Composer · 1879 - 1957
Joseph Canteloube
Biography
Joseph Canteloube
(b Annonay, 21 Oct 1879; d Paris, 4 Nov 1957). French composer. Born into an established Auvergnat family, he spent his earliest years at Annonay.
His mother, herself an accomplished pianist, arranged for him to study, from the age of six, with Amélie Doetzer, an elderly Polish refugee who had been a friend of Chopin. She used exercises written in Chopin's own hand as the basis of her teaching and stressed the importance of sonority, a quality which clearly made its mark on Canteloube's keyboard approach. His father took him on walks through the mountain villages of the Auvergne, where he heard the local dances and folksongs, still a vigorous tradition in the last decades of the 19th century.