Fernand Halphen
Encyclopedia
Fernand Gustave Halphen was a French
Jewish composer
.
Fernand Halphen was the son of Georges Halphen, a diamond merchant, and of Henriette Antonia Stern (died in 1905), who was from a family of bankers. From the age of ten, he studied under the direction of Gabriel Fauré
before entering the Paris Conservatory where he took a composition course taught by Ernest Guiraud
, who also taught Paul Dukas
, Claude Debussy
and Erik Satie
. After Guiraud's death in 1892, Halphen studied with Jules Massenet
, who also taught Henri Rabaud
, Florent Schmitt
, Charles Koechlin
and Reynaldo Hahn
. He won first prize for his fugue in 1895, and the next year won second place for the second Grand Prix de Rome
with his cantata Mélusine, behind Jules Mouquet
and Richard d’Ivry.
Fernand Halphen is known principally as a composer. Notably, he wrote a symphony in four parts, which debuted in Paris and in Monte-Carlo, as well as a suite for orchestra, a pantomime: Hagoseida, a ballet: Le Réveil du faune, and several other symphonies and melodies. He was also interested in chamber music, and wrote a Sonata for violin and piano, and composed a few pages for organ. Finally, he was the author of an opera of one act: Le Cor Fleuri (féerie lyrique, with libretto by Ephraïm Mikhael and André-Ferdinand Hérold), which debuted in the national theatre Opéra-Comique
10 May 1904.
Captain of the thirteenth territorial infantry regiment during World War I
, Halphen died for his country on 16 May 1917.
On 15 February 1899, Fernand Halphen married Alice Koenigswarter (1878–1963). She created the Halphen Foundation (Fondation Halphen) whose purpose was to help students of composition in the Conservatory to publish and debut their works.
The Foundation also created social housing on the Ile St-Louis in Paris, taking advantage of a controversial scheme to demolish one side of an original, seventeenth-century street. 10-12 rue des Deux-Ponts housed around 50 rent-controlled apartments in two blocks dating from 1926 and 1930 and aimed at large families. In the round-ups of Jews at the end of September 1942, all 112 tenants, among them 40 young children, were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
By 2003, the apartment block had deteriorated but still housed low-income tenants, some of whom had lived there for decades, in what is France's single most expensive district for real estate. By 2004, the tenants had all left and developers began a major overhaul, marketing 'luxurious, prestigious' one-four bedroomed air-conditioned apartments. The first act of the builders renovating the building was to chisel off the coloured mosaic plaque above the main entrance, bearing the words "Fondation Fernand Halphen 1926." No trace of the Foundation's presence remains. In August 2006, a one-bedroom apartment in the building was on sale for 600,000 euros, 39.7 times the annual gross French minimum wage.
Alice also assembled an important collection of paintings including the works of Monet
, Pissarro
and of Henri Rousseau
, as well as the portrait of Fernand Halphen which was painted by Renoir in 1880.
The couple had one daughter, Henriette, born on 26 February 1911, and one son, Georges, born 9 March 1913. In 1995 Georges Halphen offered the portrait of his father, painted by Renoir, to the Musée d’Orsay. It was to offer his wife a view which enchanted her, he said, that Fernand Halphen bought the house at la Chapelle-en-Serval, near Chantilly
(Oise) and decided in 1908 to erect a country house in a wooded valley there: the château Mont-Royal
.
He has also composed several songs, and pieces for the piano, violin, horn, etc.
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...
Jewish 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...
.
Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Urbain Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th century composers...
before entering the Paris Conservatory where he took a composition course taught by 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...
, who also taught Paul Dukas
Paul Dukas
Paul Abraham Dukas was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man, of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, and he abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions...
, Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
and 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...
. After Guiraud's death in 1892, Halphen studied with Jules Massenet
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...
, who also taught Henri Rabaud
Henri Rabaud
Henri Rabaud was a French conductor and composer, who held important posts in the French musical establishment and upheld mainly conservative trends in French music in the first half of the twentieth century....
, Florent Schmitt
Florent Schmitt
Florent Schmitt was a French composer.-Early life:A Lorrainer, born in Meurthe-et-Moselle, Schmitt originally took music lessons in Nancy with the local composer Gustave Sandré. Subsequently he entered the Paris Conservatoire. There he studied with Gabriel Fauré, Jules Massenet, Théodore Dubois,...
, Charles Koechlin
Charles Koechlin
Charles Louis Eugène Koechlin was a French composer, teacher and writer on music. He was a political radical all his life and a passionate enthusiast for such diverse things as medieval music, The Jungle Book of Rudyard Kipling, Johann Sebastian Bach, film stars , travelling, stereoscopic...
and Reynaldo Hahn
Reynaldo Hahn
Reynaldo Hahn was a Venezuelan, naturalised French, composer, conductor, music critic and diarist. Best known as a composer of songs, he wrote in the French classical tradition of the mélodie....
. He won first prize for his fugue in 1895, and the next year won second place for the second Grand 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...
with his cantata Mélusine, behind Jules Mouquet
Jules Mouquet
Jules Mouquet was a French composer.- Biography :Jules Mouquet studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Théodore Dubois and Xavier Leroux. In 1896, he won the prestigious Rome Prize with his cantata Mélusine. He went on to win another two composition prizes, the Prix Trémont and the Prix Chartier...
and Richard d’Ivry.
Fernand Halphen is known principally as a composer. Notably, he wrote a symphony in four parts, which debuted in Paris and in Monte-Carlo, as well as a suite for orchestra, a pantomime: Hagoseida, a ballet: Le Réveil du faune, and several other symphonies and melodies. He was also interested in chamber music, and wrote a Sonata for violin and piano, and composed a few pages for organ. Finally, he was the author of an opera of one act: Le Cor Fleuri (féerie lyrique, with libretto by Ephraïm Mikhael and André-Ferdinand Hérold), which debuted in the national theatre Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...
10 May 1904.
Captain of the thirteenth territorial infantry regiment during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Halphen died for his country on 16 May 1917.
On 15 February 1899, Fernand Halphen married Alice Koenigswarter (1878–1963). She created the Halphen Foundation (Fondation Halphen) whose purpose was to help students of composition in the Conservatory to publish and debut their works.
The Foundation also created social housing on the Ile St-Louis in Paris, taking advantage of a controversial scheme to demolish one side of an original, seventeenth-century street. 10-12 rue des Deux-Ponts housed around 50 rent-controlled apartments in two blocks dating from 1926 and 1930 and aimed at large families. In the round-ups of Jews at the end of September 1942, all 112 tenants, among them 40 young children, were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
By 2003, the apartment block had deteriorated but still housed low-income tenants, some of whom had lived there for decades, in what is France's single most expensive district for real estate. By 2004, the tenants had all left and developers began a major overhaul, marketing 'luxurious, prestigious' one-four bedroomed air-conditioned apartments. The first act of the builders renovating the building was to chisel off the coloured mosaic plaque above the main entrance, bearing the words "Fondation Fernand Halphen 1926." No trace of the Foundation's presence remains. In August 2006, a one-bedroom apartment in the building was on sale for 600,000 euros, 39.7 times the annual gross French minimum wage.
Alice also assembled an important collection of paintings including the works of Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
, Pissarro
Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...
and of Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier , a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector...
, as well as the portrait of Fernand Halphen which was painted by Renoir in 1880.
Chantilly, Oise
Chantilly is a small city in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune in the department of Oise.It is in the metropolitan area of Paris 38.4 km...
(Oise) and decided in 1908 to erect a country house in a wooded valley there: the château Mont-Royal
Château Mont-Royal
The Château Mont-Royal is a French chateau in La Chapelle-en-Serval, Oise, built for Fernand Halphen by the architect Guillaume Tronchet.It was to offer his wife a view which enchanted her, he said, that Fernand Halphen bought the house at la Chapelle-en-Serval, near Chantilly and decided in 1908...
.
Works
His chief works are:- a SicilianSicilySicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
, a suite for orchestra, 1896; - a symphony, Monte Carlo, 1897;
- a sonata for piano and violin, 1899;
- "Le Cor Fleuri", lyric opera in one act, based on the play by the late Ephraim Micaël.
He has also composed several songs, and pieces for the piano, violin, horn, etc.