Pierre Vellones

Pierre Vellones (of his true name Pierre Rousseau ) is a Compositeur French born with Paris the March 29th 1889 and died in Paris the July 17th 1939.

Pierre Rousseau grows within a hearth cultivating arts and practitioner the music in family. Like his cousin Scellier de Gisors (Architect, Price of Rome), it has a beautiful blow of pencil. When his/her parents take it along to the Opéra to attend a representation of Tannhäuser , it is the revelation.

Its first tests go back to 1903: “I acquired the conviction that I had at all costs to avoid amateurism and dilettantism. ” Also he studies the counterpoint, the Fugue and the composition with Jean-Hugues Louvier, friend of Widor.

Conforming to the paternal example, it in parallel carries out its training of doctor until his term and exerts this lasting trade its life. “For me, medicine is only one to go worse”. Painter in watercolours of talent, it visualizes its inspirations for better musicalement transcribing them by having care never not to run up against the listeners.

Affected for the 117e regiment of infantry of line in 1914, it is used as an auxiliary doctor and knows the hard conditions of the face. While crossing the village of Velosnes, it is conquered by the absolute poetry of the site meusan and adopts its Pseudonyme of type-setter. This music which he blesses the every day makes it possible him to keep confidence in one period of doubts and reorientation. Florent Schmitt, of which it takes council, judiciously encourages it to persevere.

But the destiny is with go. Diagnosed in 1926 by his/her large friend Lucien of Genoa, the Maladie of Kahler (multiple Myélome) condemns it in the short run. Confined to bed, he then writes articles on the art of the Tibet as well as a novel, the Pre one with the wolves . “They were almost two years of retirement and concentration where I known the price of the marital love, the patient kindness, and the price also of the things of the spirit”.

The x-rays delay the progression of the evil. Pierre Rousseau gives up the general medicine for the electrotherapy which it practices in residence. Among its customers, it looks after prince Sixte of Bourbon-Parma, Gabriel Pierné, Maurice Paléologue, the prince Louis II of Monaco, Paul Valéry.

Its sharp intellectual curiosity makes him approach all arts and all the kinds. It composes of the instrumental music and the melodies on poems of Verlaine, Mallarmé, Samain, Rimbaud, Fort as well as the Love songs of the old woman China .

“I believe in the peremptory necessity to renovate the orchestra for works to come, and that especially by three elements: Saxophone, battery, Martenot”.

Very quickly, it is impassioned for the searchs for Aleksandr Mossolov, of John Cage, for the Folklore S extra-Westerners and dream to renovate the musical writing by the contribution of amazing sonorities. The first work of this type is the Cantique of the Canticles (1925) according to Jean Lahor (alias Doctor Henri Cazalis) which with a vocal trio associates a Flûte and a Basson.

“The Jazz (...) was for me a revelation as violent as Tannhäuser when I carried sailor's collars”. Admittedly, of Indy, Debussy, Soler-Casabon had used the saxophone in the traditional orchestra, but only explores and exploits truly its richnesses to him. As of 1929, it uses two saxophones with four Harpe S and a Contrebasse to accompany its five Poèmes by Mallarmé and composes the Fables of Florian for tenor and symphonic jazz. Follow Cavaliers Andalusians (1930) for quartet of saxophones, Concerto for saxophone and orchestra (1934), Rastelli (1937) homage to the famous juggler missing in 1931, Prélude and French Rondo (1937), Rapsodie (1937).

He is also the first French type-setter to resort to the Ondes Martenot: its Imagination date of 1930. Extraordinary the Vitamins and the Valse gypsy Split employ simultaneously quartet of saxophones and waves in 1935.

Attentive father, it is interested in pedagogy and the musical awakening of the children with the collection for piano With the garden of the wild beasts (1929), adopted by the school Marguerite Length, and in which it interferes with the charm with his notes humor his words. Wolf, little brother is a song Scout E of 1931. an adventure of Babar , intended for the Theater of the Uncle Sebastien in 1938, imitates with the waves various cries of animals.

If it triumphed forever with the scene (its Ballet S besieged Grenade and With the Country of Tightening like its Opérette S Their small majesties and Médecin of my heart were never represented), it has its share with successes of several documentary and more than fifteen Film S ( Casanova with Saturnin Fabre, the Queen of Biarritz with Marguerite Moreno, white Poursuites of Marcel Ichac with Maurice Baquet, etc).

Its last years mark the apogee of its artistic career. “It proved qualities of spirit and trade which are not so common” (André George). Inexhaustible creator, orchestrator with the extraordinary facilities, respectful innovator of the tradition inherited Fauré and Ravel, it leaves more than one hundred of burning and sincere works.

More than by the Spain which impregnates many its titles, it is attracted like all its generation by inaccessible and magic the Orient. Ordered for the Exposure of 1937, its fantastic Festival , fairyhood of water and light, employs grinds exotic instruments placed at its disposal by the museum of Ethnography: sarong Javanese, Chinese Cymbal , drum S African, rattle with seeds Cameroun board, etc with which it associates three Martenot.

The same year, it illustrates the film Karakoram of Marcel Ichac, on French forwarding in the the Himalayas with - for the first time at the cinema - a whole of seven Martenot waves, piano and traditional instruments of percussion. Working to forget its evil, the profusion of the ideas which spout out of its imagination never does not dry up. The action of its great ballet the Paradise of Amitabha (1938) of which it conceives the argument, the music, the decorations and costumes, proceeds with Tibet, region which it studies since ten years. The chief Philippe Gaubert and the Chorégraphe Serge Lifar think the largest good of it but - although accepted at the Reading panel of the Opera - the ballet still was not born…

Overworked, weakened, Pierre declines gradually, surrounded of the affection as of his, and gives up in 1939 any occupation. July 17th, like writes it Gustave Samazeuilh, it “disappears without to have been able to give all its measurement. But its works are there to affirm more high-quality of its merits and to perpetuate the memory of a being of elite”.

This musician, literary man, painter and doctor, synthesize the spirit of the Entre-deux-guerres, where tradition and innovation were côtoyaient harmoniously.

Stravinski as far as Ravel held it in high regard. Gabriel Pierné, Albert Wolf, Eugene Religious bigot, Pedro de Freitas-Branco directed her works. Lily Laskine, Maxence Larrieu, Marcel Mule, Claire Croiza, Jeanne Bathori, Pierre Bernac, Francis Poulenc defended it.

Bonds

Official site on Pierre Vellones

To listen

Rhapsody, Vitamins, fantastic Festival, Andalusian Karaokam, Mitou, Riders, chromatic Waltz , by Marcel Mule, Lily Laskine, Pierre Bernac, Francis Poulenc, the Quartet of the Republican guard, the Unit Maurice Martenot, to dir. Maurice Jaubert. APV.1997-001
Concerto in F, Rastelli, Prelude and Rondo French, Sevillanes, Persan Entertainment , by Paul Wehage, the Orchestra of the Radio and television of Cracow, to dir. Jose Maria Florencio jr. APV.1999-002
With the garden of the wild beasts, an adventure of Babar, Invitation to the Music, Theater of the Puppets , by Therese Malengreau and Luc Devos. CYPRESS 1611
Melodies and parts for saxophones , by François the Russet-red, Hanna Schaer, No5el Lee. REM 311303
Trio and parts for piano , by Genevieve Ibanez and Odette Chaynes-Decaux. XCP 332986
complete Works for quartet of saxophones by the 4uatre unit. DAPHENEO 9601

With reading

Serge Vellones, Pierre Vellones, twenty years of a Parisian musical life , Slatkine, Geneva, 1981.

Random links: