Henry-Louis de La Grange
| Henry-Louis de La Grange | |
|---|---|
Henry-Louis de La Grange in August 2010 as photographed by Dominique Degli-Esposti.
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| Born |
26 May 1924 Paris, France |
| Died | 27 January 2017 (aged 92) Lonay, Switzerland |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Musicologist, biographer |
| Parent(s) | Amaury de la Grange Emily Sloane |
Henry-Louis de La Grange (26 May 1924 – 27 January 2017) was a French musicologist and biographer of Gustav Mahler.
La Grange was born in Paris, of an American mother (Emily Sloane) and a French father, Amaury de la Grange[], who was a senator, one-time government minister, and Vice-President of the International Aviation Federation. Henry-Louis studied the humanities in Paris and New York and literature at Aix-en-Provence University and at the Sorbonne. From 1946 to 1947 he studied at the Yale University School of Music and subsequently, from 1948 until 1953, privately in Paris – piano under Yvonne Lefébure and harmony, counterpoint, and analysis under Nadia Boulanger.
La Grange began working as a music critic in 1952, writing articles for the New York Herald Tribune and The New York Times, and the magazines Opera News, Saturday Review, Musical America, and Opus in the United States, and Arts, Disques, La Revue Musicale, and Harmonie in France.
He first heard the music of Gustav Mahler, the Ninth Symphony, on 20 December 1945 at a concert in which Mahler's disciple, Bruno Walter, conducted the New York Philharmonic in its first performance of the work. La Grange had attended the concert because he had become a great admirer of the conductor, but knew very little about Mahler, who at the time was not nearly as well known as he is now. He was surprised at the length of the symphony and its unusual style, and his interest was piqued. Gradually becoming more and more interested, from the early 1950s on he began to seriously investigate Mahler's works and his life. He met Mahler's widow Alma Mahler in 1952, became a close friend of her daughter Anna, and interviewed other contemporaries of the composer. He carried out research in Europe and North America and over time accumulated a collection of materials which became one of the richest existing archives concerning Mahler and his epoch. These documents are now part of a multimedia library, the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler, founded in 1986 with Maurice Fleuret as the Bibliothèque Gustav Mahler.
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