Marcel François Paul Landowski (18 February 1915 – 23 December 1999) was a French

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

biographer Biographers are authors who write an account of another person's life, while autobiographers are authors who write their own biography. Biographers Countries of working life: Ab=Arabia, AG=Ancient Greece, Al=Australia, Am=Armenian, AR=Ancient Rome ...

and arts administrator.

Biography

Born at

Pont-l'Abbé Pont-l'Abbé (; , "Abbot's bridge") is a Communes of France, commune in the Finistère Departments of France, department of Brittany (administrative region), Brittany in north-western France. The self-styled capital of Pays Bigouden (roughly th ...

Finistère Finistère (, ; ) is a Departments of France, department of France in the extreme west of Brittany. Its prefecture is Quimper and its largest city is Brest, France, Brest. In 2019, it had a population of 915,090.Brittany Brittany ( ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the north-west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica in Roman Gaul. It became an Kingdom of Brittany, independent kingdom and then a Duch ...

, he was the son of French

sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

Paul Landowski and great-grandson of the composer

Henri Vieuxtemps Henri François Joseph Vieuxtemps (; 17 February 18206 June 1881) was a Belgian composer and violinist. He occupies an important place in the history of the violin as a prominent exponent of the Franco-Belgian violin school during the mid-19th c ...

. He was father of a son and two daughters. The younger, Manon Landowski is singer-songwriter, performer, author and

of musical shows. As an infant he showed early musical promise, and studied

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

under Marguerite Long. He entered the

Paris Conservatoire The Conservatoire de Paris (), or the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (; CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue Jean Ja ...

in 1935; in addition one of his teachers was

Pierre Monteux Pierre Benjamin Monteux (; 4 April 18751 July 1964) was a French (later American) conductor. After violin and viola studies, and a decade as an orchestral player and occasional conductor, he began to receive regular conducting engagements in 1 ...

Administrative career

In 1966, France's Cultural Affairs minister

André Malraux Georges André Malraux ( ; ; 3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French novelist, art theorist, and minister of cultural affairs. Malraux's novel ''La Condition Humaine'' (''Man's Fate'') (1933) won the Prix Goncourt. He was appointed ...

appointed Landowski as the ministry's director of music, a controversial appointment made in the teeth of opposition from the then ascendant

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

s, led by

Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 19255 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war contemporary classical music. Born in Montb ...

. One of his first acts was the establishment, in 1967, of the

Orchestre de Paris The Orchestre de Paris () is a French orchestra based in Paris. The orchestra currently performs most of its concerts at the Philharmonie de Paris. History In 1967, following the dissolution of the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du ...

, appointing Charles Munch as its first director. He also championed the establishment of regional orchestras at a time when interest in them appeared to be waning.Obituary
/ref> This was part of a so-called "ten-year plan for music", instituted with the intention of establishing an opera company and conservatoire in each of the

Regions of France France is divided into eighteen administrative regions (, singular ), of which thirteen are located in metropolitan France (in Europe), while the other five are overseas regions (not to be confused with the overseas collectivities, which ha ...

. The new Orchestre de Paris was also built on the model intended to be followed by planned regional orchestras. In this endeavour Landowski worked with local authorities, especially those in the regional centres such as

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( ; ; Gascon language, Gascon ; ) is a city on the river Garonne in the Gironde Departments of France, department, southwestern France. A port city, it is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the Prefectures in F ...

Lille Lille (, ; ; ; ; ) is a city in the northern part of France, within French Flanders. Positioned along the Deûle river, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France Regions of France, region, the Prefectures in F ...

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

Strasbourg Strasbourg ( , ; ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est Regions of France, region of Geography of France, eastern France, in the historic region of Alsace. It is the prefecture of the Bas-Rhin Departmen ...

and

Toulouse Toulouse (, ; ; ) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Haute-Garonne department and of the Occitania (administrative region), Occitania region. The city is on the banks of the Garonne, River Garonne, from ...

, who signed agreements under which the French State would finance a third of each company or ensemble's operating budget. Landowski also oversaw modernisation of regional concert halls and theatres. In 1975 Landowski was appointed Inspector General of Music, and was Director of Cultural Affairs of the City of Paris from 1977 to 1979. He succeeded Emmanuel Bondeville as President of the Maurice Ravel Foundation and was in turn succeeded by

Manuel Rosenthal Manuel Rosenthal (18 June 1904 – 5 June 2003) was a French composer and conductor who held leading positions with musical organizations in France and the United States. He was friends with many contemporary composers, and despite a considerab ...

. He died in hospital in Paris in 1999, aged 84.

Compositions

Landowski eschewed the

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

approaches to music of his contemporaries, preferring a more conservative style. His greatest musical influence was

Arthur Honegger Arthur Honegger (; 10 March 1892 – 27 November 1955) was a Swiss-French composer who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. Honegger was a member of Les Six. For Halbreich, '' Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher'' is "more even ...

. His entire output includes five symphonies, several

concerto A concerto (; plural ''concertos'', or ''concerti'' from the Italian plural) is, from the late Baroque era, mostly understood as an instrumental composition, written for one or more soloists accompanied by an orchestra or other ensemble. The ...

s (notably two for piano and one each for bassoon, for cello, for flute, for trumpet, for trombone, for violin),

opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

s as well as a

Mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

and bears testimony to Honegger's impact. Landowski went on to write a

biography A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curri ...

of his mentor.

Selected 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'' (opera) *1962 ''Les Notes du Nuit'' (symphonic poem) *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'', oratorio on a poem by Pierre Emmanuel *1979 ''Un enfant apelle'' (concerto composed for the cellist

Mstislav Rostropovich Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich (27 March 192727 April 2007) was a Russian Cello, cellist and conducting, conductor. In addition to his interpretations and technique, he was well known for both inspiring and commissioning new works, which enl ...

and his wife, soprano

Galina Vishnevskaya Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya (, Ivanova, Иванова; 25 October 1926 – 11 December 2012) was a Russian soprano opera singer and recitalist who was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1966. She was the wife of cellist Mstislav Rostropo ...

). *1982 ''L'Horloge'', symphonic poem. *1987 ''La Vieille Maison'', "musical tale" in 2 acts *1988 Symphony No. 4 *1998 Symphony No. 5, "Les Lumières de la nuit" Many of his works were recorded by

Erato Records Erato Records is a record label founded in 1953 as Erato Disques S.A. by Philippe Loury to promote French classical music. Loury was head of éditions musicales Costallat. His first releases in France were licensed from the Haydn Society of Bo ...

who issued a retrospective of his recordings in 2010.

Selected filmography

Between the 1940s and the 1960s, Landowski composed the scores for several dozen films, most notably '' Gigi'' (1949). * '' Mandrin'' (1947) * '' Dark Sunday'' (1948) * '' Three Investigations'' (1948) * ''

The Woman I Murdered ''The Woman I Murdered'' (French: ''La femme que j'ai assassinée'') is a 1948 French drama film directed by Jacques Daniel-Norman and starring Armand Bernard, Pierre Larquey and Micheline Francey.Bessy & Chirat p.459 The film's sets were designed ...

'' (1948) * '' The Secret of Monte Cristo'' (1948) * '' Street Without a King'' (1950) * '' Agnes of Nothing'' (1950) * '' Chéri'' (1950) * '' Mammy'' (1951) * '' Serenade to the Executioner'' (1951) * '' The Passerby'' (1951) * '' Maria of the End of the World'' (1951) * '' Operation Thunder'' (1954) * '' Crime at the Concert Mayol'' (1954)

References

External links

Catalogue of works (in French and English)(.pdf file)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Landowski, Marcel 1915 births 1999 deaths French film score composers French male film score composers French people of Polish descent People from Pont-l'Abbé Conservatoire de Paris alumni 20th-century French composers French opera composers 20th-century French male musicians