Ernest Chausson

He frequented the Paris salons, where he met celebrities such as Henri Fantin-Latour, Odilon Redon, and Vincent d'Indy.

[1] Archived 2014-11-29 at the Wayback Machine During 1882 and 1883, Chausson, who enjoyed travel, visited Bayreuth to hear the operas of Richard Wagner.

In his own home (22 Boulevard de Courcelles, near Parc Monceau), he received artists, including the composers Henri Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, and Isaac Albéniz; poet Stéphane Mallarmé; Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev; and Impressionist painter Claude Monet.

His funeral was attended by figures of the arts, including Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, Isaac Albéniz, Redon, Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, Henri de Régnier, Pierre Louÿs and Claude Debussy.

The second period, dating from 1886, is marked by a more dramatic character, deriving partly from Chausson's contacts with the artistic milieux in which he moved.

From his father's death in 1894 dates the beginning of his third period, during which he was especially influenced by his reading of the symbolist poets and Russian literature, particularly Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy.

In general, Chausson's compositional idiom bridges the gap between the ripe Romanticism of Massenet and Franck and the more introverted Impressionism of Debussy.

He employed that instrument in December 1888 in his incidental music, written for a small orchestra, for La Tempête, a French translation by Maurice Bouchor of Shakespeare's The Tempest.