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Charles Lucien Lambert, also known as Lucien Lambert, Sr. or Lucien Lambert père (1828–1896), was an American pianist, music teacher and composer, born a free person of color in New Orleans before the American Civil War. Part of a family of prominent African-American composers, Lambert was noted for talent in music and gained international acclaim.[1]
Lambert was born in New Orleans to Charles-Richard Lambert, a native of New York, and his wife, a free Creole woman of color. They were a very musical family. Free people of color constituted a special class in New Orleans, where they had privileges not available to free blacks in other areas. After his mother's death, his father married Coralie Suzanne Orzy, also a free woman of color. They had a son Sidney Lambert, born in 1838, and the half-brothers learned to be musicians together.[2] He performed in the Théâtre d'Orléans.[3]
Lambert married a French woman. Their son Lucien-Léon Guillaume Lambert, born in Paris in 1858, became a musician and composer, more well-known than his father. He was sometimes called Lucien Lambert fils (son),[2] and his work is often confused with that of his father. Together with the work of the violinist and composer Edmond Dédé, Lucien-Leon Lambert's compositions are considered classics of Romantic Creole music. Lambert's brother Sidney also became a noted pianist and composer.
By 1854, Lambert moved with his family to Paris, where he worked as a composer and musician.[4] Sometime in the 1860s, he moved his family to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he served as chief musician in Dom Pedro's court.[3] He was so associated with French music that some historians referred to him as a French musician. Lambert had a piano and music store in the city. He also became part of the Brazilian National Institute of Music, where Ernesto Nazareth was one of his students.[4] In 1869 he greeted Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a contemporary French Creole whom he had known as a fellow musician in New Orleans. Both Lambert and his son Lucien played in one of Gottschalk's massive works, one calling for 31 pianists to play together.[2]
Lambert died in Rio.[5] Numerous of his compositions are held by the Bibliothèque nationale de Paris.[2]
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