Claude Arrieu
Encyclopedia
Claude Arrieu was a prolific French
composer.
and Mozart, and later, Igor Stravinsky
. However, Gabriel Fauré
, Claude Debussy
, and Maurice Ravel
provided her the most inspiration.
Dreaming of a career as a virtuoso
, she entered the Conservatoire de Paris
in 1924. She became a piano student of Marguerite Long
and took classes from Georges Caussade
, Noël Gallon
, Jean Roger-Ducasse
and Paul Dukas
. In 1932, she received first prize for composition
.
From this point on, she developed her personal style. She was particularly interested in the evolution of musical language and various technical means available. In 1935, she joined the French Radio Broadcasting Program Service (« Service des programmes de la Radiodiffusion française »), where she was employed to 1947. She participated in the development of a wide range of programming, including Pierre Schaeffer’s experimental radio
series, La Coquille à planètes (1943–1944). In 1949, she won the Prix Italia
of the RAI
for her score Frédéric Général.
She wrote music in all styles, composing works of "pure music" as well as music for theatre
, film
, radio, and music hall
, contributing her own voice to every situation, dramatic or comic, with a particular taste for rhythm
and imagery. Her musical gift is typified by its ease of flow and elegance of structure. Vivacity, clarity of expression, and a natural feel for melody
are her hallmarks.
Arrieu composed concerto
s for piano
(1932), two pianos (1934), two concertos for violin
(1938 and 1949), for flute
(1946), trumpet
and strings (1965). She also wrote Petite suite en cinq parties (1945), "Concerto for wind quintet and strings" (1962), Suite funambulesque ("Tightrope Walker's Suite") (1961), and "Variations for classical strings" (1970).
Among her important chamber music
compositions are her "Trio for Woodwinds" (1936), "Sonatina for Two Violins" (1937), and "Clarinet Quartet" (1964). Her "Sonatine for flute and piano" made a big impression at its first radio performance in 1944 by Jean-Pierre Rampal
and H. Means.
Although Arrieu’s instrumental works strongly contributed to her legacy, it is vocal music that most markedly distinguish her career. Voice inspired her to set many poems to music, including those by Joachim du Bellay
, Louise Levêque de Vilmorin
, Louis Aragon
, Jean Cocteau
, Jean Tardieu
, Stéphane Mallarmé
, and Paul Éluard
. Examples include Chansons Bas for voice and piano based on poems by Mallarmé (1937); Candide, radio music on texts by Jean Tardieu based on Voltaire
; and À la Libération, cantata of seven poems on love in war, on poems by Paul Éluard
Her first opéra bouffe
, Cadet Roussel with a libretto
by André de la Tourasse after Jean Limozin, was presented at the Opéra de Marseille on 2 October 1953. In 1960, La princesse de Babylone ("Princess of Babylon"), an opéra bouffe after the work of Voltaire adapted by Pierre Dominica, was praised for its lyrical originality and spectacle.
Noteworthy film score
s include: Les Gueux au paradis (1946), Crèvecoeur (1955), Niok l'éléphant (1957), Marchands de rien (1958), Le Tombeur (1958), and Julie Charles (for television
, 1974).
Pierre Schaeffer writes: "Claude Arrieu is part of her time by virtue of a presence, an instinct of efficiency, a bold fidelity. Whatever the means, concertos or songs, music for official events, concerts for the elite or for a crowd of spectators, she delivered emotion through an impeccable technique and a spiritual vigilance, finding the path to the heart."
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.
Biography
Claude Arrieu was a classically trained musician from an early age. She became particularly interested in works by BachBạch
Bạch is a Vietnamese surname. The name is transliterated as Bai in Chinese and Baek, in Korean.Bach is the anglicized variation of the surname Bạch.-Notable people with the surname Bạch:* Bạch Liêu...
and Mozart, and later, Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
. However, 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...
, 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 Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
provided her the most inspiration.
Dreaming of a career as a virtuoso
Virtuoso
A virtuoso is an individual who possesses outstanding technical ability in the fine arts, at singing or playing a musical instrument. The plural form is either virtuosi or the Anglicisation, virtuosos, and the feminine form sometimes used is virtuosa...
, she 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...
in 1924. She became a piano student of Marguerite Long
Marguerite Long
Marguerite Long was a French pianist and teacher.Marguerite Marie-Charlotte Long was born in Nîmes. She studied with Henri Fissot at the Paris Conservatoire, taking a premier prix in 1891, and privately with Antoine François Marmontel...
and took classes from Georges Caussade
Georges Caussade
Georges Caussade was a French composer, music theorist, and music educator. Born in Port Louis, Mauritius, he joined the faculty of the Conservatoire de Paris in 1905 as a teacher of counterpoint. He began teaching fugue at the school as well in 1921; a position his wife, composer Simone...
, Noël Gallon
Noël Gallon
Noël Gallon was a French composer and music educator. His compositional output includes several choral works and vocal art songs, 10 preludes, a Toccata for piano, a Sonata for flute and bassoon, a Fantasy for piano and orchestra, an Orchestral Suite, and the lyrical drama Paysans et Soldats...
, Jean Roger-Ducasse
Jean Roger-Ducasse
Jean Jules Amable Roger-Ducasse was a French composer.-Biography:Jean Roger-Ducasse studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Emile Pessard and André Gedalge, and was the star pupil and close friend of Gabriel Fauré...
and 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...
. In 1932, she received first prize for composition
Musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
.
From this point on, she developed her personal style. She was particularly interested in the evolution of musical language and various technical means available. In 1935, she joined the French Radio Broadcasting Program Service (« Service des programmes de la Radiodiffusion française »), where she was employed to 1947. She participated in the development of a wide range of programming, including Pierre Schaeffer’s experimental radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
series, La Coquille à planètes (1943–1944). In 1949, she won the Prix Italia
Prix Italia
The Prix Italia is an international Italian television, radio-broadcasting and Website award. It was established in 1948 by RAI - Radiotelevisione Italiana in Capri...
of the RAI
RAI
RAI — Radiotelevisione italiana S.p.A. known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane, is the Italian state owned public service broadcaster controlled by the Ministry of Economic Development. Rai is the biggest television company in Italy...
for her score Frédéric Général.
She wrote music in all styles, composing works of "pure music" as well as music for theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
, film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, radio, and music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
, contributing her own voice to every situation, dramatic or comic, with a particular taste for rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
and imagery. Her musical gift is typified by its ease of flow and elegance of structure. Vivacity, clarity of expression, and a natural feel for melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
are her hallmarks.
Arrieu composed concerto
Concerto
A concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...
s for 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...
(1932), two pianos (1934), two concertos for violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
(1938 and 1949), for flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
(1946), trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
and strings (1965). She also wrote Petite suite en cinq parties (1945), "Concerto for wind quintet and strings" (1962), Suite funambulesque ("Tightrope Walker's Suite") (1961), and "Variations for classical strings" (1970).
Among her important chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
compositions are her "Trio for Woodwinds" (1936), "Sonatina for Two Violins" (1937), and "Clarinet Quartet" (1964). Her "Sonatine for flute and piano" made a big impression at its first radio performance in 1944 by Jean-Pierre Rampal
Jean-Pierre Rampal
Jean-Pierre Louis Rampal was a French flautist. He has been personally "credited with returning to the flute the popularity as a solo classical instrument it had not held since the 18th century."-Early years:...
and H. Means.
Although Arrieu’s instrumental works strongly contributed to her legacy, it is vocal music that most markedly distinguish her career. Voice inspired her to set many poems to music, including those by Joachim du Bellay
Joachim du Bellay
Joachim du Bellay was a French poet, critic, and a member of the Pléiade.-Biography:He was born at the Château of La Turmelière, not far from Liré, near Angers, being the son of Jean du Bellay, Lord of Gonnor, first cousin of the cardinal Jean du Bellay and of Guillaume du Bellay.Both his parents...
, Louise Levêque de Vilmorin
Louise Leveque de Vilmorin
Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin was a French novelist, poet and journalist.Born in the family château at Verrières-le-Buisson, Essonne, a suburb southwest of Paris, she was heir to a great French seed company fortune, that of Vilmorin. She was afflicted with a slight limp that became a personal trademark...
, Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon , was a French poet, novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt.- Early life :...
, 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...
, Jean Tardieu
Jean Tardieu
Jean Tardieu was a French artist, musician, poet and dramatic author. He earned a degree in literature and worked for a publishing house. He published several poetry collections in the 1930s before starting to write for the stage...
, Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
, and Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...
. Examples include Chansons Bas for voice and piano based on poems by Mallarmé (1937); Candide, radio music on texts by Jean Tardieu based on Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
; and À la Libération, cantata of seven poems on love in war, on poems by Paul Éluard
Her first opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffe is a genre of late 19th-century French operetta, closely associated with Jacques Offenbach, who produced many of them at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens that gave its name to the form....
, Cadet Roussel with a libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
by André de la Tourasse after Jean Limozin, was presented at the Opéra de Marseille on 2 October 1953. In 1960, La princesse de Babylone ("Princess of Babylon"), an opéra bouffe after the work of Voltaire adapted by Pierre Dominica, was praised for its lyrical originality and spectacle.
Noteworthy film score
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
s include: Les Gueux au paradis (1946), Crèvecoeur (1955), Niok l'éléphant (1957), Marchands de rien (1958), Le Tombeur (1958), and Julie Charles (for television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, 1974).
Pierre Schaeffer writes: "Claude Arrieu is part of her time by virtue of a presence, an instinct of efficiency, a bold fidelity. Whatever the means, concertos or songs, music for official events, concerts for the elite or for a crowd of spectators, she delivered emotion through an impeccable technique and a spiritual vigilance, finding the path to the heart."
Selected works for stage and broadcast
- Noé, 1931–1934 (imagerie musicale, 3 acts, A. Obey), f.p. Strasbourg Opéra, 29 January 1950
- Cadet Roussel, 1938–1939 (opéra bouffe, 5 acts, André de la Tourasse after Jean Limozin), f.p. Marseilles, Opéra, 2 October 1953
- La Coquille à planètes (opéra radiophonique, Pierre Schaeffer), RTF (Radiodiffusion-Télévision FrançaiseRadiodiffusion-Télévision FrançaiseRadiodiffusion-Télévision Française was the French national public broadcasting organization established on 9 February 1949 to replace the post-war "Radiodiffusion Française" , which had been founded in 1945...
), 1944 - Le deux rendez-vous, 1948 (opéra comique, P. Bertin after G. de Nerval), RTF, 22 June 1951
- Le chapeau à musique (opéra enfantine, 2 acts, Tourasse and P. Dumaine), RTF, 1953
- La princesse de Babylone, 1953–1955 (opéra bouffe, 3 acts, P. Dominique, after Voltaire), Rheims, Opéra, 3 March 1960
- La cabine téléphonique (opéra bouffe, 1 act, M. Vaucaire), RTF, 15 March 1959
- Quintette en Ut, pour flute, hautbois, clarinette, cor et basson (1955) http://music.ibiblio.org/pub/multimedia/pandora/vorbis/uw_archive/chamber/Soni_Ventorum/80_Jan/09Arrieu_quintet1.ogg
- Cymbeline, 1958–1963 (2 acts, J. Tournier and M. Jacquemont, after Shakespeare), ORTF, 31 March 1974
- Balthazar, ou Le mort–vivant, 1966 (opéra bouffe, 1 act, Dominique), Unperformed
- Un clavier pour un autre (opéra bouffe, 1 act, J. Tardieu), Avignon, Opéra, 3 April 1971
- Barbarine, 1972 (3 acts, after A. de Musset), incomplete
- Les amours de Don Perlimpin et Belise en son jardin (imaginaire lyrique, 4 tableaux, after F. Garcia Lorca), Tours, Grand Théâtre, 1 March 1980
Sources
- Sadie, Stanley (Ed.) [1992] (1994). The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, vol. 1, A-D, chpt: "Arrieu, Claude" by Richard Langham Smith, New York: MacMillan. ISBN 0-935859-92-6.
- IMDb: Claude Arrieu - Filmography
- Fr.Wikipédia: Claude Arrieu