Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel (April 5 1869 - August 23 1937) was a French composer. Although Roussel spent seven years as a midshipman, only turning to music as an adult, he became one of the most prominent French composers of the inter-war period. His earlier works were strongly influenced by the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, with his later works turning more towards neoclassicism.

Biography

Born in Tourcoing, France, Roussel's earliest interest was not in music but mathematics. He spent a time in the French Navy, and in 1889 and 1890 he served on the crew of the frigate Iphigénie. These travels affected him artistically, as many of his musical works would reflect his interest in far off, exotic places.

After resigning from the Navy in 1894 he began to study music seriously with Eugène Gigout, then continuing his studies until 1908 at the Schola Cantorum (one of his teachers there was Vincent D'Indy). While studying, he was also busy teaching; his students included Satie and the young Edgard Varèse.

During World War I he served—as did Ernest Hemingway—as an ambulance driver on the Western Front. Following the war, he bought a summer house in Normandy, where he devoted most of his time to composition.

Roussel was by temperament a classicist. While his early work is strongly influenced by impressionism, he eventually found a personal style which was more formal in design, with a strong rhythmic drive, and with a more distinct liking for functional tonality than is evident in the work of his more famous contemporaries (for instance Debussy, Ravel, Satie, and Stravinsky). Roussel's training at the Schola Cantorum, with its emphasis on rigorous academic models such as Palestrina and Bach, left its mark on his mature style, which is characterized by contrapuntal textures. While he has been criticized for his heavy orchestrational style, that may be due to an expected similarity to the subtle and nuanced style of his countrymen, an aesthetic which he did not fully share; compared to the lush German romantic orchestral tradition, it could hardly be called heavy at all.

Roussel was also interested in jazz, and wrote a piano-vocal composition entitled Jazz dans la nuit, which makes an interesting contrast to some of the other jazz-inspired compositions by French composers at the same time (compare it, for example, with the second movement of the Ravel Violin Sonata, or Darius Milhaud's La Creation du Monde).

Roussel's most important works are the ballets Le festin de l'araignée, Bacchus et Ariane, and Aeneas and the four symphonies (of which the Third, in G minor, and the Fourth, in A major, are masterpieces which epitomize his mature neoclassical style). His other works include numerous ballets, orchestral suites, a piano concerto, a concertino for cello and orchestra, a psalm setting for chorus and orchestra, incidental music for the theatre, and much chamber music, solo piano music, and songs. He died in the town of Royan, in Western France, in 1937, the same year that his countrymen Maurice Ravel and Gabriel Pierné died.

Arturo Toscanini included the suite from the ballet Le festin de l'araignée in one of his broadcast concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Georges Prêtre recorded this same music with the Orchestra National de France for EMI in 1986.

Works

Stage

• Aeneas, ballet
• Bacchus et Ariane, ballet in two acts. f.p. Paris Opéra, 22 May 1931
• Le festin de l'araignée, ballet in one act. f.p. 3 April 1913
• Padmâvatî, opera in 2 acts (1913–18, Louis Laloy, after T.-M. Pavie). f.p. Paris Opéra, 1 June 1923
• Sarabande (1927; for the children's ballet L'Éventail de Jeanne, to which ten French composers each contributed a dance)

Orchestral

• Symphony No. 1 in D minor The Poem of the Forest
• Symphony No. 2 in B-flat major
• Symphony No. 3 in G minor
• Symphony No. 4 in A major
• Suite for Orchestra in F major
• Sinfonietta

Concertante

• Piano Concerto in G major
• Cello Concertino

Vocal/Choral

• Psalm 80, for tenor, choir, and orchestra

Chamber/Instrumental

• String Trio
• Piano Trio
• Trio for Flute, Viola, and Cello
• Joueurs de Flute, flute and piano
• Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor
• Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major
• Suite for Piano in F-sharp minor
• Piano Sonatina
• String Quartet
• Serenade, for flute, string trio, and harp
• Andante and Scherzo, for flute and piano
• Divertimento, for piano and wind quintet
• Segovia, Op. 29 for solo guitar

Recommended Recordings

• Symphony No. 3 and Ariadne et Bacchus - Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Stephane Deneve (Naxos Records)
• Symphony No. 3 - New York Philharmonic/Leonard Bernstein (Sony Classical)
• Symphony No. 4 - Philharmonia Orchestra/Herbert von Karajan (EMI)
• Symphony No 2 /Aeneas/ Bacchus /Spider's Feast - ORTF/Jean Martinon(Erato);
• Padmavati (opera)/ London Symphony Orchestra/Jean Martinon (BBC)
• Padmavati/ Marilyn Horne, Nicolai Gedda/ Michel Plasson conducting (EMI)

References and further reading

• The Concise Edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 8th ed. Revised by Nicolas Slonimsky. New York, Schirmer Books, 1993. ISBN 0-02-872416-X
• Albert Roussel, un marin musicien, 1st ed. by Damien Top. Séguier, 2000.

External links

• a Roussel website at opus1.com, in English, with lists and commentary on the composer's works
• a Roussel website, in French, brief
• a Roussel website, in French, under construction