Artists

Chabrier, Alexis Emmanuel

image of Chabrier, Alexis Emmanuel Composer of the Orchestral Rhapsody "Espana"

Emmanuel Chabrier was born in the Marsac suburb of 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.Chabrier's friends from the artistic avant-garde in Paris included Gabriel Fauré, Ernest Chausson, and Vincent d'Indy, as well as painters Henri Fantin-Latour, Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet whose 'Thursday' soirées Chabrier attended, and writers such as Zola, Daudet, Jean Moréas, Jean Richepin and Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (as well as Daudet and Mallarmé). On a trip to Munich with Henri Duparc in 1879, he discovered Wagner's masterpiece Tristan und Isolde. This event lead him to realize his true passion for composition and quit the Ministry of Interior in 1880. In 1880 he composed his piano cycle Pièces pittoresques; the Idylle from the Pièces pittoresques greatly influenced Francis Poulenc.
1882 also saw the Chabriers' visit to Spain which resulted in his most famous work España 1883, a mixture of popular airs he had heard and his own imagination. In the view of his friend Duparc, this composition for orchestra demonstrated an individual style that seemed to come from nowhere; other contemporary musicians were more condescending.