Cras, Jean

Cras, Jean – Légende pour Violoncelle et piano (Piano reduction & Cello Solo)

For more information about the piece read the preface to the full score:

French composer and career naval officer, Jean Cras, was born and died in Brest, France. He was from a medical and naval family in one of the most important military stations in the Breton coast in France. At 6, he wrote his first compositions including short piano pieces, songs, and duets to be performed by his siblings. At age 17, he began his naval career, balancing his life between his two passions: music and military service. Mentored during his 20s by Henri Duparc (1848–1933) a French composer of the late romantic period, Cras explored various composers and compositional techniques that allowed his unique style to evolve. Autobiographical elements such as family, church, travel experiences, and home nostalgia inspired the main topics of his compositions. The harmonic exploration mixed traditional romantic features with impressionistic elements. Although World War I took up a substantial amount of his time since he was in the navy, he began to work on the opera that catapulted his career, Polyphème, written based on a lyric tragedy by Albert Samain (1858–1900) for the Concours musical de la Ville de Paris in 1921. During the final decade of his life, his composition of chamber music and solo works intensified, bringing to life his famous Trio pour cordes in 1925. …
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