Background
Maurice Maréchal was born in Dijon at the home of his parents, Jules Jacques Maréchal, an employee for Posts and Telegraphs, and Martha Justine Morier.
cellist music educator university professor
Maurice Maréchal was born in Dijon at the home of his parents, Jules Jacques Maréchal, an employee for Posts and Telegraphs, and Martha Justine Morier.
Three years later, France entered, and Maréchal was drafted. He recorded his daily routine from August 1914 to February 1919 in his diaries, and recounted how two carpenter comrades carved him a rudimentary wooden cello from an ammunition box, with which he played for religious services and for officers. While in the service he met other musicians, including Gustave Cloëz, Lucien Durosoir, André Caplet and Henri Lemoine, and formed with them a small ensemble that performed before the officer staff
After the war, he joined the Concerts Lamoureux in 1919 for one year, and later the New York Orchestra.
He then began a solo career. In 1942 he was appointed professor at the Conservatoire de Paris, a post he left a year before his death in 1964, at the age of 72.
Among his pupils were Christine Walevska, Alain Lambert, Jean Moves and Alain Meunier. He also was known for his interpretations of Épiphanie by André Caplet, and the concertos of Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud and Édouard Lalo.
I
Maréchal"s career was again interrupted by war.
When the Germans occupied France in 1940, Maréchal supported the Resistance. He also steadfastly refused all offers to play in Germany, or even on the German-dominated French radio program concerts. After the war when he resumed his career he was stricken with a progressive muscular disease that took the strength from his bowing arm.
He gave his last concerts in 1950, and spent the rest of his life teaching and appearing on international juries.