Pierre Vellones – Rhapsody op. 62 – Georges Gourdet, Marie-Claire Jamet, France Clidat, – 1958 – ORTF Radio, Paris – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Over to Paris this week for a radio broadcast recital featuring Georges Gourdet, saxophone, France Clidat, piano, Marie-Claire Jamet, Harp and Didier Duclos, percussion – recorded for ORTF in Paris in 1958.
Pierre Rousseau grew up in a home cultivating the arts and practicing music. Like his cousin Scellier de Gisors (architect , Prix de Rome), he had a fine pencil stroke. When his parents took him to the Opera to attend a performance of Tannhäuser, it was a revelation.
His first attempts date from 1903 : “I became convinced that I had to avoid amateurism and dilettantism at all costs. He also studied counterpoint , fugue and composition with Jean-Hugues Louvier , a friend of Charles-Marie Widor .
Diagnosed in 1926 by his great friend Lucien de Gennes, with Kahler’s disease (multiple myeloma ), it condemned him in the short term. X -rays show the disease in remission, for the time being.
He composed instrumental music and melodies on poems by Verlaine, Mallarmé, Samain, Rimbaud, Fort as well as the Songs of Love from Old China . He was the first French composer (and second in the world) to use the ondes Martenot: his Fantaisie dates from 1930 . The extraordinary Vitamine and the gypsy waltz Split simultaneously employ a quartet of saxophones and Martenot waves in 1935.
His last years marked the height of his artistic career. Inexhaustible creator, orchestrator with prodigious facilities, innovator respectful of the tradition inherited from Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Ravel, he has left more than a hundred ardent and sincere works.
Overworked, anemic and with a return of Kahler’s Disease, Pierre gradually declines, and died on July 17, 1939 gives up all occupation.
Now you know, dive in and enjoy.
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