Joseph de Marliave was a French

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...

 musicologist. He is best known for his book on the Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

 quartets

String quartet

A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...

, which was the most widely-read and quoted book on the subject prior to Joseph Kerman

Joseph Kerman

Joseph Wilfred Kerman is an American critic and musicologist. One of the leading musicologists of his generation, his 1985 book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology was described by Philip Brett in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field." He is...

's 1966 book The Beethoven Quartets.

In addition to his work on Beethoven, he published numerous essays on other composers. Some of his book on Beethoven was a translation and paraphrase of the 1885 book in German by Theodor Helm

Theodor Helm

Theodor Otto Helm was an Austrian music critic and writer.Theodor Otto Helm was a leading figure in Viennese musical life and a prominent music critic in Vienna for fifty years...

.

Marliave was a close friend 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...

, who wrote the preface to the original French edition of the book on the Beethoven quartets.

Marliave was also a captain in the French army, and he was killed in action in August 1914, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War

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...

. Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...

 memorialized him in his Le tombeau de Couperin

Le Tombeau de Couperin

Le tombeau de Couperin is a suite for solo piano by Maurice Ravel, composed between 1914 and 1917, in six movements. Each movement is dedicated to the memory of friends of the composer who had died fighting in World War I...

, dedicating the closing Toccata

Toccata

Toccata is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers...

 to him (the sixth part of the piano version, but absent in the orchestral arrangement).

Marliave was the husband of the famous French pianist 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...

(1874–1966).