Daniel-Lesur 1908–2002

An obituary by Nigel Simeone

Daniel-Lesur, the distinguished French composer, organist and administrator was born in Paris a little over a fortnight before Olivier Messiaen. Lesur came from a musical family: his mother Alice Lesur (née Thiboust) was herself an accomplished composer, some of whose music was published. As a teenager he was a classmate of his exact contemporary Messiaen, and the two were to remain lifelong friends. Early on, Daniel-Lesur was considerably influenced by his teacher, the organist-mystic Charles Tournemire, whose deputy he served as at Sainte-Clotilde from 1927 until 1937. Daniel-Lesur’s own composing career began during this period, and his early style is to be heard at its most individual in three works for the organ: In paradisum, La vie intérieure and Hymnes. These pieces were not only played by the composer himself but also by several of his friends, including Messiaen at the organ of the Trinité. In 1937 he moved from Sainte-Clotilde to the Benedictine Abbey of Sainte-Marie, in Paris’s 16th arrondissement, a post he held until 1944.

In 1935, Daniel-Lesur became a professor of counterpoint at the Schola Cantorum, one of several young teachers appointed by the Schola’s new Director, Nestor Lejeune, after a year which had seen the departure – in some cases in high dudgeon – of some of the Schola’s ancien régime of staff who had been appointed during d’Indy’s time. That same year, he was one of the composers to found the progressive concert society La Spirale – very much centred around the Schola and actively supported by Lejeune – which was headed by Georges Migot, and whose committee included Jolivet, Messiaen, Claire Delbos (Mme Messiaen) and others. In 1936, he was a co-founder with Messiaen, Jolivet and Baudrier of La Jeune France, a group which was established primarily to promote and encourage the values of emotional expression and sincerity in music, in opposition to the neo-classicism which was prevalent at the time. The group’s manifesto allowed for a wide range of musical styles and the founder members were a broad church indeed: in an interview given at the time of its foundation, Messiaen placed Jolivet on the musical Left-wing (progressive), with Baudrier and Daniel-Lesur on the Right (traditionalist) and himself forging an independent via media. The group flourished during the years of the Popular Front in France, up to the outbreak of World War II. During the anguished years of the German Occupation of France, Daniel-Lesur and the instrument inventor Maurice Martenot were the first to offer their old friend Messiaen a job when he was released from captivity, working in the Free Zone for the music division of Pierre Schaeffer’s arts organisation called – immensely confusingly – the Association Jeune France. Messiaen’s letters written to his wife during these difficult weeks (from early March until the start of May 1941) make frequent reference to Daniel-Lesur’s kindness, before Messiaen took up his post as a harmony teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, giving his first class on 7 May 1941.

While Daniel-Lesur was a composer with strong allegiances to traditional tonal frameworks, his best music has a stamp of real individuality and is beautifully written for the forces concerned. Renaud Machart, writing in Le Monde (4 July 2002) summarised Daniel-Lesur’s contribution as a composer as follows: ‘Daniel-Lesur has not revolutionised the history of music, and his language, always tonal, does not have the individuality or the immediate harmonic fingerprints which mark out Olivier Messiaen or Francis Poulenc’, but Machart went on to stress the ‘considerable delights and profound harmonic richness of Le Cantique des Cantiques, his most famous composition, notable for its controlled sensualism’. Earlier judgments on his scrupulously-crafted music were not dissimilar . In 1960 ‘Clarendon’ (Bernard Gavoty) in Le Figaro wrote that ‘Daniel-Lesur has an intelligent talent: that is not something I see as a restriction, but as a compliment’.

Dating from 1953, Le Cantique des Cantiques is indeed among his finest pieces – and is perhaps the only one of his major compositions to be performed outside France with any frequency. Written for twelve-part unaccompanied voices, it was one of the remarkable group of works commissioned by the brilliant choral conductor Marcel Couraud. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Couraud commissions included two other classics of the twentieth-century choral repertoire: Messiaen’s Cinq Rechants inspired by the Tristan legend of love-death, and Jolivet’s Epithalame, written as a celebration of his own twentieth wedding anniversary. Daniel-Lesur’s piece shares with these the common theme of love-songs, something which Couraud stipulated in his commissions from these three veterans of La Jeune France. Le Cantique des Cantiques is in seven movements, mixing French and Latin texts drawn in the main from the Song of Songs, but also interweaving appropriate New Testament texts. In the last movement, ‘Epithalame’, the combination of richly harmonised upper voices singing the famous words from Chapter 8 of the Song of Songs in French (‘Pose-moi comme un sceau sur ton coeur, comme un sceau sur ton bras. Car l’amour est fort comme la Mort’) over an ostinato set to Latin words (‘Veni sponsa Christi’) has very great cumulative power, reaching a mighty twelve-part climax where all the voices sing a succession of Alleluias which initially emerge from the complex texture in a repeated motif coloured by the Lydian mode – an idea which seems to suggest the joyous pealing of bells. It’s a memorable moment, and this impressive work deserves more regular outings. The slightly later Messe du Jubilé, for chorus and organ, is less imaginative, but shows an enviable level of craftsmanship.

His works for the theatre included a ballet written jointly with Jolivet, and three operas. The most significant of these was Andrea del Sarto (also the title of a tone-poem), based on the play by Alfred de Musset, but it failed to establish itself in the French lyric repertoire. One of his last major works was a Fantaisie concertante written at the request of Mstislav Rostropovich in 1994. In a long career with a prolific output, he also wrote several film scores and a number of fine songs for voice and piano, notable among which is a set using poems by Messiaen’s mother, Cécile Sauvage.

As a teacher, Daniel-Lesur’s position at the Schola Cantorum became increasingly important, and he became professor of fugue and composition before his appointment as Director in 1957, a post he held for four years, then taking the title of Honorary Director in 1961. He also worked for many years at French Radio, and in the early 1960s became an advisor on music programming for French television. One of his most interesting programmes for Radio France in the 1950s, done as a joint enterprise with the critic Bernard Gavoty, was a series addressing questions in modern music by interviewing contemporary composers. These were published in book form as Pour ou contre la musique moderne? (1957), a fascinating and characteristically broad-minded examination of the state of music, especially in France, during the 1950s.

Throughout his long career, administrative posts were something he took to with enthusiasm, and in 1969 he was appointed Principal Inspector for Music, moving on to Inspector General for Music – a post which had previously been held by some very distinguished musicians including Gabriel Fauré, Paul Dukas and Jacques Chailley – at the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in 1973. For part of this time he also took on the difficult and delicate task of running the Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux (1971–73) in preparation for Rolf Liebermann’s arrival at the Opéra. Once again he worked as an able administrator at Radio France, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Paris Conservatoire. His career certainly suggests that he was a musician who also relished administrative work, but his success in this area brought the disadvantage of leaving his later composing activity somewhat in the shadows. Daniel-Lesur was elected as a member of the Institut (Académie des Beaux-Arts) in 1982 (in succession to Tony Aubin) where one of the other fauteuils for music was occupied by his old friend Messiaen. He was also a Grand Officier of the Légion d’Honneur. He married Simone Lauer on 30 March 1943, and they had two children, Christian and Béatrice (Mme Jean-Pierre Birchant). He had been in poor health for several years.

Daniel-Lesur: born Paris, 19 November 1908; died Paris, 2 July 2002.