Chabrier: Orchestral Works

View all works by Chabrier in the main app

Explore the complete catalog of Orchestral compositions by Chabrier. This curated list includes composition years, historical Wikipedia context, and interactive audio to add specific tracks directly to your listening queue.

Title Year Actions
Bourree fantasque, for orchestra

"Bourrée fantasque" is a piece of music for solo piano by Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–1894), being one of his last major completed works.

España, rhapsody for orchestra

España, rhapsody for orchestra (French: España, rapsodie pour orchestre or Rapsodie España) is the most famous orchestral composition by French composer Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–1894). Written in 1883 after a trip to Spain, it was dedicated to the conductor Charles Lamoureux, who conducted the first public performance on 4 November 1883, at the Théâtre du Château d’Eau for the Société des Nouveaux Concerts in Paris.

Fête polonaise

Le roi malgré lui (The King in Spite of Himself or The Reluctant King) is an opéra-comique in three acts by Emmanuel Chabrier of 1887 with an original libretto by Emile de Najac and Paul Burani. The opera is revived occasionally, but has not yet found a place in repertory. Eric Blom wrote that the tragic fate of the opera was to be written a quarter of a century too soon. However, the music has been greatly admired by composers including d'Indy, Ravel and Stravinsky.

Joyeuse marche

Joyeuse marche is a popular orchestra piece by the French composer Emmanuel Chabrier. It is the second half of a pair of orchestral pieces (the other was Prélude pastoral) first performed on 4 November 1888 in Angers, conducted by the composer. The Joyeuse marche is dedicated to Vincent d'Indy.

Lamento

Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier (French: [ɛmanɥɛl ʃabʁie]; 18 January 1841 – 13 September 1894) was a French Romantic composer and pianist. His bourgeois family did not approve of a musical career for him, and he studied law in Paris and then worked as a civil servant until the age of thirty-nine while immersing himself in the modernist artistic life of the French capital and composing in his spare time. From 1880 until his final illness he was a full-time composer. Although known primarily for two of his orchestral works, España and Joyeuse marche, Chabrier left a corpus of operas (including L'étoile), songs, and piano music, but no symphonies, concertos, quartets, sonatas, or religious or liturgical music. His lack of academic training left him free to create his own musical language, unaffected by established rules, and he was regarded by many later composers as an important innovator and a catalyst who paved the way for French modernism. He was admired by, and influenced, composers as diverse as Debussy, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Satie, Poulenc, Stravinsky, and others of the group of composers known as Les Six. Writing at a time when French musicians were generally proponents or opponents of the music of Wagner, Chabrier steered a middle course, sometimes incorporating Wagnerian traits into his music and at other times avoiding them. Chabrier was associated with some of the leading writers and painters of his time. Among his closest friends was the painter Édouard Manet, and Chabrier collected Impressionist paintings long before they became fashionable. A number of such paintings from his personal collection by artists known to him are now housed in some of the world's leading art museums. He penned a large number of letters to friends and colleagues which offer an insight into his musical opinions and character. Chabrier died in Paris at the age of fifty-three from a neurological disease, probably caused by syphilis.

Larghetto for Horn and Orchestra

This is a selected list of musical compositions that feature a prominent part for the natural horn or the French horn, sorted by era and then by composer.

Suite pastorale

Pièces pittoresques (Picturesque pieces) are a set of ten pieces for piano by Emmanuel Chabrier. Four of the set were later orchestrated by the composer to make his Suite pastorale.