Life and career
Casanova was born in Paris, and studied law there, while at the same time studying music with Georges Dandelot at the École Normale de Musique de Paris. [1] In 1944 he became the first French pupil of René Leibowitz, [2] with whom he studied theory and composition. [1] Leibowitz introduced him to dodecaphonic and serial composition. Together with other Leibowitz pupils, Serge Nigg, Antoine Duhamel and Jean Prodromidès, he gave the first performance of Leibowitz's Explications des Metaphors, Op. 15, in Paris in 1948. [1] [3]
Thereafter, according to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , Casanova's concern was "to ally a romantic spirit with modernity of style". [2] in the mid-1950s he abandoned dodecaphony, although he retained some of its chromatic elements for harmonic purposes. After his avant-garde period, Casanova returned to what Grove calls "a more classical conception of both style and form". [2] In 1959 his Concertino, for piano and chamber orchestra, was performed as a French contribution at the 33rd annual music festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music. In 1960 he received an award from the Queen Marie José Music Foundation for his Cavalier seul, a chamber cantata for baritone and string quartet (later revised for voice and string orchestra), [1] dedicated to Hans Werner Henze. [4]
In the late 1940s there had been some hostility between adherents of Leibowitz and those of the teacher and composer Olivier Messiaen, [5] but so far as Casanova was concerned any breach had healed sufficiently during the 1950s for Messiaen's partner Yvonne Loriod to play the solo part at the premiere of Casanova's piano concertino in 1959. [6] He developed an interest in German Romantic literature and with Nietzsche's philosophy, which is reflected in his work. [2] His Third Symphony (Dithyrambes, 1964) has a vocal part, with words by Nietzsche, taken from Dionysos-Dithyramben set in the original German. [7]
In his later years Casanova lived at Louveciennes on the fringe of Paris, where he died on 7 March 2009, at the age of 89. [8]
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