Lucien DUROSOIR

Lucien Durosoir pursued a career as a violinist before devoting himself to composition. After studying under André Tracol in Paris, he perfected his technique with the leading German teachers, Hugo Heermann and Joseph Joachim. His virtuoso tours took him all over Europe, where he introduced audiences to works of French music (by Fauré, Saint-Saëns, Lalo, Widor and Bruneau); conversely, he used his tours in France to give the French premieres of great works in the foreign repertory (Concerto by Niels Gade in 1899, Concerto by Richard Strauss, Concerto by Brahms in 1903). He spent World War One at the front and fought in the war’s bloodiest battles (Douaumont, the Chemin des Dames, Éparges). Lucien Durosoir and André Caplet spent these terrible years together and their friendship was sealed as much in the trenches as in the music-making they enjoyed when they were not fighting. The idea of composing took an increasingly firm hold and as soon as Durosoir was demobilised, in February 1919, he found a quiet place of residence in France where he could devote himself to composition. Between 1920 and 1955, he lived in retirement, a long way from Paris and artistic circles; as a result, he developed a style that owed little to prevailing trends, but was no less progressive than that of Les Six. Lucien Durosoir left behind around forty unpublished works, pieces for a variety of different forces, as well as symphonic music and chamber music. From 1950, illness prevented him from composing and he died in December 1955.