Maurice Emmanuel, Essai sur l'orchestique grecque, Παρίσι 1895, σσ. 329, με πέντε πίνακες και 600 σχήματα.
MAURICE EMMANUEL (1862 – 1938)
Essai sur l’orchestrique grecque (thèse). Université de Paris 1895 ; Paris 1895 ; traduction en anglais 1916)
Grèce, art gréco-romain. Dans A. Lavignac & L. de La Laurencie (éditeurs), «Encyclopédie de la musique et dictionnaire du Conservatoire» (I, 1) 1921, p. 377–537
Il prend sa licence à la Sorbonne, et il écrit ses thèses de doctorat sur l' Orchestique grecque et l' Éducation du danseur grec (1895), qu'il avait illustrées lui-même de ses dessins. Il se lie avec ses maîtres, Louis Havet, Gaston Paris, Maxime Collignon.
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Emmanuel, (Marie François) Maurice
(b Bar-sur-Aube, 2 May 1862; d Paris, 14 Dec 1938). French composer and musicologist. In 1869 his family moved to Beaune, and the landscape and monuments of Burgundy instilled in Emmanuel a love of nature and the visual arts, which was encouraged by his mother, a skilled and perceptive artist. Here Emmanuel interested himself in folksong and frequent visits to the Hôtel-Dieu in Beaune stimulated his feeling for the beauty of the liturgy. Both of these factors played an important part in the evolution of his music. He passed his baccalauréat at Dijon and, following the encouragement of a local composer, Charles, Marquis d’Ivry, entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1880. Here his teachers were Savart (solfège), Dubois (harmony), Bourgault-Ducoudray (history) and Delibes (composition). He also studied classics, poetics, philology and history of art at the Sorbonne and the Ecole du Louvre, gaining the licence ès lettres in 1887. His free approach to rhythm and the introduction of medieval modes into his early works (notably the Cello Sonata op.2, cast in the Phrygian mode) met with strong censure from Delibes who branded his Ouverture pour un conte gai ‘baroque and unperformable’ and forbade his entry for the Prix de Rome. As a result Emmanuel studied privately with the more liberal Ernest Guiraud and so came into close contact with Debussy.
In 1896, after a viva voce examination involving dancers from the Opéra and ambitious projections by Jules Marey, Emmanuel was awarded the doctorat ès lettres for his thesis on ancient Greek dance, a comprehensive study which stressed its freedom and eurhythmic qualities in contrast with the greater rigour of the contemporary French dance, in which the mimetic element was almost entirely absent. After a report on the state of music in German universities, the Collège de France decided in 1898 to create the post of lecturer in musical history for Emmanuel, but vigorous opposition from Berthelot forced it to abandon this idea, and Emmanuel, in the absence of other more congenial employment, spent the period until 1904 lecturing on the history of art at secondary level. He was then appointed maître de chapelle at Ste Clotilde, but his revival of Gregorian chant led to his dismissal in 1906. In 1909 he was appointed lecturer in the history of music at the Paris Conservatoire in succession to Bourgault-Ducoudray, continuing his predecessor’s pioneering interest in folksong and the ancient modes. He held the post until his retirement in 1936; his pupils included Migot, Casadesus and Messiaen.
Emmanuel was unusually self-critical, and of the 73 works he composed between 1877 and 1938, he destroyed all but 30. His compositions reflect his strong views on the ‘tyranny’ of the major scale, the conventional cadence, the dominant 7th and the bar-line. As Koechlin wrote, ‘he used modes through taste and natural instinct; he thought modally’. Like Koechlin, he demonstrated how modality and folksong could be used constructively in 20th-century music. While his prose works are perceptive and scholarly in the extreme, there is nothing pedantic about his compositions, which are remarkable for their virility and concision, and their polymodal and polyrhythmic originality.
His eight purely orchestral works (including the overture to Salamine and the prologue to Prométhée enchaîné) cover the whole of a career which was planned with extreme care. None of these was performed before 1920. Apart from his Suite française, each is accompanied by a literary ‘argument’, although only in his last work, Le poème du Rhône, did he approach the symphonic poem beloved of his contemporaries d’Indy, Roussel and Koechlin. Each work entailed a new approach: Zingaresca recreates the improvisations of a Hungarian gypsy orchestra; the First Symphony expresses the sentiments felt on the death of the aviator son of his friend Louis de Launay, making no attempt to follow Classical sonata form; the short, programmatic Second Symphony was suggested by the Breton legend of King Grallon of Ys.
Emmanuel’s three major stage works (opp. 16, 21 and 28) reflect his great sympathy with ancient Greek civilization, and his knowledge of Greek rhythms and methods enabled him to go beyond Fauré’s refined interpretation of ancient beauty, nobility and simplicity to achieve powerful, tautly constructed dramas of considerable intensity. One of his greatest gifts was the creation of balanced, large-scale sections filled with a wealth of detail which is more remarkable for its harmony and rhythm than for its melody. Even so, his stage works deserve to be revived. Most important among his pieces for lesser forces are the six piano sonatinas written between 1893 and 1925, of which the fourth is based on Hindu modes and prefigures Messiaen. It is through these striking and consistently inspired piano works that Emmanuel is most widely known.
One of the few genuine independents in French music, he sought to liberate it from all that limited its scope, deriving his material from sources almost entirely outside the Classical and Romantic traditions.
Writings
Essai sur l’orchestrique grecque (diss., U. of Paris, 1895; Paris, 1895; Eng. trans., 1916)
Histoire de la langue musicale (Paris, 1911, 2/1928)
Traité de l’accompagnement modal des psaumes (Lyons, 1913)
Preface to R. Bertrand: Coins de Bourgogne (Beaune, 1919)
‘Grèce: art gréco-romain’, EMDC, I/i (1921), 377–537
with R. Moissenet: La polyphonie sacrée (Oullins, 1923)
Preface to P. Brunold: Traité des signes et agréments employés par les clavecinistes français des XVII et XVIII siècles (Lyons, 1925/R)
Preface to A. Dandelot: Résumé d’histoire de la musique (Paris, 1925)
Pelléas et Mélisande de Claude Debussy (Paris, 1926, 2/1950)
César Franck (Paris, 1930)
Preface to R. Bertrand: La montagne de Beaune (Beaune, 1932)
Anton Reicha (Paris, 1936)
Editions
with M. Teneo J.-P. Rameau: Oeuvres complètes, xvii (Paris, 1913), xviii (Paris, 1924)
Bibliography
G. Larroumet: ‘Sur une conférence de Maurice Emmanuel, consacrée à la danse grecque’, Le temps (9 Feb 1897)
M. Brillant: ‘Maurice Emmanuel’, Le correspondant (25 Aug 1929)
R. Dumesnil: La musique contemporaine en France (Paris, 1929)
E. Vuillermoz: ‘Etudes sur Salamine’, Candide (27 June 1929)
A. Cortot: La musique française de piano, ii (Paris, 1932, 3/1948/R)
M. Béclard d’Harcourt: ‘L’oeuvre musical de Maurice Emmanuel’, ReM, nos.152–5 (1935), 22–33
R. Dumesnil: ‘Maurice Emmanuel, musicien français’, Le flambeau (16 Nov 1935)
L. Laloy: ‘Un musicien de grande classe: Maurice Emmanuel’, Page musicale (23 Dec 1938)
J. Prod’homme: ‘Maurice Emmanuel’, RMI, xliii (1939), 105–8
R. de Souza: ‘Maurice Emmanuel et le rythme poétique’, Mercure de France, ccxci (1939), 693–700
H.F. Stewart: ‘Maurice Emmanuel’, ML, xx (1939), 278–80
N. Dufourcq: Petite histoire de la musique en Europe (Paris, 1942, 11/1973)
R. Bernard: ‘Maurice Emmanuel’, Information musicale (16 Jan 1942)
P. Landormy: La musique française après Debussy (Paris, 1943)
G. Samazeuilh: Musiciens de mon temps (Paris, 1945)
R. Dumesnil: La musique en France entre les deux guerres 1919–1939 (Geneva, 1946)
ReM, no.206 (1947) [Emmanuel issue]
J. Lonchampt: ‘Musique bourguignonne de Beaune à Auxerre’, Journal musical français, no.3 (1951), 2, 16
R. Dumesnil: ‘Maurice Emmanuel et la musique modale’, Le monde (17 Feb 1955)
R. Stevenson: ‘Maurice Emmanuel: a Belated Apologia’, ML, xl (1959), 154–65
H. Gagnebin: ‘Un grand compositeur oublié: Maurice Emmanuel’, Tribune de Genève (12 Oct 1963)
J. Durbin: ‘Hommage à Maurice Emmanuel’, Croix (9 Nov 1963)
J. Bruyr: ‘Hommage à Maurice Emmanuel’, Guide du concert (28 Nov 1963)
M.-C. Valette: Contribution à l’étude de l’oeuvre musical de Maurice Emmanuel (diss., U. of Strasbourg, 1972) [on chbr music, Trois odelettes anacréontiques, Sonatines, Salamine]
E.A. Carlson: Maurice Emmanuel and the Six Sonatinas for Piano (diss., Boston U., 1974)
A. Michel: ‘Modernité de Maurice Emmanuel’, Education musicale, no.242 (1977), 71–3
F. Emmanuel: ‘Maurice Emmanuel et son temps (1862–1938): lettres inédites’, Revue internationale de musique française, no.11 (1983), 7–92
A. Hoérée, A. Surchamp and M. Emmanuel: ‘Maurice Emmanuel’, Zodiaque, no.139 (1984), 2–38
ReM, nos.410–11 (1988) [expansion of 1947 Emmanuel issue]
F. Emmanuel, ed.: ‘Maurice Emmanuel et les musiciens suisses’, Revue musicale de Suisse romande, xliii/2 (1990), 89–95
Robert Orledge
Grove