Henri Duparc

Henri Duparc (1848–1933) was a French composer of the late Romantic period. Born in Paris, he studied piano with César Franck and became one of his first composition pupils. In 1871, he joined Saint-Saëns and Romain Bussine to found the Société Nationale de Musique. In 1868, his Five Mélodies, for voice and piano, were published. He travelled to Munich in the next year, attending several performances at the Bayreuth Festival. He was strongly impressed by the Wagner’s music and later would make numerous trips to Bayreuth over the next several decades. Poéme nocturne was written by Duparc in 1874 and was premiered at a Société National concert. One year later, he composed the symphonic poem, Lénore. In 1879, he began working on his opera Roussalka, based on a dramatic poem by Alexander Pushkin, left unfinished and partly destroyed. Duparc is best known for his mélodies ("art songs"), with texts by poets such as Baudelaire, Gautier, Leconte de Lisle and Goethe. A mental illness, diagnosed at the time as "neurasthenia", caused him abruptly to cease composing at age 37, in 1885. He devoted himself to his family and his other passions, drawing and painting. But increasing vision loss after the turn of the century eventually led to total blindness. He destroyed most of his music, leaving fewer than 40 works to posterity. He spent most of the rest of his life in Switzerland, and died in Mont-de-Marsan, in southwestern France, at age 85.