Albert Roussel
Albert Roussel
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Albert Roussel

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Albert Roussel

Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel (French pronunciation: [albɛʁ ʃaʁl pɔl maʁi ʁusɛl]; 5 April 1869 – 23 August 1937) was a French composer. He spent seven years as a midshipman, turned to music as an adult, and became one of the most prominent French composers of the interwar period. His early works were strongly influenced by the Impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, while he later turned toward neoclassicism.

Born in Tourcoing, Roussel's earliest interest was not in music but mathematics. He spent time in the French Navy, and in 1889 and 1890, he served on the crew of the frigate Iphigénie and spent several years in southern Vietnam. These travels affected him artistically, as many of his musical works would reflect his interest in far-off, exotic places.

After resigning from the Navy in 1894, he began to study harmony in Roubaix, first with Julien Koszul (grandfather of composer Henri Dutilleux), who encouraged him to pursue his studies in Paris with Eugène Gigout; Roussel then continued his studies until 1908 at the Schola Cantorum de Paris, where one of his teachers was Vincent d'Indy. While studying, Roussel also taught. His students included Erik Satie and Edgard Varèse. (See: List of music students by teacher: R to S#Albert Roussel.)

During World War I, Roussel served as an ambulance driver on the Western Front. Following the war, he bought a summer house in Normandy and devoted most of his time there to composition.

Starting in 1923, another of Roussel's students was Bohuslav Martinů, who dedicated his Serenade for Chamber Orchestra (1930) to Roussel. French composer and musicologist Yvonne Rokseth also studied with Roussel.

His sixtieth birthday was marked by a series of three concerts of his works in Paris; the concerts also included the performance of a collection of piano pieces, Homage to Albert Roussel, written by several composers, including Ibert, Poulenc, and Honegger.

Roussel died in Royan in 1937, and was buried in the churchyard of Saint Valery in Varengeville-sur-Mer.

By temperament Roussel was predominantly a classicist. While his early work was strongly influenced by Impressionism, he eventually arrived at a personal style which was more formal in design, with a strong rhythmic drive, and with a more distinct affinity for functional tonality than is found in the work of his more famous contemporaries Debussy, Ravel, Satie, and Stravinsky.

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