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Maurice
André (1933 - 2012)
"le grand
trompettiste de notre
temps"
Latest: Maurice André died on February 25, 2012 (close to midnight, 23:45, at the hospital of Bayonne at the Pyrénées-Atlantiques).
Background
Maurice
André
was born on May 21, 1933, into a miner's family in Ales
in the
Cevennes. His father was an amateur trumpet player and a great
music
lover. He played in the small villages and one day he came back
with an
old cornet. Maurice who then was 12 ½ years old had done
his
solfeggio for two years. He
fell in love with the instrument:
His father also did a great thing when he sent Maurice to study with a friend of his, Monsieur Leon Barthélémy who had studied at the Paris Conservatory under Professor Merri Franquin (1848-1934).
With Barthélémy,
Maurice
had to buy method books like Arban and as he says:
Student at
the
Paris Conservatory (1951 - 1953)
After 4 years study,
Barthélémy told his father that he had to get
Maurice,
who then was working in the mine,
to Paris to study at the Conservatory. But being a miner he
could not
afford
that. Then Barthélémy got the idea that
Maurice
should
try to become a member of a military band. Soon after,
Maurice
was
in Mont-Valerien with the 8th regiment. At the Conservatory you
could
get
a free place as member of a military band. At 18, in 1951,
Maurice left
the mine
and
entered the Paris Conservatory in the class of Professor Raymond
Sabarich (1909-1966).
On photos from that time one can see
Maurice in the trumpet class in a military uniform.
It was not an easy time in Paris
without
any money, a son of a miner. He always ate at the
barracks, and
studied in the barracks too. Raymond Sabarich soon discovered
that this
young miner was a great talent and he gave Maurice a "lesson"
that he
recall in this way in an interview:
3 months after my arrival in Paris, a good lad from the south and all that, Sabarich gave me a real piece of his mind. He had felt straight away that I was gifted, as is said, and so he loaded me with work… and I didn't deliver the goods as he wished. After 3 months he threw abuse at me and chucked me out of the class. Before his death - poor man - Sabarich always said: "lt's when Maurice André woke up.'' How a good scolding does one good occasionally !After 3 months with a lot of practice, Maurice returned and played all the 14 etudes from Arban (in the back of the book) without making any mistakes. After only 6 months of work in Paris, studying the cornet, he won the first prize (1952). The next year (1953), he won the first prize for trumpet.
The
prizewinner
In 1955 he won the first prize at the
Geneva
International Competition. In 1963 when he was 30 years old he
was
asked to become a member of the jury in the "Internationalen
Wettbewerb
in München". He then
discovered that he could take part in the competition and he did
and
won
the first prize.
The
orchestral
musician
André
played in
major French orchestras such as Philharmonique
del la R.T.F (the Paris Radio Orchestra)
(1953
-1962), Orchestre
des Concerts Lamoureux
(1953
-1960), and the orchestra of the Opéra-Comique
in Paris (1962 -1967). He also played in smaller more
jazz-oriented groups.
The solo
artist
The prize in 1963 was the start of
his
solo career.
A very important person for his solo
career was a girl he met in Montreux in Suisse, Liliane. 6
months after
they met, they got married.
Liliane saw the potential he had and
became his manager and companion on his tours. When Maurice
started out
as a soloist there were very little music for trumpet and the
trumpet
was not considered a solo instrument like the violin, oboe and
some of
the other instruments. To add to the repertoire, Maurice
transcribed
solo concerts for violin, oboe
and other instruments. He also started using the piccolo
trumpet. Today
there
are more than 130 transcriptions for the piccolo trumpet and
some of
the
pieces, like the Tartini Concerto in D major for Trumpet and
Orchestra
(originally
for violin), transcribed by Jean Thilde is very popular and
several
trumpet
artists are performing it now.
Maurice André has toured all
over
the world and played with a lot of the great conductors and
great
orchestras. In an interview 20 years ago (in 1978) he told
Jean-Pierre
Mathéz that he did 220 concerts that year and an average
of 180
so that up to 1978 he must have done more than 2700 concerts.
The trumpet
teacher
André succeeded
his
teacher Raymond Sabarich (who died in 1966) as a professor of
trumpet
at the Paris Conservatory in 1967. Like Sabarich he continued
the
class-teaching tradition of the Conservatory. About this
tradition André said
the following (see ITG Journal
1976 - Opinions of
Contemporary
European Trumpet Players) to a question from Norman E.
Smith:
The recording artist
The piccolo
trumpet
Composer and
musician Jan Leontsky has
written an article
where he call Maurice
André
"the father of the piccolo trumpet" (le père de la
trompette
piccolo).
In 1959 the Selmer Company started
making a piccolo trumpet (with 3 valves). In the following
years, many
technical improvements came (a 4th valve added in 1967) in close
collaboration with Maurice André.
See www.maurice-andre.com
for
more!
Biography
Trumpet
artist and student of André, Guy Touvron
has
written a biography. Unfortunately the book is only in French.
In 2007, André told his memoirs to Thierry Martin. As with Touvrons book it is only in French.
Daily warm up
In Brass Bulletin, vol. 69, 1985, No. 4, page 70, there is a brief description of his warm up routine:
Morning (approx. 1 hour)
1) I waken up the muscles and the lips with buzzing exercises and with the mouthpiece alone, taking care to use no pressure on the lips (I don't worry about the sound at all!)
2) I move on to the instrument with scale and arpeggio exercises, still very lightly, without pressing and still without worrying about the sound.
3) I start chord arpeggios over again, but this time looking for good sound. I insist on flexibility, working as slowly as possible. Next I go on to wider and wider intervals (fourths, fifths, single, double and triple octaves), still very slow and pressing as little as possible.
4) I do no. 3) again staccato.
When that's done, I can go on (for however long it takes) to my concert programme. I also practise changing instruments and mouthpieces.
Every night, before going to bed, I conscientiously massage my lip muscles with butter, which is rich in vitamin E.
For me the main things in trumpet playing are looking for the right sound and a precise attack.
More info,
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