Désiré Dondeyne

Désiré Louis Corneille Dondeyne (21 July 1921 – 12 February 2015) was a French conductor, composer and teacher who was born in Laon in the Aisne département. He studied music at the conservatory in Lille and beginning in 1936 at the Conservatoire de Paris. Dondeyne earned first prize in clarinet, chamber music, harmony, fugue, counterpoint and composition. From 1939 to 1953 he was the solo clarinet with the Musique de l’air (the French Air Force Band). From 1954-79, he was conductor of La Musique des Gardiens de la Paix (the Paris metropolitan police band). Dondeyne expanded the works of the wind orchestra by his discoveries, his own compositions and with personal encouragement from other composers. The wind orchestra repertory was enriched with compositions from Jacques Castérède, Louis Durey, Gabriel Fauré, Jacques Ibert, Charles Koechlin, Darius Milhaud, Florent Schmitt, Germaine Tailleferre and Kurt Weill. With the Musique des Gardiens de la Paix he traveled throughout Europe and made over 100 recordings (including the famous Anthology of French Marches, produced by Jean-Marie Le Pen), and won several Grand Prix du Disques. He was appointed in 1979 to the governing board of the French Ministry of Culture. He was the director of the conservatory of Issy-les-Moulineaux, a small suburb outside of Paris, from 1980 until 1986. Dondeyne also composed and arranged a large number of compositions from instrumental to symphonic. Recordings with Dondeyne and the Musique des Gardiens de la Paix have been issued in the U.S. on the Calliope, Nonesuch Records and Westminster labels. Included in his recordings are two versions (band, and band with chorus) of Hector Berlioz’s Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale.