ROUSSEL, ALBERT-CHARLES-PAUL-MARIE

Albert-Chalres-Paul-Marie Roussel (1869 - 1937) was one of the leading French composers of the era after World War I. He wrote in various styles and his work is notable for its lyrical fervour, austerity of technique, and harmonic audacity.

He was born at Tourcoing, France on the 5th of April 1869. A naval career officer until 1894, he studied (1898 -1907) with the French composer Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, where he later became an influential teacher. Roussel's music is impressionistic in its color and poetic allusion, but in its formal design and clarity it reflects the neoclassicism of the Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky. Works such as Roussel's opera-ballet "Padmâvatî" (1918) reflect his fascination with Oriental culture.

Some of his works include his first symphony "Le Poeme de la Foret" (1904 - 1906) ("The Poem of the Forest"),  "Evocations" (1912), the one-act opera "La Naissance de la Lyre" (1925) ("The Birth of the Lyre"), his ballets "Le Festin de l'Araignee" (1912A) ("The Spider's Feast"), and "Bacchus et Ariane" (1931), "Suite in F" for orchestra. and the "Sinfonietta for Strings" (1934).

Roussel's mature style, employing both the modal harmonies of Oriental music and the dissonances of the contemporary idiom, is a reaction against French Impressionism as well as against the chromaticism of Franck.  Some critics see Roussel as a reviver of the old French formal traditions stemming from Rameau, with a venturesome harmonic style traced partly to Stravinsky.

He died in Royan, France on the 23rd of August 1937 aged 68 years.