Gabriel Grovlez
1879 - 1944
French
Biography
French Composer Gabriel Grovlez was born in Lille on April 4th 1879. He had piano lessons as a very young child from his mother who was a daughter of one of Chopin’s pupils. Grovlez went on to study at the Paris Conservatory with Descombes, Kaiser, Gédalge, Diémer, Lavignac and Fauré. In 1899 he was appointed as professor of piano at the Schola Cantorum, where he remained until 1909. During this time he was also choirmaster and conductor at the Opéra-Comique from 1905 to 1908, before becoming music director at the Théâtre des Arts in 1911. In 1914, he was appointed conductor of the Opéra which he held for 20 years, whilst also conducting other productionsin Monte Carlo, Lisbon, Cairo, New York and Chicago. His final position was as professor of chamber music at the Paris Conservatory, which he was appointed to in 1939. Louvier says of his compositions that they are ‘cultivated and finely coloured, achieving individuality despite a melodic and harmonic indebtedness to Fauré’.