Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray
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...
Breton
Breton people
The Bretons are an ethnic group located in the region of Brittany in France. They trace much of their heritage to groups of Brythonic speakers who emigrated from southwestern Great Britain in waves from the 3rd to 6th century into the Armorican peninsula, subsequently named Brittany after them.The...
composer, pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
, and professor of music history/theory at 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...
as well as a 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...
laureate
Laureate
In English, the word laureate has come to signify eminence or association with literary or military glory. It is also used for winners of the Nobel Prize.-History:...
. He was born at Nantes
Nantes
Nantes is a city in western France, located on the Loire River, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the 6th largest in France, while its metropolitan area ranks 8th with over 800,000 inhabitants....
and died at Vernouillet
Vernouillet, Eure-et-Loir
Vernouillet is a commune in the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France.It lies adjacent to the south side of the town of Dreux.-Population:-International relations:It is twinned with Cheddar in the United Kingdom as well as Felsberg in Germany....
, near Dreux
Dreux
Dreux is a commune in the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France.-History:Dreux was known in ancient times as Durocassium, the capital of the Durocasses Celtic tribe. Despite the legend, its name was not related with Druids. The Romans established here a fortified camp known as Castrum...
. 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...
was one of his protégés.
His bucolic upbringing near the family estate of Grézillières
Basse-Goulaine
Basse-Goulaine is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France....
certainly added to his eventual fascination with the folklore, music, and culture of Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
and other nations. Later in life, Bourgault would support the Breton Regionalist Union
Breton Regionalist Union
The Breton regionalist union , was a Breton cultural and political organisation created August 16 1898. It was a broadly conservative grouping dedicated to preserving Breton cultural identity and regional independence...
, a Celtic organization indebted to the propagation of Breton culture, ideals, and the notions of independence. He was also represented in the Goursez
Goursez Vreizh
Goursez Vreizh is the national gorsedd of Brittany . It often has delegates from the Welsh gorsedd and Gorsedh Kernow in Cornwall.-History:...
.
Bourgault was from a family of considerable political and ancestral clout. His uncle was Adolphe Billault, the famous minister of the Second Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...
. He was personally selected by Napoleon III to act as France's Interior Minister
Minister of the Interior (France)
The Minister of the Interior in France is one of the most important governmental cabinet positions, responsible for the following:* The general interior security of the country, with respect to criminal acts or natural catastrophes...
from 1854-1858 (Groves 6, III, p. 110). Another of his uncles, Jules Rieffel, from Alsace, founded one of France's first Agricultural schools called the École nationale supérieure agronomique de Rennes. Amongst his ancestors, L.A. Bourgault-Ducoudray counted the ancient royal house of Dreux (the Dukes of Brittany from the early 13th century on). He was also related to Charlotte Corday
Charlotte Corday
Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont , known to history as Charlotte Corday, was a figure of the French Revolution. In 1793, she was executed under the guillotine for the assassination of Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat, who was in part responsible, through his role as a politician and...
, the Girondin assassin of Jean-Paul Marat
Jean-Paul Marat
Jean-Paul Marat , born in the Principality of Neuchâtel, was a physician, political theorist, and scientist best known for his career in France as a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution...
, a leading figure in the French Revolution. His father was an important businessman, ship owner and munitions expert.
These family connections enabled him to study law before switching to music at the Paris Conservatoire under Ambroise Thomas
Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas was a French composer, best known for his operas Mignon and Hamlet and as Director of the Conservatoire de Paris from 1871 till his death.-Biography:"There is good music, there is bad music, and then there is Ambroise Thomas."- Emmanuel Chabrier-Early life...
, where he obtained the prestigious 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 1862 with his cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
, "Louise de Meziere." He served in 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...
and was wounded, receiving a medal for conspicuous bravery, and in 1874 visited Greece, where he began studying Greek church music and folk music. In 1878 he was appointed professor of musical history at the Paris Conservatoire. Among his many pupils were 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 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...
. Through music-making and time spent at the Villa Medici
Villa Medici
The Villa Medici is a mannerist villa and an architectural complex with a garden contiguous with the larger Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in Rome, Italy. The Villa Medici, founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and now property of the French...
in Rome, he became good friends 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...
.
While living at the Villa Medici in Rome, his reserved personality did not serve him well. "Bourgault-Ducoudray was reserved and did not mix too frequently with the other pensioners." (Irvine, p. 30) Jules Massenet was one of those pensioners. Massenet had come the year after Bourgault-Ducoudray. Massenet wrote Ambroise Thomas about a encounter with Bourgault-Ducoudray. Irvine summarizes: "One morning in March (1864), the reserved Bourgault-Ducoudray had finally paid Massenet a visit. They played bits of Bach
Bạch
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...
Passions, which Bourgault had not known before. Early in April (1864), Bourgault left to join his family in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, expecting to return to Rome only for the three summer months to write his envoi
Envoi
In poetry, an envoi is a short stanza at the end of a poem used either to address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem.-Form:...
." (Irvine, p. 32) His second envoi [first is not known at present] was a French opera titled Meo Patacca on a text by Berneri. On November 27, 1864, Irvine says that Bourgault held a splendid garden party at the Villa Medici
Villa Medici
The Villa Medici is a mannerist villa and an architectural complex with a garden contiguous with the larger Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in Rome, Italy. The Villa Medici, founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and now property of the French...
that was attended by 20 men and women from the Trastevere
Trastevere
Trastevere is rione XIII of Rome, on the west bank of the Tiber, south of Vatican City. Its name comes from the Latin trans Tiberim, meaning literally "beyond the Tiber". The correct pronunciation is "tras-TEH-ve-ray", with the accent on the second syllable. Its logo is a golden head of a lion on a...
, the old Jewish quarter of Rome across the river from Campo dei Fiori. The attendees were required to dress in costumes from the early 19th century. The party roamed all over the grounds of the Villa Medici ending up "in a brilliantly lighted sculptor's Falguière's
Alexandre Falguière
Jean Alexandre Joseph Falguière was a French sculptor and painter.He was born in Toulouse...
studio, where six musicians with mandolins and guitars provided music for the costumed dancers." Massenet—who, it seems was Bourgault's only close friend—was a party guest and Massenet. The party must have been memorable because Massenet recollected about it many years later. (Irvine, pp. 35–36) Massenet wrote: "The weather was fine and the scene was simply wonderful when we were in the 'Bosco', my sacred grove. The setting sun lighted up the old walls of ancient Rome. The entertainment ended in [Jean-Alexandre-Joseph] Falguière's studio, lighted a giorno, our doing. There the dance became so captivating and intoxicating that we finished vis-à-vis to the 'Transteverines' in the final salturrele
Saltarello
The saltarello was a lively, merry dance first mentioned in Naples during the 13th century. The music survives, but no early instructions for the actual dance are known. It was played in a fast triple meter and is named for its peculiar leaping step, after the Italian verb saltare .-History:The...
. They all smoked, ate, and drank--the women especially liked our punch." (Jules Massenet, My Recollections (Boston:1919) trans. H. Villiers Barnett, p. 48) Bourgault left the Villa Medici on Christmas Eve, 1864.
Bourgault had an immense interest in foreign music, but one of his more obsessive interests lay in pentatonic Eastern scales. Anachronistic for the time, he composed a two part work in 1882 called Rapsodie cambodgienne, or "Kampuchean Rhapsody," with genuine gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....
instruments and Cambodian musical themes. The eventual performance of this piece in 1889 was spurred on by Bourgault and Debussy's attending of the World's Fair
Exposition Universelle (1889)
The Exposition Universelle of 1889 was a World's Fair held in Paris, France from 6 May to 31 October 1889.It was held during the year of the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, an event traditionally considered as the symbol for the beginning of the French Revolution...
in Paris during the latter half of 1889. This turned out to be the first Western gamelan piece ever written, although Debussy's efforts are more well known. Between 1883 and 1892 Louis met with Peter Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
a number of times to discuss the burgeoning Russian composers as well as each composer's endeavours.
Bourgault was also interested in historical figures, notably fellow Bretons, and in collecting and editing Breton folk music, of which he was a pioneer. He wrote operas dealing with both Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the Age of Discovery and the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India...
and Anne of Brittany
Anne of Brittany
Anne, Duchess of Brittany , also known as Anna of Brittany , was a Breton ruler, who was to become queen to two successive French kings. She was born in Nantes, Brittany, and was the daughter of Francis II, Duke of Brittany and Margaret of Foix. Her maternal grandparents were Queen Eleanor of...
. Coincidentally, he had acknowledged patrilineal descent to the extinct Dreux
Arthur II, Duke of Brittany
Arthur II , of the House of Dreux, was Duke of Brittany from 1305 to his death. He was the first son of John II and Beatrice, daughter of Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence....
Dukes of Brittany, making him a descendant of Anne. He wrote many other operas, choral works and orchestral music and published several collections of folksongs, mainly Greek, Breton, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish. Among his final compositions was a mass
Mass (music)
The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...
. He also wrote a biography of Schubert. Bourgault's primary librettist was Louis Gallet
Louis Gallet
Louis Gallet was an inexhaustible French writer of operatic libretti, plays, romances, memoirs, pamphlets, and innumerable articles, who is remembered above all for his adaptations of fiction—and Scripture— to provide librettos of cantatas and opera, notably by composers Georges...
.
He gave a lecture concerning his philosophy at the 1878 Universal Exhibition in Paris. He said:
No element of expression existing in a tune of any kind, however ancient, however remote in origin, must be banished from our musical idiom. All modes, old and new, European or exotic, insofar as they are capable of serving an expressive purpose, must be admitted by us and used by composers. I believe that the polyphonic principle may be applied to all kinds of scales. Our two modes, the major and minor, have been so thoroughly exploited that we should welcome all elements of expression by which the musical idiom may be rejuvenated.
Bourgault was one of the first western European composers to be influenced by what is now known as world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
. His devotion led many other elite composers including his student, Debussy, to study it more intensely.
Noted Works
- L'atelier de Prague (The Prague Workshop) (1859) Comic Opera
- Untitled Symphony (1861)
- Louise de Mézière (1862) Cantata (won Prix de RomePrix de RomeThe 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...
) - Meo Patacca (1864) Opera (libretto by BerneriMeo PataccaMeo Patacca or Roma in feste ne i Trionfi di Vienna is the name of a poem in rhymes written by Giuseppe Berneri .- The poem :...
) - Symphonie religieuse (1868)
- Vasco da Gama (1872?) Opera
- Stabat MaterStabat MaterStabat Mater is a 13th-century Roman Catholic hymn to Mary. It has been variously attributed to the Franciscan Jacopone da Todi and to Innocent III...
(1874) Hymn for Palestrina - Trente mélodies populaires de Grèce et d'Orient (Thirty Popular Melodies from Greece and the Orient) (1876) Folksong Collection
- Anne de Bretagne (1879?) Opera
- Thamara (1881) Opera (with BalakirevMily BalakirevMily Alexeyevich Balakirev ,Russia was still using old style dates in the 19th century, and information sources used in the article sometimes report dates as old style rather than new style. Dates in the article are taken verbatim from the source and therefore are in the same style as the source...
) - Rapsodie cambodgienne (1882)
- Trente mélodies populaires de Basse Bretagne (Thirty Popular Melodies from Lower Brittany) (1885) Folksong Collection
- Quatorze mélodies Celtiques (Fourteen Celtic Melodies) (1909) Folksong Collection
- Carnaval d’Athènes, Danse égyptienne, L’enterrement d’Ophélie and Le fils de Saül Tone Poems