Émile Goué (13 June 1904 – 10 October 1946) was a French composer.
Born in Châteauroux (Indre), with a father who was inspector of primary education, a mother who was 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 was naturally destined for the teaching profession. With a keen intelligence, he 1921, he obtained the two existing baccalaureats: that of elementary mathematics and that of philosophy. he graduated in science at the age of 20. He was appointed professor at Boulogne-sur-Mer three years later. Thereafter, he transferred to Agen in 1924 where he successfully completed the physics and chemistry degree. In 1927, he married Yvonne Burg and they had three children: Michel, Bernard and Françoise. 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.
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 two different pairs of shoes. With a very high moral conscience, his personal reactions were always guided by an idealistic point of view.
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.
Demonstrating passionate self-denial, he wanted to complete this theoretical teaching and instil in his companions of misfortune a love of music by conducting and commenting on eighteen symphonic concerts whose programs ranged from Franco-Flemish polyphonists to Arthur Honegger. Both the musicians of the orchestra and the singers of the choir were amateurs, with instruments of very poor quality, but Goué's enthusiasm won them all over.
"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.
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.
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.
Starting from ancient fashions, Goué considered it necessary for the French temperament, by tradition, to assert tonality, but an expanded tonality going without complex to polymodality. A composer of his time, Goué perfectly understood the evolution of musical language and developed his own technique, which he called "chromatic simultaneity", a variant of polymodality on the same tonic. The infinite resources of contrapuntal writing allowed him a multitude of combinations of subjects.
In his quest for perfection, his fascinating theoretical reflections on form extend those of Vincent d'Indy. His temperament as a builder concerned with unity made him prefer the use of a single theme generating the whole work, following Bach's example. Architectural concerns that became more and more imperative in his last opuses (Quintet, 3rd String Quartet, Prelude, Aria and Final...) without stifling lyricism and epic meaning. Because "one must not hide the emptiness of thought under the efflorescence of counterpoint", his style, by successive stripping, reached its conclusion in captivity.
Charles Koechlin rightly characterized him: "He is above all a sensitive, a lyrical man. However, he keeps a constant need for order: a Cartesian whose art does not abandon itself to the fantasy of musical improvisation. The monothematic form that he often likes, is extremely voluntary. It is infinitely serious, often harsh, even strange, sometimes quite austere, sometimes tragic too. But on occasion he achieves real beauty (as in the andante of his Sonata for piano and violin). I have already spoken of the emotion that emanates from a Psalm written in captivity. There is no doubt that such an emotion is also evident in many of his other works. He's not an entertainer. He's not even a skillful charmer. There's often something rough about him. But it is a living being, who loves, who suffers, who has mercy. What he leaves behind is significant enough to deserve to escape oblivion.[1]
An astonishing encounter with Saint Theresa in the pen of the one who had renounced the Catholic religion of his childhood: "I understood that resigning myself to the humble daily tasks puts me in contact with the most essential concerns of Life, and develops in me this gift of generosity that must be cultivated at all costs". Goué remained tormented to the highest degree by the metaphysical problem. His noble and anxious spirituality gives his works a sincere depth and raises the essential questions. Exacerbated by the experience of the camps, this interiority gives Goué's message its accent of authentic originality. Rough universe where man seeks his way by feeling, anxious by his destiny, but sometimes illuminated by a ray of hope. These concerns are in line with our sad actuality: there is some Rouault in this music, exsanguinated faces, surrounded by black, who shout their despair in a burning world.