FROM: AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE 890 Broadway New York, New York 10003 (212) 477-3030

ERNEST CHAUSSON

Ernest Chausson was born in Paris to a prosperous bourgeois family At 25, Chausson began attending ’s composition classes at the Paris Conservatoire. He had already composed some piano pieces and songs, however, the earliest manuscripts that have been preserved are those corrected by

Massenet. In 1882 and 1883, Chausson made the pilgrimage to Bayreuth to attend the of Wagner.

On the first of these journeys he went to see the premiere of .

Chausson’s work is commonly divided into three periods. The first was dominated by

Massenet and exhibits fluid and elegant melodies. The second period, dating from 1886, is marked by a more dramatic character, deriving partly from his contacts with the artistic milieux in which he moved. The third period dates from his father’s death in 1894 and was influenced by his reading of the symbolist poets and Russian literature, particularly Turgenev, and .

Chausson’s work is deeply original, but it does reflect some technical influences of both Franck and Wagner. His compositional idiom bridges the gap between the Romanticism of Massenet and Franck and the Impressionism of Debussy. He completed one , (). His orchestral output was comparatively small, but significant. The works of his that involve include the

Symphony in B-Flat, his sole symphony, Poème for violin and orchestra, an important piece in the violin repertoire and the dramatic mélodie, Poème de l’amour et la Mer.

From 1885 until his death in 1899, Chausson was secretary of the Société Nationale de

Musique. He received many of the Paris artistic elite in his salon, including the ,

Gabriel Fauré, and Isaac Albéniz, the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, the Russian novelist and

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CHAUSSON – Page 2 playwright and the impressionist painter . Chausson also assembled an important collection of impressionist art.

At the age of 44, Chausson died as a result of an accident. He is buried in Père Lachaise

Cemetery in Paris.

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Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia