Vincent d'Indy

Photograph of Vincent d'Indy

Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy (March 27, 1851 – December 2, 1931) was a French composer and teacher.

Life

D'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age but, to please his family, studied law. However, he decided to be a musician. He became a devoted student of César Franck at the Conservatoire de Paris. As a follower of Franck, d'Indy came to admire what he considered the standards of German symphonism.

Inspired by his own studies with Franck and dissatisfied with the standard of teaching at the Conservatoire de Paris, d'Indy, together with Charles Bordes and Alexandre Guilmant, founded the Schola Cantorum in 1894. D'Indy taught there and later at the Paris Conservatoire until his death. Although d'Indy was often accused of harboring vehement anti-Semitism (like his musical inspiration Wagner), which together with his lifelong monarchist bent led him to join the League de La Patrie française during the Dreyfus Affair in the late 1890s, he nevertheless won respect from fellow musicians opposed to his outlook, such as Camille Saint-Saëns, Claude Debussy, Pierre Monteux, and Charles Münch. Among his many pupils were Leo Arnaud, Erik Satie, Albert Roussel, Alberic Magnard, Isaac Albéniz, Arthur Honegger, Otto Albert Tichy, Darius Milhaud (whose family was Jewish) and Joseph Canteloube (who later wrote d'Indy's biography).

Few of d'Indy's works are performed regularly today. His best known pieces are probably the Symphonie Cévenole or Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français (Symphony on a French Mountain Air) for piano and orchestra (1886), and Istar (1896), a symphonic poem in the form of a set of variations.

Among d'Indy's other works are other orchestral music, chamber music, piano music, songs and a number of operas, including Fervaal (1897) and L'Etranger (1902). His Lied for cello and orchestra was recorded by Julian Lloyd Webber and the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier in 1991. As well as Franck, d'Indy's works show the influence of Berlioz and especially of Wagner (he attended the premiere of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1876).

D'Indy helped revive a number of then largely forgotten early works, for example, making his own edition of Claudio Monteverdi's opera L'Incoronazione di Poppea.

His musical writings include the co-written three-volume Cours de composition musicale (1903-1905), as well as studies of Franck and Beethoven.

D'Indy died where he was born, in Paris.

Works

• List of compositions by Vincent d'Indy

Further reading

• Norman Demuth, Vincent d'Indy: Champion of Classicism (London, 1951)
• Steven Huebner, Vincent d'Indy and Moral Order' and 'Fervaal': French Opera at the Fin de Siecle (Oxford, 1999), pp.301-08 and 317-50

Vincent d'Indy (Marie d'Indy, ed.), Vincent d'Indy: Ma Vie. Journal de jeunesse. Correspondance familiale et intime, 1851-1931 (Paris, 2001). ISBN 2-84049-240-7

• James Ross, 'D’Indy’s Fervaal: Reconstructing French Identity at the Fin-de-Siècle', Music and Letters 84/2 (May 2003), pp.209-40
• Manuela Schwartz (ed.), Vincent d'Indy et son temps (Sprimont, 2006). ISBN 2-87009-888-X
• Andrew Thomson, Vincent d'Indy and his World (Oxford, 1996)
• Robert Trumble, Vincent d'Indy: His Greatness and Integrity (Melbourne, 1994)

Record Review

External links

• [1]
• [2]
• Vincent d'Indy was listed in the International Music Score Library Project
• Review of Liedca:Vincent d'Indy

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