Albert Lavignac
Albert Lavignac (21 January 1846 – 28 May 1916) was a French musicologist and a minor composer. He was born in Paris and studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Antoine Marmontel, François Benoist, and Ambroise Thomas, later teaching harmony there. His students included Debussy, Gabriel Pierné, Vincent d’Indy, Florent Schmitt and others.
In 1864, at eighteen, he conducted a private premiere of Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle from the harmonium.
Lavignac’s best-known work, La Musique et les Musiciens, is a compact guide to musical theory and materials. It explains the characteristics of instruments and of each key, in a way similar to the methods used by Berlioz and Gevaert. The book remained popular and was reprinted long after his death.
He also wrote about Wagner’s operas in Le Voyage artistique à Bayreuth and edited the Encyclopédie de la Musique.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 08:48 (CET).