Auguste Bazille

Auguste Bazille (27 May 1828 – 18 April 1891) was a 19th-century French organist, composer, chef de chant and professor. Auguste Bazille was a brilliant student at the Conservatoire de Paris (1st prize in music theory, 1841, harmony 1845, fugue 1846, organ 1847, 2nd Grand Prix de Rome). He led a triple career as an organist, chef de chant at the Opéra-Comique and professor of practical harmony and accompaniment at the Conservatoire. Appointed to the new Suret organ at the église Sainte-Élisabeth-de-Hongrie in Paris in 1853, he was a close friend of the Suret (best man at Augustus Suret's marriage in 1855). He inaugurated several of their instruments from 1848. An appreciated improviser, he was often called for organ inaugurations in Paris and in the provinces (église Saint-Sulpice Paris, 1862, Saint-Eustache, Paris, 1854, église Saint-Germain-des-Prés Paris, and Rouen, Toulouse, Nancy ...). As chef de chant at the Opéra-Comique, he was close to the Parisian milieu of opera and opéra comique. In particular, he was a close friend of Charles Gounod and Georges Bizet (he played the organ for the funeral of Bizet), of Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély (he played the organ at the wedding of his daughter). Bazille reduced to "piano and singing" numerous opera scores of the nineteenth, from Adam to Wagner. He wrote a few compositions for voice, piano and expressive organ. As a teacher of practical harmony at the piano (piano accompaniment), Bazille had many students, the most famous among them being the composers Claude Debussy and Mélanie Bonis.