Alexandre Tansman

Alexandre Tansman was born on 11 June 1897 in Łódź, Poland, an important manufacturing town, into a highly educated middle-class family. He began composing at an early age, attending the local conservatoire and playing in the Łódź Symphony Orchestra, which performed his first works. He went on to study music and law at the National Conservatory and the University of Warsaw. In the first national competition of newly independent Poland, he won three first prizes under different names. However, his works were considered too daring and atonal for Poland at the time. He decided to go to Paris at the end of 1919. He had the opportunity to meet Ravel and play his early works for him. Ravel recognised his real talent, recommended him to his publishers and introduced him to the best of the musical world. He attended the salons of the Revue Musicale and others and soon had his first concerts and publications. His talent as a pianist enabled him to perform his own works, either as a soloist or as a chamber music accompanist. He became friends with the Group of Six and the 'Paris School' composers from Central Europe: the Czech Bohuslav Martinù, the Russian Alexandre Tcherepnine, the Hungarian Tibor Harsanyi, the Romanian Marcel Mihalovici and the Swiss Conrad Beck. In Vienna he made contact with Universal Edition, who published his first Sinfonietta, which was a great success in the United States, where Tansman toured several times in 1927-1928. The most important conductors and performers included his works in their programmes: Koussevitzky, Toscanini, Stokowski, Monteux, Mengelberg, Golschmann, Horenstein, Gieseking, Rubinstein, Iturbi, Segovia, Heifetz, Huberman, Casals...

Finally, in 1932-1933, he went on a world tour (during which he met unforgettable personalities such as Mahatma Gandhi), enriching his music with a variety of harmonies and rhythms. Back in France, he married the pianist Colette Cras, daughter of the composer and admiral Jean Cras, and became a French citizen in 1938. The war interrupted this happy period and Tansman and his family took refuge in Nice for a year. Thanks to the support of a committee set up by Charlie Chaplin (known during his tours) and several musicians and conductors (such as Toscanini), he went into exile in the United States for 5 years. He became close friends with the Stravinskys, to whom he dedicated a book in 1949 and, on his death, a Stèle in memoriam. There he met many of his exiled friends, including Schoenberg, Zeisl and Milhaud. He wrote a number of successful film scores and even won an award for the music to Paris Underground. He composed a great deal, including three symphonies and chamber music, and conducted his orchestral works as a guest conductor in all the major cities. But the nostalgia for Europe was strong and the family returned to Paris in 1946. Musical life gradually resumed and Tansman was able to resume all the concerts cancelled in 1938, tour Europe extensively and present his publishers with a large number of new works. He composed his most outstanding works, such as his oratorio Isaïe le prophète, his opera Le Serment and his Sinfonia piccola. He would not submit to any system or experiment. "I am against everything that is an exclusive system [...] I do not want to be a modern musician. I find this expression too ambiguous, because it implies "fashion". I want to be a musician of my time [...]".Finally, Poland rediscovered him in the 1970s, acclaiming him with numerous concerts and decorating him with the most important cultural medals. In 1996, an international Alexandre Tansman competition was held in his home town for the next 20 years. He received numerous commissions from the French and Polish Ministries of Culture and the RTF, and his works were all premiered. Tansman's artistic legacy includes more than 300 works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles. After being awarded the medal of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, Alexandre Tansman died on 15 November 1986.