Author Description

Over sixty years after his death in 1931, Vincent d'Indy is still a misunderstood and maligned figure in French music. Previous biographers have left a portrait of the academic figure par excellence, who turned the seemingly inspired and selfless inspiration of his master Cesar Franck into a cold and authoritarian pedagogical system. This new study re-examines the evidence. D'Indy is revealed as a much more psychologically complex and turbulent character. A tireless propagandist for the spiritual revival of French musical civilization, he was confronted by the social and intellectual problems of the Third Republic, notably the uneasy position of religious and aesthetic values in modern liberal societies. Andrew Thomson's biography stresses the breadth of d'Indy's interests and preoccupations, and will be of interest to students and devotees of French music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He lays particular emphasis on the importance of general philosophical ideas and literary works in the development of d'Indy's ideas and programmes. This is a significant contribution to the cultural history of the 'Proustian epoque'.