Bourrée fantasque

• Chabrier composed his Bourrée fantasque for piano in 1891. It is one of the last pieces Chabrier wrote.¹
• Chabrier did not live to complete his orchestration of this work. Felix Mottl (1856-1911), Austrian conductor² who promoted Chabrier’s music, orchestrated it after Chabrier’s death.³
• This piece is an homage to a folk dance from the Auvergne region where Chabrier grew up: the bourrée d’Auvergne, a lively clog dance.⁴

“My dear young colleague, I’ve concocted a little piano piece for you which I think is quite fun and in which I’ve counted nearly 113 different sonorities. You’ll see how luminously you make this one sparkle! It needs to sound wild and crazy!”

Chabrier, to Edouard Risler, the 18-year-old pianist for whom Chabrier wrote Bourrée fantasque ⁵

1. Steven Huebner, “Chabrier, (Alexis-)Emmanuel,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 19, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000005351.
2. Malcolm Miller, “Mottl, Felix,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 19, 2019,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000019231.
3. Huebner, “Chabrier, (Alexis-)Emmanuel,” Grove Music Online.
4. Roy Howatt, ed., Emmanuel Chabrier: Works for Piano (New York: Dover, 1995), xi.
5. Ibid.