Alexis Emmanuel Chabrier was a French Romantic composer and pianist.
Background
Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier was born in Ambert (Puy-de-Dôme), a town in the Auvergne region of central France. His father was an attorney; his childhood nanny Anne Delayre (whom Chabrier called "Nanine") remained close to him throughout her life. He began his music lessons at the age of six; the earliest of his compositions to survive in manuscript are piano works from 1849.
His family moved to Clermont-Ferrand in 1852 where he prepared for a legal career, studied at the Lycée imperial and had practical and theoretical music lessons with Alexander Tarnowski, a Polish-born composer and violinist. A piano piece from this period, Le Scalp!!!, was later modified into the Marche des Cipayes.
Education
In 1856 the family made Paris their home, and the young Chabrier continued serious studies in both of his chosen fields. He spent a year at the Lycée Saint-Louis, passed the Baccalauréat, and entered law school from which he graduated in 1861, and on 29 October that year began a career at the French Ministry of the Interior. Despite this, his passion was music;
Career
In 1881 he was appointed chorus-master of the concerts then recently established by Lamoureux.
He had two years previously written an opera boujfe entitled L'Etoile, which was performed at the Bouffes Farisiens.
In 1883 he composed the brilliant orchestral rhapsody entitled Espana, the themes of which he had jotted down when travelling in Spain.
Chabrier was also the author of a set of piano pieces entitled Pieces pittoresques, Vaises romantiques, for two pianos, a fantasia for horn and piano, &c. His great admiration for Wagner asserted itself in Gwendoline, a work which, in spite of inequalities due to want of experience, is animated by a high artistic ideal, is poetically conceived, and shows considerable harmonic originality, besides a thorough mastery over the treatment of the orchestra.
This opera was brought out with considerable success at Brussels on the 10th of April 1886, and was given later at the Paris Grand Opera.
The following year 1887, Le Roi malgre lui, an opera of a lighter description, was produced in Paris at the Opera Comique, its run being interrupted by the terrible fire by which this theatre was destroyed.
His last opera, Briseis, was left unfinished, and performed in a fragmentary condition at the Paris Opera, after the composer's death in Paris on the 13th of September 1894.
Chabrier's premature death prevented him from giving the full measure of his worth.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
The characteristics of Le Roi malgri lui have been well summed up by M. Joncieres when he alludes to " cette verve inepuisable, ces rythmes endiables, cette exuberance de gaiete et de vigueur, a laquelle venait se joindre la note melancolique et emue. "