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Ernest Chausson
January 20, 1855 - June 10, 1899
born in Paris, France, composed during the Romantic period
Biography
If Marcel Proust had written music, it might have sounded something like Ernest Chausson's: intensely passionate, yet rarely given to grand gestures. The effectiveness of Chausson's ardent, even erotic, musical language derives largely from the slithery chromatic style the composer inherited from his most important teacher, César Franck. Not a prolific composer, Chausson died in 1899, at the age of 44, from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident. Chausson's death silenced the most distinctive voice in French music in the generation immediately preceding Debussy's; indeed, Chausson's music forms an elegant, if swaying, bridge between Franck's lush, Wagnerian Romanticism and the sensuous Impressionist language of Debussy. Chausson came from a well-to-do family; in fact, comfortable circumstances throughout his entire life made it unnecessary for him to pursue a living as a musician. Although interested in music from a young age, Chausson pursued law studies at his father's behest. In 1877, he was sworn in as a lawyer in Paris; in the same year, he wrote his first work, the unpublished song Lilas. The impulse to devote himself to composition was sparked in 1879, when he attended a performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in Munich and met there the sometime Wagner disciple Vincent d'Indy.