Biography
Paule Charlotte Marie Jeanne Maurice was a French composer born in Paris on September 29, 1910, to Raoul Auguste Alexandre Maurice and Marguerite Jeanne Lebrun. She died on August 18, 1967, in Paris. Registration lists at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris report that her father was an office worker and state only that her parents were married.
Her most famous composition is Tableaux de Provence pour saxophone et orchestre, written between 1948 and 1955 and dedicated to the saxophone virtuoso Marcel Mule. The work has five movements: Farandoulo di Chatouno, Cansoun per ma mio, La Boumiano, Dis Alyscamps l’amo souspire, and Lou cabridan. It is most often performed in its piano reduction form.
Tableaux de Provence was premiered on December 9, 1958, by Jean-Marie Londeix with the Orchestre Symphonique Brestois, conducted by Maurice’s husband and fellow composer, Pierre Lantier. Maurice’s other compositions include Suite pour quatuor de flûtes, Volio, Cosmorama, Concerto pour piano et orchestre, Mémoires d’un chat, Trois pièces pour violon, and many more. Additional titles are catalogued in the library of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where Maurice studied and spent her professional life.
Paule Maurice’s teachers included Jean Gallon (harmony), Noël Gallon (counterpoint and fugue), and Henri Büsser (composition). From 1933 to 1947, she served as Jean Gallon’s teaching assistant. She received first prize in harmony in 1933, second prize in fugue in 1934, and first prize in composition in 1939.
In 1942, Maurice was appointed Professor of Déchiffrage (sight-reading), and in 1965 she became Professor of Harmonic Analysis at the École Normale de Musique. She taught many students who later became professors at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, with some winning the Prix de Rome (saxame.org).
Paule Maurice and Pierre Lantier co-authored a treatise on harmony entitled Complément du Traité d’Harmonie de Reber, which became an important reference work in France and abroad. It was intended to be used alongside the 1862 treatise Traité d’Harmonie by Napoléon Henri Reber. The evolving harmonic language influenced by Stravinsky, Debussy, and Ravel created the need for this updated approach to harmonic analysis.
