Jean Cras, Polymath of Music and Letters

Franco-Canadian pianist and musicologist Paul-André Bempéchat studied at the Manhattan and Juilliard Schools of Music and the Sorbonne. A contributor to The Revised New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, and to numerous academic and performing arts journals, Bempéchat has enjoyed research and lecturing appointments at Harvard University, where he remains an affiliate at its Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and a visiting lecturer at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Bempéchat sustains the career which has brought him to the Wiener Festwochen and Berlin’s Konzerthaus. In 2017, the author was decorated Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and as Honourary Fellow of the Royal Academic Chapel and Orchestra at Uppsala University.

« Le Canadien Paul-André Bempéchat, est parfaitement francophone mais c’est en anglais qu’il rédige cette somme dédiée à Jean Cras … Tout y est, … sa carrière marine, … l’inventeur brilliant, l’esthète pétri d’humanisme, le musicien dans son œuvre. … Le portrait est vivant, Jean Cras se tient devant vous et tous les secrets de son art subtil sont démontrés. » – Diapason

• Music – France – Brittany – Post-romanticism – Neo-classicism – Impressionism – Ethnomusicology – Naval history – First World War – Henri Duparc – Religion – Ecumenism – Navigation sciences – Physics – Minority cultures