Henri Théodore Ymbert (born 10 July 1827 in Auteuil, Yvelines, died 22 September 1894 at Bourbonne-les-Bains) was a French lawyer and composer.[1]
Life and career edit
Théodore Ymbert was the son of the dramatist Jean-Gilbert Ymbert, who also practised as a legal administrator.[2] Following in the family profession of law, he also studied composition under Auguste Barbereau.[3] His musical activity in Paris over the years 1858 – 69 consisted for the most part in settings for voice.[4] Two works were his most successful: the music for the one-act comic opera Les Deux Cadis (1861);[5] and his Sept Fables de la Fontaine, which was preferred to Jacques Offenbach’s settings of La Fontaine's Fables when it was first performed in 1862,[6] and which continues to be performed.[7]
Professionally Ymbert gained his doctorate in law and practised in the Court of Appeal of Paris.[8] As well as writing on both legal and musical subjects, he also collaborated in the revision of a number of administrative reference works. Among the latter was the Dictionnaire des formules ou mairie pratique contenant les modèles de tous les actes d'administration municipal (1880)[9] and the Dictionnaire général d'administration (1884),[10] for which he was qualified after serving as mayor of Bourbonne-les-Bains between 1873-8 and then as a deputy judicial officer.
References edit
- ^ Library of Congress
- ^ Geneanet
- ^ Auguste Barbereau biography, Musica et Memoria
- ^ BNF data base
- ^ Les Deux Cadis, script
- ^ Frits Noske, French Song from Berlioz to Duparc, Dover Publications, New York 1970, note 293, p.429
- ^ A performance of La Montagne qui Accouche in Warsaw on 7 May 2017
- ^ Le Contemporain: revue d'économie chrétienne 1876, p.972
- ^ World Cat
- ^ Archived online