The French composer Ernest Chausson was born lucky, but died unlucky. He was the son who survived the early death of his two brothers, a tragedy that does not count, of course, in the inventory of his good fortune. But from those specific events, he became the spoiled son, the "apple of his eye" of his beleaguered but very wealthy parents. His father, called Prosper because fate is perspicacious, was a renowned public works contractor who was there, in Paris, at the time of the Second Empire, when Napoleon III had the idea of redrawing the City of Light, remodeling its buildings, avenues, parks, and gardens.
And so Ernest never needed to work a day in his life. Possessing, since childhood, diverse talents for painting, philosophy, or literature, as a teenager he added music to his vast wealth of interests. When he finally decided on musical composition as a life project, his parents applied the indispensable correction in these cases: they sent him to the university to study law. The young Chausson was sworn in as a lawyer in 1877. But that same year he changed course. The most notable achievement of that year would not be his oath but the composition of his first song, Les Lilas.
At Paris Conservatory
Ernst Chausson (1855 - 1899)
Chausson will never practice the profession. Two years later, in 1879, when he was 24 years old, the lawyer entered the Paris Conservatory to study composition with master Jules Massenet. Later, integrated into the circle that surrounded César Franck, he was encouraged to compose music despite his very late musical initiation.
His lyricism
He was not a virtuoso composer, but an innate lyricism helped him overcome his technical limitations. With all the time in the world to mature his compositions without being disturbed by any extra-musical occupation, Chausson wrote songs, choral music, some operas, and chamber music. Today he is remembered mainly for two imaginative orchestral works: a Symphony, and the Poem for Violin and Orchestra, from 1896.
The fateful end
He lived in Paris with his wife all his lifetime but every summer the couple would take off to the provinces. In the summer of 1899, while riding a bicycle, he lost control of the vehicle and crashed his head against a wall. He died on the spot.
His funeral was attended by the most conspicuous personalities of French music and arts.
Poem for violin and orchestra, op. 25
Chausson hardly had any reason to be sad during his lifetime. However, much of his music exudes an undeniable melancholy. The Poem for Violin does not evade it, during its 17 minutes of beautiful nostalgia, or "spleen", to use the word Baudelaire invented during those years.
Premiere
Composed between April and June 1896, the work had its public premiere on December 27 of that year, with the participation as soloist of the Belgian master Eugène Ysaÿe, to whom it is dedicated and who would have been its applicant.
