Biography
Born in central France in 1853 to an affluent family with no musical background, André Messager would become a leading French organist and composer whose operas and ballets left a lasting mark on Parisian musical life. His father, a tax collector, initially opposed any pursuit of music; yet at age seven the boy was dispatched to Lyon to attend a Marist Catholic school, where he obtained both a standard elementary education and his earliest piano instruction. Financial setbacks in the 1860s forced the family to withdraw him from the school, an event that prompted his father to revise his earlier stance once he recognized that posts such as church organist could be both respectable and secure. In 1871 Messager received a bursary to enter the Ecole Niedermeyer in Paris, an institution renowned for training superior church organists. There his composition teachers were Eugène Gigout and Gabriel Fauré, while Adam Lausset instructed him in piano and Clément Loret in organ. After completing his studies he worked privately on composition with Camille Saint-Saëns and formed a close friendship with Fauré. His first professional post came in 1874 as assistant organist at the church of Saint-Sulpice, serving under Charles-Marie Widor. In the years that followed he earned recognition for his Symphony as well as the cantatas Don Juan et Haydée and Prométhée enchaîné. Beginning in 1878 he took up the baton at the Folies Bergère, where he also wrote the scores for Fleur d’oranger and Les Vins de France. Two years later he accepted an invitation to conduct at Brussels’s Eden theater, remaining there until 1881. Returning to Paris, he served successively as choirmaster and organist at the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis and then spent two years at Saint-Marie des Batignolles assisted by Claude Terrasse. The year 1883 brought both his marriage to Edith Clouette and a commission to finish the operetta François les bas-bleus left incomplete by the late Firmin Bernicat; its success firmly established Messager’s standing as a composer. Subsequent important commissions included the operetta La Fauvette du temple and the ballet Les Deux Pigeons, the latter becoming his most widely loved work. He also produced the comic opera La Béarnaise, which enjoyed acclaim in France, London, and New York. Stage pieces from the late 1880s and early 1890s met with less enthusiasm, leading him at one point to contemplate retirement. The death of his wife in 1892 affected him profoundly. He nevertheless continued to accept conducting engagements, and in 1896 he completed the serious opera Le Chevalier d’Harmental, which failed to find favor. The following year he withdrew from composition for a time, retreating to the English countryside with his second wife, Dotie (Alice Maude) Davis. An unsolicited libretto that arrived in the post in 1897 rekindled his creative impulse and resulted in Les P’tites Michu, an operetta that ran for 401 performances in London. In 1898 he brought forth the popular comic opera Véronique and celebrated the birth of his daughter Madeleine Hope Andrée. Between then and 1914 his services as a conductor were constantly sought, with positions at the Paris Opéra-Comique and London’s Royal Opera House leaving scant opportunity for new composition. Even so, he urged Debussy to finish Pelléas et Mélisande and led its premiere at the Opéra-Comique in 1902; he likewise conducted the first performances of Massenet’s Grisélidis and Charpentier’s Louise. From 1908 to 1919 he directed the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, presenting the full range of major orchestral literature, including a complete Beethoven symphony cycle. Under his leadership the orchestra toured Argentina, Europe, and North America and made several recordings in New York in 1918. Messager continued to compose until his death in 1929 at the age of seventy-five.