Emmanuel Chabrier is another of those musicians who were at the center of the musical and cultural lives of their countries and their times, but whose own creative contributions have largely faded from view. Other than España, the Rhapsody for Orchestra, most of Chabrier’s works are likely to be unfamiliar to today’s listeners, especially outside of France.
And yet Chabrier’s circle of friends included Monet, Manet, Fauré, Chausson, Degas, and Emile Zola, just to name a few, and his music was known and admired by virtually every important composer of his day, including Mahler, Stravinsky, and Maurice Ravel. Francis Poulenc wrote that Chabrier’s music had opened up a harmonic universe for him, and Ravel once said that the opening of one of Chabrier’s operas had changed the course of harmony in France. Emmanuel Chabrier, born January 18, in 1841.
This has been A Minute with Miles – a production of South Carolina Public Radio, made possible by the J.M. Smith Corporation.
