D'Indy studied under composer César Franck, and was strongly influenced by Franck's admiration for German music. At a time when nationalist feelings were high in both countries (circa the Franco-Prussian War of 1871), this brought Franck into conflict with other musicians who wished to separate French music from German influence.
Life
Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed him on to Antoine François Marmontel and Louis Diémer.[1]
From the age of 14 d'Indy studied harmony with Albert Lavignac. When he was 16 an uncle introduced him to Berlioz's treatise on orchestration, which inspired him to become a composer.[2] He wrote a piano quartet which he sent to César Franck, who was the teacher of a friend. Franck recognised his talent and recommended that d'Indy pursue a career as a composer.[2]
At the age of 19, during the Franco-Prussian War, d'Indy enlisted in the National Guard, but returned to musical life as soon as the hostilities were over. He entered Franck's organ class at the Conservatoire de Paris in 1871 remaining there until 1875, when he joined the percussion section of the orchestra at the Châtelet Theatre to gain practical experience. He also served as chorus-master to the Concerts Colonne.[2]
The first of his works he heard performed was a Symphonie italienne, at an orchestral rehearsal under Jules Pasdeloup; the work was admired by Georges Bizet and Jules Massenet, with whom he had already become acquainted.[1]
During the summer of 1873 he visited Germany, where he met Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms. On 25 January 1874, his overture Les Piccolomini was performed at a Pasdeloup concert, sandwiched between works by Bach and Beethoven.[1] Around this time he married Isabelle de Pampelonne, one of his cousins. In 1875 his symphony dedicated to János Hunyadi was performed. That same year he played a minor role – the prompter – at the premiere of Bizet's opera Carmen.[1] In 1876 he was present at the first production of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle at Bayreuth. This made a great impression on him and he became a fervent Wagnerian.[3]
In 1878 d'Indy's symphonic ballad La Forêt enchantée was performed.[4] In 1882 he heard Wagner's Parsifal. In 1883 his choral work Le Chant de la cloche appeared. In 1884 his symphonic poem Saugefleurie was premiered. His piano suite ("symphonic poem for piano") called Poème des montagnes came from around this time. In 1887 appeared his Suite in D for trumpet, 2 flutes and string quartet. That same year he was involved in Lamoureux's production of Wagner's Lohengrin as choirmaster. His music drama Fervaal occupied him between 1889 and 1895.[3]
Inspired by his studies with Franck and yet dissatisfied with the standard of teaching at the Conservatoire, d'Indy, together with Charles Bordes and Alexandre Guilmant, founded the Schola Cantorum de Paris in 1894.[3] D'Indy taught there until his death, becoming principal in 1904.[3] Of the teaching at the Schola Cantorum, The Oxford Companion to Music says, "A solid grounding in technique was encouraged, rather than originality", and comments that few graduates could stand comparison with the best Conservatoire students.[5] D'Indy later taught at the Conservatoire and privately, while retaining his post at the Schola Cantorum.[3]
Among d'Indy's renowned pupils were Albéric Magnard, Albert Roussel, Joseph Canteloube (who later wrote d'Indy's biography), Celia Torra,[6]Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud.[n 1] Two atypical students were Cole Porter, who signed up for a two-year course at the Schola, but left after a few months,[7] and Erik Satie, who studied there for three years and later wrote, "Why on earth had I gone to d'Indy? The things I had written before were so full of charm. And now? What nonsense! What dullness!"[8] Nonetheless, according to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, d'Indy's influence as a teacher was "enormous and wide-ranging, with benefits for French music far outweighing the charges of dogmatism and political intolerance".[3]
D'Indy played an important part in the history of the Société nationale de musique, of which his teacher, Franck, had been a founding member in 1871.[9] Like Franck, d'Indy revered German music, and he resented the society's exclusion of non-French music and composers.[9] He became the society's joint secretary in 1885,[3] and succeeded in overturning its French-only rule the following year. The founders of the society, Romain Bussine and Camille Saint-Saëns resigned in protest.[9] Franck refused the formal title of president of the society, but when he died in 1890, d'Indy took the post. His regime, however, alienated a younger generation of French composers, who, led by Maurice Ravel, founded the breakaway Société musicale indépendante in 1910, which attracted leading young composers from France and other countries.[10] In an attempt to further a proposed merger of the two organisations during the First World War d'Indy stepped down as president of the Société nationale to make way for the more "progressive" Gabriel Fauré, but the plan came to nothing.[10]
According to the biographer Robert Orledge, the death of d'Indy's first wife in 1905 removed the stabilising influence in the composer's life, and he became "increasingly vulnerable to politically motivated attacks on the Schola Cantorum and apprehensive of dangerously decadent trends in contemporary music in both France and Germany". His aesthetic ideas, Orledge argues, became "increasingly reactionary and dogmatic" and his political views right-wing and anti-Semitic. He joined the Ligue de la patrie française (League of the French Fatherland) during the Dreyfus affair.[3]
During the First World War d'Indy served on cultural missions to allied countries, and completed his third music drama, La Légende de Saint-Christophe, in Orledge's view "a celebration of traditional Catholic regionalism as opposed to modern liberal democracy and capitalist values".[3] After the war he increased his activities as a conductor, giving concert tours throughout Europe and the US. 1920 he married the much younger Caroline Janson; Orledge writes that this "brought a true creative rebirth, witnessed in the serene Mediterranean-inspired compositions of his final decade".[3]
D'Indy died on 2 December 1931 in his native Paris, aged 80, and was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery.[11]
Few of d'Indy's works are performed regularly in concert halls today. Grove comments that his famed veneration for Beethoven and Franck "has unfortunately obscured the individual character of his own compositions, particularly his fine orchestral pieces descriptive of southern France".[3] Among his best known pieces are the Symphony on a French Mountain Air for piano and orchestra (1886), and Istar (1896), a symphonic poem in the form of a set of variations in which the theme appears only at the end.[1]
d'Indy and a harmonium (11 February 1913)
Among d'Indy's other works are more orchestral pieces, including a Symphony in B♭, a vast symphonic poem, Jour d'été à la montagne, and another, Souvenirs, written on the death of his first wife. The Times said of his music that the influence of Berlioz, Franck, and Wagner is strong in almost all his work, "that of Franck showing itself chiefly in the shapes of his tunes, that of Wagner in their development, and that of Berlioz in their orchestration".[2]
Grove says of his chamber works: "D'Indy's somewhat academic corpus of chamber music (including three completed string quartets) is generally less interesting than his orchestral works". He also wrote piano music (including a Sonata in E minor), songs and a number of operas, including Fervaal (1897) and L'Étranger (1902). His music drama Le Légende de Saint Christophe, based on themes from Gregorian chant, was premiered at the Paris Opéra on 6 June 1920.[2][3]
D'Indy helped revive a number of then largely forgotten Baroque works, for example making his own edition of Monteverdi's opera L'incoronazione di Poppea.[3] D'Indy also contributed to the incipient revival of the works of Antonio Vivaldi, whose sonatas for cello and basso continuo (op. 14) were edited by d'Indy as cello concerti and published by Maurice Senart in 1922.[12] His musical writings include the three-volume Cours de composition musicale as well as studies of Franck and Beethoven.[3]The Times commented that his study of the former was "one of the most vivid and individual of modern French biographies", and the latter, published in 1912, showed "the closeness of the lifelong study which he devoted to that master".[2]
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie, who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an undistinguished student and obtained no diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabaret in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing works, mostly for solo piano, such as his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian sect to which he was briefly attached.
Amédée-Ernest Chausson was a French Romantic composer who died just as his career was beginning to flourish.
Eugène Marie Henri Fouques Duparc was a French composer of the late Romantic period.
The Société nationale de musique was an organisation in late 19th and early 20th century Paris, promoting French music and allowing rising composers to present their works in public. It was founded in the aftermath of France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 on a strong tide of nationalist feeling, and at first excluded all music by non-French composers. In its first 30 years it gave the premieres of works by composers including Saint-Saëns, Chabrier, Franck, Fauré, Dukas and Debussy.
The Schola Cantorum de Paris is a private conservatory in Paris. It was founded in 1894 by Charles Bordes, Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent d'Indy as a counterbalance to the Paris Conservatoire's emphasis on opera.
Henri Gabriel Mulet was a French composer, pipe and reed organist, and cellist.
Marios Varvoglis was a Greek composer.
The Symphony in D minor is the best-known orchestral work and the only mature symphony written by the 19th-century composer César Franck. It employs a cyclic form, with important themes recurring in all three movements.
Félix-Alexandre Guilmant was a French organist and composer. He was the organist of La Trinité from 1871 until 1901. A noted pedagogue, performer, and improviser, Guilmant helped found the Schola Cantorum de Paris. He was appointed as Professor of Organ at the Paris Conservatoire in 1896.
Guy de Lioncourt was a French composer.
Marcel Labey was a French conductor and composer.
Jules Auguste Garcin [Salomon] was a French violinist, conductor and composer of the 19th century.
Antoine Mariotte was a French composer, conductor and music administrator.
Joseph Rodolphe Mathieu was a Canadian composer, pianist, writer on music, and music educator. The Canadian Encyclopedia states, "Considered too avant-garde for his time because of Debussy's influence on his music, Mathieu gained recognition too late to inspire the generation that followed." The pianist Léo-Pol Morin was one of the few important exponents of his work, notably including Mathieu's Chevauchée and Trois Préludes in his concert repertoire. Mathieu's song Un peu d'ombre (1913) was included in a number of recitals given by Marguerite Bériza and Sarah Fischer in Europe.
Marie Blanche Selva was a French pianist, music educator, writer and composer of Spanish origin.
François-Marie DieudonnéMarc, Baron de Ranse was a French pianist, organist, maître de chapelle, choral conductor and composer.
Jean Doyen was a French classical pianist, pedagogue and composer.
Amédée Borsari was a French composer.
Marie Joséphine Claire Prestat (1862–1933) was a French organist, pianist, composer and teacher. She was a native of Paris where she spent her entire life. She is known principally as a composer of organ and piano music, vocal works, and pedagogical texts.
Aperçus désagréables(Unpleasant Glimpses) is a suite for piano four hands composed between 1908 and 1912 by Erik Satie. It shows the early development of his mature style, a product of his studies at the Schola Cantorum de Paris. In performance it lasts about 5 minutes.
↑ "Historique", École de musique Vincent-d'Indy, 2021. Retrieved 15 May 2021
↑ "(11530) d'Indy", International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 15 May 2021
Sources
Blom, Eric (1954). Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (fifthed.). New York: St Martin's Press. OCLC1192249.
Citron, Stephen (1993). Noël and Cole: The Sophisticates. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-508385-9.
McBrien, William (1998). Cole Porter. New York: Knopf. OCLC1148597196.
Templier, Pierre-Daniel (1969). Erik Satie. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. OCLC1034659768.
Further reading
Norman Demuth, Vincent d'Indy: Champion of Classicism (London, 1951)
Steven Huebner, Vincent d'Indy and Moral Order' and 'Fervaal': French Opera at the Fin de Siècle (Oxford, 1999), pp.301–08 and 317–50
Vincent d'Indy (Marie d'Indy, ed.), Vincent d'Indy: Ma Vie. Journal de jeunesse. Correspondance familiale et intime, 1851–1931 (Paris, 2001). ISBN2-84049-240-7
James Ross, 'D'Indy's "Fervaal": Reconstructing French Identity at the Fin-de-Siècle', Music and Letters 84/2 (May 2003), pp.209–40
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
