CHAUSSON, ERNEST (AMDE)

born Jan. 21, 1855, Paris died June 10, 1899, Limay, Fr. French composer, whose small body of compositions has given him high rank among French composers of the late 19th century. He studied law but in 1880 entered the Paris Conservatoire for a course with Massenet. From 1880 to 1883 he was a private pupil of Csar Franck. Well-to-do and generous, he was for ten years secretary of the Socit Nationale de Musique and did much to encourage contemporary French music. His own music, harmonically indebted primarily to Franck and occasionally to Richard Wagner, is particularly French in its clarity, balance, and formal poise. His early works include songs on poems by Leconte de Lisle, notably Le Colibri (The Hummingbird). Later he set poems by Paul Verlaine, Maurice Maeterlinck (Serres chaudes; Hothouse Blooms), Jean Cros (Chanson perptuelle; Perpetual Song), and Maurice Bouchor (Pome de l'amour et de la mer; Poem of Love and of the Sea). His Concert for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet (189091) represents a highly successful, almost unique application of two equal solo parts in combination with a string quartet. Notable among his orchestral works are the richly textured Pome for Violin and Orchestra (1896) and his Symphony in B Flat Major (c. 1890). He also composed several operas, among them Le Roi Arthus (posthumously produced in 1903), and choral and piano works.