Several months ago Sébastien Damarey, a faithful reader of the Florent Schmitt Website + Blog, sent me a very interesting historical artifact — an interview with Florent Schmitt that was published in the January 25, 1929 issue of the French arts magazine Le Guide du concert et des théâtres lyriques. What makes this article particularly […]
Tag Archives: Pierre-Octave Ferroud
These charmers, written for violin or cello soloist, make for perfect recital pieces. Music-lovers who are familiar with Florent Schmitt’s catalogue know that he composed a number of works featuring the violin and cello as solo instruments. Most of the composer’s violin pieces have been gathered together in a fine collection of works including the […]
A slender, petite man — and the giant legacy he left us — draw parallels with Maurice Ravel. Over the decades, a total of four biographies of the French composer Florent Schmitt have been published – all of them written in French. Three of these biographies were written during the composer’s lifetime, and with his […]
When the composer Florent Schmitt died in August 1958 at the age of nearly 88 years, many prominent musicians, scholars and journalists wrote words of tribute honoring the last of the “grand generation” of French composers that had included, among others, Debussy, Dukas, Ravel, Roussel, Koechlin, Pierné, Cras, Rabaud, Ropartz and Tournemire. Along those lines, […]
Florent Schmitt may be best-known for his opulent orchestral scores, most of which were written in the first three decades of the 20th century. But Schmitt’s compositional career, which spanned more than seven decades beginning in the late 1880s, contains so much more than just those creations. Taking a look at the composer’s extensive catalogue — […]
Published in English and French versions, the book is available for viewing and download free of charge. Recently, the music publishing firm Durand-Salabert-Eschig (part of Universal Music Publishing Group) released a book titled A French Touch: Rediscovering a Uniquely French Symphonic Repertoire. Researched and written by French musicologist and author Nicolas Southon, the slender volume (44 pages long) […]
One of the most fascinating and forward-looking works in the concert band repertoire was penned by Florent Schmitt back in 1913/14. Dionysiaques, Op. 62 was composed for France’s elite Garde Républicaine Band, which premiered the work in 1925. Dionysiaques is a brilliant, 11-minute tour de force that takes the listener on an incredible sound journey. Although […]
“[It] is like a half-hour visit to the pleasure dome in Xanadu, and if it doesn’t give you a few spiritual orgasms, then perhaps you need to insert Viagra® in each of your ears.” — Raymond Tuttle, Music Critic, Fanfare Magazine The ballet La Tragédie de Salomé, Op. 50 is Florent Schmitt’s most famous […]