Léon Durocher

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Léon Durocher ( drawing by Léon de Bercy , 1914)

Léon Durocher (born October 23, 1862 in Pontivy , then called Napoléonville, † October 23, 1918 in Paris ) was a French chansonnier , writer , journalist and Breton bard . His birth name was Léon-Joseph-Marie Düringer , he adopted the name Durocher for his writing. Durocher wrote a number of chanson texts , some of which were very successful , which were set to music by Paul Delmet and Gustave Goublier , among others , and performed with these songs in the revues at Montmartre , including in Le Chat Noir . He also became known for his work in the Breton national movement: he founded an association of Bretons in Paris, was appointed Breton bard under the name of Kambr'O Nikor , organized an annual procession of Bretons in Montfort-l'Amaury and was the driving force of the periodical Le Fureteur Breton .

Life

Youth and education

Theater poster of the Marche au Soleil

Léon Durocher was the son of the wealthy brewery owner Léon-Henry-Marc Düringer and his wife Amélie Guillemin. On his father's side, he was descended from a grandfather who grew up in Bavaria and came to Pontivy in 1806. He attended high school ( Lycée ) in Pontivy ( Morbihan department in Brittany) and later in Nantes , where he received a humanist education and met Charles Le Goffic , with whom he had a long friendship. In Nantes he wrote poems in Latin, which he was fluent in. Then Durocher was at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. After he had not been admitted to the École normal supérieure despite an earlier acceptance , he led a student life at the Sorbonne in Paris and took his exam there. He taught for a time at the high school of Beauvais and a Paris high school, but soon devoted himself exclusively to a literary activity.

1886–1894: Success as a chansonnier

Durocher attended various literati and artists circle as that of Ernest Renan launched Dîner Celtique ( "Celtic Diner"). There he performed his poems and chansons, now in French. At the same time he directed the magazine La Pomme ("The Apple"). Soon he was also performing at the famous Cabaret Le Chat Noir on Montmartre. With bugles et binious appeared in 1886, already under the stage name Durocher, his first, Renan dedicated collection of poems, the signal trumpets or whose title bugles for the patriotic note, the bagpipes or binious for the Breton regionalism were, in the words of one reviewer.

In the following years Durocher wrote a number of other chansons as well as one-act verse and prose dramas. He has also published a series of learned articles on the history of Brittany in various magazines. He also continued to participate in circles and magazine projects; in 1889 he was one of the founders of the magazine La Plume ("The Feather"). With the chanson L'Angélus de la Mer ("The Angelus on the Sea"), an "exquisite", wistful text about fishermen who stayed at sea, he achieved his greatest public success in 1894. The chanson, set to music by the renowned music director and director of a café-concert in Paris Gustave Goublier, was considered the chanson event of the year according to Serge Dillaz and, according to contemporary statements, was well-known among the French public. In most cases his texts were set to music by Paul Delmet .

1894–1904: Breton and other spectacles

In the same year Durocher founded the Association de Bretons de Paris (Association of the Bretons of Paris). Four years later he helped found the Union Régionaliste Bretonne (Breton Regionalist Union). In April 1899 he married Marie-Yvonne Le Moigne, a farmer's daughter from Lampaul-Plouarzel , to whom he later dedicated his chanson Berceuse pour Maryvonne (lullaby for Maryvonne).

Durocher then traveled with the Breton delegation to the Eisteddfod in Cardiff ( Wales ) in 1899 , where he was appointed a bard by the archidruid Rowland Williams alias Hwfa Môn, under the Celtic bard name Kambr'O Nikor, a reference to General Pierre Cambronne , who for his alleged replica “Merde!” (Eng: “ Shit !”) had achieved popular fame at Waterloo when asked to hand it over . Durocher's sense of spectacle was expressed in the autumn of the same year when he founded the Pardon de la Reine Anne in Montfort-l'Amaury , a Breton procession in honor of Anne de Bretagne , during which he was called “Pentyern” (leader, chairman, chief ) acted.

On December 25, 1899, Léon Durocher's shadow play La Marche au Soleil (The March to the Sun), an epic about the Faschoda adventure by Jean-Baptiste Marchand , premiered at the La Bodinière theater in Paris. It was a great success and saw over a hundred performances there. The piece, with music by Georges Fragerolle, appeared in print the following year. In 1900 Durocher published an extensive collection of his chansons from recent years as a book: Chansons de là-haut et de là-bas ("Songs from above and below"). In most cases the sheet music of the various composers was also included. The first two chansons Là-haut and Là-bas already clarify the meaning of the title: “Up there” stands for “la butte”, the Montmartre hill and thus the bohemian of Paris, “down there” is Brittany. At the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 , a cabaret breton performed with Durocher as director and chansonnier in Village breton .

Another of the numerous literary circles to which Durocher belonged was the Paris Académie des Ânes (Academy of Donkeys), in which each member had to choose a title that contained the word âne : Durocher called himself Capitâne (for example: captain's donkey). In 1904 he founded the tradition of the Dîners du Moulin à Sel (dinners at the salt mill); at these meetings satirical criticism was carried out under the busts of François Rabelais and Molière .

1904–1918: Breton regionalist and war singer

In December 1908 Durocher took over the editor-in-chief of Fureteur Breton , a bimonthly bulletin that gathered literary, regional history, archaeological, folkloric and genealogical contributions on Brittany.

In 1911 Durocher applied for a name change: He wanted to use the stage name Durocher as a civil name and family name for his wife and children, which was approved for him.

Like his friend Théodore Botrel , Durocher advocated French participation in the First World War in 1914, including with the chanson Cloches de Guerre . However, he soon had to fend off violent attacks from the patriotic side, which held against him his German ancestry. In 1918 Durocher died of the Spanish flu .

Works

Printing of text and notes of the chanson L'Étendard de la Pitié (Wesly / Durocher)

Books (selection)

  • Clairons et binious . Poésies. Dupret, Paris 1886.
  • Rézinsec et Strophazur . Théâtre lyrico-naturaliste. Dupret, Paris 1888 ( online on Gallica ).
  • Binious et tambourins . Vanier, Paris 1889.
  • Chansons de là-haut et de là-bas . Flammarion, Paris 1900.
  • La Marche au Soleil. Epopée de la misson Marchand . Flammarion, Paris 1900 (with music by Georges Fragerolle ).

Chanson texts (selection)

  • À Chloris . Music: Paul Delmet
  • Amertume . Music: Paul Delmet
  • L'Angélus de la Mer . Music: Gustave Goublier (1894). Recorded by Jean Noté, among others
  • Le Chanteur des bois . Music: Paul Delmet
  • Berceuse pour Maryvonne . Music: Gaston Perducet
  • L'Étendard de la Pitié . Music: Émile Wesly (1905). Recorded by Jean Noté and Marcelly
  • L'Étoile du berger . Music: Paul Delmet
  • La Noisette . Music: Paul Delmet
  • Romance fanée . Music: Paul Delmet

literature

  • Short contemporary biography in the Mariani album , No. 10, 1906, online on Gallica
  • Mautpreller, Joachim Lucchesi: The standard of compassion - found . In: Dreigroschenheft 1/2012, pp. 11-19.
  • Léon Dubreuil: Les “Chantres du Trégor” . In: Annales de Bretagne . Tome 64, no. 2, 1957, pp. 203-246.
  • Léon Dubreuil: Léon Durocher au Conquet . In: Les Cahiers de l'Iroise , no. 32, 1961, pp. 191-194.
  • Olivier Geslin: Léon Durocher, chantre du Trégor . In: Les Cahiers de l'Iroise , no. 95, 1977, pp. 163-166.
  • René Kerviler: Duringer. In: Répertoire général de bio-bibliographie bretonne. Livre premier, Les bretons. Fascicule 35 Dul-Enz, Rennes 1901, pp. 77-82. On-line

Web links

Commons : Léon Durocher  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Léon Dubreuil: Les "Chantres du Trégor"; Emile Mâle: Souvenirs et Correspondances de Jeunesse, Editions Créer, Nonette 2001, p. 201f.
  2. ^ Emile Mâle: Souvenirs et Correspondances de Jeunesse, Editions Créer, Nonette 2001, p. 195; Léon Dubreuil: Léon Durocher au Conquet, 1961. Léon de Bercy, on the other hand, says in an essay Le barde Léon Durocher , in: La Bonne Chanson , No. 77, March 1914, that he taught at the university. The text was accessible via Hervé David's website, but can now only be found on archive.org .
  3. ↑ Pz., In: Le Livre, 1887, pp. 132f. Online .
  4. ↑ Serge Dillaz: La chanson sous la Third Republic . 1870-1940. Avec un dictionnaire des auteurs, compositeurs, interprètes, Tallandier, Paris 1991, p. 21. He also rated Angélus as “exquisite” (ibid., P. 243).
  5. ↑ France Vernillat, Jacques Charpentreau: Dictionnaire de la chanson française . Larousse, Paris 1968, p. 95.
  6. ^ Armel Calvé: Histoire des Bretons à Paris , Coop Breizh, Spézet 1994, p. 126.
  7. ↑ Cf. Léon de Bercy: Le barde Léon Durocher , and Dubreuil's obituary in La Gerbe , 1919; see e.g. B. also Au Banquet du Moulin à Sel , in: Le Caveau, 1907, p. 215ff, online
  8. ↑ See Fureteur : Annuaire des Bretons de Paris, 1911, p. 21, online .
  9. ^ Regina M. Sweeney: Singing Our Way to Victory. French Cultural Politics and Music during the Great War. Wesleyan University Press, Middletown 2001, p. 57; Léon Dubreuil: Léon Durocher, in: La Gerbe, 1919 (see web links).
personal data
SURNAME Durocher, Léon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Düringer, Léon (maiden name); Kambr'O Nikor (stage name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer, journalist and bard
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Pontivy , France
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 1918
Place of death Paris , France