Maurice Delage


Maurice Charles Delage was a French composer and pianist.

Life and career

Maurice Charles Delage was born and died in Paris. He first worked as a clerk for a maritime agency in Paris, and later as a fishmonger in Boulogne. He also served for a time in the French army, before embarking on a music career in his twenties. A student of Ravel, who proclaimed him one of the supreme French composers of his day, and member of Les Apaches, he was influenced by travels to India and Japan in 1912, when he accompanied his father on a business trip. Ravel's "La vallée des cloches" from Miroirs was dedicated to Delage.
Delage's best known piece is Quatre poèmes hindous. His Ragamalika, based on the classical music of India, is significant in that it calls for prepared piano; the score specifies that a piece of cardboard be placed under the strings of the B-flat in the second line of the bass clef to dampen the sound, imitating the sound of an Indian drum.

Selected works

;Poèmes symphoniquesConté par la mer Les Bâtisseurs de ponts after Rudyard Kipling
  • Overture to Ballet de l'avenir Contrerimes, orchestration of pieces for pianoBateau ivre after the poem by Arthur RimbaudCinq danses symphoniques
;Chamber music
;Mélodies Trois mélodies Ragamalika, chant tamoul Trois poèmes Ronsard à sa muse Les Colombes La Chanson de ma mie Les Demoiselles d'Avignon Sobre las Olas on a poem by Jean Cocteau Toute allégresse on a poem by Paul-Jean Toulet
;Mélodies Quatre poèmes hindous Sept haï-kaïs for soprano and chamber orchestra
  7. Deux fables de La Fontaine, Le Corbeau et le Renard, and La Cigale et la FourmiTrois chants de la jungle after KiplingIn morte di un samouraï on a collection of haïkaïses and tankas by Pierre PascalTrois poèmes désenchantés
;Music for solo pianoSchumann...
  • ''Contrerimes''