taking music lessons at the age of six; his early teachers were from cosmopolitan backgrounds: at Ambert he studied with a Carlist Spanish refugee called Saporta, and after the family moved to Clermont-Ferrand in 1852 he studied at the Lycée imperial with a Polish musician, Alexander Tarnovsky . The earliest of Chabrier's compositions to survive in manuscript are piano works from 1849. A piano piece, Le Scalp!!! (1856) was later modified into the Marche des Cipayes (1863). The first piece to which the composer gave an opus number was a waltz for piano, Julia, op. 1, 1857. Tarnovsky advised Chabrier's parents that their son was talented enough to pursue a musical career, but Jean Chabrier was determined that his son should follow him into the legal profession. He moved the family to Paris in 1856, so that Chabrier could enrol at the Lycée Saint-Louis. From there Chabrier went on to law school, but did not neglect music, continuing his studies in composition, violin and piano. After graduating from the law school in 1861 he joined the French civil service at the Ministry of the Interior, where he worked for nineteen years. Paris: dual harness Chabrier was well regarded at the ministry, but his passion was music, to which he devoted his free time. He continued his studies, with teachers including Edouard Wolff (de) (piano), Richard Hammer (violin), Théophile Semet (fr) and Aristide Hignard (both composition). In a study of the composer published in 1935 Jacques-Gabriel Prod'homme commented that it would be wrong to class Chabrier as merely an amateur in this period: "For, while in quest of the technique of his art, he displayed a curiosity in the painting and literature of the 'modernists' of his day that, among musicians, had few parallels." From 1862 Chabrier was among the circle of the Parnassians in Paris. Among his friends were Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and Paul Verlaine; with the latter he planned a comic opera in the fashionable style of Offenbach, Vaucochard et fils Ier. He did not complete it, but four fragments (dating from about 1864 or 1865) have survived. His full-time official post severely restricted Chabrier's ability to compose large-scale works. He began an opera on a Hungarian historical theme entitled Jean Hunyade, to a libretto by Henry Fouquier, but abandoned it, after completing four numbers, in 1867. In December 1872 he scored a success at a private theatre