François-Clément Théodore Dubois (24 August 1837 – 11 June 1924) was a French 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...

, 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...

 and music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 teacher.

Biography

Théodore Dubois was born in Rosnay

Rosnay, Marne

Rosnay is a commune in the Marne department in north-eastern France. The composer Théodore Dubois was a native of Rosnay....

 in Marne

Marne

Marne is a department in north-eastern France named after the river Marne which flows through the department. The prefecture of Marne is Châlons-en-Champagne...

. He studied first under Louis Fanart (the choirmaster at Reims cathedral

Reims Cathedral

Notre-Dame de Reims is the Roman Catholic cathedral of Reims, where the kings of France were once crowned. It replaces an older church, destroyed by a fire in 1211, which was built on the site of the basilica where Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi, bishop of Reims, in AD 496. That original...

) and later 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...

. He won the 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 1861. In 1868, he became choirmaster at the Church of the Madeleine, and in 1871 took over from 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 choirmaster at the Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde

Basilique Ste-Clotilde, Paris

The Basilica of Saint Clotilde is a basilica church in Paris, located on the Rue Las Cases, in the area of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It is best known for its imposing twin spires.-History:...

. In 1877, Dubois returned to the Church of the Madeleine, succeeding Camille Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...

 as organist there. From 1871 he taught at the Paris Conservatoire, where his pupils included Pierre de Bréville

Pierre de Bréville

Pierre Onfroy de Bréville was a French composer.-Biography:Pierre de Bréville was born was born in Bar-le-Duc, Meuse. Following the wishes of his parents, he studied law with the goal of becoming a diplomat. However, he abandoned his plans after a few years and entered the Conservatoire de Paris...

, Guillaume Couture

Guillaume Couture (musician)

Guillaume Couture was a Canadian choir conductor, composer, music critic, and music educator. Although he never pursued a performance career, he is particularly remembered for his work as a voice teacher; having taught many notable Canadian singers...

, Gabrielle Ferrari

Gabrielle Ferrari

Gabrielle Ferrari was French-Italian pianist and composer noted for opera. She was born and died in Paris and studied with Charles Gounod and Théodore Dubois. Her opera Le Cobzar premiered in Monte Carlo.-Works:...

, Gustave Doret

Gustave Doret

Gustave Doret was a Swiss composer and conductor.Doret was born in 1866 in Aigle, Switzerland. He studied at the Berlin Academy of Music with Joseph Joachim, and then at the Paris Conservatory with Théodore Dubois and Jules Massenet...

, 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...

, Achille Fortier

Achille Fortier

Achille Fortier was a Canadian composer and music educator. His compositional output includes a modest amount of choral and chamber works, several songs and motets, and a small amount of symphonic music. A considerable portion of his compositions are religious in nature...

, Xavier Leroux

Xavier Leroux

Xavier Henry Napoleón Leroux was a French composer.Leroux was the son of a military bandleader. He studied at the Paris Conservatory under Jules Massenet and Théodore Dubois, and won the Prix de Rome in 1885 with the cantata Endymion...

, Albéric Magnard

Albéric Magnard

Lucien Denis Gabriel Albéric Magnard was a French composer, sometimes referred to as the "French Bruckner", though there are significant differences between the two composers...

, Édouard Risler

Édouard Risler

Joseph-Édouard Risler was a French pianist.- Biography :Risler was born in Baden-Baden of a German mother and an Alsatian father. He studied under Louis Diémer, Théodore Dubois and Émile Descombes at the Conservatoire de Paris from 1883 to 1890...

, Guy Ropartz, Spyridon Samaras

Spyridon Samaras

Spyridon-Filiskos Samaras was a Greek composer particularly admired for his operas who was part of the generation of composers that heralded the works of Giacomo Puccini...

, and Florent Schmitt

Florent Schmitt

Florent Schmitt was a French composer.-Early life:A Lorrainer, born in Meurthe-et-Moselle, Schmitt originally took music lessons in Nancy with the local composer Gustave Sandré. Subsequently he entered the Paris Conservatoire. There he studied with Gabriel Fauré, Jules Massenet, Théodore Dubois,...

.

Dubois was director of the Conservatoire from 1896 (succeeding Thomas upon the latter's death) to 1905. He resigned two months before the refusal to award the Prix de Rome to Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel

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

; this created, nonetheless, a substantial public outcry against him, which was increased by an open letter from the novelist and musicologist Romain Rolland

Romain Rolland

Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...

. 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...

 took over from Dubois as director.

Although he wrote many religious works, Dubois had considerable hopes for a successful career on the operatic stage. His fascination with Near-Eastern subjects lead to the composition to his first staged work, La guzla de l'émir, and his first four-act opera, Aben-Hamet, which broke no new ground. His other large-scale opera, Xavière, has a wildly dramatic tale set in the rural Auvergne

Auvergne (province)

Auvergne was a historic province in south central France. It was originally the feudal domain of the Counts of Auvergne. It is now the geographical and cultural area that corresponds to the former province....

. The story revolves around a widowed mother who plots to kills her daughter, Xavière, with the help of her fiancé's father to gain the daughter's inheritance. However, Xavière survives the attack with the help of a priest, and the opera finishes with a conventional happy ending.

The music of Dubois also includes ballet

Ballet

Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...

s, oratorio

Oratorio

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...

s and three symphonies. His best known work is the oratorio Les sept paroles du Christ ("The Seven Last Words of Christ" [1867]), which continues to be given an occasional airing; his Toccata in G (1889), for the organ, is also heard now and then. The rest of his large output has almost entirely disappeared from view. He has had a more lasting influence in teaching, with his theoretical works Traité de contrepoint et de fugue (on 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....

) and Traité d'harmonie théorique et pratique (on harmony

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

) still being sometimes used today.

Operas

• La prova di un'opera seria, (unpublished, composed in Rome, 1863).
• La guzla de l'émir, opéra comique (1 act, J. Barbier & M. Carré), f.p. 30 April 1873, Théâtre de l'Athénée, Paris.
• Le pain bis, opéra comique (1 act, A. Brunswick & A.R. de Beauplan), f.p. 26/27 February 1879, 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...
  
   (Théâtre Favart), Paris.
• L'enlèvement de Proserpine, scène lyrique (1 act, P. Collin), f.p. 1879.
• Aben-Hamet, opéra (4 acts, L. Détroyat & A. de Lauzières), f.p. 16 December 1884, Théâtre du Châtelet
  Théâtre du Châtelet
  The Théâtre du Châtelet is a theatre and opera house, located in the place du Châtelet in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France.One of two theatres built on the site of a châtelet, a small castle or fortress, it was designed by Gabriel Davioud at the request of Baron Haussmann between 1860 and...
  
  , Paris.
• Xavière, idylle dramatique (3 acts, L. Gallet, after F. Fabre), f.p. 26 November 1895, Opéra Comique (Théâtre Lyrique), Paris.
• Miguela, opéra (3 acts) (Originally unperformed, except prélude and second act tableau from Act 3, concert perf. 23 February 1896, Paris.) f.p. 18 May 1916, Opéra, Paris.
• La fiancée d'Abydos (unperformed)
• Le florentin (unperformed)

Ballets

• La Korrigane, (ballet by Louis Mérante
  Louis Mérante
  Louis Alexandre Mérante was a dancer and choreographer, the Maître de Ballet of the Paris Opera Ballet at the Salle Le Peletier until its destruction by fire in 1873, and subsequently the first Ballet Master at the company's new Palais Garnier, which opened in 1875...
  
  ), f.p. 12 January 1880, Opéra, Paris.
• La Farandole, (ballet by Louis Mérante
  Louis Mérante
  Louis Alexandre Mérante was a dancer and choreographer, the Maître de Ballet of the Paris Opera Ballet at the Salle Le Peletier until its destruction by fire in 1873, and subsequently the first Ballet Master at the company's new Palais Garnier, which opened in 1875...
  
  ), f.p. 14 December 1883, Opéra-Comique, Paris.

Vocal works

• Les Sept Paroles du Christ, (1867) oratorio dedicated to Abbot Jean-Gaspard (1797-1871) curé of La Madeleine.
• Le Paradis Perdu, oratorio (1878 - Prix de la ville de Paris)
• Numerous cantatas, including: L'enlèvement de Proserpine, Hylas, Bergerette; Les Vivants et les Morts
• Masses and religious compositions

Orchestral works

• Marche héroïque de Jeanne d'Arc
• Fantaisie triomphale for organ & orchestra
• Hymne nuptial
• Méditation, Prières for strings, oboe, harp, & organ
• Concerto-Cappricio for piano & orchestra
• Concerto pour piano n° 2
• Concerto pour violon
• Notre-Dame de la Mer, poème symphonique
• Adomis, poème symphonique
• Symphonie française (1908)
• Fantasietta (1917)

Chamber music

• Hymne nuptial for violin, viola, cello, harp and organ
• Quintet for oboe, violin, viola, cello and piano
• Terzettino for flute, viola and harp (1905)
• Piano Quartet in A minor (1907)
• Dectet for string and wind quintets
• Andante Cantabile for viola or cello and piano (1914)
• Nonetto for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, 2 violins, viola, cello and double bass

Other compositions

• Piano works : Chœur et Danse des Lutins, Six Poèmes Sylvestres, etc.
• Numerous pieces for organ and for harmonium
  Harmonium
  A harmonium is a free-standing keyboard instrument similar to a reed organ. Sound is produced by air being blown through sets of free reeds, resulting in a sound similar to that of an accordion...
  
  .
• Douze Pièces pour orgue ou piano-pédalier (1889), including the famous Toccata in G (no. 3)
• Douze Pièces Nouvelles pour orgue ou piano-pédalier (1893), including In Paradisum (no. 9)
• Deux Petites Pièces pour orgue ou harmonium (1910) : Petite pastorale champenoise et Prélude

Writings

• Dubois, Théodore (1901). Traité de contrepoint et de fugue. Paris: Heugel.
• Dubois, Théodore (1921). Notes et études d'harmonie pour servir de supplément au Traité d'harmonie. Paris: Conservatoire de Paris.
• Dubois, Théodore (n.d., 1921?). Traité d'harmonie théorique et pratique. Paris: Heugel. (Note: The copyright reads: Réalisations des basses et chants du Traité d'harmonie par Théodore Dubois).

Media

External links

• Theodore Dubois Chamber Music sound-bites from several works and short biography