Émile Goué

Returning home in May 1945, Goué was unable to carry out his dual activity as a musician and teacher at the same time. Very weakened, he participated in the jury of the agrégation exams, completed the orchestration of his grandiose Inscription on a stele and died on 10 October 1946 at the university sanatorium of Neufmoutiers-en-Brie. He is buried in the cemetery of Guéret, in the Creuse, whose music conservatory has been named after him since 2007.

"Captivity" - he confided in 1942, a year of despair and anguish - "removes almost all contact with real life, therefore almost all inner life" [...] "Frequent solitude is necessary to enrich one's inner life, and all solitude is lacking" [...] "The hardest thing is not to be hungry; it is to feel one's spiritual level lower". Very quickly he started composing again, with difficulty at first, then a little more serenely. As with Olivier Messiaen, the war period saw the emergence of masterpieces, revealing an incomparable mastery and artistic maturity: Psalm CXXIII (1942), Prelude, Choral and Fugue (1943), Prehistory (1943), Quintet for piano and strings (1943), Prelude, Aria and Final (1944), Theme and Variations (1945), 3rd String Quartet (1945), etc.

The Second World War broke out as orchestras and ensembles began to pay attention to his production. Mobilized in 1939 as an artillery lieutenant, taken prisoner in June 1940, he spent five years in the Nienburg, Lower Saxony/Weser Oflag. His visceral need to teach was evident from the first days of captivity through a physics course given to his young classmates to help them prepare for their future exams. At the same time, he organized introductory lectures on the history of music from its origins to the present day, to which were added over the months a course on harmony and counterpoint, a course on fugue, twenty lessons on musical aesthetics and the history of the symphony.

Following in the footsteps of the Frankish school, opposed to the romantic spirit, Goué had a predilection for Bach and Renaissance musicians. He composed Pénombres (1931), an orchestra suite, a Poème Symphonique (1933) and in 1934 a first Symphony as well as a musical action in two acts Wanda, a drama of the sea whose action is located in Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie and which will only be premiered in 1950 in Mulhouse. The colourful dough of his orchestra, as if carved with a chisel, skilfully mixes the instrumental timbres.

Like Borodin, his scientific and academic career was coupled with regular music practice. Already in Toulouse in 1924, he conducted a youth symphony with a small university orchestra. He furthered his musical studies, which he completed under the direction of Charles Koechlin. Albert Roussel also encouraged him to compose. From 1936 onwards, an intense production began which was only interrupted by the war. Goué was revealed especially with the Psalm XIII (1938) and the Trio (1937). Living permanently in an inner dream, he could seem very dizzy: so he had gone to school one day to teach with shoes of two different pairs. With a very high moral conscience, his personal reactions were always guided by an idealistic point of view.

Born in Châteauroux (Indre), with a father inspector of primary education, a mother head teacher of a teacher-training school for young girls in Guéret (Creuse) and four sisters, all of whom became teachers, the path of the young Goué was clear: he naturally destined for the teaching profession. With a keen intelligence, he obtained in 1921 the two existing baccalaureats: that of elementary mathematics and that of philosophy. Graduated in science at the age of 20, he was appointed professor at Boulogne-sur-Mer three years later. Transferred to Agen in 1924, he successfully completed the physics and chemistry degree. In 1927, he married Yvonne Burg, who gave him three children: Michel, Bernard and Françoise. Then he taught successively at the Lycée Montaigne in Bordeaux and Lycée Buffon in Paris. He taught in so-called "special mathematics" classes (preparation for the Grandes Écoles competitions) and ended his university career in one of the most renowned chairs in higher education, at lycée Louis-le-Grand.

Émile Goué (13 June 1904 – 10 October 1946) was a French composer.