Jacques Ibert, the Conservative Revolutionary

If you are following this series chronologically, you know there were a good number of French composers of woodwind quintets through the 1920s and 1930. They include: Henri Maréchal, Raymond Charpentier, Marcel Labey, Joseph-Guy Ropartz, Henri Tomasi, and Yvonne Desportes.

But the quintet that most seems to exemplify the giddy, celebratory ethos of the Roaring 20s, even if it was written a few months late, is Ibert’s Trois Pièces Brèves. And we should be glad we have it.

Ibert’s Early Life

Jacques-François-Antoine Ibert was born 15 August, 1890 in Paris, to Antoine Ibert, a successful businessman, and Marguerite Lartigue Ibert who was a cousin of composer Manuel de Falla and an accomplished pianist.

Ibert began studying music from the age of four, starting with the violin and soon improvising on the piano. His father wanted Jacques to follow him in business and, after Jacques graduated from secondary school, hired him to work in his business. During this time Ibert became enamored of acting and the theater and considered a career in acting instead of music, an idea which both of his parents opposed.

So it wasn’t until 1911 that Jacques began studies at the Conservatoire. There he studied harmony with Emile Pessard, counterpoint with André Gédalge, and composition with Paul Vidal. Gédalge also taught private classes in orchestration where Ibert met fellow students Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud.

There seems to be some difference of opinion among biographers on whether or not Ibert studied with Gabriel Fauré. While Fauré reformed and directed the Conservatoire up to 1920, it doesn’t appear that he taught many classes. Also, Fauré was going deaf during his later years and would have had difficulty hearing and critiquing his students’ music. However, Honegger (a classmate of Ibert) is listed as a student of Fauré, and members of Le Six are said to have been devoted to the elder composer, so perhaps one or more of them dragged Ibert to a lecture or seminar by Fauré or to a concert of his music. Some lists do include Ibert’s name as a student of Fauré, but others don’t. None say what Ibert supposedly studied with him. Certainly, at the Conservatoire between 1911-1920, it would have been difficult for Ibert not to have heard and studied Fauré’s music.

Ibert’s father refused to pay for musical training for his son. So Ibert supported himself working as an accompanist, writing light piano and voice works (using the pen name William Berty) and providing piano music in movie theaters. (Later in life he would write over 60 film scores.)

Ibert’s studies were interrupted by World War I. According to information on the official Ibert website, Ibert became a soldier-nurse and served as a stretcher-carrier on the battle front in November, 1914 and may have assisted with battlefield surgery. He became ill with a paratyphoid infection and was discharged. After recovery, Ibert entered the French Navy, became an officer, and served from 1917 to the end of the war at Dunkirk, resulting in the Croix de Guerre. (His naval experience may have later inspired him to write Escales or Ports of Call.)

While still in uniform, he applied for the Prix de Rome at the Conservatoire and (possibly because there were no awards between 1915-1917 due to the war) he surprisingly won on his first attempt in 1919, sharing the top award with Marc Delmas. This lead to three years of study at the Villa Medici in Rome. The day after he won the award, he married his childhood sweetheart, Rosette Veber a sculptor and daughter of artist Jean Veber.

The Quintet

Trois Pièces Brèves (Three Short Pieces)

Allegro

Andante

Assez lent – Allegro scherzando

Trois Pièces Brèves was composed in 1930. The quintet music is based on incidental music that Ibert wrote for a five-act comedy Le stratagème des roués (The Beaux’ Strategem, L 41) that Ibert completed early in 1930 for a March performance. Since Ibert had briefly studied theater as well as music, he was a natural composer choice for theater works. Apparently, this theater had little space or money, so Ibert wrote the score for woodwind quintet instead of a larger ensemble. The play is based on an earlier English play by George Farquhar. (A short song by Ibert, Chanson du rien, for voice and piano or voice and woodwind quintet is also from that incidental music. See below.)

We do not know details of the quintet’s first concert performance which is strange for a work of its overwhelming popularity.

This bubbling French Champagne of a quintet has never left the quintet standard repertoire since its introduction and is still an audience pleaser 90+ years later.

For those who don’t know Ibert’s quintet, it begins with a brightly dissonant tutti to grab the audience’s attention, but after a short intro, it turns into a showcase for the oboe, soon joined by flute and clarinet, with changing meters and moods, but all fairly succinct as the title says. In the even more “brève” second movement, Ibert pares ensemble music to its bare minimum in a lovely and sensitive duo between the flute and clarinet until (as James M. Keller describes in Chamber Music, A Listener’s Guide), “the other instruments join in to rock the movement to sleep.”

Ibert opens the third piece with a faux fanfare – a tiny bit of Gallic pomposity – for just a few bars before the work’s true technical brilliance appears, again relying on the woodwind virtuosity taught at his alma mater, the Paris Conservatoire.

But Wait, Let’s Take Another Look

What seems light and frivolous to us today was actually, in 1930, Ibert threading his personal path between a variety of musical styles familiar to Parisian audiences: the “old” Impressionist styles of Debussy and Ravel, atonality and serial music of Schoenberg, the neo-classic style of Stravinsky, the experimentalism of Ibert’s fellow classmates, Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud, and the propensity of his fellow composers (Eric Satie, et al.) to occasionally shock or mock their audiences.

Ibert’s Trois Pièces Brèves may lack the serious mien of the German works of the 1920s. But, in roughly seven minutes, the 40-year-old Ibert demonstrates that he has a firm mastery of melodicism, harmony, counterpoint, orchestration and knowledge of the trends of the Parisian avant-garde. He presents it all with the clarity of fine French crystal glass without a single note out of place.

This bubbling French Champagne of a quintet has never left the quintet standard repertoire since its introduction and is still an audience-pleaser 90+ years later. It was also one of the earliest in a series of French quintets showcasing brilliant wind writing and reminding audiences that art sometimes can simply be fun.

A French musicologist could do the quintet world a favor by finding the rest of the score to Le stratagème des roués to see what other musical bon-bons may (or may not) exist. It is likely the first dramatic work to be scored specifically for woodwind quintet, so it is surprising it is so difficult to find information about it.

Alphonse Leduc still sells Trois Pièces Brèves and it is readily available. The score and parts for Trois Pièces Brèves are also available for download in the countries where it is in the public domain from the International Music Score Library Project.

As mentioned above, there is also a short work by Ibert, Chanson du rien for woodwind quintet and voice that was based on other music from the same play. Again, the International Music Score Library Project has the voice and piano version, as does Leduc. Unfortunately, the sextet version might be out of print.

Ibert From 1930 through World War II

In the 1930s Ibert also began conducting and working as a musical administrator. He continued composing for the stage, adding ballet, theater and cinema to his opera experience. In 1937, he was appointed director of the Académie de France at the Villa Medici in Rome (where he had been a student for three years), becoming in effect a musical ambassador to Italy. He would continue at the post until 1960 with the war intervening.

Another World War interrupted his career in a plot-twisting manner. Already working at in the Villa Medici in Rome, Ibert was mobilized to serve as a Naval Attaché at the French Embassy. But, on June 10, 1940, Mussolini declared Italy was joining the war and the Iberts left via diplomatic train to Bordeux and he was soon demobilized. Meanwhile, the Germans successfully invaded France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium in May-June 1940.

Ibert was unable to work in France after the Vichy government banned his music and was unwelcome in Italy under the Mussolini regime. The Iberts retreated to Switzerland and later the nearby mountainous French region of Haute-Savoie. In August, 1944, the provisional government of General Charles de Gaulle called Ibert to return to Paris. After the war he returned to his administrative duties in the Villa Medici.

After the War

By 1955 Ibert was appointed to lead the Réunion des Théâtres Nationaux which ran both the Paris Opera and the Opéra-Comique, two of France’s leading artistic institutions, on top of his duties in Rome. But heart disease caused him to withdraw after less than a year. He left Rome in 1960. Finally, at age 71, he died on February 5, 1962 of a heart attack and was buried in Paris.

Other Works for Winds

Another notable work, Cinc pièces en trio (1935) was one of the earlier compositions by a contemporary composer for trio d’anche (oboe, clarinet and bassoon), and Ibert dedicated the work to Fernand Oubradous and the Trio d’anches de Paris. Cinq Pièces en Trio also appears to have been the first trio d’anche commissioned and published by l’Oiseaux Lyre press and it was recorded by the Trio d’anches de Paris in 1937. This light work would become as popular with trio d’anche ensembles as the Three Short Pieces are in woodwind quintets. (See it in our new Trio d’Anche list.)

A selection of other works by Ibert for winds includes:

Deux mouvements a wind quartet for 2 flutes (or flute and oboe), clarinet and bassoon (1921) is published by Alphonse Leduc in Paris. It was one of the works that Ibert wrote as a student in Rome.

Many works for flute, including Jeux, a Sonatine for flute and piano (1923) and a Flute Concerto (1934)

Concerto for Cello and Wind Instruments (1925) for solo cello accompanied by 2 flutes (2nd doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 clarinets (2nd doubling on bass clarinet), trumpet and horn

Concertino da Camera for solo Alto Saxophone and 11 Instruments (flute, oboe, bassoon, B-flat soprano clarinet. trumpet, horn, 2 violins, viola, cello and double bass) composed in 1935, and other works with saxophones.

Symphonie Concertante for Oboe and String Orchestra

Capriccio pour dix instruments (1936-1938) for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, harp, 2 violins, viola, cello

2 short works for bassoon and piano: Carignane (1953) and Arabesque

Fernand Oubradous, French conductor, bassoonist, and founder of the Trio d’anche de Paris also created a transcription of Ibert’s Le Petit Ane Blanc for bassoon and piano in 1939.

Finally, bassoon and clarinet players may be curious enough to hunt up Ibert’s cadenzas to Mozart’s Bassoon and Clarinet Concertos.

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