While I have conducted researches on Louis
Deffès (b. Toulouse 1819 - d. 1900 Toulouse) since 1994, I am
currently preparing a biography on this composer native from the
South-West of France and author in 1845 of 'La Toulousaine', a song
which received an immediate and tremendous success and is still sung
in today Toulouse area. 
Admitted to the Paris Conservatory of music by Luigi Chérubini, Deffès, a pupil of Berton, Bazin and Halévy, was the first Toulousain ever to win a few years later, in 1847, the Grand Prix de Rome which he was awarded for his cantate 'L'ange et Tobie'.
While residing at the Villa Medici in Roma, he composed a Messe Solennelle, which was played in the church St-Louis-des-Français in January 1850 but also given, for instance, - with 500 musicians - in the cathedral Notre-Dame-de-Paris in March 1857.
Author of a superb symphony, 'Un Triomphe
à Rome', of an oratorio 'La Fille de Jaïze' or of a
cantate to Clémence Isaure, he composed
scores of songs
on Languedocian or French languages, as well as a merveillous Ave
Maria and a Marche funèbre, along with 15 operas; some of
which were performed in the Marmorsaal of the Bad Ems Kurhaus (in
Germany), as well as in Paris Opéra-Comique,
Théâtre Lyrique, Les Bouffes-Parisiens or the
Athénée, and in Marseille, Dieppe or Toulouse. Louis
Deffès spent the last 17 years of his life, from 1883 to 1900,
as the Director of the Toulouse Conservatory of music and
successfully revived the music and bel canto traditions of
excellency, which have long been a distinct feature of
Toulouse.
It is worth noting that musicians as varied as Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles Gounod, Léo Delibes, Gabriel Fauré, Jacques Offenbach or Adam, Auber and Halévy praised his musics and that librettists as celebrated as Scribe, Sardou, Meilhac or Mery worked with Deffès.
Aiming at safeguarding Louis Deffès'memory and in
an attempt to revive his musics, I am looking for any information available on this
compositor and trying to find out where are the original orchestra
scores of his operas (knowing that most
of them were unpublished): Jessica (or The Merchant of Venice from
Sakespeare's drama), Le Café du Roi, L'Anneau d'Argent, Le
Fantôme du Rhin, La Clef des Champs, La Comédie en
voyage, Passé Minuit, La Boîte à surprise, Une
nuit de Noces, La Lanterne Magique, etc.
As the year 2000 will be the first centenary of his death, I would also like on this occasion to promote the revival of his works, and their recordings too, to ensure that music lovers, musicians and musicologists may, now and for the future, enjoy his fine musics which were never played in this century. The first musics to be thus recreated could be the Messe Solennelle, the cantate L'Ange et Thobie, the symphonic poem Un Triomphe à Rome and the opera Valse et Menuet, whose orchestral scores are readily available. Several orchestras are already interested but the financing remains to be found and the next Millenium is approaching.
Although this site is still very much embryonary, it will be further extended and enriched in the coming months, and other informations, including a 22 page article (to be published in the German revue: 'Bad Emser Hefte') suming up Louis Deffès'biography, are available on request.
To learn more...
The project's author:
Graduated from the Political Sciences Institute of Paris, former Barrister to the Paris Bar and executive in the energy industry, Bertrand Malaud, 47, has turned to the searching of Louis Deffès'works, after having involved himself in the compositor's biography, and is aiming at trying to revive his repertoire.
Write me - écris-moi - schreib'
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