1865–1914 · France
Albéric Magnard was a French composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the son of a Le Figaro editor and a pupil of Théodore Dubois, Jules Massenet and Vincent d'Indy. He wrote four symphonies and several operas, as well as chamber music for violin, cello and small ensembles. He died in 1914, at the start of the First World War, defending his home from invading German soldiers.
Lucien Denis Gabriel Albéric Magnard was born on 9 June 1865 in Paris, in the 18th arrondissement. His father Francis Magnard was editor-in-chief of the newspaper Le Figaro and a bestselling author; his mother, Émilie Bauduer, died when Albéric was only four, and his father remarried, to Olympe Broye. The family's wealth would have let the son live comfortably without ever having to earn a living.
But Albéric disliked being called "the son of Figaro": he decided to make his own way in music, relying only on his own talent, without his father's connections. Before entering the conservatoire, he completed military service and a law degree.
Magnard entered the Conservatoire in 1886, partly under the impression of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, which he had heard in Bayreuth. Until 1888 he studied harmony with Théodore Dubois and composition with Jules Massenet, and from 1888 to 1892 he took lessons in fugue and orchestration with Vincent d'Indy, for a total of four years. His first two symphonies were written under d'Indy's guidance, and he dedicated the first of them to his teacher.
Despite differing political and religious views — Magnard was a committed Dreyfusard — teacher and pupil kept mutual respect for the rest of their lives.
Francis Magnard supported his son in his own way, trying not to override his wish to make it on his own — for instance, by writing about him in Le Figaro. When his father died in 1894, Albéric grieved deeply: gratitude toward his father mixed with resentment toward him.
He dedicated the Chant funèbre, Op. 9 (1895), for orchestra, to his father's memory — a very moving work.
Besides composing, Magnard occasionally wrote music columns for Le Figaro.
On 15 February 1896 Magnard married Julie Creton in Paris; she already had a five-year-old son, René, and the couple later had two daughters, Ève and Ondine. That same year the composer began teaching counterpoint at the Schola Cantorum, a school his teacher Vincent d'Indy had co-founded shortly before.
That same year Magnard completed his Symphony No. 3 in B-flat minor — later to become his best-known — and dedicated his Hymne à Vénus to his wife.
As a composer, Magnard was shaped above all by his French contemporaries, especially César Franck: both shared a taste for cyclic form, in which a theme from one movement returns and grows in another. At the same time, certain pages of his symphonies sound more Germanic in character. Magnard himself put most of his effort into opera, but today he is remembered chiefly for his four symphonies.
Of his operas, Guercœur and Bérénice survive — tragédies en musique completed in 1901 and 1909 respectively (Bérénice was first performed in 1911); an earlier one-act opera, Yolande, had already been finished in 1892. In his operas, like Richard Wagner, Magnard used the leitmotif technique.
His chamber catalogue includes a quintet in D minor for piano and winds, Op. 8; a string quartet in E minor, Op. 16, from 1904; a piano trio in F minor, Op. 18, from 1905; a violin sonata in G, Op. 13, from 1903; and a cello sonata in A major, Op. 20, from 1912.
Magnard was a reserved, proud man, suspicious of praise except from his own close circle of friends; unsurprisingly, among French composers of his time he remained one of the least known to the wider public.
Magnard's convictions went beyond music: a committed Dreyfusard, he wrote the Hymne à la justice in support of Captain Dreyfus and afterwards left military service. He dedicated his fourth and last symphony to a feminist organisation.
Magnard's refusal to surrender his home made him, in the eyes of his compatriots, a national hero. On 3 September 1914, in the first weeks of the First World War, German soldiers invaded Magnard's estate, the Manoir de Fontaines, at Baron, Oise. Shortly before, Magnard had taken his wife and their two daughters to safety and stayed behind alone to defend the house. A gunfight broke out, after which the soldiers set the house on fire; Magnard was killed, and many of his unpublished manuscripts burned with the house.
The fire destroyed every copy of his early opera Yolande and a large part of the score of Guercœur — the piano reduction had already been published by then. From that and from his memory of a 1908 concert performance of the third act, Magnard's friend Guy Ropartz reconstructed the lost orchestration; Guercœur was finally staged in 1931, at the Paris Opéra.
Magnard was buried at the Passy cemetery in Paris. The Senate proposed moving his remains to the Panthéon, but his family declined the belated honour. His correspondence was later published by the composer's granddaughter, Claire Vlach. In 1915 a collection of essays in his memory, 1914, une défense héroïque, was published, its proceeds going to wounded soldiers.
Magnard's legacy is above all his four symphonies and the operas Yolande, Guercœur and Bérénice; in the operas, following Richard Wagner, he used leitmotifs. Besides these he wrote several shorter orchestral pieces — the Suite dans le style ancien, Op. 2, the Chant funèbre, Op. 9, an Overture, Op. 10, the Hymne à la justice, Op. 14, and the Hymne à Vénus, Op. 17. He left comparatively few opus numbers, even though he was writing symphonies, operas and chamber music side by side; two further pieces have no opus number at all — En Dieu mon espérance et mon épée pour ma défense and À Henriette. His closest musical kinship was with César Franck — hence his taste for cyclic form, in which a theme from one movement returns and grows in another, giving his larger works their unity. Magnard himself put most effort into opera, but today he is performed more often as a symphonist. Bérénice was first performed in 1911. His violin sonata, Op. 13, was often played by well-known performers of the day.
Besides the large-scale scores, Magnard left chamber works: a string quartet, a quintet for piano, flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon, a piano trio, and sonatas for violin and for cello with piano. He also wrote songs for voice and piano, among them the cycle Six Poèmes, Op. 3 — its six songs are "Nocturne", "Au poète", "À elle", "Ad fontem", "Invocation" and "Le Rhin allemand" — and Quatre Poèmes, Op. 15, for baritone.
For solo piano, the site currently has one piece by Magnard — Promenades, level Intermediate+. It needs neither an ensemble nor an orchestra, making it a good place to start before moving on to his larger chamber works or his symphonies and operas.