Einar Englund - 100 Years, 2. Symphonies
Einar Englund (1916 - 1999) is considered Finland's most important symphonist after Sibelius, and one with a distinct 20-century voice. After Englund composed the War and Blackbird symphonies in the...
View ArticleAntonio Estevez - 100 Years, 1. Life, Cantata Criolla, works for orchestra...
I am satisfied to have lived to the fullest as a musician and citizen. I enjoy inner happiness and face responsibilities toward myself and my country with the only means at my command: my music. -...
View ArticleAntonio Estevez - 100 Years, 2. Choral songs
Stylistically, Estévez uses many nationalistic resources in his compositions. One of the most important influences is the Venezuelan plains, a geographic area that provides him with many poetic lyrics...
View ArticleVideo Picks: Diana Eustrati - 100 Years
Diana Eustrati (b. 1916) was a Greek mezzo-soprano and alto who performed frequently in Germany especially during the 1950s. She worked with famous conductors such as Hermann Abendroth, Fritz Lehmann...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 1. Early life and works
Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) was a Monégasque-born French singer-songwriter of the postwar period. He admired French poets, starting with those he had read in secret while at French catholic boarding school...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 2. Rutebeuf, Villon, Ronsard, and Baudelaire
Even more important, in my view, were his deeply sympathetic settings of great poems by Villon, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Apollinaire and Aragon. His instinctive feeling of brotherhood with these...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 3. Verlaine, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Pavese
Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) not only set many of Baudelaire's poems from La Fleur du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) but he also used the symbolist poems of Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud who both came in the...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 4. Aragon, Caussimon, Ferré writer and poet
Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) was a musician constantly in search of the ideal poem and text. He admired French wordsmiths starting with Rutebeuf in the Middle Ages, read the poètes maudits.In his songs he...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 5. Music
Although Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) is best known for his love songs and his poetical and anarchist texts, he had a thorough grounding in music which transpires at regular intervals, both in his text and...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 6. Music - Requiem, Beethoven, Conductor, L'Opéra du...
In 1975 Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) started conducting the Orchestre de l’Institut des Hautes Études Musicales de Montreux and took them for performances to Belgium and France. He later conducted Royal...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 7. Love songs: Odette Schunck
He was the lover singing of desire, jealousy (La Jalousie), forbidden sex, transgression (Petite), complete love (La Lettre), erosion, habit, with more depth and taking more risk than anyone...
View ArticleLéo Ferré- 100 Years, 8. Madeleine Rabereau, her daughter Annie and Pépée the...
It suits youThis unceremonious airWith which you took my nameTo live from music - Léo Ferré (1)Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) separated from Odette Schunck in 1950. The divorce was finalized in December of...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 9. Marie-Christine Diaz
In the early 1960s Marie-Christine Diaz (Maria Cristina, or simply Marie in some of the songs) entered the household of Léo (1916 - 1993) and Madeleine Ferré at the Pechrigal Castle in the French Lot...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 10. Men and women
Throughout his life Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) was a keen observer of what was going on around him. For him everyday life, how people act and interact, was a never ending source of inspiration. In this...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 11. Songs about Life Part I
Now that Bob Dylan has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, I cannot help but regret that Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) is no longer alive to receive this honor as well. His lyrics and poetry have no...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 12. Songs about life Part II
In the late 1960s and 1970s Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) left his wife Madeleine Rabereau and took back his freedom. He was briefly involved in the May 68 events in Paris but returned to the South of...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 13. Paris
From 1946-1953 Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) lived in Paris in Bohemian poverty. Later in the 1950s he gained popularity as a Left-Bank cult singer. Throughout this period and in the 1960s when he became...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 14. Nature, Sea, and Ports
Whereas Ferré lived in Paris early on in his career and, as we saw in my previous post, wrote many a song about that popular city, he always sought refuge in the countryside. In 1959 he purchased an...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 15. Popular culture
Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) liked to rail against commercialism, one-upmanship, and the post-war American influence on French society. Maybe it was a holdover from his first marriage to Odette Schunck who...
View ArticleLéo Ferré - 100 Years, 16. A voice of conscience (late 1940s - 50s)
Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) is perhaps most known for his lifelong rebellion against abuse of power. His was a voice in defense of the downtrodden, those on the edge of society, those for whom nobody seems...
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