Jeanne DANGLAS

Between 1909 and 1919, Pathé Frères, Heugel and subsequently Durand published mélodies and piano pieces signed ‘J. Danglas’ and lavishly illustrated by René Péan and later Misti. It is possible to identify this mysterious composer thanks to a number of works printed at the same period under the names ‘Jeanne Danglas’ or ‘Jeanne Crabos-Danglas’. Hence the Bibliothèque Nationale de France designates these different names as the pseudonyms of Rosalie Crabos. She was born in Toulouse on 1 August 1871, the daughter of a locksmith and a tailor’s seamstress. The enrolment register of the Paris Conservatoire – where she spent a short time in the solfège and singing classes between 1889 and 1890 – mentions that she had been a pupil at the music school of her native city. Her death certificate, drawn up in the tenth arrondissement of Paris on 14 October 1915, describes her as a ‘pianist’. And that is all we know of an artist who was barely mentioned in the press at the time. The catalogue of her works speaks for itself: during the last ten years of her life, Rosalie Crabos published some thirty different pieces, to which may be added instrumental versions of her vocal works. In the field of the mélodie, her most regular collaborators were Pierre d’Amor (the pseudonym of Charles-Maurice Siville) and Léon Tampier. Their subjects were chiefly sentimental, but turned towards patriotism with the arrival of the Great War. She also composed for solo piano, orchestra, small ensemble (Suite norvégienne) and violin and piano.