CHABRIER IN HIS LETTERS

Abstract

T HE CASE of Emmanuel Chabrier is not the only one of its kind in the history of French music. It is not without similarity to that of Berlioz, who was the elder by about forty years. The son of a bourgeois from the provinces-like Berlioz-, Chabrier was not intended by his parents for a musical career. Berlioz was destined to prepare for his father's profession, medicine, and was sent to Paris to complete his studies; the father of Chabrier, a lawyer, wishing to direct his son towards legal studies, in 1857 went to Paris with his family, so that Emmanuel could enter the law-school. Both Berlioz and Chabrier-the former a native of Dauphin6, the latter of Auvergne-were to stamp their impressions deeply upon succeeding generations of musicians. And each was possessed of a veritable musical demon. Emmanuel Chabrier, of old Auvergne and Bourbonnais stock-it is possible to trace his genealogy back to his father's great-great-grandfather, born in i68o--, first saw the light of day at the small town of Ambert in the subprefecture of Puy-de-D6me. The surname Chabrier ( = chevrier, meaning goat-herd) indicates a remote peasant origin. Emmanuel soon showed musical proclivities. He had as his earliest teachers first, at Ambert, Zapata,' a Spanish refugee, and later, at Clermont-Ferrand, where he attended the lycee (1852), Tarnowski, a Pole from Vilna.