Stephanus le Roux Marais

E-mail 25 JAN 2017 : My aunty edith johanna rex married a stephanus LE ROUX Marais . he was a well known music composer of DIE ROOS and kom dans Klaradyn. (C. J. PAXTON born REX)

A direct descendant of the French refugee Charl Marais who died (3 April 1688), STEPHANUS LE ROUX MARAIS (1896-1976) having 3 traceable descents (2 paternal & 1 maternal) from the stamvaders grandson Jacques Marais, leaves a monumental classical musical legacy & mark on the South African landscape ... S. le Roux Marais (born “Aasvogelkop” near Bloemfontein 1896) - died Graaff-Reinet 1976) - organist & church musician, music teacher, composer, & pioneer of the Afrikaans art song. His extensive compositional output includes over 100 art songs (Heimwee, Kom dans Klaradyn, Die Roos, Mali die Slaaf se Lied, etc.), 2 operettas, various choral works, & organ music ... Marais’s early musical studies were at the Bloemfontein Normal & Polytechnical College under the direction of P. K. de Villiers, who encouraged him to consider a career in composition. After various stints as an organist & music teacher, Marais became a student at the South African College of Music (SACM) in Cape Town (1921-1923) studying music history & theory under the direction of Professor W. H. Bell (1873-1946) the highly esteemed teacher & director of the SACM & influential in the education of many South African composers. Marais undertook further studies at the Royal School of Music Academy of the Royal College of Music in London where he received (1924) diplomas. Upon his return to South Africa, Marais resumed his career as a music teacher & church musician in various rural areas around the country. His early compositional period was his most productive, & was spent in Brandfort / Ermelo from (1924-1940). Although Marais’s musical contemporaries included Schoenberg (1874-1951), Bartók (1881-1945), & Hindemith (1895-1963), he chose to model his personal musical idiom, developed in the 1930s, after the compositional techniques of Schubert (1787-1828), Schumann (1810-1856), & Mendelssohn (1809-1847). His art songs have been described as: . . . easily singable & melodically facile, and stylistically distinguished by a sort of ballad-like, narrative quality which generates emotional responses in the listener. In their own simple, uncomplicated way they express the child-like, naïve factors in the national Afrikaans character, marked by distinct traces of sweet melancholy, so that his style might be described as a kind of adolescent Afrikaner romanticism. A number of Marais’s art songs, including the waltz song “Kom dans Klaradyn” (Come dance, Klaradyn) & the emotionally compelling “Heimwee” (Homesickness / Nostalgia), can be considered as having “. . . achieved the status of national songs, even of genuine folk songs” among the Afrikaner public. His works are widely acknowledged as an early highpoint in the development of Afrikaans music literature as they “. . . served to awaken the Afrikaner’s consciousness of the musical values of their language." Marais was popular in his lifetime, having won 23 distinctions at various Eisteddfodau (by 1934). The magnitude of his contribution to the Afrikaans art song was likened to C. J. Langenhoven’s impressive contribution to Afrikaans literature in a speech by Prof. W. F. C Arndt at an awards ceremony in Marais’s honour held by the South African Academy for Arts & Sciences in 1946. Marais became a highly respected figure within Afrikaans music circles, while important South African singers, (including Mimi Coertse), performed his songs nationally as well as abroad. [Bronwen M. Forbay, Afrikaans Art Song: A Stylistic Study & Performance Guide (University of Cincinnati 2011)] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df2znFK9dQQ - Mansell UPHAM