Paul Alexandre Camille Chevillard (14 October 1859 – 30 May 1923) was a French composer and conductor.

Biography

According to Musiciens français d'Aujourd'hui, Camille Chevillard was the son of the famous cellist and composer, who taught at the Paris Conservatoire. He entered the Conservatoire in the piano class of Georges Mathias and graduated in 1880 with second prize. He never studied composition. Chevillard began composing chamber music in 1882: first a quintet for piano and strings, then a quartet, a trio and sonatas, which were performed in various concerts, notably at the Société Nationale de Musique. He became voice coach for the Concerts-Lamoureux(1887) and in this capacity he took part in the "heroic and legendary" Paris premiere of Lohengrin at the Eden-Théâtre in 1887. On 17 April 1888, he married Marguerite Victoire Lamoureux (1861-1941), a singing teacher and daughter of Charles Lamoureux. In 1889, together with Fritz Schneklud (the cellist in Gauguin's The Cellist),, Lucien Capet and Monteux, he founded the 'Société de fondation Beethoven' and in 1890 was appointed second conductor of the Concerts-Lamoureux. These new functions gave him a taste for writing for the orchestra. His Ballade symphonique was first performed at the Concerts-Lamoureux on 23 February 1890. It was followed by the symphonic poem Le Chêne et le Roseau (8 March 1891), and the Fantaisie symphonique (21 October 1894). All three works are part of the Concerts-Lamoureux repertoire. The first performance of the "Trio Chevillard, Hayot, Salmon" (with Maurice Hayot, 1862-1945 and the cellist Joseph Salmon) took place in 1895. Finally, in 1897-1898, Chevillard regularly replaced Lamoureux, who had numerous engagements abroad. After the death of his father-in-law in 1899, he became the principal conductor of the Association des Concerts-Lamoureux. As a conductor, he turned to the German and Russian Romantic repertoire, but he also conducted the Lamoureux Orchestra in the first performances of Pelléas et Mélisande (1901) by Gabriel Fauré, the Nocturnes (1900-1901) and especially La Mer (1905) by Claude Debussy and La Valse (1920) by Maurice Ravel. He promoted the music of Albéric Magnard. In 1903, Camille Chevillard was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour. Also in 1903, he was awarded the by the Académie des beaux-arts for his chamber music compositions Professor of Chamber Music at the Conservatoire from 1907, he also became musical director of the Opéra de Paris in 1914. There, in 1923, he premiered the ballet Cydalise et le Chèvre-pied by his friend Gabriel Pierné. He died in Chatou. His pupils included Suzanne Chaigneau, Clotilde Coulombe, Sophie Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté, Yvonne Hubert, Eugeniusz Morawski, and Robert Soetens. His wife Marguerite Chevillard is sometimes credited as Madame Camille Chevillard as translator into French of German song texts, e.g. Felix Weingartner's 3 Gedichte Op.17 published in 1894.

Selected works

Discography