed the “Les Nuits d'Alziprato” festival in Corsica for five years (1974–1979), and in the summer of 1986 the Mahler Festival in Toblach (Dobbiaco, Italy). La Grange has produced or participated in many radio and television programs, including 34 two-hour programs for France-Musique (radio) on the life and work of Mahler, six one-hour programs for WGUC (public radio) in Cincinnati, USA, and a series of six over Mahler's last years for Radio Suisse Romande. He was also involved in the conception and production of the first major exhibition about Mahler: "Une œuvre, une vie, une époque" at the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1985, which attracted over 27,000 visitors and so all previous records for a musical exhibition broke. In this context, he organized two international Mahler symposia, in Paris and Montpellier, and two further exhibitions in Paris at the Châtelet and the Bibliothèque Gustav Mahler on the occasion of the performance of the complete Mahler cycle from February to May 1989 (5 lectures and another symposium at the Sorbonne).

Henry-Louis de La Grange acted as advisor for the Mahler cycle with the Orchester National de Lyon in 1991–1993. In 1999 he organized an international symposium on "The Irony in Mahler's Music" at the University of Montpellier. In 1998 he spent three weeks in San Francisco as a guest lecturer for the orchestra's Mahler Celebration, and he was one of the first European musicologists to give Mahler a lecture in Beijing. He toured the United States and Mexico as a lecturer in 2000. In 2002, he gave four concert introductions in Philadelphia and New York for the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Honors and prizes

  • Professor title awarded by the Austrian government in 1988
  • A collection of essays on Mahler by eminent scholars was published in 1997 as a commemorative publication in honor of the seventieth birthday of Henry-Louis de La Grange.
  • Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Literature from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (New York), 2002
  • Order of the Officer of the Order of the Legion of Honor (2006)
  • Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art 1st Class (2010)
  • IGMG Vienna, Gold Medal of the International Gustav Mahler Society (2010)
  • Honorary Doctor of Music, The Juilliard School , 2010

Publications (selection)

Books

  • Mahler , Volume I (1860-1901). Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co, 1973, 982 pages, ISBN 978-0-385-00524-1 .
  • Mahler , Volume I (1860-1901). London: Gollancz, 1974, 987 pages, ISBN 978-0-575-01672-9 .
  • Gustav Mahler (French, 3 volumes):
  • Gustav Mahler (English, 4 additional volumes):
    • Volume 2: Vienna: The Years of Challenge (1897–1904) . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, 892 pages, ISBN 978-0-19-315159-8 .
    • Volume 3: Vienna: Triumph and Disillusion (1904-1907) . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 1000 pages, ISBN 978-0-19-315160-4 .
    • Volume 4: A New Life Cut Short (1907-1911) . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, 1758 pages, ISBN 978-0-19-816387-9 .
    • Volume 1: The Arduous Road to Vienna (1860-1897). Turnhout: Speculum Musicae, 2020, 850 pages, ISBN 978-2-503-58814-8
  • Vienne, une histoire musicale (French, 2 volumes):
  • Vienne, une histoire musicale (French, combined edition). Paris: Fayard, 1995, 417 pages, ISBN 978-2-213-59580-1 (also translated into German and Spanish).
  • Mahler: A la recherche de l'infini perdu , translated into Japanese by Takashi Funayama. Tokyo: Soshiba, 1993, 277 pages, ISBN 978-4-7942-0519-3 .
  • Ein Glück ohne Ruh '- Gustav Mahler's letters to Alma (German, first complete edition), edited with Günther Weiß, Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1995, 575 pages, ISBN 978-3-88680-577-8 .
  • Op zoek naar Gustav Mahler [In search of Gustav Mahler] , translated into Dutch by Ernst van Altena. Amsterdam: Landsmeer, Meulenhoff, 1995, 127 pages, ISBN 978-90-290-4932-0 .
  • Gustav Mahler: Letters to his Wife , edited by Henry-Louis de La Grange, Güther Weiß, and Knud Martner , translated into English by Antony Beaumont. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004, 431 pages, ISBN 978-0-8014-4340-4 .

more publishments

A collection of his articles and lectures was published in Japanese in 1992 by ARC (Tokyo), Japan.
For ten years (1986–1995) he reviewed new Mahler recordings for the French magazine Diapason, and he occasionally wrote for Le Monde , L'Evénement du Jeudi , Le Monde de la Musique , Opus (Chatsworth, California: ABC Consumer Magazines ), Scherzo (Madrid), Amadeus (Milano) and Le Nouvel Observateur .
Contributions to the program for the Orchester de Paris on all of Mahler's orchestral works (1971–88).
Contributions to LPs and CDs for numerous recordings by Mahler and other composers from Brahms to Tchaikovsky. Numerous contributions to specialist literature.

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Guillaume Decalf: Henry-Louis de La Grange est mort, disparition du plus grand spécialiste de Gustav Mahler . France Musique , January 27, 2017, accessed January 30, 2017 (French).
  2. ^ Matthieu Chenal: Henry-Louis de La Grange est décédé à Lonay . Tribune de Genève , January 30, 2017, accessed January 31, 2017 (French).
  3. ↑ a b c d Henry-Louis de La Grange. Website of the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler, accessed on January 30, 2017 (English).
  4. ^ A b Cory Robertson: 7 Honorary Doctorates to Be Awarded at Commencement. The Juilliard Journal 25/8 May 2010, accessed January 30, 2017 .
  5. ↑ a b c The Juilliard School holds 105th commencement ceremony on Friday, May 21, 2010 at 11 AM in Alice Tully Hall. Juilliard News Release , April 30, 2010, archived from the original on May 28, 2010 ; accessed on January 30, 2017 (English).
  6. ↑ a b c d Discovery Day: Gustav Mahler (2 May 2009). (No longer available online.) Carnegie Hall , formerly the original ; accessed on January 30, 2017 (English).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.carnegiehall.org  
  7. ^ Gene Gaudette: Interview with Henry-Luis de La Grange - Mahler Revealed . The Classical Source, May 8, 2008, accessed on January 30, 2017 ( mp3, 3.7 MB, ( memento of the original from March 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check Original and archive link according to instructions and then remove this note. 31 minutes; English). Henry-Louis de la Grange (French) . BiblioMonde, accessed September 27, 2010. Erik Ryding, Rebecca Pechefsky: Bruno Walter: A World Elsewhere. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2001, ISBN 978-0-300-08713-0 , p. 299. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.classicalsource.com
  8. ↑ Homepage. Médiathèque Musicale Mahler, accessed on January 30, 2017 (English).
  9. ^ Stefan Weidle : Afterword . In: Albrecht Joseph: A table at Romanoffs. From expressionist theater to western series. Memories . Juni-Verlag, Mönchengladbach 1991, p. 245.
  10. ^ International Who's Who in Classical Music . 23rd edition, Routledge, London, 2007, ISBN 978-1-85743-416-3 , p. 182.
  11. ^ Jacques Lonchampt: Le cycle Mahler au Châtelet: Frissons de beauté. Le Monde , March 14, 1989, archived from the original on December 11, 2012 ; Retrieved January 30, 2017 (French, abstract). Jacques Lonchampt: Une célébration pendant trois mois Mahler hante le Châtelet. Le Monde , February 17, 1989, archived from the original on August 3, 2012 ; Retrieved January 30, 2017 (French, abstract).
  12. ↑ En direct du studio 109 de Radio France: Henry-Louis de La Grange and Christian Labrande. France Musique : Le Magazine, September 21, 2009, archived from the original on March 1, 2012 ; Retrieved January 30, 2017 (French).
  13. ^ Günther Weiß (Ed.): Neue Mahleriana, Essays in Honor of Henry-Louis de La Grange on His Seventieth Birthday . Peter Lang, Bern / Berlin / Frankfurt am Main, 1997, ISBN 978-3-906756-95-0 (English, French, German, Italian). The publication contains a résumé of La Granges until 1994.
  14. ^ Bard College Awards - Bard College Catalog 2009–2010. Bard College, archived from the original on May 27, 2010 ; accessed on January 30, 2017 (English).
  15. ↑ BM Schmied awards Henry-Louis de la Grange the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, 1st Class. Austrian Federal Ministry of Education , January 30, 2017, archived from the original on May 27, 2011 ; accessed on January 30, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME La Grange, Henry-Louis de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French musicologist and biographer
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 2017
Place of death Lonay , Morges District , Canton of Vaud , Switzerland