Prince Edmond de Polignac
Encyclopedia
Prince Edmond Melchior Jean Marie de Polignac (19 April 1834 - 8 August 1901) was a French composer
.
, and was the author of the July Ordinances
in 1830, which revoked the Constitution, suspended freedom of the press, and gave the king extraordinary powers, including absolute power in the name of "insuring the safety of the state".
The document resulted in the development of an insurgency and resulted in the "July Revolution
" that ended the reign of the Bourbons
. The king and his family went into exile, and his cabinet members were tried. Jules de Polignac was captured, tried, convicted and condemned in December 1830 to la mort civile: life imprisonment and a complete loss of civil rights. He was incarcerated in the fortress at Ham
.
As his father was legally non-existent, Edmond was listed on his acte de naissance (birth certificate) as the son of 'the Prince called Marquis de Chalançon, presently on a trip'. In 1836 King Louis-Philippe granted a petition for the release of the imprisoned cabinet members on the grounds of their declining physical condition. Jules was released from jail with the proviso that he leave Paris permanently. The family moved to Bavaria, near Landau, where Jules was granted a second princely title by King Ludwig I of Bavaria
, and built a château named "Wildthurn". Edmond received a classical education there, including instruction in Greek, Latin, modern languages, dancing and horseback riding. English, French and German were all spoken regularly in the household. Early on Edmond demonstrated an inclination toward performance and the creative arts, writing plays and comedies for the children's theatre built by his father. His elder brothers mocked him for his frailness and his lack of athleticism; as a sort of recompense, his parents permitted him to take lessons in piano and music theory.
In November 1845 the family returned to France, moving to Saint-Germain-en-Laye
. Two years later, on 30 March 1847, Jules de Polignac died. The remaining family moved to Paris in the rue de Berri, and Edmond continued his education with a preceptor in the Faubourg Saint-Germain
. Edmond by now had determined that he would be a composer, though this dismayed his mother, who felt music was an acceptable hobby for an aristocrat, but not an acceptable profession.
Alphonse Thys was engaged to teach Edmond counterpoint, composition, and solfège. He entered the Conservatoire de Paris
and studied harmony under Henri Reber. His pre-existing frailty, the rigors of the conservatory curriculum, his chronic gastrointestinal problems, and the internal pressures of his concealed and, perhaps, mistrusted homosexuality led to periods of great musical productivity alternating with stretches of illness and inactivity. In 1860 Alfred Beaumont, director of the Opéra-Comique
asked Edmond to supply the music for a libretto by Roger de Beauvoir
. He composed an opéra bouffe, Un Baiser de Duchesse, but Beaumont left the Opéra-Comique before it could be produced. Depression, and family pressure to marry, ensued.
In 1861, Edmond and his brother Alphonse were founding members of the Cercle de l'Union Artistique, formed to promote performances of great music in venues other than theatres. Besides the aristocrats, the club included Gounod
, Berlioz
, Auber
, and Catulle Mendès
. The Cercle supported Wagner
after Tannhäuser
s resounding failure in its 1861 Paris Opera debut.
Edmond began writing for the amateur male choruses (orphéons) which had begun to proliferate in France, revealing a gift for choral composition, and winning first prizes in competitions for orpheonic works in 1865 and 1867. He also began to write for chamber ensembles. Opera, though, was the path to fame, and when the Ministry of Fine Arts mounted a contest in conjunction with the World's Fair
in August 1867 for a new opera on the libretto La Coupe du Roi de Thulé, Edmond, and forty-one other composers, entered. The winner, Eugène-Émile Diaz de la Péna, was a student of the chairman of the judging jury. The losers included Jules Massenet
in second place and Georges Bizet
in seventh place. Edmond's score, ranked fifth, had been rated lowly because its orchestration - calling for two bass clarinet
s - was considered horribly complicated.
Edmond joined other clubs for their social status: the Jockey Club
, the most exclusive, and the Cercle de la rue Royale, a venue for idling, smoking cigars, discussing politics and the stock market. The indolence of the Cercle de la rue Royale, and of Edmond, was caught in James Tissot
's 1868 painting Le Balcon du Cercle de la rue Royale. He buried himself in mystic obsessions and enthusiasms.
In 1875 a new friend entered his life, Comte Robert de Montesquiou
, a beautiful and intelligent man twenty-one years his junior. They shared many interests, and it is possible they began a sexual relationship at that time. In his later years, Montesquiou used his wit to shield himself from sincere emotional interaction. He is remembered as a model for des Esseintes in Huysman's À rebours
, and the Baron de Charlus in Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu
. Through Montesquiou's circle, Polignac made the acquaintance of Élisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe
and of Gabriel Fauré
, and became a member of the Société Nationale de Musique
, where his compositions were performed alongside those of Chausson
, Debussy
, and Fauré
.
In 1879, Polignac independently "discovered" the octatonic scale
, which had been used in Russian folk music for centuries. He used it for his three-part Passion
oratorio, Échos de l'Orient judaïque, and in his incidental music for Salammbô
. These works, though played, proved puzzling to audiences and critics.
, daughter of Isaac Singer
, the sewing machine
tycoon, with her marriage to Prince Louis de Scey-Montbéliard lately annulled, arose. Singer's social status could be improved by marrying a prince, even a poor one. And the arrangement would have other benefits: Winnaretta was lesbian
and not sexually interested in men at all. She was intimately interested in music, however, something the two did have in common. Polignac asked the comtesse Greffulhe to sound out Madame Singer on the subject of a mariage blanc (unconsummated marriage), in which each partner would have their own bed but would share artistic interests. Montesquiou, who collaborated with Winnaretta on some artistic projects, asked her to speak with Madame Greffulhe, and there the arguments were reviewed; her social position, compromised by divorce, would be improved by an alliance with one of the oldest and most distinguished aristocratic families in France; with the thirty-one year age difference, and the predilections of the bride and groom, Winnaretta would be free to lead her personal life as she wished, with no sexual demands from Edmond.
The advantages clear, a friendship and affection grew. In November 1893, Edmond proposed marriage to Winnaretta, and she accepted, a year after the idea had first been broached. On 15 December 1893, the couple was married by the Abbé de Broglie
in the Chapelle des Carmes in Paris. The union received the blessings of Pope Leo XIII
. Montesquiou, who felt Edmond owed him a debt of gratitude for effecting this marriage of convenience, felt slighted when Edmond was not sufficiently effulgent, and the friendship was irrevocably broken.
The marriage freed Edmond to create, and Winnaretta was happy to promote his creations. The happier they became, the more scurrilous the stories Montesquieu would spread about them. Winnaretta became close with Edmond's niece, Armande de Polignac
, who was also a composer and musician. Winnaretta became a patron in public musical circles. With her husband, she hosted a music salon in her renovated atelier. With a vaulted two story ceiling, 12 x 10 meters, and housing a Cavaillé-Coll
organ
and two grand piano
s, the room became a haven for Paris's musical and artistic avant-garde
.
On Tuesdays, her organ evenings were especially sought after, and featured the great performers of the day, including Widor, Gigout
, Fauré
, Vierne
, and Guilmant
. In 1894, Marcel Proust
was introduced to the Polignacs through Montesquiou; as of 1895, he was a regular in the Polignac salon, often attending in the company of his current love interest and mutual friend of the Polignacs, composer Reynaldo Hahn
. Much of Proust's musical "education" took place in the Polignac salon, and his letters to Edmond de Polignac reveal a profound admiration of the Prince's music.
In 1894, Winnaretta produced a performance of Edmond's octatonic compositions at a charity event for the benefit of an orphanage. In 1901, she mounted another "all-Polignac" concert at the Conservatoire.
Through his friendship with Vincent d'Indy
, Edmond became involved with the founding of the Schola Cantorum
. Armande de Polignac was among the school's first students. Shortly before his death, Polignac also collaborated with dancer Isadora Duncan
.
During the Dreyfus Affair
in 1894, Edmond and his brother Camille were staunch Dreyfusards, while most of the rest of the Polignacs and a remarkable number of musicians were anti-Dreyfus.
The time remaining to the couple's marriage was spent in touring Europe, acquiring a palazzo in Venice, and promoting Edmond's compositions. Edmond died of a febrile illness, on 8 August 1901. He was interred in the Singer crypt in Torquay
. His tomb is inscribed "Edmond-Melchior-Jean-Marie, Prince de Polignac, Born 1834, Died 1901, Composer of Music"
After Polignac's death, the Princesse de Polignac became an important musical patron in her own right. She established a prize in music in her husband's name, and commissioned Igor Stravinsky
's Renard
, Manuel de Falla
's El retablo de maese Pedro, Erik Satie
's Socrate
, Francis Poulenc
's Two-Piano and Organ Concertos and Germaine Tailleferre
's Piano Concerto. She also subsidized individuals and organizations, such as Nadia Boulanger
, Clara Haskil
, Arthur Rubinstein
, Vladimir Horowitz
, Ethel Smyth
, Adela Maddison
, the Ballets Russes
, the Opéra de Paris, and the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris. Until 1939, the Polignac salon was the foremost gathering-place for the artistic elite in Paris and Venice, including Jean Cocteau
, Monet, Diaghilev, and Colette
.
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...
.
Heritage, prison sentence
Edmond was a descendant of one of the more illustrious families of France. His grandmother, the duchesse de Polignac, had been the close friend of Queen Marie-Antoinette. His father Auguste Jules Armand Marie, Prince de Polignac (1780–1847) was the Minister of State in the Restoration government of King Charles XCharles X of France
Charles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...
, and was the author of the July Ordinances
July Ordinances
July Ordinances, also known as the Four Ordinances of Saint-Cloud, were a series of decrees set forth by Charles X and Jules Armand de Polignac, the chief minister, in July 1830....
in 1830, which revoked the Constitution, suspended freedom of the press, and gave the king extraordinary powers, including absolute power in the name of "insuring the safety of the state".
The document resulted in the development of an insurgency and resulted in the "July Revolution
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...
" that ended the reign of the Bourbons
House of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...
. The king and his family went into exile, and his cabinet members were tried. Jules de Polignac was captured, tried, convicted and condemned in December 1830 to la mort civile: life imprisonment and a complete loss of civil rights. He was incarcerated in the fortress at Ham
Ham
Ham is a cut of meat from the thigh of the hind leg of certain animals, especiallypigs. Nearly all hams sold today are fully cooked or cured.-Etymology:...
.
Marriages, arts-writing-acting, and homosexuality
Jules de Polignac, who by his first wife Barbara Campbell had had one daughter and one son, by his second wife Mary Charlotte Parkyns (1792–1864), had, in 1830, two sons, and a daughter was born as he began his sentence. Despite the harsh sentence, visitation was allowed, and two more sons were born to Jules while he was imprisoned. Edmond was his last child, born on 19 April 1834.As his father was legally non-existent, Edmond was listed on his acte de naissance (birth certificate) as the son of 'the Prince called Marquis de Chalançon, presently on a trip'. In 1836 King Louis-Philippe granted a petition for the release of the imprisoned cabinet members on the grounds of their declining physical condition. Jules was released from jail with the proviso that he leave Paris permanently. The family moved to Bavaria, near Landau, where Jules was granted a second princely title by King Ludwig I of Bavaria
Ludwig I of Bavaria
Ludwig I was a German king of Bavaria from 1825 until the 1848 revolutions in the German states.-Crown prince:...
, and built a château named "Wildthurn". Edmond received a classical education there, including instruction in Greek, Latin, modern languages, dancing and horseback riding. English, French and German were all spoken regularly in the household. Early on Edmond demonstrated an inclination toward performance and the creative arts, writing plays and comedies for the children's theatre built by his father. His elder brothers mocked him for his frailness and his lack of athleticism; as a sort of recompense, his parents permitted him to take lessons in piano and music theory.
In November 1845 the family returned to France, moving to Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris from the centre.Inhabitants are called Saint-Germanois...
. Two years later, on 30 March 1847, Jules de Polignac died. The remaining family moved to Paris in the rue de Berri, and Edmond continued his education with a preceptor in the Faubourg Saint-Germain
Faubourg Saint-Germain
The Faubourg Saint Germain is an historic district of Paris. The Faubourg has long been known as the favorite home of the French high nobility and hosts many aristocratic Hôtels particuliers...
. Edmond by now had determined that he would be a composer, though this dismayed his mother, who felt music was an acceptable hobby for an aristocrat, but not an acceptable profession.
Alphonse Thys was engaged to teach Edmond counterpoint, composition, and solfège. He entered the Conservatoire de Paris
Conservatoire 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...
and studied harmony under Henri Reber. His pre-existing frailty, the rigors of the conservatory curriculum, his chronic gastrointestinal problems, and the internal pressures of his concealed and, perhaps, mistrusted homosexuality led to periods of great musical productivity alternating with stretches of illness and inactivity. In 1860 Alfred Beaumont, director of the 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...
asked Edmond to supply the music for a libretto by Roger de Beauvoir
Roger de Beauvoir
Roger de Beauvoir was the pen name of French Romantic novelist and playwright Eugène Auguste Roger de Bully . His wit, good-looks and adventurous lifestyle made him well-known in Paris, where he was a friend of Alexandre Dumas, père...
. He composed an opéra bouffe, Un Baiser de Duchesse, but Beaumont left the Opéra-Comique before it could be produced. Depression, and family pressure to marry, ensued.
In 1861, Edmond and his brother Alphonse were founding members of the Cercle de l'Union Artistique, formed to promote performances of great music in venues other than theatres. Besides the aristocrats, the club included Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
, Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
, Auber
Daniel Auber
Daniel François Esprit Auber was a French composer.-Biography:The son of a Paris print-seller, Auber was born in Caen in Normandy. Though his father expected him to continue in the print-selling business, he also allowed his son to learn how to play several musical instruments...
, and Catulle Mendès
Catulle Mendès
Catulle Mendès was a French poet and man of letters.Of Portuguese Jewish extraction, he was born in Bordeaux. He early established himself in Paris and promptly attained notoriety by the publication in the Revue fantaisiste of his Roman d'une nuit, for which he was condemned to a month's...
. The Cercle supported Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
after Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser (opera)
Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...
s resounding failure in its 1861 Paris Opera debut.
Edmond began writing for the amateur male choruses (orphéons) which had begun to proliferate in France, revealing a gift for choral composition, and winning first prizes in competitions for orpheonic works in 1865 and 1867. He also began to write for chamber ensembles. Opera, though, was the path to fame, and when the Ministry of Fine Arts mounted a contest in conjunction with the World's Fair
World's Fair
World's fair, World fair, Universal Exposition, and World Expo are various large public exhibitions held in different parts of the world. The first Expo was held in The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, United Kingdom, in 1851, under the title "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All...
in August 1867 for a new opera on the libretto La Coupe du Roi de Thulé, Edmond, and forty-one other composers, entered. The winner, Eugène-Émile Diaz de la Péna, was a student of the chairman of the judging jury. The losers included 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...
in second place and Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
in seventh place. Edmond's score, ranked fifth, had been rated lowly because its orchestration - calling for two bass clarinet
Bass clarinet
The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...
s - was considered horribly complicated.
Jockey Club
The Jockey Club is the largest commercial organisation in British horseracing. Although no longer responsible for the governance and regulation of the sport, it owns 14 of Britain's famous racecourses, including Aintree, Cheltenham and Newmarket, amongst other concerns such as the National Stud and...
, the most exclusive, and the Cercle de la rue Royale, a venue for idling, smoking cigars, discussing politics and the stock market. The indolence of the Cercle de la rue Royale, and of Edmond, was caught in James Tissot
James Tissot
James Jacques Joseph Tissot was a French painter, who spent much of his career in Britain.-Biography:Tissot was born in Nantes, France. In about 1856, he began study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Hippolyte Flandrin and Lamothe, and became friendly with Edgar Degas and James Abbott...
's 1868 painting Le Balcon du Cercle de la rue Royale. He buried himself in mystic obsessions and enthusiasms.
In 1875 a new friend entered his life, Comte Robert de Montesquiou
Robert de Montesquiou
Marie Joseph Robert Anatole, comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac , was a French aesthete, Symbolist poet, art collector and dandy....
, a beautiful and intelligent man twenty-one years his junior. They shared many interests, and it is possible they began a sexual relationship at that time. In his later years, Montesquiou used his wit to shield himself from sincere emotional interaction. He is remembered as a model for des Esseintes in Huysman's À rebours
À rebours
À rebours is a novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans...
, and the Baron de Charlus in Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu
In Search of Lost Time
In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its considerable length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." The novel is widely...
. Through Montesquiou's circle, Polignac made the acquaintance of Élisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe
Elisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe
Marie Anatole Louise Élisabeth, Countess Greffulhe , was a renowned beauty, and queen of the salons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain in Paris....
and of Gabriel Fauré
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...
, and became a member of the Société Nationale de Musique
Société Nationale de Musique
The Société Nationale de Musique was founded on February 25, 1871 to promote French music and to allow young composers to present their music in public...
, where his compositions were performed alongside those of Chausson
Ernest Chausson
Amédée-Ernest Chausson was a French romantic composer who died just as his career was beginning to flourish.-Life:Ernest Chausson was born in Paris into a prosperous bourgeois family...
, 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 Fauré
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...
.
In 1879, Polignac independently "discovered" the octatonic scale
Octatonic scale
An octatonic scale is any eight-note musical scale. Among the most famous of these is a scale in which the notes ascend in alternating intervals of a whole step and a half step, creating a symmetric scale...
, which had been used in Russian folk music for centuries. He used it for his three-part Passion
Passion (Christianity)
The Passion is the Christian theological term used for the events and suffering – physical, spiritual, and mental – of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion...
oratorio, Échos de l'Orient judaïque, and in his incidental music for Salammbô
Salammbô
Salammbô may refer to:*Salammbô , the original novel by Gustave Flaubert*Salammbô , an unfinished opera, based on Flaubert's novel, on which Modest Mussorgsky worked between 1863 and 1866...
. These works, though played, proved puzzling to audiences and critics.
Meeting and marriage with Winnaretta Singer
By 1892, Polignac, 57, inept with money and impoverished through investments in a series of get-rich-quick schemes, was destitute; his nephews helped him with loans, but noted that desperate action was needed. The solution they suggested was marriage to a woman of appropriate means. Polignac discussed the matter with Montesquiou, and Montesquiou with his cousin Élisabeth Greffulhe, and out of these conversations the name of Winnaretta Eugenie SingerWinnaretta Singer
Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac was an American musical patron and heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune.-Early Life and Family:...
, daughter of Isaac Singer
Isaac Singer
Isaac Merritt Singer was an inventor, actor, and entrepreneur. He made important improvements in the design of the sewing machine and was the founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company...
, the sewing machine
Sewing machine
A sewing machine is a textile machine used to stitch fabric, cards and other material together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolution to decrease the amount of manual sewing work performed in clothing companies...
tycoon, with her marriage to Prince Louis de Scey-Montbéliard lately annulled, arose. Singer's social status could be improved by marrying a prince, even a poor one. And the arrangement would have other benefits: Winnaretta was lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
and not sexually interested in men at all. She was intimately interested in music, however, something the two did have in common. Polignac asked the comtesse Greffulhe to sound out Madame Singer on the subject of a mariage blanc (unconsummated marriage), in which each partner would have their own bed but would share artistic interests. Montesquiou, who collaborated with Winnaretta on some artistic projects, asked her to speak with Madame Greffulhe, and there the arguments were reviewed; her social position, compromised by divorce, would be improved by an alliance with one of the oldest and most distinguished aristocratic families in France; with the thirty-one year age difference, and the predilections of the bride and groom, Winnaretta would be free to lead her personal life as she wished, with no sexual demands from Edmond.
The advantages clear, a friendship and affection grew. In November 1893, Edmond proposed marriage to Winnaretta, and she accepted, a year after the idea had first been broached. On 15 December 1893, the couple was married by the Abbé de Broglie
Auguste-Théodore-Paul de Broglie
Abbé Auguste-Théodore-Paul de Broglie was professor of apologetics at the Institut Catholique in Paris, and writer on apologetic subjects....
in the Chapelle des Carmes in Paris. The union received the blessings of Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII , born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci to an Italian comital family, was the 256th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, reigning from 1878 to 1903...
. Montesquiou, who felt Edmond owed him a debt of gratitude for effecting this marriage of convenience, felt slighted when Edmond was not sufficiently effulgent, and the friendship was irrevocably broken.
The marriage freed Edmond to create, and Winnaretta was happy to promote his creations. The happier they became, the more scurrilous the stories Montesquieu would spread about them. Winnaretta became close with Edmond's niece, Armande de Polignac
Armande de Polignac
Armande de Polignac, Comtesse de Chabannes was a French composer, the niece of Prince Edmond de Polignac and Princess Winnaretta de Polignac, the patron of Ravel, Stravinsky and Milhaud...
, who was also a composer and musician. Winnaretta became a patron in public musical circles. With her husband, she hosted a music salon in her renovated atelier. With a vaulted two story ceiling, 12 x 10 meters, and housing a Cavaillé-Coll
Aristide Cavaillé-Coll
Aristide Cavaillé-Coll was a French organ builder. He is considered by many to be the greatest organ builder of the 19th century because he combined both science and art to make his instruments...
organ
Pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...
and two grand piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
s, the room became a haven for Paris's musical and artistic avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
.
On Tuesdays, her organ evenings were especially sought after, and featured the great performers of the day, including Widor, Gigout
Eugène Gigout
Eugène Gigout was a French organist and a composer of European late-romantic music for organ.-Biography:Gigout was born in Nancy, and died in Paris....
, Fauré
Faure
Faure or Fauré is a French family name and may refer to:People:* Edgar Faure, French politician* Élie Faure, French art historian and essayist* Émile Alphonse Faure, lead battery pioneer* Cédric Fauré, French football striker...
, Vierne
Louis Vierne
Louis Victor Jules Vierne was a French organist and composer.-Life:Louis Vierne was born in Poitiers, Vienne, nearly blind due to congenital cataracts, but at an early age was discovered to have an unusual gift for music. Louis Victor Jules Vierne (8 October 1870 – 2 June 1937) was a French...
, and Guilmant
Alexandre Guilmant
Félix-Alexandre Guilmant was a French organist and composer.- Short biography :Guilmant was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer...
. In 1894, Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
was introduced to the Polignacs through Montesquiou; as of 1895, he was a regular in the Polignac salon, often attending in the company of his current love interest and mutual friend of the Polignacs, composer 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....
. Much of Proust's musical "education" took place in the Polignac salon, and his letters to Edmond de Polignac reveal a profound admiration of the Prince's music.
In 1894, Winnaretta produced a performance of Edmond's octatonic compositions at a charity event for the benefit of an orphanage. In 1901, she mounted another "all-Polignac" concert at the Conservatoire.
Through his friendship with Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy was a French composer and teacher.-Life:Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed him on to Antoine François Marmontel and...
, Edmond became involved with the founding of the Schola Cantorum
Schola Cantorum
The Schola Cantorum de Paris is a private music school in Paris. It was founded in 1894 by Charles Bordes, Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent d'Indy as a counterbalance to the Paris Conservatoire's emphasis on opera...
. Armande de Polignac was among the school's first students. Shortly before his death, Polignac also collaborated with dancer Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan was a dancer, considered by many to be the creator of modern dance. Born in the United States, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. In the United States she was popular only in New York, and only later in her life...
.
During the Dreyfus Affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
in 1894, Edmond and his brother Camille were staunch Dreyfusards, while most of the rest of the Polignacs and a remarkable number of musicians were anti-Dreyfus.
The time remaining to the couple's marriage was spent in touring Europe, acquiring a palazzo in Venice, and promoting Edmond's compositions. Edmond died of a febrile illness, on 8 August 1901. He was interred in the Singer crypt in Torquay
Torquay
Torquay is a town in the unitary authority area of Torbay and ceremonial county of Devon, England. It lies south of Exeter along the A380 on the north of Torbay, north-east of Plymouth and adjoins the neighbouring town of Paignton on the west of the bay. Torquay’s population of 63,998 during the...
. His tomb is inscribed "Edmond-Melchior-Jean-Marie, Prince de Polignac, Born 1834, Died 1901, Composer of Music"
After Polignac's death, the Princesse de Polignac became an important musical patron in her own right. She established a prize in music in her husband's name, and commissioned 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 Renard
Renard (Stravinsky)
Renard, Histoire burlesque chantée et jouée is a one-act chamber opera-ballet by Igor Stravinsky, written in 1916. The Russian text by the composer was based on Russian folk tales from the collection by Alexander Afanasyev.The full Russian name of the piece is: Ба́йка про лису́, петуха́, кота́, да...
, Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu was a Spanish Andalusian composer of classical music. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century....
's El retablo de maese Pedro, 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...
's Socrate
Socrate
Socrate is a work for voice and piano by Erik Satie. First published in 1919 for voice and piano, in 1920 a different publisher reissued the piece "revised and corrected". A third version of the work exists, for small orchestra and voice, for which the manuscript has disappeared and which is...
, Francis Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
's Two-Piano and Organ Concertos and Germaine Tailleferre
Germaine Tailleferre
Germaine Tailleferre was a French composer and the only female member of the famous composers' group Les Six.-Biography:...
's Piano Concerto. She also subsidized individuals and organizations, such as Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
, Clara Haskil
Clara Haskil
Clara Haskil was a Romanian classical pianist, renowned as an interpreter of the classical and early romantic repertoire....
, Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein KBE was a Polish-American pianist. He received international acclaim for his performances of the music of a variety of composers...
, Vladimir Horowitz
Vladimir Horowitz
Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz was a Russian-American classical virtuoso pianist and minor composer. His technique and use of tone color and the excitement of his playing were legendary. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.-Life and early...
, Ethel Smyth
Ethel Smyth
Dame Ethel Mary Smyth, DBE was an English composer and a leader of the women's suffrage movement.- Early career :...
, Adela Maddison
Adela Maddison
Katharine Mary Adela Maddison, née Tindal , usually known as Adela Maddison, was a British composer of operas, ballets, instrumental music and songs. She was also a concert producer...
, 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...
, the Opéra de Paris, and the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris. Until 1939, the Polignac salon was the foremost gathering-place for the artistic elite in Paris and Venice, including Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, Monet, Diaghilev, and Colette
Colette
Colette was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette . She is best known for her novel Gigi, upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.-Early life and marriage:Colette was born to retired military officer Jules-Joseph...
.
External links
- Site officiel d'antonio de la gandara at www.lagandara.fr