Background
Ernest Reyer was born in Marseilles on the 1st of December in 1823. His father, a notary, did not want his son to take up a career in music.
Ernest Reyer was born in Marseilles on the 1st of December in 1823. His father, a notary, did not want his son to take up a career in music.
However, his father did not actively block his ambitions and allowed Ernest to attend classes at the Conservatoire from age six to sixteen.
At the age of sixteen he went to Algeria, and remained there some years.
The outcome of his residence there was a symphonic ode entitled Le Selam, the musical orientalism of which had, unluckily for him, already been anticipated by Felicien David in Le Desert.
But Reyer had to wait several years before obtaining a real and permanent success.
Erostrate, an opera produced at Baden- Baden in 1862, and given at the Paris Opera some ten years later, was a failure.
The composer had in the meanwhile set to work on Sigurd, the subject of which is the same that inspired Wagner in Siegfried and Gotterddmmerung.
Sigurd is a work of great value, displaying its composer's elevated notions as regards the form of the " lyrical drama. "
Salammbd, founded upon Flaubert's romance, was successfully produced at Brussels in 1890.
Gluck, Weber, Berlioz and Wagner exercised most influence over Reyer.
His Quarante Ans de musique (with biographical notice by E. Henriot) was published in 1909.