André Casanova

André Marcel Charles Casanova (12 October 1919 – 7 March 2009) was a French composer. He was an early disciple of René Leibowitz, a teacher and composer who maintained a strict adherence to the dodecaphonic musical theories of Arnold Schoenberg. Casanova later abandoned most of them in favour of a more classical style of composition. His published works, composed between 1944 and 1993, include orchestral, chamber and choral music, operas and songs. Life and career Casanova was born in Paris, and studied law there, while at the same time studying music with Georges Dandelot at the École Normale de Musique de Paris. with whom he studied theory and composition. Thereafter, according to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Casanova’s concern was “to ally a romantic spirit with modernity of style”. In the late 1940s, there had been some hostility between adherents of Leibowitz and those of the teacher and composer Olivier Messiaen, but so far as Casanova was concerned, any breach had healed sufficiently during the 1950s for Messiaen’s partner Yvonne Loriod to play the solo part at the premiere of Casanova’s piano concertino in 1959. He developed an interest in German Romantic li