Art nouveau: French chamber music around 1900

Featuring

Vincent Coq
Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian
Raphaël Pidoux
Trio Wanderer
Édouard Lalo
Claude Debussy

Mel Bonis
Maurice Ravel

Did you know?

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Composition History

Debussy's only piano trio, composed in Fiesole, Italy, in 1880, was long considered partly lost until its rediscovery in the 1980s by musicologist Ellwood Derr.

Composer Biography

Mel Bonis, a contemporary of Debussy, abandoned her musical career for about fifteen years after her marriage in 1883 due to family pressure.

Composer Biography

Claude Debussy, as a young musician, worked as an accompanist and music teacher for Nadezhda von Meck, a wealthy Russian aristocrat and admirer of Tchaikovsky.

Historical Context

Around 1880, French composers struggled to have their chamber music performed, as concert societies preferred established masters like Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Maurice Ravel described a 'long period of conscious gestation' for his compositions, where he would envision the entire work before writing a single note.

Compositional Technique

Ravel's Piano Trio's second movement, a scherzo, is structured on the poetic form of the pantoum, where two contrasting meanings continue throughout the poem.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Debussy intended his 'Six Sonates pour divers instruments' to pay tribute to 18th-century French composers like Couperin and Rameau, even requesting his publisher imitate their title pages.