IBERT, JACQUES BIOGRAPHY(1890 - 1962)
Ibert, a winner of the Prix de Rome at the Paris Conservatoire,
was for a number of years director of the French Academy in Rome.
Versatile and prolific, he wrote operas, ballets and music for
the theatre, cinema and radio, in addition to vocal and
instrumental works, all equally beautifully crafted, with
particularly idiomatic handling of wind instruments. He died in
Paris in 1962.
Orchestral
Music
The Flute Concerto by Ibert,
written in 1934, is a useful addition to solo repertoire
for an instrument whose possibilities the composer well
understood, as he did the saxophone in his concertino for
that instrument, composed in the following year. The
orchestral music of Ibert includes suites and extracts
from his theatre music, among which the scores written
for A Midsummer Night's Dream and for the Orson Welles
film of Macbeth should be mentioned. His Divertissement
for chamber orchestra was derived from incidental music
for Un chapeau de paille d' Italie (An Italian Straw Hat).
Chamber Music
The most popular of Ibert's works for
smaller groups must be the Entracte for flute or violin,
with harpsichord or guitar, followed by the Interludes
for flute, violin and harp, from Lifar's Le burlador, and
Histoires, taken from his own piano work of that name.
|