Jean Marie Octave Géraud Poueigh (24 February 1876 in Toulouse – 14 October 1958 in Olivet) was a French composer, musicologist, music critic, and folklorist. According to Henri Collet, Poueigh was fighting ‘for a national music that can only be such by reviving itself at the source of popular melody… recreating folk-lore, without plagiarising it’.[1]
He also wrote music criticism under the pseudonym Octave Séré.[2] Poueigh is known for suing fellow French composer Erik Satie over an insulting postcard.
He began playing the piano as a child, then in the autumn of 1895 enrolled at the Faculty of Law and began studying harmony with Jean Hugounenc, a teacher at the Toulouse Conservatoire. After two years, he was able to enter Hugounenc's class and that same year (July 1898) won first second prize for harmony. He then left for Paris and became a free listener at the Conservatoire National: he studied counterpoint and fugue with Georges Caussade and for a few months he attended the composition classes of Charles Lenepveu before entering the class of Gabriel Fauré. From autumn 1898 to the end of 1902 he was also taught by Vincent d'Indy of the Schola Cantorum of Paris.[3]
Jean Poueigh is the author of works of chamber music, vocal or instrumental, a violin sonata, lyrical works like Perkain, premiered at the Bordeaux opera on 16 January 1931 with sets and costumes by Ramiro Arrue), or le Roi de Camargue (performed in Marseille 21 May 1948).
A Jean Poueigh Festival was organised on 21 April 1925, at the Salle Gaveau, with the Colonne orchestra conducted by Henri Morin. A young saw it as a triumph for the composer who had some of this most important works performed by the orchestra, with the participation of Louise Matha, M. Huberty and the Quatuor vocal — Mmes Marthe Cornélis and Vallin-Mathieu, and MM. Gabriel Paulet, Jean Suscinio (1884–1980).[4]
At the same time, he wrote much as a musical critic in the Ère nouvelle. After the performance of the ballet Parade (1917), he wrote a virulent criticism and Érik Satie sent him some incendiary letters, the most famous being thus written: "Monsieur and dear friend, you are only an arse, worse, an arse without music". This being sent on a postcard without envelope, so likely to have been read by the concierge, Satie fell short of a one-year sentence for public defamation.[5] At the trial Jean Cocteau was arrested and beaten by police for repeatedly yelling "arse" in the courtroom. Satie was given a sentence of eight days in jail.[6] [7] Satie was forced to pay a fine but on appeal his prison sentence was suspended and ultimately vacated. See Volta, "Satie Seen Through His Letters",[8]
Poueigh was interested in traditional music, collecting songs from the Basque Country and Occitania and beyond, and all the folklore of these regions on which his works are still authoritative.