Renaud de Vilbac
1829 — 1884
Alphonse Zoé Charles Renaud de Vilbac was a prolific French organist and composer.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Renaud de Vilbac.
From the period sources
Renaud de Vilbac, a French pianist and organist, was born in Montpellier in 1829 and died in Paris in 1884, though an 1886 biographical dictionary records his death as occurring in Brussels. He trained at the Paris Conservatory under notable figures such as Lemoine, Halévy, and Benoist, the latter of whom, according to Brown’s Biographical Dictionary (1886), counted Vilbac among his “more famous pupils.” Vilbac achieved early distinction, winning the Grand Prix de Rome in 1844, and later served as organist at St.-Eugène in Paris from 1856. He composed two comic operas, Au clair de lune (1857) and Almanzor (1858), along with a piano method and numerous piano pieces. A Dictionary of Music (1880) notes that his “many (40) drawing-room pieces,” including the 3 Morceaux de salon, op. 23, and 3 Caprices, op. 25, became “well known,” and his collective work Les Beautés des Operas was “very popular.” He also contributed to this collection of operatic themes for piano and violin in collaboration with Albert Lavignac, as noted in Fétis’s Biographie universelle des musiciens (1880).