Roussel, Albert

Roussel, Albert – Deuxième Symphonie en si bémol Op. 23

(b. Tourcoing, 5 April 1869 – d. Royan, 23 August 1937)

(1919-1921)

Preface
Albert Roussel was born in Tourcoing, a city near Lille close to the border with Belgium. He spent the earlier years of his adult life as a sailor, rising to the rank of lieutenant. In the course of his naval career he spent a good deal of time in East Asia, including periods in India and Vietnam. In 1894 he resigned from the navy and began serious musical studies, attending the Schola Cantorum, where his teachers included Vincent d’Indy. In 1902 he was invited to take over the counterpoint class and himself had a number of pupils who would go on to become composers, including Erik Satie, Edgard Varèse and Bohuslav Martinů. Roussel destroyed his student compositions and began his public career as a composer in 1903. During the first World War he served as an ambulance driver. Afterwards, he bought a house in Normandy where he went to compose during the summer. His music became increasingly well-known and he made a successful visit to the United States in 1930. However, his health started to fail and he died in 1937. He was buried overlooking the sea.

His music falls naturally into three periods. In the first, he continues the line of impressionism from Debussy; works from this period include the first symphony, subtitled Le Poème de la Forêt, which is a counterpart to Debussy’s La Mer and d’Indy’s Jour d’été à la montagne, and the ballet Le Festin de l’Araignée. In the second period, which partly overlaps with the first, he moves away from impressionism towards a more full-blooded idiom, closer to Ravel or even d’Indy, his one-time teacher, than Debussy; the key works from this period are the orchestral and choral work Évocations, the opera-ballet Padmâvatî and the second symphony. In the third period he is a neo-classicist; the works from this period include the third and fourth symphonies and the ballet Bacchus et Ariane….

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