French Classical Music
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French Classical Music
French classical music began with the sacred music of the Roman Catholic Church, with written records predating the reign of Charlemagne. It includes all of the major genres of sacred and secular, instrumental and vocal music. French classical styles often have an identifiably national character, ranging from the clarity and precision of the music of the late Renaissance music to the sensitive and emotional Impressionistic styles of the early 20th century. Important French composers include Pérotin, Machaut, Du Fay, Ockeghem, Josquin, Lully, Charpentier, Couperin, Rameau, Leclair, Grétry, Méhul, Auber, Berlioz, Alkan, Gounod, Offenbach, Franck, Lalo, Saint-Saëns, Delibes, Bizet, Chabrier, Massenet, Widor, Fauré, d'Indy, Chausson, Debussy, Dukas, Vierne, Duruflé, Satie, Roussel, Hahn, Ravel, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, Auric, Messiaen, Françaix, Dupré, Dutilleux, Xenakis, Boulez, Guillou, Grisey, and Murail. Definition Classical music usu ...
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Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization.O'Collins, p. v (preface). The church consists of 24 ''sui iuris'' churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies located around the world. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the chief pastor of the church. The bishopric of Rome, known as the Holy See, is the central governing authority of the church. The administrative body of the Holy See, the Roman Curia, has its principal offices in Vatican City, a small enclave of the Italian city of Rome, of which the pope is head of state. The core beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The Catholic Church teaches that it is th ...
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D'Indy
Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy (; 27 March 18512 December 1931) was a French composer and teacher. His influence as a teacher, in particular, was considerable. He was a co-founder of the Schola Cantorum de Paris and also taught at the Paris Conservatoire. His students included Albéric Magnard, Albert Roussel, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, and Erik Satie, as well as Cole Porter. 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 ...
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Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Urbain Fauré (; 12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his ''Pavane (Fauré), Pavane'', Requiem (Fauré), Requiem, ''Sicilienne (Fauré), Sicilienne'', Fauré Nocturnes, nocturnes for piano and the songs Trois mélodies, Op. 7 (Fauré), "Après un rêve" and Clair de lune (Fauré), "Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmony, harmonically and melody, melodically complex style. Fauré was born into a cultured but not especially musical family. His talent became clear when he was a young boy. At the age of nine, he was sent to the École Niedermeyer de Paris, Ecole Niedermeyer music college in Paris, where he w ...
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Widor
Charles-Marie-Jean-Albert Widor (21 February 1844 – 12 March 1937) was a French organist, composer and teacher of the mid-Romantic era, most notable for his ten organ symphonies. His Toccata from the fifth organ symphony has become one of the best known and most often performed works for organ. As of 2022, he is the longest-serving organist of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, a role he held for 63 years (January 1870 – 31 December 1933). He also was organ professor at the Paris Conservatory from 1890 to 1896 (following César Franck) and then he became professor of composition at the same institution, following Théodore Dubois. Widor was a prolific composer, writing music for organ, piano, voice and ensembles. Apart from his ten organ symphonies, he also wrote three symphonies for orchestra and organ, several songs for piano and voice, four operas and a ballet. He was one of the first composers to use the term "symphony" for some of his organ compositions, helped in this by the or ...
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Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are ''Manon'' (1884) and ''Werther'' (1892). He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music. While still a schoolboy, Massenet was admitted to France's principal music college, the Paris Conservatoire. There he studied under Ambroise Thomas, whom he greatly admired. After winning the country's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome, in 1863, he composed prolifically in many genres, but quickly became best known for his operas. Between 1867 and his death forty-five years later he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets. Massenet had a good sense of the th ...
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Chabrier
Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier (; 18 January 184113 September 1894) was a French Romantic music, Romantic composer and pianist. His Bourgeoisie, bourgeois family did not approve of a musical career for him, and he studied law in Paris and then worked as a civil servant until the age of thirty-nine while immersing himself in the modernist artistic life of the French capital and composing in his spare time. From 1880 until his final illness he was a full-time composer. Although known primarily for two of his orchestral works, ''España (Chabrier), España'' and ''Joyeuse marche'', Chabrier left a List of operas and operettas by Emmanuel Chabrier, corpus of operas (including ''L'étoile (opera), L'étoile''), songs, and piano music, but no symphonies, concertos, quartets, sonatas, or religious or liturgical music. His lack of academic training left him free to create his own musical language, unaffected by established rules, and he was regarded by many later composers as an important inno ...
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Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire. During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he began many thea ...
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Leo Delibes
Leo or Léo may refer to: Acronyms * Law enforcement officer * Law enforcement organisation * ''Louisville Eccentric Observer'', a free weekly newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky * Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity Arts and entertainment Music * Leo (band), a Missouri-based rock band that was founded in Cleveland, Ohio * L.E.O. (band), a band by musician Bleu and collaborators Film * ''Leo'' (2000 film), a Spanish film by José Luis Borau * ''Leo'' (2002 film), a British-American drama film * ''Leo'', a 2007 Swedish film by Josef Fares * ''Leo'' (2012 film), a Kenyan film * Leo the Lion (MGM), mascot of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie studio Television * Leo Awards, a British Columbian television award * "Leo", an episode of ''Being Erica'' * Léo, fictional lion in the animation '' Animal Crackers'' * ''Léo'', 2018 Quebec television series created by Fabien Cloutier Companies * Leo Namibia, former name for the TN Mobile phone network in Namibia * L ...
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Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (; 9 October 183516 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic music, Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Piano Concerto No. 2 (Saint-Saëns), Second Piano Concerto (1868), the Cello Concerto No. 1 (Saint-Saëns), First Cello Concerto (1872), ''Danse macabre (Saint-Saëns), Danse macabre'' (1874), the opera ''Samson and Delilah (opera), Samson and Delilah'' (1877), the Violin Concerto No. 3 (Saint-Saëns), Third Violin Concerto (1880), the Symphony No. 3 (Saint-Saëns), Third ("Organ") Symphony (1886) and ''The Carnival of the Animals'' (1886). Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy; he made his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine, Paris, La Madeleine, the official church of the Second French Empire, Fren ...
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César Franck
César-Auguste Jean-Guillaume Hubert Franck (; 10 December 1822 – 8 November 1890) was a French Romantic composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher born in modern-day Belgium. He was born in Liège (which at the time of his birth was part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands). He gave his first concerts there in 1834 and studied privately in Paris from 1835, where his teachers included Anton Reicha. After a brief return to Belgium, and a disastrous reception of an early oratorio ''Ruth'', he moved to Paris, where he married and embarked on a career as teacher and organist. He gained a reputation as a formidable musical improviser, and travelled widely within France to demonstrate new instruments built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. In 1858, he became organist at the Basilica of St. Clotilde, Paris, a position he retained for the rest of his life. He became professor at the Paris Conservatoire in 1872; he took French nationality, a requirement of the appointment. Afte ...
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