Émile Vuillermoz

Émile-Jean-Joseph Vuillermoz (23 May 1878 – 2 March 1960) was a French critic in the areas of music, film, drama and literature. He was also a composer, but abandoned this for criticism.

Émile Vuillermoz was born in Lyon in 1878. He studied literature and law at University of Lyon, then became a music student at the Conservatoire de Paris, his teachers being Jules Massenet, Gabriel Fauré, Antoine Taudou and Daniel Fleuret. Among his fellow students was Maurice Ravel, who became his lifelong friend.

He was a member of Les Apaches, along with Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Manuel de Falla and others.

He had early success as a writer of songs and operettas, and with settings of French and Canadian folk songs, but chose to follow the career of a critic instead. He wrote initially for the Mercure Musical, and then he edited the Revue Musicale SIM (Société internationale de musique).

With Ravel, Paul Dukas, Florent Schmitt, Charles Koechlin and others, he co-founded the Société Musicale Indépendante (SMI). Its first concert, on 20 April 1910, contained three world premieres: Gabriel Fauré's song cycle "La chanson d'Ève" (its first complete performance; excerpts had been presented earlier); Claude Debussy's "D'un cahier d'esquisses", performed by Maurice Ravel; and Ravel's own Ma mère l'oye in its original version for piano 4-hands, played by Jeanne Leleu and Geneviève Durony.

His interests extended beyond music to drama and literature, and he wrote for Le Temps,L'Excelsior, L'Illustration, L'Éclair and Candide. He also contributed to the Encyclopédie française, and to foreign journals.

...
Wikipedia