
Louis Joseph Diémer (14 February 1843 – 21 December 1919) was a French pianist and composer. He was the founder of the
Société des Instruments Anciens in the 1890s, and also gave recitals on the
harpsichord
A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecÃn; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...
. His output as a composer was extensive, including a
piano concerto
A piano concerto is a type of concerto, a solo composition in the classical music genre which is composed for a piano player, which is typically accompanied by an orchestra or other large ensemble. Piano concertos are typically virtuoso showpiec ...
and a quantity of
salon
Salon may refer to:
Common meanings
* Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments
* French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home
* Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment
Arts and entertainment
* Salon (P ...
pieces.
Life
Diémer was born and died in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
. He studied at the
Paris Conservatoire
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 his teachers included
Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas (; 5 August 1811 – 12 February 1896) was a French composer and teacher, best known for his operas ''Mignon'' (1866) and ''Hamlet'' (1868).
Born into a musical family, Thomas was a student at the Conservatoire de ...
for composition,
Antoine Marmontel
Antoine is a French given name (from the Latin ''Antonius'' meaning 'highly praise-worthy') that is a variant of Danton, Titouan, D'Anton and Antonin.
The name is used in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, West Greenland, Haiti, French Guiana ...
for piano, and
François Benoist
François Benoist (10 September 1794 – 6 May 1878) was a French organist, composer, and pedagogue.
Benoist was born in Nantes. He took his first music lessons under Georges Scheuermann. Benoist studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris and ...
for organ. From the age of twelve, he won several first prizes (''Premiers Prix'') at the Conservatoire, in piano, harmony and accompaniment, counterpoint and fugue, and solfège, and a ''second prix'' in organ.
He quickly built a reputation as a virtuoso and toured with, among others, the violinists
Delphin Alard and
Pablo de Sarasate
Pablo MartÃn Melitón de Sarasate y Navascués (; 10 March 1844 – 20 September 1908), commonly known as Pablo de Sarasate, was a Spanish (Navarrese) violin virtuoso, composer and conductor of the Romantic period. His best known works include ...
.
In 1888, Diémer succeeded Marmontel as professor of piano at the Paris Conservatory. He taught, among others,
Robert Casadesus
Robert Marcel Casadesus (7 April 1899 – 19 September 1972) was a renowned 20th-century French pianist and composer. He was the most prominent member of a distinguished musical family, being the nephew of Henri Casadesus and Marius Casadesus, ...
,
Alfredo Casella
Alfredo Casella (25 July 18835 March 1947) was an Italian composer, pianist and conductor.
Life and career
Casella was born in Turin, the son of Maria (née Bordino) and Carlo Casella. His family included many musicians: his grandfather, a f ...
,
Marcel Ciampi
Marcel Paul Maximin Ciampi (29 May 1891 – 2 September 1980) was a French pianist and teacher. He held the longest tenure in the history of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and also became head of piano classes at the Y ...
,
Alfred Cortot
Alfred Denis Cortot (; 26 September 187715 June 1962) was a French pianist, conductor, and teacher who was one of the most renowned classical musicians of the 20th century. A pianist of massive repertory, he was especially valued for his poeti ...
,
José Cubiles
José Antonio Cubiles Ramos (15 May 1894 5 April 1971) was a noted Spanish pianist, conductor and teacher.
Biography
Cubiles was born in Cádiz in 1894. His pianistic gifts were already apparent by the age of five. He first studied music theory ...
,
Lazare Lévy
Lazare Lévy
Lazare Lévy, also hyphenated as Lazare-Lévy, (18 January 188220 September 1964) was an influential French pianist, organist, composer and pedagogue. As a virtuoso pianist he toured throughout Europe
Europe is a large peninsu ...
,
Robert Lortat,
Yves Nat
Yves Philippe Avit Nat (29 December 1890 – 31 August 1956) was a French pianist and composer.
Biography
Nat was born in Béziers and showed an early aptitude for both piano and composition. By the age of seven he was allowed to improvise eac ...
, and
Édouard Risler
Joseph-Édouard Risler (23 February 1873 – 22 July 1929) was a French pianist.
Biography
Risler was born in Baden-Baden (Germany) of a German mother and an Alsatian father. He studied under Louis Diémer, Théodore Dubois and Émile Decomb ...
. He was also instrumental in promoting the use of historical instruments, giving a series of harpsichord performances as part of the 1889
Universal Exhibition
A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...
and contributing to the founding of the Société des Instruments Anciens.
Works dedicated to Diémer
Several composers dedicated compositions to Diémer. They included
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 p ...
's ''
Symphonic Variations'',
Jules 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' ...
's only
piano concerto
A piano concerto is a type of concerto, a solo composition in the classical music genre which is composed for a piano player, which is typically accompanied by an orchestra or other large ensemble. Piano concertos are typically virtuoso showpiec ...
,
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 C ...
's
5th Piano Concerto, and
Édouard Lalo
Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo (27 January 182322 April 1892) was a French composer. His most celebrated piece is the ''Symphonie espagnole'', a five-movement concerto for violin and orchestra, which remains a popular work in the standard reper ...
's Piano Concerto in F minor.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...
's
3rd Piano Concerto was intended to be dedicated to him.
Recordings
Diémer was also among the earliest pianists to record for the
gramophone
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
. His recordings are said to show the best aspects of the 19th-century French piano school: clarity, point, and control in rapid, detaché passages and limpid
pianissimo
In music, the dynamics of a piece is the variation in loudness between notes or phrases. Dynamics are indicated by specific musical notation, often in some detail. However, dynamics markings still require interpretation by the performer dependin ...
scales
Scale or scales may refer to:
Mathematics
* Scale (descriptive set theory), an object defined on a set of points
* Scale (ratio), the ratio of a linear dimension of a model to the corresponding dimension of the original
* Scale factor, a number w ...
. They clearly attest to Diémer's title in the French press as "the king of the scale and the
trill
TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is an Internet Standard implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and is the application of link-state routing to the VLAN-aware custom ...
.
[Schonberg (1987), p. 287.] They also give evidence to comments made by his pupil
Lazare Lévy
Lazare Lévy
Lazare Lévy, also hyphenated as Lazare-Lévy, (18 January 188220 September 1964) was an influential French pianist, organist, composer and pedagogue. As a virtuoso pianist he toured throughout Europe
Europe is a large peninsu ...
, who himself would become an influence on the French musical scene. Lévy wrote: "The astonishing precision of
iémer'splaying, his legendary trills, the sobriety of his style, made him the excellent pianist we all admired".
[
]
Bibliography
*
* Roger Cotte, Bernard Haultier: "Diémer, Louis (Joseph)", in: ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'' (MGG), biographical part, vol. 5 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2001), cc. 998–1000.
References
External links
*
The French School: Louis Diémer and his Pupils
Retrieved 31 Jul 2013.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Diemer, Louis
1843 births
1919 deaths
19th-century French composers
19th-century classical composers
19th-century French male classical pianists
20th-century French composers
20th-century classical composers
French Romantic composers
French male classical composers
Male classical pianists
Musicians from Paris
Conservatoire de Paris faculty
Conservatoire de Paris alumni
Burials at Montmartre Cemetery
Pupils of Antoine François Marmontel