Gabriel Pierné
Encyclopedia
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...
, conductor, 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...
.
Biography
Gabriel Pierné was born in MetzMetz
Metz is a city in the northeast of France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers.Metz is the capital of the Lorraine region and prefecture of the Moselle department. Located near the tripoint along the junction of France, Germany, and Luxembourg, Metz forms a central place...
in 1863. His family moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to escape the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, gaining first prizes for solfège
Solfege
In music, solfège is a pedagogical solmization technique for the teaching of sight-singing in which each note of the score is sung to a special syllable, called a solfège syllable...
, piano, organ, counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
and fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
. He won the French 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...
in 1882, with his cantata Edith. His teachers included Antoine François Marmontel
Antoine François Marmontel
Antoine François Marmontel was a French pianist, teacher and musicographer.Marmontel entered the Paris Conservatory in 1827. His teachers were Pierre Zimmerman in pianoforte, Victor Dourlen in harmony, Jacques Fromental Halévy in fugue and Jean-François Le Sueur in composition...
, Albert Lavignac
Albert Lavignac
Albert Lavignac was a French music scholar, known for his essays on theory, and a minor composer.-Biography:Lavignac was borin in Paris and studied with Antoine François Marmontel, François Benoist and Ambroise Thomas at the Conservatoire de Paris, where later he taught harmony...
, Émile Durand
Émile Durand
Émile Durand was a French musical theorist, teacher and composer. He was better known for his theoretical writings than for his compositions.-Biography:...
, 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....
(for the organ) and 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...
(for composition).
He succeeded 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....
as organist at Saint Clotilde Basilica in Paris from 1890 to 1898. He himself was succeeded by another distinguished Franck pupil, Charles Tournemire
Charles Tournemire
Charles Tournemire was a French composer and organist, notable partly for his improvisations, which were often rooted in the music of Gregorian chant...
. Associated for many years with Édouard Colonne
Édouard Colonne
Édouard Juda Colonne was a French conductor and violinist, who was a champion of the music of Berlioz and other eminent 19th-century composers.-Life and career:...
's concert series, the Concerts Colonne
Concerts Colonne
The Colonne Orchestra is a French symphony orchestra, founded in 1873 by the violinist and conductor Édouard Colonne.-History:While leader of the Opéra de Paris orchestra, Édouard Colonne was engaged by the publisher Georges Hartmann to lead a series of popular concerts which he founded under the...
, from 1903, Pierné became chief conductor of this series in 1910.
His most notable early performance was the world premiere of Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
's ballet The Firebird
The Firebird
The Firebird is a 1910 ballet created by the composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer Michel Fokine. The ballet is based on Russian folk tales of the magical glowing bird of the same name that is both a blessing and a curse to its captor....
, at the Ballets Russes
Ballets Russes
The Ballets Russes was an itinerant ballet company from Russia which performed between 1909 and 1929 in many countries. Directed by Sergei Diaghilev, it is regarded as the greatest ballet company of the 20th century. Many of its dancers originated from the Imperial Ballet of Saint Petersburg...
, Paris, on 25 June 1910. He remained in the post until 1933 (when Paul Paray
Paul Paray
Paul Paray was a French conductor, organist and composer. He is best remembered in the United States for being the resident conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for more than a decade. He married Yolande Falck on 25 August 1944.-Biography:Paray's father, Auguste, was a sculptor and organist...
took over his duties).
He died in Ploujean
Ploujean
Ploujean is a former commune of Finistère which is now part of Morlaix since February 22, 1959.The church was built in the 15th century. It has been listed as a Monument historique since 1914 by the French Ministry of Culture, and its organ, built by Thomas Dallam II in the 17th century, has been...
, Finistère
Finistère
Finistère is a département of France, in the extreme west of Brittany.-History:The name Finistère derives from the Latin Finis Terræ, meaning end of the earth, and may be compared with Land's End on the opposite side of the English Channel...
, in 1937.
Music
Pierné wrote several operas and choral and symphonic pieces, as well as a good deal of chamber music. His most famous composition is probably the oratorioOratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
La Croisade des Enfants. Also notable are such shorter works as his March of the Little Lead Soldiers, which once enjoyed substantial popularity (not only in France) as an encore; the comparably popular Marche des petits Faunes is from his ballet Cydalise et le Chèvre-pied. His chamber work, Introduction et variations sur une ronde populaire, for saxophone quartet is a standard in saxophone quartet repertoire.
His discovery and promotion of the work of Ernest Fanelli
Ernest Fanelli
Ernest Fanelli was a French composer of Italian descent who is best known for sparking a controversy about the origins of Impressionist music when his composition Tableaux Symphoniques was first performed in 1912...
in 1912 led to a controversy over the origins of impressionist music
Impressionist music
Impressionism in music was a tendency in European classical music, mainly in France, which appeared in the late nineteenth century and continued into the middle of the twentieth century. Similarly to its precursor in the visual arts, musical impressionism focuses on a suggestion and an atmosphere...
.
Honours
He received the French Légion d'honneurLégion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
in 1900. He became member of the Academie des Beaux Arts in 1924. The Square Gabriel Pierné in Paris is named for him.
Orchestral works
- Serenade for Strings
- Trois pièces formant suite de concert, 1883
- Suite No. 1, 1883
- Envois de Rome (Suite – Ouverture – Les Elfes), ca. 1885
- Fantaisie-ballet, for piano and orchestra, 1885
- Piano concerto, Op. 12, 1886
- Scherzo-caprice, for piano and orchestra, 1890
- Ballet de cour, 1901
- Concertstück, for harp and orchestra, 1903
- Poème symphonique, for piano and orchestra, 1903
- Two suites from the incidental music for RamuntchoIncidental music for RamuntchoThe Incidental music for Ramuntcho was written by Gabriel Pierné in 1908 for a staged version of Pierre Loti's 1897 novel Ramuntcho, which was presented at the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris...
, 1910 - Paysages franciscains, Op. 43, 1920
- Fantasie basques, for harp and orchestra, 1927
- Divertissement sur un thème pastoral, Op. 49, 1932
- Gulliver au pays de Lilliput, 1935
- Viennoise, suite, Op. 49bis, 1935
Works for band
- Marche des petits soldats de plomb (March of the Little Lead Soldiers)
- Marche solennelle (1899) (dedicated to Gustave Wettge)
- Petit Gavotte et Farandole
- Ramuntcho
Operas
- La coupe enchantée, 1895
- Vendée (Drame lyrique), 1897
- La fille de Tabarin (opéra comique), 1901
- On ne badine pas avec l'amour (opéra comique), 1910
- Sophie Arnould (opéra comique), 1927
- Fragonard, 1934
Ballets
- Le Collier de Saphir, 1891
- Les joyeuses commères de Paris, 1892
- Bouton-d'or, 1895
- Salome, 1895 (premier starring Loie Fuller at the Comedie-Parisienne, Paris March 4 1895 closed 27 April.
- Cydalise et le chèvre-pied, 1923
- Impressions de music-hall, 1927
- Giration, 1934
- Images, 1935
Music for theatre
- Yanthis, 1894
- La princesse lontaine, 1895
- La Samaritaine, 1897
- RamuntchoIncidental music for RamuntchoThe Incidental music for Ramuntcho was written by Gabriel Pierné in 1908 for a staged version of Pierre Loti's 1897 novel Ramuntcho, which was presented at the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris...
, 1908 - Les Cathédrales, 1915
Solo works
- Impromptu-Caprice, Op. 9 (harp)
- Piece in G Minor (oboe)
- Solo de Concert (bassoon and piano)