Ernest Chausson

Ernest Chausson's scores suggest the kind of inward intensity Marcel Proust might have achieved had he turned to composition—deeply felt yet seldom reliant on sweeping effects. Much of the force behind his impassioned and at times sensual idiom can be traced to the sinuous chromatic manner he absorbed from his foremost instructor, César Franck. Through this inheritance Chausson's work creates a poised yet supple link between Franck's opulent, Wagner-inflected Romanticism and the refined Impressionist vocabulary later cultivated by Debussy.

Born into affluence, Chausson enjoyed financial security that freed him from any obligation to earn his living through music. Although drawn to the art early on, he followed his father's wishes and completed legal training. In 1877 he was admitted to the bar in Paris; that same year he produced his earliest piece, the unpublished song Lilias. The decisive turn toward composition arrived in 1879 after he heard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in Munich and encountered Vincent d'Indy, once a follower of the German master. The next year Chausson enrolled at the Paris Conservatory for lessons with Jules Massenet, later supplementing this training through private work with Franck. His abilities developed rapidly: several pieces issued soon afterward, most notably the cycle Seven Mélodies, Op. 2 (1879-1882), have long been recognized as minor masterworks.

From 1886 onward, service as secretary of the Société Nationale de Musique—an association launched by Saint-Saëns and colleagues to champion French instrumental repertoire—placed Chausson at the center of Paris's musical life. His salon regularly hosted figures such as Mallarmé, Debussy, Albéniz, pianist Alfred Cortot, and violinist-composer Eugène Ysaÿe. Although he wrote numerous songs along with pieces for voice and orchestra, choral settings, and several operas, his reputation rests chiefly on chamber scores, above all the Concert for piano, violin, and string quartet, Op. 21 (1889-1891) and the Piano Quartet, Op. 30 (1897), together with evocative orchestral compositions that include the Symphony in B flat major, Op. 20 (1889-1890) and the Poème for violin and orchestra, Op. 25 (1896). Chausson perished in 1899 at age forty-four after a bicycle mishap, removing the most singular French musical voice of the generation that preceded Debussy.