1858–1948 · France
Georges Hüe was a French composer, born in Versailles in 1858 and died in Paris in 1948. In 1879 he won the Prix de Rome. His legacy includes six operas staged in Paris, vocal music and pieces for flute. The site offers his Choral Varié for organ.
Georges Hüe was born on 6 May 1858 in Versailles, into a family of architects. His mother began his musical studies. His father, a well-known architect, expected his son to carry on the profession.
Charles Gounod heard the boy's first compositions, and on his recommendation the boy was sent to study music.
Hüe studied at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1879 he won the Prix de Rome for his cantata Médée.
Once back in Paris, Hüe saw the Opéra Comique put on his first stage work, Les Pantins. It premiered on 28 December 1881. The work has two acts and no plot, and four singers share the roles between them.
Fashionable realism was of no interest to the piece, yet it won high praise. The work brought the composer the Cressent prize, which he received in 1881.
For the next twenty years Hüe's career went in other directions. He returned to the stage with Le Roi de Paris, his first full-length opera, shown on 26 April 1901. Titania followed, staged on 20 January 1903.
Fantasy and Shakespeare lay behind Titania, which is notable for impressionistic forest scenes for chorus and orchestra. Le Miracle, an opera in five acts, followed in 1910; it joins the myth of Pygmalion to a religious miracle. Its premiere was on 14 December 1910.
Audiences liked best Dans l'ombre de la cathédrale, an opera after Blasco Ibáñez first given on 7 December 1921. Socialism and Catholicism, with their opposing ideals, set its plot in motion. Several revivals followed during the 1920s.
After journeys of his own in Asia, Hüe wrote Siang-Sin, a ballet-pantomime made for a Chinese spring festival and first given on 12 March 1924. The last of his stage works, the musical comedy Riquet à la houppe, drew on a Charles Perrault tale and appeared on 17 December 1928.
In 1922 Hüe became a member of the Académie des beaux-arts, succeeding Saint-Saëns. He died in Paris on 7 June 1948. The composer is buried in Passy Cemetery.
Hüe wrote six operas that reached the Paris stage between 1881 and 1928, plus a large amount of vocal music and theatre music. Richard Wagner influenced his music especially; Hüe was an honorary citizen of Bayreuth, the city of the Wagner festivals.
Among his vocal works are Chansons lointaines for high voice and piano, 1898, Chansons printanières, 1902, Croquis d'Orient to poems by Tristan Klingsor, published in 1905, and Chansons du valet de cœur, published in 1912. In 1886 he composed the Sérénade for orchestra; it has transcriptions for flute and piano and for piano four hands.
Only a few instrumental pieces are heard in concert now, above all the Fantaisie for flute and piano (1913, orchestral version 1923), along with a few songs, chiefly À des oiseaux and J'ai pleuré en rêve. His music enjoyed modest success, and his manner stayed the same over the years. Even so, Claude Debussy and Gabriel Fauré admired it.