Louis Laloy

Louis Laloy (Gray, 18 February 1874 – Dole, 4 March 1944)^[1] was a French musicologist, writer and sinologist. A Doctor of Letters (he spoke French, English, German, Italian, Latin, Russian, Greek and Chinese), he became an eminent musicologist, music critic, co-founder of Le Mercure musical, teacher at the Sorbonne and at the Paris Conservatory, and Secretary General of the Paris Opera.^[2]

Le Chagrin dans le palais de Han, Chinese drama by Louis Laloy. Theatre poster by René Piot, 1900. After a play by Ma Zhiyuan.

He is associated with many prominent artists and composers. He was a friend and (after the English book by Louise Liebich) the first French biographer of Claude Debussy^[3] and wrote books on his contemporaries Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie, and Paul Dukas, as well as Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) who was then rediscovered.^[4]