Helena Kean - Music and Images

  Erik Satie   1866 – 1925   This witty and quizzical composer began his life ironically, by being born at No 90 Rue Haute (High Street), the lowest street of Honfleur!  His music is admired for its harmonic innovation, revolutionary simplicity and lack of romantic excesses, but in his early career, he was considered an obscure eccentric and was ridiculed as a musician.   His father was a ship broker and his mother was English of Scottish descent. After the 1870 War, the Satie family moved to Paris, but when his mother died in 1872 Erik was sent to live with his grandparents in Honfleur. His early life was further disrupted when his grandmother died in 1878, and he was returned to his father in Paris. He was given a very informal education until his father remarried. His new wife Eugénie Barnetsche, a pianist and amateur composer forced her musical tastes on young Satie. He disliked her and her tastes intensely. He found the concerts and academic music she l...

  Darius Milhaud 1892-1974 Milhaud was born in Aix-en-Provence into one of oldest Southern-French Jewish families, which could trace their ancestry back to the C10th. His father, an almond exporter, was the accompanist for the Aix Music Society and his Italian mother was a professionally trained contralto, who understood the discipline required to make a career in music.   At the age of 7 Milhaud began studying the violin. He had wanted to start sooner but doctors were prescribing rest and tranquillity for his ill health, which would always be part of his life. His mother instilled in him the strong self-disciplined needed to be a musician, and supervised his homework and practising. Both his parents supported his musical aspirations and sent him to classes at Paris Conservatoire. He went to live in Paris in 1909 but returned to Aix regularly.   He loved to listen to the hum of conversation and songs of the workers in the field. He found his first inspirations at his gra...

Gabriel Fauré 1845-1924 Born in 1845 in Ariège, Gabriel Urbain Fauré was to become the most advanced composer of his generation. His harmonic and melodic innovations would profoundly influence many early C20th composers. He anticipated Impressionism creating a unique and identifiable style, a personal musical language. His mother’s family were minor aristocrats and his father was the director of a teacher training college at Montgauzy, near Foix. During the first four years of his life, Fauré was sent to a nurse in a neighbouring village. On his return he found his mother and father were generally too busy to spend much time with him or his siblings and were very strict. His main solace was the large garden at Montgauzy, where he could escape from the austere family house into a world of Mediterranean trees – pines, cypresses, magnolias, cedars, and beautiful flowers, which made a lasting impression on him. Montgauzy’s “Jardin Clos” was a priest’s garden, with sweet-smelling flow...

Henri Duparc  1848-1933 Born in Paris, his full name was Marie-Eugene Henri Fouques-Duparc. On the advice of a publisher, he shortened it to Henri Duparc. As a child he had no particular interest in music and preferred games. While training as a lawyer at the Jesuit College of Vaugirard, César Franck recognised his musical talent and taught him piano and composition. Duparc responded with energy and enthusiasm. At age 19 he wrote his first work a sonata for cello and piano and by 1868 he had written his first five songs. During the Franco-Prussian war he served in the 18 th Battalion of the Mobile Guard. It was during the siege of Paris that he wrote “L’Invitation au Voyage”. In 1871 he married an Irish girl Ellie MacSwiney from County Cork. He was devoted to her and their two sons. He was friends with D’Indy and Liszt and met Wagner at Liszt’s house in Weimar in 1869. Duparc admired Wagner and had seen performances of “Tristan und Isolde” and “Die Walk ü re” in Munich, but ...

  Claude Debussy ( 1862 – 1918) His parents were running a china shop in St Germain-en-Laye, just outside Paris, when Achille Claude was born on the 22 nd of August 1862. His birthplace, a C17th building in two parts, joined by a beautiful balustrade staircase, is now the Maison Claude Debussy. The ground floor now houses the Office de Tourisme and the first floor is a museum dedicated to Debussy. Personal souvenirs, letters, photographs, manuscripts and ornaments reflecting his life, tastes and personality were bequeathed to the museum by his daughter-in-law. An auditorium room on the second floor regularly presents various recitals, readings and lectures on Debussy and other composers and the town holds a festival every year in his honour. A fitting tribute to one of France’s most influential and popular composers. His childhood was very unsettled; his father changed jobs many times and was imprisoned for a short time after Commune of 1871 for his revolutionary activities....