Ma Chère Maman - Mon Cher Enfant - Lucien Durosoir

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Résumé :
In August 1914, concert violinist Lucien Durosoir was on holiday with his mother Louise in Brittany, when the world changed, and he was called up. Swapping his instrument for a rifle, he was at the front a week later. Ma Ch? re Maman - Mon Cher Enfant is the first-ever English translation of the letters of Lucien and Louise Durosoir. This collection provides a unique first-hand perspective on World War I. From his gruesome time in the trenches, watching as his comrades were killed beside him, to his transfer to a musical unit and work as a pigeon keeper with the composer Andr? Caplet, Lucien wrote to his mother nearly every day, and she responded. The letters are rich with descriptions of conditions and battles, daily life at the front and Paris, music, and maternal guidance. They offer an intimate peek into the complicated relationship of two determined individuals....

Biographie:
Lucien Durosoir (1878 - 5 December 1955) was a French composer and violinist whose works were rediscovered thanks to manuscripts found by his son Luc. Durosoir studied the violin with Joseph Joachim and Hugo Heermann in Germany before his first tour as a young virtuoso in 1899. In addition to giving the first performances of French music in Austria-Hungary and Germany (Saint-Sa? ns, Faur?, Lalo, Widor, Bruneau), he also gave the French premiere of the Strauss violin concerto in 1901. His career as a violinist was cut short by World War I. Durosoir served in the Fifth Division, which took part in some of the bloodiest battles of the war (Douaumont, the Chemin des Dames, and Eparges). At the encouragement of General Mangin, Durosoir formed a string quartet with his fellow soldiers Henri Lemoine (second violin), Andr? Caplet (viola), and Maurice Mar? chal (cello).After his demobilization in February, 1919, he began to compose at his home in southwest France. For the next thirty years he composed a host of works, including three string quartets, (1920, 1922 and 1933-34) a large piano sonata (Le Lys, 1921), a piano quintet (1925), an orchestral suite (Fun? railles, 1930), and about twenty-five works of chamber music for various instrumental combinations. Isolated from Parisian musical trends, Durosoir forged a very personal style in the Romantic tradition, but with unusual features such as polyrhythms. In 1922 Andr? Caplet wrote, I will talk with enthusiasm to all my friends about your quartet, which I find a thousand times more interesting than anything with which the noisy group of newcomers overwhelms us. From 1950 onwards illness prevented him from continuing to compose and he died in December 1955....

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