Emmanuel Chabrier
Emmanuel Chabrier was born in Ambert, France, on January 18, 1841. He was trained as a lawyer; from 1862 to 1880 he was employed at the Ministry of the Interior in Paris. But he had also received a sound musical training with private teachers. Composition began for him in earnest in the 1870’s, with two of his operettas receiving performances in Paris between 1877 and 1879. In 1879 he made a pilgrimage to Germany to hear Wagner’s music dramas whose impact upon him proved so overwhelming that he finally decided to give up his government work and concentrate on music. Returning to Paris in 1880 he published the Pièces pittoresques for piano. Following a visit to Spain he produced in 1883 his first major work for orchestra and realized with it his first major success as a composer—the rhapsody España. He also wrote two operas, Gwendoline produced in 1886, and Le Roi malgré lui introduced one year later. Some of his best writing was for the piano and included such distinguished works as the Habanera, Bourrée fantasque, and Trois valses romantiques. Chabrier became a victim of paralysis in the last two years of his life, and just before his death he began losing his sanity. He died in Paris on September 13, 1894.
While in his operas he revealed his profound indebtedness to the Wagnerian idiom, Chabrier was at his best either in music that interpreted Spain or to which he brought a natural bent for laughter, gaiety, and the grotesque.
España, an orchestral rhapsody, is his most famous composition, as popular in the semi-classical literature as it is in the symphonic repertory. Chabrier wrote it in 1883 after a Spanish holiday, and its première in Paris on November 4 of that year was a sensation. This rhapsody is built from three principal subjects, two borrowed from Spanish folk melodies, and one Chabrier’s own. A nervous rhythm in plucked strings leads to a strongly accented malagueña, first heard in the wind instrument. Different sections take it over before soaring strings arrive with a lyrical jota melody. Chabrier’s own theme, a stately subject for trombones, is then heard, set against the background of the malagueña melody. The French waltz-king, Waldteufel, used Chabrier’s themes from España for one of his most famous waltzes, also entitled España.
The Joyeuse marche (1888) reveals the composer in one of his satirical moods. Chabrier wrote it at first as a piano composition to be used for a sight-reading class at the Bordeaux Conservatory. It proved too difficult to fulfil this function, and Chabrier decided to orchestrate it, calling it Joyeuse marche and presenting it as one of his more serious endeavors. The music is in a burlesque style, believed to be a musical description of drunken musicians staggering home after a festive evening. The work opens with an orchestral flourish, following which the oboe offers a capricious subject. This gaiety is maintained in the lively second theme for the violins.
The Suite pastorale (1880) is an orchestral adaptation of four of the ten piano pieces in Pièces pittoresques. In the first, “Idylle,” a beautiful melody is accompanied by plucked strings. The second, “Danse villageoise” is a country dance in which the lively dance tune is first heard in clarinets. The third piece, “Sous bois” has a pastoral character, while the concluding number, “Scherzo-Valse” is a protracted piece of pulsating music.