| Description: | Joseph Guy Marie Ropartz (15 June 1864 ñ 22 November 1955) was a French composer and conductor. His compositions included five symphonies, three violin sonatas, cello sonatas, six string quartets, a piano trio and string trio (both in A minor), stage works, a number of choral works and other music, often alluding to his Breton heritage. Ropartz also published poetry.
He was born in Guingamp, CÙtes-d'Armor, Brittany. He studied initially at Rennes. In 1885 he entered the Conservatoire de Paris, studying under ThÈodore Dubois, then Jules Massenet, where he became a close friend of the young Georges Enesco. He later studied the organ under CÈsar Franck.
He was appointed director of the Nancy Conservatory (at the time a branch of the Paris Conservatory) from 1894 to 1919, where he established classes in viola, trumpet, harp, and trombone. He also founded the season of symphonic concerts with the newly created orchestra of the Conservatory, ancestor of the Orchestre symphonique et lyrique de Nancy.
From 1919 to 1929 Ropartz was director of the Strasbourg Conservatory, and at the same time he undertook the direction of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Strasbourg.
He retired in 1929 and withdrew to his manor in Lanloup, Brittany. He continued to compose until 1953, however, when he became blind. He died in Lanloup in 1955.
His musical style was influenced by Claude Debussy and CÈsar Franck. However he self-identified as a Celtic Breton, writing that he was the son of a country "where the goblins populate the moor and dance by the moony nights around the menhirs; where the fairies and the enchanters - Viviane and Merlin - have as a field the forest of BrocÈliande; where the spirits of the unburied dead appear all white above the waters of the Bay of the Departed."
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