Edouard Lalo

Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo (27 January 1823 – 22 April 1892) was a French composer. Easily his most celebrated piece is his Symphonie espagnole, a popular work in the standard repertoire for violin and orchestra.

Lalo was born in Lille (Nord), in northernmost France. He attended that city's conservatoire in his youth. Then, beginning at age 16, Lalo studied at the Paris Conservatoire under François Antoine Habeneck. Habeneck conducted student concerts at the Conservatoire from 1806 onwards and became the founding conductor of the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in 1828. (Berlioz, in his memoirs, denounced Habeneck for incompetence in conducting Berlioz's own Requiem.)

For several years, Lalo worked as a string player and teacher in Paris. In 1848, he joined with friends to found the Armingaud Quartet, playing viola and later second violin. Lalo's earliest surviving compositions are songs and chamber works (two early symphonies were destroyed).

Julie Besnier de Maligny, a contralto from Brittany, became his bride in 1865. She aroused Lalo's early interest in opera and led him to compose works for the stage, of which Le Roi d'Ys is the most notable. Unfortunately, these works were never really popular; despite their originality, they incurred considerable criticism for being allegedly too progressive and Wagnerian. This led Lalo to dedicate most of his career to the composition of chamber music, which was gradually coming into vogue for the first time in France, and works for orchestra.

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