Dynam-Victor Fumet
Encyclopedia
Dynam-Victor Fumet was a French
composer
and organist
.
, where he studied organ with César Franck
and composition with Ernest Guiraud
. The city of Toulouse voted him a scholarship to finish his studies in Paris, and he was sent off to the capital city accompanied by the municipal band. ..
At first his studies in Paris were pursued with hard work, but once finally freed from his
father's stifling education, he soon began to frequent anarchist groups (Louise Michel
, Prince Kropotkine
, Jean Grave
, Charles Malato
). He continued none-the-less his musical studies at the conservatory, where his fellow students nicknamed him "Dynam", probably both because of the dynamic way he played and because of the way he lived. At 19 he entered the competition to obtain the "Prix de Rome
", was congratulated by Reyer
and complimented by Saint-Saens
, but did not win the prize, perhaps for political reasons : a morning newspaper had denounced his anarchist tendencies. A stinging failure, and scandal in Toulouse: the city decided to cut off the libertarian's
scholarship and his father refused to see him. He still continued his studies at the conservatory, and
César Franck, who loved the youngest of his students and knew he was having financial difficulties, managed to have him hired as accompanist on the organ at the Sainte-Clotilde church where he was principal organist.
For a while, Fumet was the orchestra conductor at the "Chat Noir
", but he soon quit and left the post to his friend, Erik Satie
. It was shortly after this period that he became interested in spiritism and became a well-known medium. After a suicide attempt, from which he miraculously survived, he regained his faith in God, and under the influence of Léon Bloy
regained his faith in Christianity. He became interested in the occult sciences and the Christian kabbalists, and began meeting with people like the Duchess of Pommard, Saint-Yves d'Alveydre
, Stanislas de Guaita
, etc.
During this same period of time he met Verlaine
, with whom he became close friends since they used the informal "tu" forms between them.
After a turbulent voyage to South America where he was hired as a conductor, he came back to Paris and married into a family close to the founder of the Theosophical Society
, Hélène Blavatsky
. Named principal organist at the Sainte-Anne-de-la-Maison-Blanche church, he began a discrete career, even though his improvisations attracted large crowds. It was there that he composed a large number of works for the Church, which he premiered on every important holiday ; unfortunately many of these works have been lost.
This extraordinarily talented musician refused to use what he considered common tricks in his compositions; this did not make his music easy for the general public to understand. On top of that,
possessed by his spiritual calling which gave him, until the end of his life, centers of interest other than his musical career, he soon became completely isolated from the fierce musical profession, which requires constant social interaction.
Dynam-Victor Fumet's works contain all the ambiguities and paradoxes that characterize the
isolated, independent spirits whose sincerity and contempt for fashion ensure their timeless originality. They purposely go beyond classical forms. Fumet indeed, most of the time, invents his own forms. Coming from the incomparable French school to which he owes his ease in the uses of forms and continuous modulation, he possesses a unique sense of harmony, rhythm, and strong and subtle melodies which distinguish him from the major musical trends from before and after the war.
"The purpose of art", he explained in a letter to a friend, "is to humanize universal life, that is to say to make it proportional to man's deposed royalty". He added that "art became a need of love ever since man was no longer as grand as the universe he looks at. He calls the universe to himself, and it is thus that works come into being. One therefore needs eternity to understand it, needs to feel his exile in order to give painful birth to living truth."
At the end of his life, surprised by the institutions' indifference towards his music, this spiritual and refined composer explained, not without humor, that Heaven held against him the excesses that had allowed him to create his works. ..
. His works for organ received the same kind of praise, mentioned in the same magazine by Michel Roubinet as played by Jean-Paul Imbert and by Frédéric Denis, as well as in prestigious publications such as "New Record Guide" or "Fanfare" in the United States.
Renowned French critic Bernard Gavoty, who heard Fumet play, later commented on the composer's work:
Piano : Akiko Ebi
INTEGRAL Classic - INT 221.121
Hommage à Dynam-Victor Fumet (œuvres pour orgue)
Orgue : Frédéric Denis
WERGO - ORG70082
).
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and organist
Organist
An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...
.
Life
Born in Toulouse in 1867, son of a very strict watchmaker, Dynam-Victor Fumet began his musical studies at the municipal Conservatory where his exceptional talents were very quickly recognized, and where he received all the possible prizes. At the age of 16, he entered the Paris National ConservatoryConservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...
, where he studied organ with César Franck
César Franck
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....
and composition with Ernest Guiraud
Ernest Guiraud
Ernest Guiraud was a French composer and music teacher born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is best known for writing the traditional orchestral recitatives used for Bizet's opera Carmen and for Offenbach's opera Les contes d'Hoffmann .- Biography :Guiraud began his schooling in Louisiana under the...
. The city of Toulouse voted him a scholarship to finish his studies in Paris, and he was sent off to the capital city accompanied by the municipal band. ..
At first his studies in Paris were pursued with hard work, but once finally freed from his
father's stifling education, he soon began to frequent anarchist groups (Louise Michel
Louise Michel
Louise Michel was a French anarchist, school teacher and medical worker. She often used the pseudonym Clémence and was also known as the red virgin of Montmartre...
, Prince Kropotkine
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
, Jean Grave
Jean Grave
Jean Grave was an important activist in the French anarchist movement. He was involved with Élisée Reclus' Révolté...
, Charles Malato
Charles Malato
Charles Malato was a French anarchist and writer.He was born to a noble Neapolitan family, his grandfather Count Malato being a Field Marshal and the Commander-in-Chief of the army of the last King of Naples...
). He continued none-the-less his musical studies at the conservatory, where his fellow students nicknamed him "Dynam", probably both because of the dynamic way he played and because of the way he lived. At 19 he entered the competition to obtain the "Prix de Rome
Prix de Rome
The Prix de Rome was a scholarship for arts students, principally of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It was created, initially for painters and sculptors, in 1663 in France during the reign of Louis XIV. It was an annual bursary for promising artists having proved their talents by...
", was congratulated by Reyer
Ernest Reyer
Ernest Reyer, the adopted name of Louis Étienne Ernest Rey, was a French opera composer and music critic .- Biography :...
and complimented by Saint-Saens
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
, but did not win the prize, perhaps for political reasons : a morning newspaper had denounced his anarchist tendencies. A stinging failure, and scandal in Toulouse: the city decided to cut off the libertarian's
scholarship and his father refused to see him. He still continued his studies at the conservatory, and
César Franck, who loved the youngest of his students and knew he was having financial difficulties, managed to have him hired as accompanist on the organ at the Sainte-Clotilde church where he was principal organist.
For a while, Fumet was the orchestra conductor at the "Chat Noir
Le Chat Noir
Le Chat Noir was a 19th-century cabaret, meaning entertainment house, in the bohemian Montmartre district of Paris...
", but he soon quit and left the post to his friend, Erik Satie
Erik Satie
Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...
. It was shortly after this period that he became interested in spiritism and became a well-known medium. After a suicide attempt, from which he miraculously survived, he regained his faith in God, and under the influence of Léon Bloy
Léon Bloy
Léon Bloy , was a French novelist, essayist, pamphleteer and poet.-Biography:Bloy was born in Notre-Dame-de-Sanilhac, in the arondissement of Périgueux, Dordogne. He was the second of six sons of Voltairean freethinker and stern disciplinarian Jean Baptiste Bloy and his wife Anne-Marie Carreau,...
regained his faith in Christianity. He became interested in the occult sciences and the Christian kabbalists, and began meeting with people like the Duchess of Pommard, Saint-Yves d'Alveydre
Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre
Alexandre Saint-Yves, Marquess of Alveydre was a French occultist who adapted the works of Fabre d'Olivet and, in turn, had his ideas adapted by Papus...
, Stanislas de Guaita
Stanislas de Guaita
Stanislas de Guaita was a French poet based in Paris, an expert on esotericism and European mysticism, and an active member of the Rosicrucian Order. He was very celebrated and successful in his time. He was an expert on magic and occultism. He had many disputes with other people who were involved...
, etc.
During this same period of time he met Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
, with whom he became close friends since they used the informal "tu" forms between them.
After a turbulent voyage to South America where he was hired as a conductor, he came back to Paris and married into a family close to the founder of the Theosophical Society
Theosophical Society
The Theosophical Society is an organization formed in 1875 to advance the spiritual principles and search for Truth known as Theosophy. The original organization, after splits and realignments has several successors...
, Hélène Blavatsky
Madame Blavatsky
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , was a theosophist, writer and traveler. Between 1848 and 1875 Blavatsky had gone around the world three times. In 1875, Blavatsky together with Colonel H. S. Olcott established the Theosophical Society...
. Named principal organist at the Sainte-Anne-de-la-Maison-Blanche church, he began a discrete career, even though his improvisations attracted large crowds. It was there that he composed a large number of works for the Church, which he premiered on every important holiday ; unfortunately many of these works have been lost.
Works
It is difficult to understand Fumet's music while ignoring his mysticism, even if his music holds itself up by its forms and intrinsic qualities. The difficulty comes perhaps from its refinement, which excludes the facile effects that please audiences and the general public so easily.This extraordinarily talented musician refused to use what he considered common tricks in his compositions; this did not make his music easy for the general public to understand. On top of that,
possessed by his spiritual calling which gave him, until the end of his life, centers of interest other than his musical career, he soon became completely isolated from the fierce musical profession, which requires constant social interaction.
Dynam-Victor Fumet's works contain all the ambiguities and paradoxes that characterize the
isolated, independent spirits whose sincerity and contempt for fashion ensure their timeless originality. They purposely go beyond classical forms. Fumet indeed, most of the time, invents his own forms. Coming from the incomparable French school to which he owes his ease in the uses of forms and continuous modulation, he possesses a unique sense of harmony, rhythm, and strong and subtle melodies which distinguish him from the major musical trends from before and after the war.
"The purpose of art", he explained in a letter to a friend, "is to humanize universal life, that is to say to make it proportional to man's deposed royalty". He added that "art became a need of love ever since man was no longer as grand as the universe he looks at. He calls the universe to himself, and it is thus that works come into being. One therefore needs eternity to understand it, needs to feel his exile in order to give painful birth to living truth."
At the end of his life, surprised by the institutions' indifference towards his music, this spiritual and refined composer explained, not without humor, that Heaven held against him the excesses that had allowed him to create his works. ..
Selected works
As of 2009, there is no definitive catalogue of Fumet's work. The list below only contains a few of his works, with large omissions in chamber music (15 pieces overall) piano (71 piece) and organ (39 piece) sections.Orchestral
- La lumière sur le sentier
- Le sabbat rustique (1904)
- Le cantique du firmament (1911)
- Transsubstantiation (1913–20)
- "Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani?" (1914–40)
- Les trois âmes (1915–17)
- Le triptyque des légendes (1918)
- Le conciliabule des fleurs (1921)
- Libération (1921)
- Marche funèbre (1922)
- Notre mirage, notre douleur (1922)
- Vénus sortant des eaux (1934)
- Aria (1938)
- Hiératique (1940)
- Le sommeil d’Adam (1940)
- Tourbillon (1940)
- Voie lactée (1941)
- La prison glorifiée (1943)
Masses
- La messe mariale
- La messe du Christ-Roi
- La messe des oiseaux
- Requiem
Dramatic works
- Oratorio Sancta Genovefa (1918)
- Opera Le Charme Maudit (unfinished; manuscript unusable)
Other pieces
- Les glaneuses "Choeur égyptien"
- Joies floréales
- Les anges du soir
- Les voix mystiques
- O doux printemps aimé
- Pater noster
- Un bel ange du ciel
- Il est tout petit
- Les saisons
- Printemps
- Ave Maria
- Cantiques à Marie
Solo vocal
- Berceuse (1890)
- Ave verum (1899)
- Le verbe des nuits (1899)
- O salutaris (1899)
- Un dimanche: Petite légende (1904)
- Je me languis (1907)
- Légende marine (1907)
- Refloraison (1907)
- Sérénade faunesque (1907)
- Trouble d'âme (1907)
- Verbe d'amour: Diction symphonique (1907)
- Sur les ailes de notre amour (1949)
Organ
- Canticum novum (1914)
- Marche des Chevaliers célestes
- Fuga quasi Fantasia
- Transsubstantiation
- Le Voile de Marie
- Adoration
- Le Saint Sacrement
- Adam et Eve
- Aria
- Au firmament
- Au tombeau du Christ
- Feu de Gloire
- La lumière qui vient
- L'endormement du petit Jésus
- Le baiser intérieur
- Le conciliabule des arbres
- Le sommeil des innocents
- Le tourment de Marie
- Les chariots d'Israël
- Litanies d'orgue
- Pâques d'or
- Prélude en mi bémol mineur
- Prélude et Fugue en la bémol majeur
- Prélude printanier
Piano
- Les enlisements d'en-haut (c. 1885)
- Douloureux pèlerinage (c. 1885)
- Les libellules (1899)
- Joie
- 6 études caractéristiques de haute technique musicale (1931)
Reception
All of the CDs devoted to Dynam-Victor Fumet's works have received favorable reviews, and sometimes extremely laudatory ones, whether for his piano works or for his organ works. In Diapason, Jean Roy talks about chefs-d'oeuvres on the recording of his pieces for piano played by the wonderful Japanese pianist Akiko EbiAkiko Ebi
-Biography:Akiko Ebi was born in Osaka. She studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts, and won the piano prize of the 41st Music Competition of Japan. Her international career began with her winning second prize in the 1975 Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris. She continued her...
. His works for organ received the same kind of praise, mentioned in the same magazine by Michel Roubinet as played by Jean-Paul Imbert and by Frédéric Denis, as well as in prestigious publications such as "New Record Guide" or "Fanfare" in the United States.
Renowned French critic Bernard Gavoty, who heard Fumet play, later commented on the composer's work:
Do you know Dynam-Victor Fumet? He was an organist unique to his century. A disciple of César FranckCésar FranckCésar-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....
, he also had a talent for improvisation that transformed him into a genius. When I was young, I heard him once at the organ of the Sainte-Anne-de-la-Maison-Blanche church where he was the principal organist. That day I had one of the most overwhelming emotions of my life. To be spellbound; do you know what that means? Taken, engulfed by a maelstrom, emptied of all personal substance but filled in place with a river of fire that delighted and consumed me. All those who heard Fumet felt impressions similar to mine. His name has never been erased from my memory.
Recordings
L'œuvre pour piano de Dynam-Victor FumetPiano : Akiko Ebi
INTEGRAL Classic - INT 221.121
Hommage à Dynam-Victor Fumet (œuvres pour orgue)
Orgue : Frédéric Denis
WERGO - ORG70082
News
The Sabbat Rustique will be soon premiered by the Cannes-Côte d'Azur Orchestra conducted by Philippe Bender (Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-VenceSaint-Paul, Alpes-Maritimes
Saint-Paul or Saint-Paul-de-Vence is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France. One of the oldest medieval towns on the French Riviera, it is well-known for its modern and contemporary art museums and galleries such as Fondation Maeght which is located nearby.The property...
).