Ernest Chausson

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Ernest Chausson (January 20, 1855 – June 10, 1899) was a late-blooming French romantic composer who died tragically just as his career was beginning to flourish.

[edit] Life

Chausson was born in Paris into a well-to-do bourgeois family. His father made a fortune in the 1850s while assisting Baron Haussmann in the redevelopment of Paris.

To please his father, Chausson studied law and became a lawyer at the court of appeals; but, in truth, he had little or no interest in the law. He frequented the Paris salons, where he met such celebrities as Fantin-Latour, Odilon Redon, and Vincent d'Indy. He dabbled in writing and drawing before definitely deciding on his career.

In October of 1879 at age 25, he began attending the composition classes of the opera composer Jules Massenet at the Paris Conservatoire. Chausson had already composed some piano pieces and songs but his first manuscripts that have been preserved are those corrected by Massenet.

At the Conservatoire, Chausson also studied composition with César Franck, who had eschewed the fashionable avenue to opera and taken the lonelier path of composing orchestral and chamber music. It was Franck who became Chausson's main mentor and he, in turn, became an ardent disciple of Franck.

Chausson enjoyed travel and in 1882 and 1883, he made the pilgrimage to Bayreuth to attend the operas of Wagner. On the first of these journeys, Chausson went with d'Indy to see the premiere of Parsifal, and on the second trip he went with his new bride Jeanne Escudier.

From 1886 until his death in 1899, Chausson was secretary of the Société Nationale de Musique. He received many of the Paris artistic elite in his salon, including the composers Henri Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, and Isaac Albéniz, the poet Mallarmé, the Russian novelist and playwright Ivan Turgenev, and the impressionist painter Claude Monet. Also, Chausson assembled an important collection of impressionist art.

At the age of 44, Chausson died in Limary, Seine-et-Oise, as a result of an accident. It appears that on a downhill slope he lost control of the bicycle he was riding, ran straight into a brick wall, and perished instantly. He was buried in the celebrated Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris.

[edit] Music

The creative work of Chausson is commonly divided into three periods. Of those, the first was dominated by Massenet and exhibits fluid and elegant melodies. The second period, dating from 1886, is marked by a more dramatic character, deriving partly from his contacts with the artistic milieux in which he moved. The third period dates from his father's death in 1894, and was influenced by his reading of the symbolist poets and Russian literature, particularly Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy.

Chausson's work is deeply original, but it does reflect some technical influences of both Franck and Wagner. Stylistic traces of Massenet and, more surprisingly, Brahms can be detected sometimes. Chausson's compositional idiom bridges the gap between the Romanticism of Massenet and Franck and the Impressionism of Debussy.

Several delicate and admirable songs came from Chausson's pen. He wrote one opera, Le Roi Arthus (King Arthur). His orchestral output was comparatively small, but significant. The works of his which involve orchestra include the Symphony in B- flat (his sole symphony); the Poème for violin and orchestra (an important piece in the violin repertoire); and the mélodie Poème de l'amour et de la mer.

Chausson's œuvre is relatively modest in quantity. There are only 39 opus numbers. See the List of compositions by Ernest Chausson.