Gabriel Pierné

Gabriel Pierné was born in Metz in Moselle on August 16, 1863 into a family of musicians. His father, Jean-Baptiste Pierné, is a voice teacher, his mother is a piano teacher. He entered the Paris Conservatory, where he had masters Albert Lavignac, Antoine-François Marmontel, Émile Durand, César Franck and Jules Massenet, and in 1882, he obtained, at the same time as the organ prize, the Grand Prize for Rome with the cantata Édith. At the Conservatory, he rubs shoulders with Claude Debussy with whom he will always remain very close. He approaches all genres successfully: according to legend, it was at the age of twelve that he composed his famous Sérénade for violin and piano opus 3 (in reality, the score dates rather from 1879). Among his sendings from Rome, first an Orchestra Suite, opus 11, then The Elves, dramatic legend in three parts and a Symphonic overture, opus 10 (1885), all three highly appreciated by critics, make him, at the end of the 1880s, one of the new hopes of the very influential French school. But you have to look for the best of Pierné in his chamber music. We will first be interested in his Sonata for violin and piano composed in 1900 in Brittany and especially in his Quintet for piano and strings composed during the First World War, between August and September 1917. For the piano, we owe him many collections of pieces. He also wrote many melodies, notably Le Petit Rentier, Les Petits Lapins (Jean Aicard, 1891), Les Trois Petits Oiseaux (Jean Richepin), or Les Trois Poèmes by Klingsor. Finally, there is the Sonata for cello and piano of 1919, the Franckist character of which is so obvious that one might think it was written by Franck himself in certain places. Throughout his life, Gabriel Pierné's career as an orchestra conductor somewhat eclipsed his talents as a composer with his contemporaries.