PARES | Spanish Archives

Identification

Type:

Person

Preferred form:

Laloy, Louis (1874-1944)Other forms

Fechas de existencia:

Gray (Alto Saona, Francia) 1874-02-18 - Dole (Jura, Francia) 1944-03-02

History:

French musicologist, teacher, lyricist, sinologist, and music critic.

He was born on February 18 of 1874 in Gray (Haute Saône, France). Son of a controller of finances. He moved to Paris with his family as a child, was a student at the École Normale Supérieure from 1893 and received his doctorate in Literature in 1904. Between 1899 and 1905 he studied at the Schola Cantorum with Vincent d'Indy and Charles Borders.

He started out as the unacknowledged chief editor of the "Revue Musicale" in 1901 and in 1905 he founded "Mercure musical" alongside Jean Marnold , a magazine that later became the "Bulletin français de la S.I.M. International Music Society". In 1906, he married Susanik Babaïan, a pianist nicknamed Chouchik, and the sister of the singer Marguerite Babaïan, both of Armenian origin.

He was Professor of Music History at La Sorbonne (1906-1907) and at the Conservatoire national de Musique (1936-1941). In 1909 he published the first biography on Claude Debussy, with whom he had a great friendship. From 1914 he was general secretary of the Paris Opera, as well as co-founder of "Anée musicale" (1911-1913).

As a specialist in Asian music, he gave lectures on Chinese music at La Sorbonne in 1921, wrote the lyrics for "Padmâvatî" (1923) with music by Albert Roussel, and in 1931 he was sent on a cultural mission to China by the French Government.

He met Manuel de Falla during the trips that the composer from Cadiz made to Paris since 1920, maintaining sporadic correspondence with the artist until 1930. That same year he worked as a music critic in "Gazette des beaux-arts", "Grande revue", and other magazines such as: "Revue des deux mondes", "Le Courrier musical", "La Joie musicale", or "Le Figaro". He died on March 2 of 1944 in Dôle (Jura, France).