Félicien-César David
Born: 13 April 1810, Cadenet (in the Vaucluse) (France)
Died: 29 August 1876, St. Germain-en-Laye (France)
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Sheet music
- SheetMusicPlus
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Find more scores by Félicien-César David
[details ←] Le Desert, Ode Symphonique - full score Vocal, Percussion,
[details ←] La Perle du Brasil: Charmant Oiseau [arrangements in F, G] - set of parts Vocal, Percussion,
[details ←] Le Desert, Ode Symphonique - set of parts Vocal, Percussion,
Music
Introduction
Félicien David established the genre of exotic music in the Romantic age. His symphonic ode Le Désert caused a sensation at its first performance in Paris. In music history he remained in the shadow of Hector Berlioz and passed into oblivion after his death.
Works
The symphonic ode Le Désert, with words by Auguste Collin, was first performed on December 8, 1844, in Paris. It is written in three movements, for solo tenor, a speaker, chorus and orchestra. The opening of Part II "Hymn to the Night", was especially popular. His masterpiece is the two-act op
Biography
Félicien-César David became an orphan at the age of five, the youngest of four small children. A few years later, at the advice of a former oboist who happened to live nearby, he was sent to the cathedral in Aix-en-Provence to be trained as a choirboy. Thereafter he worked in Aix for a few years and in 1830 moved to Paris. At the Paris conservatory he studied for another year as a penniless student. Through a friend he became attracted to Saint-Simonism, a socialist movement based on the writings of Claude-Henri de Rourroy, comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825). At that time it had already spread as an almost religious cult throughout France, but it burned out soon. As a political movement it was a failure, but some of its ideas took root.
David joined the cause of Saint-Simonism officially in 1832 and became member of a Saint-Simonian community near Paris. Soon the government closed the community and imprisoned its leader, Barthélemy-Proper Enfantin. A small band of his followers decided to travel to the East and arrived in Constantinople in March 1833. In Cairo they were joined by Enfantin in October 1833. David stayed nearly two years in Egypt before returning to France.
Back in Paris he had a difficult time making a living, while composing pieces with an oriental flavor. The break-through came in 1844, when he finished his symphonic ode Le Désert. First performed on December 8, 1844, it had an instantaneous success. This overnight change of fortune enabled David to settle as a composer, writing many more works in the same vein. His greatest success came with the opera Lalla Roukh, which was first performed on 12 May, 1862. It received hundreds of performances. People came from all over France by special train.
In the 1860’s David received official public recognition, but after his death he was soon forgotten. His musical language is very conventional and only his orientalism was an inspiration for other composers.
Literature
Dorothy Veinus Hagan, Félicien David 1810-1876; A Composer and a Cause, Syracuse University press, Syracuse, New York, 1985.
The Son
directed by: Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Prices subject to change.
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9781567303452
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 1567303455
Label: New Yorker Video
Languages:
Manufacturer: New Yorker Video
MPN: D87504D
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: New Yorker Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: May 25, 2004
Running Time: 100 minutes
Studio: New Yorker Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2002
Related Items: Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
The brothers Dardenne craft lean, unfancy movies, full of ordinary people, with no special effects--but the emotional impact of their movies (which include the superb La Promesse and Rosetta) is devastating. In The Son, a carpentry teacher named Olivier (Olivier Gourmet) accepts a new student into his class after having first rejected him; it is soon revealed that this new boy, Francis, is responsible for the death of Olivier's son. But Olivier takes Francis under his wing--is Olivier planning on taking revenge? Is this a phenomenal act of compassion? Is he simply tormenting himself? The movie watches Olivier engage in his daily tasks without comment, yet every scene is almost unnervingly dense with emotion (it's no wonder that Gourmet won the Best Actor award at Cannes for this performance). The Son builds complex and potent feelings from utterly mundane moments. It's simply an astonishing feat of moviemaking. --Bret Fetzer
Rating:
- Forgiveness or Revenge? 3.5 Stars ..... Olivier, a wood shop teacher reluctantly takes on a new pupil, only to find that the kid is one who murdered his own son years ago. The apprentice is blithely unaware of this background, after having spent 5 years in a juvenile center. He looks up to the teacher as a trade tutor and even asks him to become his guardian.
As Olivier drives the two of them out to a remote lumber yard, the viewer wonders what impulse will prevail - revenge or forgiveness. This is a suspenseful movie ... Read More
Rating:
- WTF?Wow, this was soooo boring. Very misleading how the DVD case said "SUSPENSFUL!!" Where? I saw NO suspense! Again the acting? Why was the acting praised, anyone can walk around with the same blank look throughout a movie. I watched this movie waiting and waiting for something good to happen...then the credits rolled. WTF? I was hoping that this movie was like "Dancer in the Dark", the shaky camera angles and the laboriously boring dialogue I hoped would then tranform into something even mildy ... Read More
Rating:
- Redemption . . .This Belgian film tells a story of grief and redemption as a teacher in a vocational training center takes on a young student, who is just released from prison, to teach him the fundamentals of carpentry. We watch for a half hour a kind of cat and mouse game between the two of them before we discover the reason for the teacher's initial reluctance to take on the boy as a student and his reticence about the choice he's made. Divorced and living an isolated existence, the man (Olivier Gourmet) seems deadened ... Read More
Rating:
- The SonThis stark, unnerving drama by the esteemed Dardenne brothers skirts the themes of reckoning and vengeance without committing fully to either one, yet it packs a mighty emotional punch. In a brilliant, haunting performance, Gourmet plays an ordinary tradesman whose motivations, like his emotions, are completely unfathomable: Is he planning to reform Francis, or kill him? With the Dardennes' tight, handheld camerawork, we are immersed in the claustrophobic, indecipherable world of Olivier's body language, and ... Read More
Rating:
- redemptive carpentryThe Belgian carpenter Olivier runs a vocational ed shop for teenagers. When he befriends yet another apprentice, Francais, he could never imagine the consequences of his decision.
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