biography
| name: |
Roussel, Albert (Charles Paul Marie)
|
pronunciation:
[roosel]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1869–1937)
|
| biography:
| Composer, born in Tourcoing, N France. He began a career as a naval officer in the Ecole Navale in 1889 but resigned at 25 and settled in Roubaix to study harmony. He took lessons in orchestration at the Schola Cantorum (1898) where d'Indy entrusted him with the counterpoint class (1902–14). The ballet Le Festin de l'Araignée (1912, The Spider's Feast) marks his impressionist period; he then moved away from Debussy's influence towards a more marked originality, which blossomed in the Suite en fa and the 3ème symphonie en sol mineur (1930). A trip to the Far East inspired themes and methods which he fully employed in tonal writing, inspiring the choral Evocations (1912) and the opera Padmâvati, begun in 1914 and completed after World War 1. His best-known work, the ballet Bacchus et Ariane, appeared in 1930. He was appointed president of the Fédération Musicale Populaire in 1936. |
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