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This medal
has been minted in 1968 in
This medal
has been designed by the outstanding French medallier, Andre BELO.
This medal has been minted in 100 only!!!
This one has the number 08/100 on the rim.
Henri
Sauguet (18
May 1901 — 22 June 1989), was a French composer. Born in Bordeaux as Henri-Pierre Poupard,
he adopted his mother's maiden name as his pseudonym. His output includes
operas, ballets, four symphonies (1945, 1949, 1955, 1971), concertos, chamber
and choral music and numerous songs, as well as film music. Although he
experimented with musique
concrète
and expanded tonality, he remained opposed to particular systems and his music
evolved little: he developed tonal or modal ideas in smooth curves, producing
an art of clarity, simplicity and restraint.
av.
Henri Sauguet
rv.
The symbolic motive
diameter – 72 x 72
mm, (2⅞“)
weight – 349.70 gr, (12.34 oz)
metal – bronze, mint patina
Sauguet started learning the piano at home when he was five years old.
Later he was taught by the organist of the church of Sainte-Eulalie de
When
Jean Cocteau dubbed a group of
Paris-based composers Les Six, Sauguet started writing to
one of its members, Darius Milhaud. He also began to refer to
himself and two
Sauguet's
correspondence with Milhaud led to the composer asking to see some of his
works. He wrote a piano suite called Trois Françaises (Three
Frenchwomen) which so impressed Milhaud that he encouraged the young man to
move to Paris. Arriving in October 1921,
he found work as a secretary at the Guimet Museum. For some six years he
studied composition with Charles Koechlin, whom he credits with
helping him understand music within its own context and find his own voice.
In
1923, together with three other admirers of Satie's music (Henri
Clicquot-Pleyell, Roger
Desormière,
Maxime Jacob), Sauguet formed the 'School
of Arcueil', named after the location of Satie's home. With his support, they
had their first concert on 25 October 1923 at Théâtre
des Champs-Elysées.
In 1924, Erik Satie introduced Sauguet to Serge Diaghilev, the flamboyant impresario
of the Ballets russes, and he wrote his first
ballet, Les Roses (Roses) that year. In 1927 Diaghilev's company
produced the ballet La Chatte (The Cat) with music by Sauguet, which
premiered in
Sauguet's
gained his greatest popularity with his ballets,
of which he wrote over twenty. The best of these, and the work by which he is
most known outside France, was Les Forains (1945) about a talented, slightly
tattered, but ultimately hopeful travelling circus troupe. He also wrote
numerous works for radio, television, stage, and film, and a large quantity of
chamber and other instrumental works, including solos for harmonica and musical
saw, but his particular talent was vocal music. He worked ten years on La
Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1936) - based on Stendhal's novel - an opera that had
a reputation in France as his most important work. Internationally, however, it
was considered to be short on emotion and drama. Other operatic works include La
Contrebasse (1930), La Gageure Imprévue (1942), Les
Caprices de Marianne (1954), and Boule de Suif (1978)
The
war period brought a change to Sauguet's work, which had previously been marked
by his high spirits. He used his reputation during this time to help his Jewish
friends but lost the oldest-established among them, Max Jacob, who died in the Drancy
prison camp. At the war's end he completed his Symphony No. 1, known as Expiatoire
(Expiatory), in tribute to the war's innocent victims. This was followed by his
2nd Symphony, known as The Allegorical or The Seasons, in 1949. His 3rd
Symphony is known as I.N.R. and his 4th, a meditation on old age written as he
approached the age of seventy, as Du Troisième Age (The Third Age).
Sauguet
worked as a music critic throughout the 1930s and 1940s. He founded the
Composers Union, also devoting his time to Una Voce, an organization
that works to preserve Latin and traditional chant in the Roman Catholic
liturgy. In 1956 he was made an Officer of the Legion of Honour and succeeded his friend
Milhaud into the French Academy in 1976. He died in Paris in
1989 and was buried in the Cimetière
de Montmartre.
An autobiography, Musique, ma vie (Music, my life) was published in
1990.
Sauguet was homosexual, and formed a partnership with the set designer and decorator of French theatre Jacques Dupont which endured until the latter's death in 1978.