André Caplet

André Caplet was born in Le Havre on 23 November 1878, the youngest of seven children born to a Norman family of modest means. He began studying piano and violin when a child and by the age of 13 performed in the orchestra of the Grand Théâtre there. He entered the Paris Conservatory in 1896 and won several prizes. While a student he supported himself first by playing in dance orchestras in the evening and then by conducting, where had immediate success. After a stint as assistant conductor of the Orchestre Colonne, in 1899 he took over the musical direction at the Théâtre de l'Odéon.[1] Some of his student compositions were published as early as 1897. The Société des compositeurs de musique (SCM), the less avant-garde of French organizations promoting new music,[lower-alpha 1] awarded his quintet for piano and winds first prize in 1901 and premiered it on 28 February of that year.[2][1] Caplet soon had success with the more progressive Société nationale de musique (SCM) as well, including a concert dedicated to his work on 9 March 1901, and he was hailed in the musical press and from these performances until the end of his career his chamber works had a champion in the flutist Georges Barrère.[2]

He won the Prix de Rome in 1901, composing in a conventional style to please the judges, while Maurice Ravel showed his contempt for the assigned text.[lower-alpha 2] Caplet's native city celebrated his participation with a performance of his Été for chorus and orchestra (1899) on 3 April 1901 and marked his victory by presenting several of his works at a concert on 24 November, including L'Été, Pâques citadines for chorus and orchestra, Feuillets d'album for flute and piano (1901), and the cantata that won him the Prix de Rome, Myrra (1901).[1]

Until the end of 1905, Caplet lived at the French Academy in Rome with the financial support the prize provided, though he took leave for long periods to attend performances in Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg.[1]

As a composer Caplet wrote many vocal works and chamber pieces, several works for orchestra and only a handful of piano pieces. Especially interesting is his instrumental use of voices, as in his Septuor à cordes vocales et instrumentales (1909). He was also one the composers who first incorporated the saxophone into his chamber works, like Légende (1903) and Impressions d’automne (1905).[3][4][lower-alpha 3]

Caplet served as one of the conductors of the Boston Opera Company for four seasons, from 1910 to 1914, specializing in the French repertoire.[lower-alpha 4] He secured the appointment through one of its co-founders, the impresario Henry Russell, whose wife Nina became a friend of Caplet during his time in Rome. He accepted the position to enhance his reputation as a conductor and used it to introduce contemporary French repertoire to the United States. Works by Debussy that he led include L'enfant prodigue, the Children's Corner, Pelléas et Mélisande, and the incidental music to Le Martyre de saint Sébastien.[1][lower-alpha 5]

At the end of 1914, after he had completed two movements of a work that became Les Prières, Caplet enlisted[9] in the French army and saw combat in the trenches at Verdun. He was wounded in May 1915 and later promoted to sergeant. In 1917 he completed the third movement and the work premiered that same year in the small church of Ham, Picardy, accompanied by the distant sounds of artillery.[10] His service ended in 1919. On 4 June of that year he married Geneviève Perruchon, a general's daughter who followed his work as a composer closely. They had a son in 1920.[9]

In 1918–19, he taught conducting, harmony, and orchestration at the music school established by Walter Damrosch at the behest of U.S. General John J. Pershing in Chaumont to train U.S. military personnel in hopes of creating military bands on the model of those found in France.[11][12][lower-alpha 6]

Caplet did not return to teaching and conducting at the war's end. Instead he devoted himself to composition, including a number of religious works. His Messe à trois voix for a capella female chorus had its premiere in Sainte Chapelle on 13 June 1922. It lacks the traditional "Credo" and includes the familiar Communion motet "O salutaris hostia".[13]

His oratorio-like Le Miroir de Jésus composed in September 1923 features a "choeur de femmes" in an supporting role. In Miroir Caplet set texts by Henri Ghéon as meditations on the fifteen decades of the rosary. The chorus announces each section's title but the female soloist delivers most of the text. The music of the central movements that take Christ's passion as their subject are, according to one commentator, "remarkable for its restraint as for its dissonance". It was a religious concert work of a sort not encountered again until Olivier Messiaen's Trois petites liturgies (1944). The British music critic Felix Aprahamian wrote that the musical textures of this work "reflect at once the polychrome tones and timbres of Debussy's art and the fourths, fifths, discant and parallel motion of the ars antiqua". Caplet conducted its premiere in February 1924 in Lyon and its Paris premiere on 1 May of that year.[13]

André Caplet with Claude Debussy

He became a close friend of Claude Debussy, sometimes serving as translator, and he orchestrated part of Debussy's Le Martyre de saint Sébastien.[14][15] He also collaborated with Debussy in the orchestration of La boîte à joujoux. In 1911, Caplet prepared an orchestration of Debussy's Children's Corner, which, along with his orchestration of Clair de lune from the Suite bergamasque is probably the most widely performed and recorded example of his work.[lower-alpha 7]

In 1925, Caplet caught a cold and, given how his lungs had been weakened when he was gassed during his military service, developed pleurisy, which proved fatal. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine), a suburb of Paris, on 22 April 1925 at the age of 46. He was buried in Montmartre Cemetery.

His widow conducted many concerts of his music.

In 1926, the sculptor Jacques Zwobada, a native of Neuilly, was commissioned to create a monument to Caplet. This was one of Zwobada's earliest works after he graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts.[17]

Additional sources

• Johnson, Graham; Stokes, Richard (2002). A French Song Companion. Oxford University Press. pp. 54ff. et passim. ISBN 978-0-19-924966-4.
• "Compositeur André Caplet (1878–1925)". ResMusicca (in French). Archived from the original on 10 November 2007.

• Le martyre de Saint-Sébastien: mystère en cinq actes, music by Debussy, transcribed by Caplet Score from Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection
• The Masque of Red Death Score from Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection
• André-Caplet.fr (in French)
• Free scores by André Caplet at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)