Vincent D'Indy

biographical notes from Wikipedia

Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy (27 March 1851 – 2 December 1931) was a French composer and teacher.

D'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age but, to please his family, studied law. However, he decided to be a musician. He became a devoted student of César Franck at the Conservatoire de Paris. As a follower of Franck, d'Indy came to admire what he considered the standards of German symphonism.

Inspired by his own studies with Franck and dissatisfied with the standard of teaching at the Conservatoire de Paris, d'Indy, together with Charles Bordes and Alexandre Guilmant, founded the Schola Cantorum in 1894. D'Indy taught there and later at the Paris Conservatoire until his death. Although d'Indy was often accused of harboring vehement anti-Semitism (like his musical inspiration Wagner), which together with his lifelong monarchist bent led him to join the League de La Patrie française during the Dreyfus Affair in the late 1890s, he nevertheless won respect from fellow musicians opposed to his outlook, such as Camille Saint-Saëns, Claude Debussy, Pierre Monteux, and Charles Münch. Among his many pupils were Leo Arnaud, Erik Satie, Albert Roussel, Alberic Magnard, Isaac Albéniz, Arthur Honegger, Otto Albert Tichy, Darius Milhaud (whose family was Jewish) and Joseph Canteloube (who later wrote d'Indy's biography).

Few of d'Indy's works are performed regularly today. His best known pieces are probably the Symphonie Cévenole or Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français (Symphony on a French Mountain Air) for piano and orchestra (1886), and Istar (1896), a symphonic poem in the form of a set of variations.

Among d'Indy's other works are other orchestral music, chamber music, piano music, songs and a number of operas, including Fervaal (1897) and L'Etranger (1902). His Lied for cello and orchestra, op. 19 was recorded by Julian Lloyd Webber and the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier in 1991. As well as Franck, d'Indy's works show the influence of Berlioz and especially of Wagner (he attended the premiere of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1876).

D'Indy helped revive a number of then largely forgotten early works, for example, making his own edition of Claudio Monteverdi's opera L'Incoronazione di Poppea.

His musical writings include the co-written three-volume Cours de composition musicale (1903-1905), as well as studies of Franck and Beethoven.

D'Indy died where he was born, in Paris.

Notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'indy

Notes on the performers and music:

Daniel Wayenberg (Dutch biog.): http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniël_Wayenberg

Ernest Bour: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Bour:

Ernest Bour (April 20, 1913-June 20, 2001) was a French conductor. Born in Thionville, Bour studied at both the University and the Conservatoire of Strasbourg. His conducting teachers included Fritz Münch and Hermann Scherchen.

After serving as chorus master for the radio choruses of Geneva and Strasbourg, he was appointed conductor of the Orchestre de Mulhouse in 1941. In 1950 he became conductor of the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra and in 1955 of the Strasbourg Opera House. He was principal conductor of the SWF Symphony Orchestra in Baden-Baden from 1964 to 1979.

Bour's repertoire was marked by a concentration on contemporary music. World premières he presided over included works by Bussotti, Ferneyhough, Górecki, Ligeti, Rihm, Stockhausen and Xenakis, and he gave the French premières of Hindemith's Symphony Mathis der Maler and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. His recordings ranged from music of François Couperin to André Jolivet.

Bour died in Strasbourg, aged 88.

Musical notes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonie_sur_un_chant_montagnard_français:

The Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français (English: Symphony on a French Mountain Air), op. 25, written in 1886 by Vincent d'Indy, is virtually the only work by the composer which still receives regular performances today. As indicated by the title, d'Indy took the principal theme from a folk song he heard at Périer overlooking the Cévennes mountains (hence the work's alternative name, Symphonie cévenole). Originally conceived as a Fantaisie for piano and orchestra, the symphony is unusual in that it is scored for a prominent (but never dominant) piano part together with orchestra, and has acquired the label sinfonia concertante from some critics. It consists of three movements and lasts just under half an hour:

• Assez lent - Modérément animé
• Assez modéré, mais sans lenteur
• Animé

The symphony begins with an evocative melody played first by a cor anglais. The main themes of subsequent movements are based on this melody, and as the symphony progresses each subsequent variation becomes more and more like the original version.

Full orchestral score: http://imslp.org/wiki/Symphonie_sur_un_Chant_Montagnard_Français,_Op.25_(Indy,_Vincent_d')

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