Fernand Gustave Halphen (18 February 1872 – 16 May 1917) was a French Jewish composer.

Life and career

Fernand Halphen was the son of Georges Halphen, a diamond merchant, and of Henriette Antonia Stern (1836–1905), who was from the Stern banking family. From the age of ten, he studied under the direction of Gabriel Fauré before entering the

Paris Conservatory The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...

where he took a composition course taught by

Ernest Guiraud Ernest is a given name derived from Germanic word ''ernst'', meaning "serious". Notable people and fictional characters with the name include: People *Archduke Ernest of Austria (1553–1595), son of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor *Ernest, M ...

, who also taught

Paul Dukas Paul Abraham Dukas ( or ; 1 October 1865 – 17 May 1935) was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, having abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions. His b ...

, Claude Debussy and Erik Satie. After Guiraud's death in 1892, Halphen studied with Jules Massenet, who also taught

Henri Rabaud Henri Benjamin Rabaud (10 November 187311 September 1949) was a French conductor, composer and pedagogue, who held important posts in the French musical establishment and upheld mainly conservative trends in French music in the first half of th ...

Florent Schmitt Florent Schmitt (; 28 September 187017 August 1958) was a French composer. He was part of the group known as Les Apaches. His most famous pieces are ''La tragédie de Salome'' and ''Psaume XLVII'' (Psalm 47). He has been described as "one of th ...

, Charles Koechlin and

Reynaldo Hahn Reynaldo Hahn (; 9 August 1874 – 28 January 1947) was a Venezuelan-born French composer, conductor, music critic, and singer. He is best known for his songs – '' mélodies'' – of which he wrote more than 100. Hahn was born in Caracas ...

. He won first prize for his fugue in 1895, and the next year won second place for the second Grand

Prix de Rome The Prix de Rome () or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them t ...

with his cantata ''Mélusine'', behind Jules Mouquet and Richard d'Ivry. Fernand Halphen is known principally as a composer. Among his notable works are the one-act opera ''Le Cor Fleuri'' (libretto by Ephraïm Mikhael and André-Ferdinand Hérold), which debuted in the national theatre Opéra-Comique, 10 May 1904, several symphonies, one of which was performed in Paris and in Monte Carlo, a suite for orchestra, the pantomime ''Hagoseida'', the ballet ''Le Réveil du faune'', some chamber music such as a sonata for violin and piano, works for organ as well as songs. Captain of the thirteenth territorial infantry regiment during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, Halphen was killed in action on 16 May 1917.

Personal life

On 15 February 1899, Fernand Halphen married (1878–1963). She also assembled an important collection of paintings including the works of

Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

Pissarro Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies). H ...

and of

Henri Rousseau Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (; 21 May 1844 – 2 September 1910)
at the Renoir Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Re ...

in 1880. The couple had one daughter, Henriette, born on 26 February 1911, and one son, Georges, born 9 March 1913. In 1995, Georges Halphen offered the portrait of his father, painted by Renoir, to the Musée d’Orsay. It was to offer his wife a view which enchanted her, he said, that Fernand Halphen bought the house at la Chapelle-en-Serval, near

Chantilly Chantilly may refer to: Places France *Chantilly, Oise, a city located in the Oise department **US Chantilly, a football club *Château de Chantilly, a historic château located in the town of Chantilly United States * Chantilly, Missou ...

(

Oise Oise ( ; ; pcd, Oése) is a department in the north of France. It is named after the river Oise. Inhabitants of the department are called ''Oisiens'' () or ''Isariens'', after the Latin name for the river, Isara. It had a population of 829,41 ...

) and decided in 1908 to erect a country house in a wooded valley there: the château Mont-Royal. His niece, Germaine (1884-1975) married Baron Édouard de Rothschild of the prominent

Rothschild banking family of France The Rothschild banking family of France (french: Famille banquière Rothschild) is a French banking dynasty founded in 1812 in Paris (at the time in the First French Empire) by James Mayer de Rothschild (1792–1868). James was sent there from ...

Halphen Foundation

Alice Halphen created the Halphen Foundation (''Fondation Halphen'') whose purpose was to help students of composition in the Conservatory to publish and perform their works. The Foundation also created social housing on the Ile St. Louis in Paris, taking advantage of a controversial scheme to demolish one side of an original, seventeenth-century street. 10-12 rue des Deux-Ponts housed around 50 rent-controlled apartments in two blocks dating from 1926 and 1930 and aimed at large families. In the round-ups of Jews at the end of September 1942, all 112 tenants, among them 40 young children, were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. By 2003, the apartment block had deteriorated but still housed low-income tenants, some of whom had lived there for decades, in what is France's single most expensive district for real estate. By 2004, the tenants had all left and developers began a major overhaul, marketing "luxurious, prestigious" one- to four-bedroomed air-conditioned apartments. The first act of the builders renovating the building was to chisel off the coloured mosaic plaque above the main entrance, bearing the words "Fondation Fernand Halphen 1926". No trace of the Foundation's presence remains. In August 2006, a one-bedroom apartment in the building was on sale for 600,000 euros, 39.7 times the annual gross French minimum wage.

Works, editions, recordings

His chief works are: * a Sicilian, a suite for orchestra, 1896 * a symphony, Monte Carlo, 1897 * a sonata for piano and violin, 1899 * "''Le Cor Fleuri''", lyric opera in one act, based on the play by the late Ephraim Micaël He also composed several songs, and pieces for the piano, violin, horn, etc * Mélodies, pieces for piano & chamber music (2CD): Jeff Cohen (piano), Alexis Galpérine (violin),

François Le Roux François Le Roux (born 30 October 1955) is a French baritone. Le Roux began vocal studies at 19 with François Loup, winning prizes in Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro. He was a member of the Lyon Opera Company from 1980 to 1985, before appearing in ...

(baritone), Jean McManama (horn), Clara Novakova (flute),

Sonia Wieder-Atherton Sonia Wieder-Atherton (born 1961) is a Franco-American classical cellist. Life Born in San Francisco of a Romanian mother and an American father of Jewish origin, she grew up in New York and then in Paris where she entered the Conservatoire de ...

(cello). ''Patrimoines musicaux des juifs de France'', vol. 5 (2006). Orphée d'or 2007 of the Académie du Disque Lyrique, and Prix Gabriel Fauré 2007.

References

External links