La Grange, Henry-Louis de
La Grange, Henry-Louis de
La Grange, Henry-Louis de, eminent French writer on music; b. Paris, May 26, 1924. He was a scion of a distinguished family, his father being French and his mother an American. After studying belles lettres in Aix-en-Provence and at the Sorbonne in Paris, he took courses at the Yale Univ. School of Music (1945–53); then completed his musical training with Y. Lefébure (piano) and Boulanger (harmony, counterpoint, and analysis) in Paris. He wrote music criticism for various American and French periodicals. In 1960 he commenced exhaustive research on the life and works of Gustav Mahler, resulting in his monumental biography Gustav Mahler: Chronique d’une vie (3 vols., 1973-84; also in Eng.). He also publ. Vienne, une histoire musicale (Arles, 1991). He was a guest lecturer at Columbia Univ., N.Y.U., Stanford Univ., and Ind. Univ. (1974–81); in Geneva (1982), Brussels (1983–84), and Leipzig (1985); and at the Juilliard School, the Univ. of Southern Calif, in Los Angeles, and Johns Hopkins Univ. (1986). In Paris in 1986 he founded the Bibliothèque Musicale Gustav Mahler, a vast repository for researchers. He received many awards and honors, including his being made a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire