Selva, Blanche
Selva, Blanche
Selva, Blanche, French pianist and teacher; b. Brive, Jan. 29, 1884; d. St. Amand, Tallende, Puy-de-Dome, Dec. 3, 1942. She studied piano at the Paris Cons., and took courses in composition with d’Indy at the Paris Schola Cantorum. She was one of the strongest propagandists of modern French music early in the 20thcentury. She presented programs of piano works by Debussy, Ravel, and others, and also became a proponent of Czech music. She taught at the Schola Cantorum (1901–22), then at the Strasbourg Cons. and Prague Cons. She publ, several books dealing with piano technique; her compendium, L’Enseignement musical de la technique du piano (4 vols., Paris, 1922) is valuable. She also pubi, disquisitions on musical form: La Sonate (Paris, 1913), Quelques mots sur la sonate (Paris, 1914), and Les Sonates de Beethoven (Barcelona, 1927), and a monograph on Déodat de Séverac (Paris, 1930).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire