Marcel Landowski facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Marcel Landowski

Marcel François Paul Landowski (born February 18, 1915 – died December 23, 1999) was a talented French composer, writer, and an important person in managing the arts in France. He helped shape music in his country for many years.

Biography

Marcel Landowski was born in Pont-l'Abbé, a town in Finistère, Brittany, France. His father was the famous French sculptor Paul Landowski. Marcel was also the great-grandson of the composer Henri Vieuxtemps.

Marcel had a son and two daughters. His younger daughter, Manon Landowski, is also a talented singer, songwriter, performer, and composer of musical shows.

From a very young age, Marcel showed great promise in music. He studied piano with a well-known teacher named Marguerite Long. In 1935, he joined the famous Paris Conservatoire, a top music school. One of his important teachers there was Pierre Monteux.

Leading Music in France

In 1966, André Malraux, who was France's Minister of Cultural Affairs, chose Landowski to be the director of music for the ministry. This was a big decision because some modern composers, like Pierre Boulez, preferred a different style of music.

One of Landowski's first big actions was to create the Orchestre de Paris in 1967. He chose Charles Munch to be its first leader. Landowski also strongly supported creating orchestras in different regions of France. At that time, people were losing interest in regional music groups, so his efforts were very important.

He had a "ten-year plan for music" to help set up an opera company and a music school in each of France's regions. The new Orchestre de Paris was a model for these planned regional orchestras. Landowski worked with local governments in cities like Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Strasbourg, and Toulouse. They agreed that the French government would pay for one-third of each music group's costs. Landowski also helped update concert halls and theaters in these regions.

Later, in 1975, Landowski became the Inspector General of Music. From 1977 to 1979, he was the Director of Cultural Affairs for the City of Paris. He also became the President of the Maurice Ravel Foundation, taking over from Emmanuel Bondeville. Later, Manuel Rosenthal took his place.

Marcel Landowski passed away in a hospital in Paris in 1999, at the age of 84.

His Music

Marcel Landowski chose a more traditional style of music instead of the very new and experimental "avant-garde" approaches that some other composers of his time used. His biggest musical influence was Arthur Honegger.

Landowski wrote many different types of music, including five symphonies and several concertos. He wrote concertos for instruments like the piano, bassoon, cello, flute, trumpet, trombone, and violin. He also composed operas and a Mass. His music clearly shows the influence of his mentor, Arthur Honegger. Landowski even wrote a biography about Honegger.

Some of His Works

• 1940 Piano Concerto No. 1
• 1949 Symphony No. 1, "Jean de la Peur"
• 1954 Concerto for ondes Martenot and string orchestra
• 1956 Le Fou (an opera)
• 1962 Les Notes du Nuit (a symphonic poem, which is a piece of music that tells a story or describes something)
• 1963 Piano Concerto No. 2
• 1963 Symphony No. 2
• 1964 Symphony No. 3, "Des Espaces"
• 1968 Flute Concerto
• 1976 Trumpet Concerto, "Au bout du chagrin, une fenêtre ouverte"
• 1977 Messe de l'Aurore, an oratorio (a large musical work for voices and orchestra) based on a poem by Pierre Emmanuel
• 1979 Un enfant apelle (a concerto written for the famous cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya)
• 1982 L'Horloge, a symphonic poem
• 1987 La Vieille Maison, a "musical tale" in two acts
• 1988 Symphony No. 4
• 1998 Symphony No. 5, "Les Lumières de la nuit"

Many of his musical works were recorded by Erato Records. In 2010, this company released a collection of his recordings.

Film Music

Between the 1940s and the 1960s, Marcel Landowski composed music for many films. One of his most famous film scores was for Gigi (1949).

Here are some other films he composed for:

• Mandrin (1947)
• Dark Sunday (1948)
• The Woman I Murdered (1948)
• The Secret of Monte Cristo (1948)
• Street Without a King (1950)
• Mammy (1951)
• The Passerby (1951)
• Maria of the End of the World (1951)

See also

In Spanish: Marcel Landowski para niños