Lucien Durosoir
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Lucien Durosoir (1878-1955) was a French composer and violinist recently rediscovered thanks to manuscripts found by his son Luc.
Durosoir studied the violin with Joseph Joachim and Hugo Heermann in Germany before his first tour as a young virtuoso in 1899. In addition to giving the first performances of French music in Austria-Hungary and Germany (Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Lalo,Widor, Bruneau), he also gave the French premieres of the Brahms and Strauss violin concertos in 1901.
His career as a violinist was cut short by World War One. Durosoir served in the Fifth Division, which took part in some of the bloodiest battles of the war (Douaumont, the Chemin des Dames, and Eparges). At the encouragement of General Mangin, Durosoir formed a string quartet with his fellow soldiers Henri Lemoine (second violin), André Caplet (viola), and Maurice Maréchal (cello).
After his demobilization in February, 1919, he gave up the violin and began to compose at his home in southwest France. For the next thirty years he composed a host of works, including three string quartets, (1920, 1922 and 1933-34) a large piano sonata (Le Lys, 1921), a piano quintet (1925), an orchestral suite (Funérailles, 1930), and about twenty-five works of chamber music for various instrumental combinations. Isolated from various Parisian musical trends, Durosoir forged a very personal style, essentially in the Romantic tradition, but with unusual features such as polyrhythms. In 1922 André Caplet wrote, "I will talk with enthusiasm to all my friends about your quartet which I find a thousand times more interesting than anything with which the noisy group of newcomers overwhelms us."
From 1950 onwards, illness prevented him from continuing to compose and he died in December of 1955.
Thanks to his son Luc Durosoir and Luc's wife Georgie, a renowned musicology professor at the Sorbonne, Durosoir's works have recently been published and the MEGEP chamber music competition was founded to encourage the revival of the music. A book of Durosoir's letters has been published to much acclaim in France, and the music is enjoying increasing interest among musicologists, performers, and pedagogues.
Born near Paris in 1878, Lucien Durosoir pursued a career as a violinist before turning to composition. The outbreak of war in August of 1914 brought an abrupt end to his performing career. From then until February 1919, five years in all, Lucien Durosoir served as an infantryman in the trenches and fought in the bloodiest battles of World War I. After the war, he retired to the south of France to devote himself to composition. His life can therefore be divided into three distinct periods of unequal duration and incongruent activities.
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[edit] THE CONCERT VIOLINIST
At the age of 14, Lucien Durosoir enrolled in Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris, where he studied with Henri Berthelier; however after several months he was expelled for insolence toward its director, Ambroise Thomas. Durosoir continued his violin studies privately with Berthelier while at the same time studying composition with Charles Tournemire. In 1898, Edouard Colonne engaged him as first chair violinist for his Orchestra of the Concerts Colonne. Thereafter he went to Germany, where he perfected his technique and interpretive skill under the violinists Joseph Joachim and Hugo Heermann. Starting in 1900, he undertook concert tours extending to central Europe, Russia, Germany, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There he played for the first time the violin repertory of contemporary French composers (Saint-Saëns, Lalo, Widor, Bruneau), and in Vienna in 1910 he premiered the Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano by Gabriel Fauré. In turn, while on tours in France he premiered modern German and Danish masterworks: Niels Gade’s Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 56 at the Salle Pleyel in 1899, Richard Strauss’s Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op.8 and Johannes Brahms’s Violin Concerto in D Op. 77, in 1901 (at the Salle des Agriculteurs) and 1903 (at the Salle Humbert de Romans) respectively. Everywhere his performances were met with favorable reviews: “captivates the public by the loftiness and spirit of his playing” (Neue freie Press, 11 January 1910); “all of these pieces were performed with the same nobility and beauty of execution” (Wiener Mittags-Zeitung, 28 January 1910). “He displayed, in the concerto of Max Bruch, the rarest qualities of sonority and musicality, and in the Dvorak concerto an astonishing style and virtuosity...Monsieur Lucien Durosoir, in this lovely performance, ranks among the foremost virtuosos of his time.” (Le Figaro, 19 May 1904)
[edit] THE SOLDIER
When war broke out, Durosoir was 36. After a year fighting in the trenches, he became a stretcher-bearer and would await nightfall before venturing out to collect the wounded. Durosoir came to the attention of General Mangin, a great music lover, who recruited him along with the composer André Caplet and the young cellist Maurice Maréchal to form a chamber music ensemble. The trio played for funeral services, for guests (such as visiting English officers and, more rarely, civilians) in the general’s quarters, and in the barracks for the soldiers’ entertainment. Their concerts featured all kinds of arrangements of orchestral works for piano and solo instruments. During this time Durosoir’s and Caplet’s duties also included caring for the carrier pigeons.
The three spent these terrible years together, and their friendship was sealed in the trenches as well as in their music-making. The inspiration to compose increasingly seized Durosoir’s imagination. He acquired scores and studied the style of Brahms, Beethoven, Haydn, and others. In 1915 Emma Debussy sent him Claude Debussy’s Études, which Durosoir and Caplet were examining when six bombs fell around their building. Thinking ahead to the end of the war, Durosoir wrote on 12 September 1916, “I begin to compose so as to become accustomed to managing the freer forms, and my efforts, I am convinced, will be fruitful.” During the periods of repose from his duties in the trenches, he continued his study of counterpoint and fugue with exercises “corrected” by André Caplet.
[edit] THE COMPOSER
Durosoir returned to civilian life in February of 1919. In 1921, the Boston Symphony Orchestra offered him the position of first chair violin. He was on the point of leaving when an accident prevented him, and he had to give up his career as a violinist. From then until his death, he lived in retirement far from Paris and its artistic circles. On the basis of his compositional studies, reinforced by his personal study of scores and compositional exercises, he set out calmly composing, and thus crafted an individual and bold musical style independent from the mainstream. His works display neither perceptible influences, nor overtly stated references. Nearly all of his works are headed by a quotation of contemporary poetry, or by a prose quotation of a philosophical nature.
André Caplet wrote to him in 1922: “I will speak with enthusiasm to all my associates of your quartet, which find many times more interesting than all the products with which the group of flashy newcomers overwhelm us.” Lucien Durosoir composed around forty unpublished works (see the List of Works), including pieces for varied ensembles, symphonic works (Funérailles, suite pour grand orchestre, Dejanira, étude symphonique sur un texte de Sophocle) and chamber music: string quartets, sonatas, trios, short piano works, numerous pieces for piano and a solo instrument. Beginning in 1950, illness prevented him from composing, and he died in December 1955.
[edit] THE MUSIC
AUDIO CLIP: Le Lys, sonata in A Minor for violin and piano, first movement[1]
As a result of his intentional isolation from the current Parisian musical trends, Durosoir’s compositions take on unique character. While not outwardly programmatic, they are often preceded by some verses of poetry which serve as a threshold into this highly personal world of expression. His style is lean and spare—one that is marked by solid construction, sudden contrasts, and avoidance of gratuitous ornament. Essentially tonal with a harmonic palette enriched by non-chord tones and altered scales, the music shows a strong need for resolution that occasionally veers off toward regions of atonality. Similarly, the constraints imposed by regular meter are cast off by means of frequent metric changes and tempo alterations. Moreover, Durosoir shows great imagination in the area of musical texture and the use of extended performance techniques (con sourdine, sul ponticello, col legno, ricochet, harmonics), and consequently one encounters in each melodic line many expressive indications. In short, the music of Lucien Durosoir avoids categorization with many of the “ism” labels (impressionism, neoclassicism, expressionism, primitivism, serialism, etc.) that are commonly applied to music of the early twentieth century.
Johnspowell 20:35, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] WORKS LIST
[edit] ORCHESTRAL WORKS
- Poème for violin and viola with orchestra, 1920
- Déjanira, symphonic étude based on a fragment from Trakhiniennes by Sophocles, 1923
- Le balcon, poème symphonique for bass solo, chorus, and strings, 1924
- Funérailles , suite for orchestra, 1930
- Suite for flute and chamber orchestra, 1931
[edit] CHAMBER WORKS
- Cinq aquarelles for violin and piano (Bretagne, Vision, Ronde *, Berceuse *, Intermède), 1920; these two movements are also transcribed for violoncello and piano
- Poème transcribed for violin solo, viola solo, and piano
- String Quartet No. 1 in F Minor, 1920
- Caprice for violoncello and harp, 1921
- Jouvence, fantasy for principal violin and string octet, 1921 ; this work is also transcribed for violin and piano
- Le Lys, sonata in A Minor for violin and piano, 1921
- String Quartet No. 2 in D Minor, 1922
- Rêve for violin and piano, 1925
- [2] Quintet in F Major for piano and string quartet, 1925
- Idylle for wind quartet : flute, clarinet, horn in F, bassoon, 1925
- Oisillon bleu, brief poème for violin and piano, 1927
- Trio en Si mineur for violin, violoncello, and piano, 1927
- Divertissement, Maiade et Improvisation, 3 pieces for violoncello and piano, 1931
- String Quartet No. 3 in B Minor [1933-1934]
- Vitrail, piece for viola and piano, 1934
- Berceuse for flute and piano, 1934
- Au vent des Landes for flute and piano, 1935
- Fantaisie for horn, harp and piano, 1937
- Incantation bouddhique for English horn and piano, 1946
- Prière à Marie for violin and piano, 1949
- Chant élégiaque in memory of Ginette Neveu, for violin and piano, 1950
- Improvisation sur la gamme d’ut for melodic instrument and piano, 1950
[edit] VOCAL
- Sonnet à un enfant for voice and piano, 1930
- A ma mère, for voice and piano (unfinished), 1950
[edit] PIANO
- Légende, 1923
- Aube, Sonate d’été, 1926
- Nocturne pour piano, 1950
[edit] TWO PIANOS
- Prélude, Interlude Fantaisie pour deux pianos, 1932
[edit] HARMONIUM AND ORGAN
- Trois préludes (two harmonium, one for organ), 1945
