Born in
Tourcoing, France, Roussel's earliest interest was not in music but
mathematics. He spent a time in the French Navy, and in
1889 and
1890 he served on the crew of the frigate
Iphigénie. These travels affected him artistically, as many of his musical works would reflect his interest in far off, exotic places.
After resigning from the Navy in
1894 he began to study music seriously with
Eugène Gigout, then continuing his studies until
1908 at the Schola Cantorum (one of his teachers there was
Vincent D'Indy). While studying, he was also busy teaching; his students included
Satie and the young
Edgard Varèse.
During
World War I he served—as did
Ernest Hemingway—as an ambulance driver on the Western Front. Following the war, he bought a summer house in
Normandy, where he devoted most of his time to composition.
Roussel was by temperament a
classicist. While his early work is strongly influenced by
impressionism, he eventually found a personal style which was more formal in design, with a strong rhythmic drive, and with a more distinct liking for
functional tonality than is evident in the work of his more famous contemporaries (for instance
Debussy, Ravel, Satie, and
Stravinsky). Roussel's training at the Schola Cantorum, with its emphasis on rigorous academic models such as Palestrina and Bach, left its mark on his mature style, which is characterized by contrapuntal textures. While he has been criticized for his heavy
orchestrational style, that may be due to an expected similarity to the subtle and nuanced style of his countrymen, an aesthetic which he did not fully share; compared to the lush German
romantic orchestral tradition, it could hardly be called heavy at all.
Roussel was also interested in
jazz, and wrote a piano-vocal composition entitled
Jazz dans la nuit, which makes an interesting contrast to some of the other jazz-inspired compositions by French composers at the same time (compare it, for example, with the second movement of the
Ravel Violin Sonata, or
Darius Milhaud's La Creation du Monde).
Roussel's most important works are the ballets "Bacchus et Ariane" and "Aeneas" and the four
symphonies (of which the Third, in G minor, and the Fourth, in A major, are masterpieces which epitomize his mature neoclassicism). His other works include numerous ballets, orchestral
suites, a
piano concerto, a
concertino for cello and orchestra, a psalm setting for chorus and orchestra, incidental music for the theatre, and much
chamber music, solo piano music, and songs. He died in the town of
Royan, in Western France, in 1937, the same year that his countrymen
Maurice Ravel and
Gabriel Pierne died.
