Charles Bordes-Famous French Composer and Teacher

Charles Bordes was born May 12, 1863 in La Roche-Corbon, France. Bordes was a French music teacher and composer. Although teaching was said to have been his passion, composition was the direction he wanted to go with his life.

Bordes studied pianoforte with Antoine François Marmontel, who was a renowned French pianist and teacher. Marmontel's other students included Georges Bizet, Vincent d'Indy, Emile Paladhile, Louis Diémer, Francis Planté and, one of his more famous students, Claude Debussy. Bordes was pleased to be allowed to study with the man he considered a master. He is counted among Marmontel's most celebrated students. Bordes also studied composition with César Franck, another renowned teacher and composer. Bordes is said to have been greatly influenced by Franck's instruction. This was an important beginning for Bordes because he would later reunite with some of these same men and create one of the most powerful revivals in music of all time.

Bordes was an organist and maître de chapelle at Nogent-su-Marne for four years beginning in 1887. It was here that his musical direction really took off and he saw what he considered to be his mission. In 1890 he became maître de chapelle at the église Saint-Gervais in Paris, which he made the center of the study and practice of 15th-17th century vocal music. This study became his passion. Bordes say a decline in what he considered one of the greatest forms of music of all time, choir music. He spent a great deal of his life trying to revive it and succeeded to some degree.

Bordes first symphony, the Symphony in C Major, was written at the Paris Conservatory when he was only seventeen years old. It is said that it began as an assignment. When the symphony was first performed, it was labeled a junior. An astonding piece form a seventeen-year-old boy, the symphony is said to bear an amazing stylistic resemblance to the music of Franz Schubert, a pianist whose work went undiscovered for a long time and then was hailed as groundbreaking.
It was in Paris that Bordes created the Saint-Gervais singers choir. The choir became known throughout the world and in 1892 organized The Saint-Gervais holy weeks. Bordes created a program where as mass was accompanied by French or Italian renaissance music. This practice still remains in some European churches today as well as some in the United States. Many believe that the act of involving music within church services began with Bordes. Today most organized churches have a musical program.

In 1897 Bordes published Archives de la tradition basque, an ethnomusicological study. The study was commissioned by the French minister of public education and also continues in use today throughout French schools. Bordes wanted to create a musical study that addressed the many aspects of ethnomusicological study and when he did so it was so widely accepted so quickly that many of the masters also took part in familiarizing themselves with his ideals.

Bordes founded the Schola Cantorum, a society for sacred music, with Vincent D'Indy and Alexandre Guilmant, two other musicians with whom he had studied at the Paris Conservatory. On October15, 1896 the Schola Cantorum was inaugurated and a piece of music history was born. The Schola Cantorum was responsible for reviving interest in plain-song and the music of Palestrina, Josquin des Prez Victoria and others who many had thought long forgotten. Many other music scholars and renowned pianist took part in Schola Cantorum over the years. These societies were so important to the music world of the time that Bordes went on to begin another one in Avignon and another in Montpellier. It had been his desire to see branches of the society throughout the world.

Bordes dies on November 8, 1909 in Toulon. He is credited today for being a choirmaster and musicologist helped in reviving Renaissance polyphonic choral music.