Over the centuries, France had very talented composers. French classical music started with music of the Roman Catholic Church during the reign of Charlemagne. Classical music evolved through centuries from monophonic (only one voice) in the Middle Ages to Baroque music in the eighteenth century and impressionism with Ravel and Debussy. I have prepared an article giving the history of some famous French classical composers.
Below, are the other articles I wrote about music:
–3 French famous singers before the sixties you should know and listen to
–French music groups you should know and listen to
–French singers from the sixties you should know and listen to
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet was born in 1838 and was a French composer.
He joined the Conservatoire de Paris where he succeeded brilliantly. He was an excellent pianist but rarely performed in public. Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical music so as a new composer he did arrangements and transcriptions of music for others. But then, around 1860 he wrote two operas which were a success, “Les pêcheurs de perles” et “La jolie fille de Perth”.
Carmen is one of his most popular works and performed in operas. Bizet died three months after its first appearance which he thought would be a failure and was in fact a spectacular success.
Here you can listen to that hugely famous song from the opera Carmen.
Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy was born in 1862 and was a French composer. Debussy was a very influential composer of the late 19th century. At the age of 10, he was already very talented and could join the Conservatoire de Paris.
It is with the only Opera he produced, Pelléas et Mélisande, that he became famous in 1902 at the age of 40. According to him, classical symphony was outdated and wanted to create something different in his work.
He wrote melodies based on poetry and influenced by the symbolist poetic movement. For piano, he wrote books of Preludes and Etudes. Later, he created three sonatas for different musical instruments as he wanted to focus on symphonic music.
You can listen here to a music from Debussy interpreted by a pianist, it is just fabulous!
Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel was born in 1875 and was a French composer, a pianist and a conductor. With Claude Debussy he was associated with impressionism.
In the twenties and thirties he was known worldwide as the France’s greatest composer. He joined the Conservatoire de Paris but it did not go well as a scandal started to arise so he left and developed his own style by adding modernism, baroque, neoclassicism and later jazz.
His most famous work was Bolero, he was known for this ability in orchestration. Some of his piano music is extremely difficult to play, like Gaspard de la nuit. He was one of the first composers to acknowledge the importance of recording to reach more people.
Here you can listen one of its famous creation called “Bolero”.
Let me know in the comments which one of these French classical composers do you prefer? Feel free to share this article!
A bientôt!
Pour moi, c’est Ravel ! Je suis fan. Merci pour cet article. 😊