- Dédé composed this satirical polka in 1899. He created both piano and orchestral versions of the composition.1
- Listen for: some unusual orchestration, including vocal parts for instrumentalists, a solo for ophicleide, and parts for mirlitons, which are a French instrument with a sound resembling that of a kazoo.2
- Dédé dedicated this piece “aux Bigotopgonistes,” which is a pun; “to kazooists,” but it can also mean “to bigots.” Only a few years earlier, in 1894, Dédé had returned from a concert tour in the United States, disgusted with the bigotry he had faced in his native land.3
- The Méphisto masqué wasn’t the only piece he wrote to express his feelings toward American bigotry: he also wrote a ballad entitled Patriotisme,4 a setting of a poem by African-American historian Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes (1849-1928), which he considered his farewell to America and its “implacable prejudice.”5
Sources
- Lester Sullivan and Richard Rosenberg, liner notes to Dede: Mon pauvre coeur / Francoise et Tirtillard / Mefisto masque, Hot Springs Music Festival Symphony Orchestra, Richard Rosenberg, Naxos 8.559038, CD, 2000.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Christopher T.F. Hanson, “Dédé, Edmond,” Grove Music Online (September 16, 2010), accessed June 10, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002087959.
- Sullivan and Richard Rosenberg, liner notes to Dede: Mon pauvre coeur / Francoise et Tirtillard / Mefisto masque.
Cut IDs
14375, 16924