Alexandre Tansman

Alexandre Tansman , born the June 11th 1897 with Łódź (Poland) and dead the November 15th 1986 with Paris, is a French type-setter of Jewish origin Polish.

Biography

He enters to the academy of Łódź then of Warsaw. He gains there the first three prices of composition in 1919.

Installed in Paris, he, in the Twenties and Thirties, is very played and a friend the large ones of his time (Dufy, Stravinski, Chaplin). In 1927, it joined the the United States where it creates its second concerto for piano dedicated in Charlie Chaplin, under the rod of Serge Koussevitzky. Very cosmopolitan and gifted for the languages, Alexandre Tansman undertook an authentic round the world tour in 1932 and is interested highly both in the Far East and with the jazz. He meets in particular Gandhi. Following the example that of its contemporary Ernst Křenek, its career is clearly divided by the Second world war.

Of return of Exile of the the United States, it is fixed definitively in France, where it is one of the most played type-setters of the School of Paris (where it had cotoyé, inter alia, Hungarian Tibor Harsanyi, Rumanian Marcel Mihalovici or Czech Bohuslav Martinů) until in 1974, year from which it falls rather brutally into the lapse of memory, because perhaps of his musical, certainly modern and erudite language, but also luxuriant, in one time when the Minimalisme appeared.

In France, the philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch was a faithful admiror and a friend of Tansman. One it redécouvre recently, and now, his birthplace, Łódź, organizes each year a prestigious musical contest which bears its name.

Its work

One owes him a vast corpus of opera S, Oratorio S, Symphonie S and works of Chamber music, forming on the whole several hundreds of partitions. Among those, one notes:

8 Japanese melodies , for voice and orchestra (1918);
the garden of the paradise , ballet, (1922);
Legend , for orchestra (1923);
the Kurdish night , opera (1927);
Concerto for piano n° 2 (1927);
Hebraic Rhapsody , for orchestrae (1933);
Orchestration of the continuation for piano Scenes of children of Federico Mompou (1936);
Polish Rhapsody , for orchestra (1940);
The Genesis , for reciting and orchestrates, written in collaboration with Arnold Schönberg, Milhaud, Stravinsky, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Toch, Shilkret, according to the Genèse (1944);
Isaïe the prophet , for chorus and orchestra (1950);
Cavatine , for guitar (1951);
Concerto for orchestra (1954);
4 symphonic movements , for orchestra (1956);
Sabbataï Zévi, the false Messiah , opera, (1957-8);
Psalms , for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra (1960-61);
Continuation in modo polonico , for guitar (1962);
Homage to Chopin , for guitar (1966);
Stele in memoriam Igor Stravinsky , for orchestra (1972);
the ten Commands , for orchestra (1978-9);
Homage to Lech Walesa , for guitar (1982);
Film musics: Hair of Carrot (1932), Flesh and Fantasy (1942), Paris Underground (1945), Destiny (1945), Sister Kenny (1946), The Bargee (1964);
9 symphonies (1917, 1926, " Symphony concertante" 1931,1939,1942, " In memoriam" 1944, " Lyrique" 1944, " Music for orchestre" 1948,1957-8);
8 quotuors with cords (1917, 1922,1925,1935,1940,1944,1947,1956);
7 Novelettes for piano;
Sonatine , for bassoon and piano;
Continuation , for bassoon and piano.

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