Eugène Marie Henri Fouques Duparc (21 January 1848 – 12 February 1933) was a French composer of the late Romantic period.
Biography
Son of Charles Fouques-Duparc and Amélie de Guaita. Henri Fouques-Duparc was born in Paris. He studied piano with César Franck at the Jesuit College in the Vaugirard district and became one of his first composition pupils.
Following military service in the Franco-Prussian War, he married Ellen MacSwiney, from Scotland, on 9 November 1871. In the same year, he joined Saint-Saëns and Romain Bussine to found the Société Nationale de Musique.
A mental illness, diagnosed at the time as "neurasthenia", caused him abruptly to cease composing at age 37, in 1885. He devoted himself to his family and his other passions, drawing and painting. But increasing vision loss after the turn of the century eventually led to total blindness. He destroyed most of his music, leaving fewer than 40 works to posterity. In a poignant letter about the destruction of his incomplete opera, dated 19 January 1922, to the composer Jean Cras, his close friend, Duparc wrote:
Après avoir vécu 25 ans dans un splendide rêve, toute idée de représentation m'était – je vous le répète – devenue odieuse. L'autre motif de cette destruction, que je ne regrette pas, c'est la complète transformation morale que Dieu a opéré en moi il y a 20 ans et qui en une seule minute a abolie toute ma vie passée. Dès lors, la Roussalka n'ayant aucun rapport avec ma vie nouvelle ne devait plus exister.
(Having lived for 25 years in a splendid dream, the whole idea of [musical] representation has become – I repeat to you – repugnant. The other reason for this destruction, which I do not regret, was the complete moral transformation that God imposed on me 20 years ago and which, in a single minute, obliterated all of my past life. Since then, [my opera] Roussalka, not having any connection with my new life, should no longer exist.)
Unfinished. Based on Русалки (Rusalka), a dramatic poem by Alexander Pushkin. Destroyed except for "Absence," republished as "Au pays où se fait la guerre".
Opera in 3 acts
1880
Sérénade florentine
Text by Jean Lahor. Released 1882.
Voice & piano
1882
Benedicat vobis Dominus
Motet for three mixed voices and organ (or piano).
Transcription of two works for organ by J.S. Bach: Prélude and fugue in E minor ("Cathedral"), BWV 513 Prélude and fugue in A minor ("The Great"), BWV 543
Two pianos
1908
Transcription of six organ works by César Franck
Two pianos
1910
Aux étoiles, pour piano
Also: version for piano four hands, & version for organ. Revised 1911.