Maurice Delage
Maurice Delage (13 November 1879 – 21 September 1961) was a French composer and pianist.
Biography
Delage was born and died in Paris. He first worked as a clerk for a maritime agency in Paris, and later as a fishmonger in Boulogne. He also served for a time in the French army, before embarking on a music career in his twenties.[1] A student of Ravel, who proclaimed him one of the supreme French composers of his day,[2] and member of Les Apaches, he was influenced by travels to India and Japan in 1912, when he accompanied his father on a business trip.[3] Ravel's "La vallée des cloches" from Miroirs was dedicated to Delage.
Delage's best known piece is Quatre poèmes hindous (1912–1913).[4] His Ragamalika (1912–1922), based on the classical music of India, is significant in that it calls for prepared piano; the score specifies that a piece of cardboard be placed under the strings of the B-flat in the second line of the bass clef to dampen the sound, imitating the sound of an Indian drum.
Selected works
- Poèmes symphoniques
- Conté par la mer (1908)
- Les Bâtisseurs de ponts (1913) after Rudyard Kipling
- Overture to Ballet de l'avenir (1923)
- Contrerimes (1931), orchestration of pieces for piano
- Bateau ivre (1954) after the poem by Arthur Rimbaud
- Cinq danses symphoniques (1958)
- Chamber music
- String quartet (1949)
- Suite française for string quartet (1958)
- Mélodies (voice and piano)
- Trois mélodies (1909)
- Ragamalika, chant tamoul (1914)
- Trois poèmes (1922)
- Ronsard à sa muse (1924)
- Les Colombes (1924)
- La Chanson de ma mie (1924)
- Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1924)
- Sobre las Olas (1924) on a poem by Jean Cocteau
- Toute allégresse (1925) on a poem by Paul-Jean Toulet
- Mélodies (voice with instrumental ensemble)
- Quatre poèmes hindous (1912)
- Sept haï-kaïs (1924) for soprano and chamber orchestra (to be sung without a break between songs)
- Préface du Kokinshū (tanka by Ki no Tsurayuki), dedicated to Mrs. Louis Laloy ;
- Les herbes de l’oubli…, dedicated to Andrée Vaurabourg (future spouse of Arthur Honegger) ;
- Le coq…, dedicated to Jane Bathori (première performer of the work) ;
- La petite tortue…, dedicated to Mrs. Fernand Dreyfus (the mother of Roland-Manuel) ;
- La lune d’automne…, dedicated to Suzanne Roland-Manuel (the spouse of Roland-Manuel) ;
- Alors…, dedicated to Denise Jobert (the daughter of the editor) ;
- L’été…, dedicated to Georgette Garban.
- Deux fables de La Fontaine (1931), Le Corbeau et le Renard, and La Cigale et la Fourmi
- Trois chants de la jungle (1934) after Kipling
- In morte di un samouraï (1950) on a collection of haïkaïses and tankas by Pierre Pascal
- Trois poèmes désenchantés (1955)
- Music for solo piano
- Schumann... (1918)
- Contrerimes (1927)
References
- ^ M D Calvocoressi (1933) Musicians gallery; music and ballet in Paris and London, Faber and Faber Ltd, London OCLC 2535873
- ^ "Program notes", Contemporary Directions Ensemble, Concert, University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance Miscellaneous Publications (1980)
- ^ Jann Pasler (1986) Confronting Stravinsky: Man, Musician, and Modernist, p.278, University of California Press ISBN 978-0-52005-403-5
- ^ Georges Jean-Aubry (1917) An Introduction to French Music, p.67, Cecil Palmer & Hayward, London
Sources
- Pasler, Jann (2000). "Race, Orientalism, and Distinction in the Wake of the 'Yellow Peril'." In Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, ed. Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.
External links
- Maurice Delage works at Classical Archives
- Maurice Delage, at Maurice Ravel Frontispice, archived at the Wayback Machine on 18 September 2017 from the original. [Retrieved 17 November 2008]
- Cypres bio
- Free scores by Maurice Delage at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
