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By music teachers, for their students
Composer(s) |
Albert Roussel |
Grade level |
Grade 5 to 8 |
Movement(s) |
Maestoso |
Instrumentation |
Brass ensemble |
Categories |
Brass Ensemble Grade 5 to 8 Grade 9 to 12 Trumpet French horn Trombone Timpani |
Duration |
0'45'' |
Number of pages |
24 |
Level: 2nd-3rd Cycle
Fanfare pour un sacre païen is a composition byAlbert Roussel. Roussel wrote this fanfare at the request of Leigh Henry, who launched the journal Fanfare at the end of 1921. The first issue, published in December, featured Roussel's work, with subsequent issues devoted to works by other composers, such as Arthur Bliss and Erik Satie.
The original piece takes up a single page and was written for four trumpets and a timpani. The composer later reworked it, and the final 1929 version is for a fuller brass ensemble. This is the version proposed in this edition.
Although it is preferable to use trumpets in C for a bright sound, parts in B are also appended to the separate parts.
Albert Roussel (1869-1937) was a French composer. He spent seven years as a naval cadet before turning to music as an adult and becoming one of the most prominent French composers of the period between the wars. His early work was strongly influenced by the Impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, while later he turned to Neoclassicism.
Born in Tourcoing, Roussel took an early interest in mathematics. He spent time in the French navy, and in 1889 and 1890, he served on the crew of the frigate Iphigénie and spent several years in Cochinchina. These voyages inspired him artistically.
After resigning from the Navy in 1894, he began studying harmony in Roubaix, initially with Julien Koszul (grandfather of composer Henri Dutilleux), who encouraged him to continue his training in Paris with Eugène Gigout. He then continued his studies until 1908 at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, where one of his teachers was none other than Vincent d'Indy. During his studies, he also taught. His students included Erik Satie and Edgard Varèse.
During the First World War, he served as an ambulance driver on the Western Front. After the war, he bought a holiday home in Normandy, where he devoted most of his time to composition.
His sixtieth birthday was marked by a series of three concerts of his works in Paris, which also included a collection of piano pieces, Hommage à Albert Roussel, written by several composers, including Ibert, Poulenc and Honegger.
Roussel died in the village of Royan in 1937 and is buried in the Saint Valery cemetery in Varengeville-sur-Mer, Normandy.