Emile Goué

With a father inspector of primary school education, a principal mother Normal young girls and four sisters who all became teaching, the way of the young person Emile Goué was very traced… Born with Chateauroux in 1904, it was intended naturally for professorship. From an acute intelligence, it obtained into 1921 the two baccalaureats existing then: that of elementary Mathematics and that of Philosophy. Bachelor of science at 20 years, it was named professor with Boulogne-sur-Mer three years later. Transferred to Agen in 1924, it makes a success of the aggregation of Physics-Chemistry. In 1927, he married Yvonne Burg which gave him three children, Michel, Bernard and Francoise. Then he taught successively with the Montaigne colleges in Bordeaux and Buffon in Paris. He professed in classes known as of “special mathematics” (preparation with the contests of the “universities”) and finished his university career in one of the most famous pulpits of Higher education to the Louis-the-Large college.

Following the example Borodine, its scientific career and academic doubled of a regular practice of the music. It “is for me a metaphysical activity and does not separate from my life.” Already to Toulouse in 1924, it directed a first Symphony with a small university orchestra. It looks further into its musical studies which it completed under the direction of Charles Koechlin. And Albert Roussel also encouraged it him with the composition. Disavowing its first tests, it destroyed them and went back its opus 1 to 1933. From 1936 an intense production began which the war stopped only hardly. Goué appeared especially with splendid Psaume XIII (1938) and the Trio (1937). Living permanently in an interior dream, it could appear very thoughtless: thus was party one day to give its course to the college with shoes of two different pairs! Of a very great moral conscience, its personal reactions were always guided by an idealistic point of view.

The war burst whereas the orchestras and units started to pay attention to its production. Mobilized in 1939 as lieutenant of artillery, captive fact in June 1940, it spent five years to the Oflag XB to Nienburg /Weser. Its visceral need to teach appeared as of the first days of captivity by a course of physique exempted with his/her young comrades in order to help them to prepare their future examinations. In parallel, it organized conferences of initiation on the Histoire of the music of the origins at our days to which were added to the wire of the months a course of Harmonie and Contrepoint, a course of Fugue, Twenty lessons of musical Esthetics and History of the Symphony.

Showing an impassioned abnegation, our pedagog born made a point of supplementing this theoretical teaching and of insufflating with his companions in misfortune the love of the music while directing and by commenting on eighteen symphonic concerts whose programs went from the polyphonists free-Flemish to Arthur Honegger. The musicians of the orchestra as the singers of the choral society were amateurs, having instruments whose quality strongly left something to be desired but the enthusiasm of Emile Goué conquered them all.

“ the captivity - he in 1942 entrusted, year of despair and anguish - removes almost any contact with the real life, therefore almost any interior life a frequent loneliness is necessary to enrich its interior life, and any loneliness is the hardest lacking , it is not to be hungry; it is to feel its spiritual level to drop. ” Very quickly it recovered to compose, initially with difficulty, then a little peacefully. As at Olivier Messiaen, the period of the War saw the blossoming of masterpieces, revealing an incomparable control and an artistic maturity: Rebirth (1941), oratorio MIME, Psalm CXXIII (1942), Prehistories (1943), Topic and Variations (1945) for piano.

Repatriate in May 1945, Emile Goué could not carry out face his double activity of musician and professor. Very weakened, it took part in the jury of the examinations of aggregation, completed the orchestration of its imposing Inscription on a Stele and succumbed on October 10th, 1946 to the university sanatorium of Neufmoutiers-in-Brie. It rests with the cemetery of Guéret in the Hollow one, whose Academy of Music bears its name since 2007.

Assessment

Falling under the line of the school franckist, opposed to the romantic spirit, Emile Goué nourished a predilection for Bach and the musicians of the Rebirth. It composed Pénombres (1931), continuation of orchestra, a Symphonic poem (1933) and in 1934 a first Symphony as well as a musical action in two Wanda acts, drama of the sea whose action is at Cross-of-Life and who will be created only in 1950 in Mulhouse. The coloured paste of its orchestra, as cut with the graver, mixes the instrumental stamps skilfully.

Left the old modes, Emile Goué considered necessary to the French temperament, by tradition, the assertion of the tonality; but a widened tonality going without complex until the polymodality. The infinite resources of the contrapuntic writing allowed him a multitude of combinations of the topics.

In search of perfection, its enthralling theoretical reflections on the form prolong those of Vincent d' Indy. Its temperament of concerned manufacturer of unit made him prefer the use of only one topic generating all work, with the example of Bach. Architectural concerns which were done increasingly pressing in its last opus (Quintet, IIIe Quatuor, Prélude aria and final…) without choking however lyricism and the direction epic. Because “one should not hide the vacuum of the thought under efflorescences of counterpoint” its style, by successive examinations, arrived to its result in captivity.

Charles Koechlin characterized it with accuracy: “It is before all sensitive, lyric. However it keeps a constant need for order: Cartesian whose art is not given up with the imagination of the improvisation. The monothematic form that often he affectionate, affirms himself at his place extremely voluntary. It is infinitely serious, rough often, strange even, sometimes rather austere, tragedy too. But on the occasion it reaches a real beauty (thus in the andante of its Sonata for piano and violin). I already spoke about the emotion which emerges from a Psalm written in captivity. No doubt that a similar emotion also does not emerge from several others of its works. It is not an entertainer. It is not, even, a skilful charmer. There is often at his place something of rough. But it is an living being, which likes, which suffers, which has pity.” (Charles Koechlin in Counterpoints, December 1946)

Astonishing meeting with Holy-Therese under the feather of this incroyant, having given up practicing the Catholic religion of its childhood: “I understood that to resign itself to the humble works day laborers puts to me in contact with the most essential concerns of the Life, and develops in me this gift of generosity which it is necessary at all costs to cultivate.” Goué remained tormented at most point by the metaphysical problem. Its noble and worries spirituality confers on its works a sincere depth and raises the crucial questions. Exacerbated by the experiment of the camps, this interiority confers on the message of Emile Goué his accent of authentic originality. Hard universe where the man seeks his way with let us touch, distressed by its destiny, but what illuminates sometimes a ray of hope. These concerns join our sad topicality: there is of Rouault in this music, of the bloodless faces, encircled of black, which shout their despair in a burnt world.

Discography

Melodies (first world recording) by Christel Plancq, soprano, Damien Top, tenor, Jean-Jacques Cubaynes, low, Eric Hénon, piano, collection of the International festival Albert-Roussel, 2006, RECITAL SyPr 054

String quartets (first world recording) by the Quartet César Franck, collection of the International festival Albert-Roussel, 2007, RECITAL RCP067

Sonata for violin and piano, String quartet n°3 (first world recording) by Alfred Loewenguth, violin, Francoise Doreau, piano, Loewenguth Quartet, collection of the International festival Albert-Roussel, 2007, SyPr RECITAL

Concerto for piano (first world recording) by Francesco Lotoro, piano, orchestra Musica Judaïca under the direction of Damien Top, 2008, KZ MUZIK Italia

With reading

Emile Goué (1904 -1946) biography, writings, analyzes of works, catalogs , booklet published by “the Friends of Emile Goué”
“an alchemist of the sounds between shade and light”, by Damien Top, appeared in Politique Magazine , 2005

“Friends of Emile Goué” (president: Damien Top) 142, boulevard Vincent Auriol 75013 Paris

the files of Emile Goué can be consulted with Musical media library Mahler 11 bis rue de Vézelay 75008 Paris

External references

Site
biographical note, catalogs works, discography in musicologie.org

Random links:

Emile Goué

Assessment

Discography

With reading

more

External references