Biography
Although his devotion to music had run deep from an early age, Emmanuel Chabrier postponed a full-time composing career until he neared forty. Once he made the change, the resulting pieces displayed striking brilliance, sharp wit, and richly colored harmonic, rhythmic, and orchestral palettes.
Piano study began at six under the Spanish refugee Saporta. At ten he entered the Lycée Impérial in Clermont-Ferrand, where keyboard work continued and initial attempts at composition appeared. His father required that music remain an avocation, so after two years at the Lycée Louis le Grand (or possibly the Lycée Saint Louis, according to differing biographical accounts) in Paris, Chabrier turned to law. He kept up piano lessons and pursued counterpoint and fugue; after receiving his law degree in 1862 he entered the Ministry of the Interior, remaining there for eighteen years. During this period he formed friendships with the painter Manet, the poet Verlaine, and musicians Duparc, d’Indy, Fauré, and Messager. On 27 December 1872 he married Marie Alice Dejean.
His first trip to Germany took place in 1879 with Duparc. Hearing Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in Munich convinced him to abandon the law for music. Returning to Paris, he resigned from the Ministry on 12 November 1880, two months before his fortieth birthday, and devoted himself to composition. Until then only two substantial works existed—the operettas L’Étoile (1877) and Une Éducation manquée (1879). Freed from official duties, he quickly produced Dix Pièces pittoresques for piano (1881), Habañera (1885), and Bourrée fantasque (1891). The brilliant España Rhapsody of 1883, his finest short piece, alone secured his reputation as a serious composer.
From 1884 to 1885 he served as chorus master at the Château d’Eau, assisting among other productions with Wagner’s Tristan. Prolonged contact with Wagner’s scores sharpened his orchestration technique and introduced Germanic stylistic elements that later surfaced in his own music, to his own dismay and that of his French colleagues. The comic opera Le Roi malgré lui, drawn from François Ancelot’s play, received its premiere at the Opéra Comique on 18 May 1887. Though still somewhat old-fashioned in its alternation of sung sections and spoken dialogue, the work was dismissed by modernists yet praised for its spirit and originality.
Given his late beginning and limited formal training, Chabrier’s achievement appears all the more remarkable. His music is intensely colorful, and he possessed a notable gift for uniting disparate forces into a coherent sonic world. More lyricist than dramatist, he excelled in comedy, a bent that mirrored his personal temperament. He exerted a decisive influence on Les Six, who adopted him as a model while rejecting his later Wagnerian leanings, and he also shaped the music of Maurice Ravel. Within the brief span of his professional activity, the extent of his output marks him as a prodigious achiever.
Piano study began at six under the Spanish refugee Saporta. At ten he entered the Lycée Impérial in Clermont-Ferrand, where keyboard work continued and initial attempts at composition appeared. His father required that music remain an avocation, so after two years at the Lycée Louis le Grand (or possibly the Lycée Saint Louis, according to differing biographical accounts) in Paris, Chabrier turned to law. He kept up piano lessons and pursued counterpoint and fugue; after receiving his law degree in 1862 he entered the Ministry of the Interior, remaining there for eighteen years. During this period he formed friendships with the painter Manet, the poet Verlaine, and musicians Duparc, d’Indy, Fauré, and Messager. On 27 December 1872 he married Marie Alice Dejean.
His first trip to Germany took place in 1879 with Duparc. Hearing Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in Munich convinced him to abandon the law for music. Returning to Paris, he resigned from the Ministry on 12 November 1880, two months before his fortieth birthday, and devoted himself to composition. Until then only two substantial works existed—the operettas L’Étoile (1877) and Une Éducation manquée (1879). Freed from official duties, he quickly produced Dix Pièces pittoresques for piano (1881), Habañera (1885), and Bourrée fantasque (1891). The brilliant España Rhapsody of 1883, his finest short piece, alone secured his reputation as a serious composer.
From 1884 to 1885 he served as chorus master at the Château d’Eau, assisting among other productions with Wagner’s Tristan. Prolonged contact with Wagner’s scores sharpened his orchestration technique and introduced Germanic stylistic elements that later surfaced in his own music, to his own dismay and that of his French colleagues. The comic opera Le Roi malgré lui, drawn from François Ancelot’s play, received its premiere at the Opéra Comique on 18 May 1887. Though still somewhat old-fashioned in its alternation of sung sections and spoken dialogue, the work was dismissed by modernists yet praised for its spirit and originality.
Given his late beginning and limited formal training, Chabrier’s achievement appears all the more remarkable. His music is intensely colorful, and he possessed a notable gift for uniting disparate forces into a coherent sonic world. More lyricist than dramatist, he excelled in comedy, a bent that mirrored his personal temperament. He exerted a decisive influence on Les Six, who adopted him as a model while rejecting his later Wagnerian leanings, and he also shaped the music of Maurice Ravel. Within the brief span of his professional activity, the extent of his output marks him as a prodigious achiever.
Albums
Singles
Suppé: Dichter Und Bauer: Overture (Digitally Remastered)
2015
Ravel: Rhapsody Espagnole (Excerpt) [Digitally Remastered]
2014
Strauss: Delirien (Deliriums), Op. 212 (Digitally Remastered)
2014
Strauss: Egyptischer Marsch (Egyptian March), Op. 335 (Digitally Remastered)
2014
Chabrier: Rhapsody España for Orchestra (Digitally Remastered)
2012