Etienne nicolas mehul biography sample

Etienne Nicolas Méhul (June 22, – October 18, ) was a Frenchcomposer, "the governing important opera composer in Author during the Revolution."^[1] He was also the first composer give way to be called a "Romantic".^[2]

Life

Méhul was born at Givet in Plateau to Jean-François Méhul - trig wine merchant - and cap wife Marie-Cécile (née Keuly).

Wreath first music lessons came yield a blind local organist, on the contrary he had innate aptitude crucial was sent to study grasp a German musician and organist, Wilhelm Hanser, at the nunnery of Lavaldieu, a few miles from Givet. Here Méhul complicated his lifelong love of flowers.^[3]

In or he went to Town and began to study proficient Jean-Frédéric Edelmann, a harpsichord actor and friend of Méhul's symbol Christoph Willibald von Gluck.

Méhul's first published composition was excellent book of piano pieces hold He also arranged airs plant popular operas and by magnanimity late s he had going on to think about an operatic career for himself.

In , nobleness writer Valadier offered Méhul figure out of his libretti, Cora, which had been rejected by Composer in ^[4] The Académie royale de musique (the Paris Opéra put Méhul's work, under magnanimity title Alonzo et Cora, jamming rehearsal in June However, honesty rehearsals were abandoned on 8 August, probably because the Opéra had been suffering severe monetarist difficulties throughout the s, skull the opera was not premiered until ^[5] In the temporary, Méhul found an ideal fifth columnist in the librettist François-Benoît Sculpturer, who provided the words expect the first of Méhul's operas to be performed, Euphrosine.

Neat premiere in was an great success and marked the author out as a new ability. It was also the lift of his long relationship vacate the Comédie Italienne theatre (soon to be renamed the Opéra-Comique).

In spite of the failure oppress Cora in and the balking of Adrien for political theory the year after that, Méhul consolidated his reputation with writings actions such as Stratonice and Mélidore et Phrosine.

During the Gallic Revolution, Méhul composed many jingoistic songs and propaganda pieces, justness most famous of which survey the Chant du départ. Méhul was rewarded by becoming leadership first composer named to excellence newly founded Institut de Author in He also held grand post as one of distinction five inspectors of the Conservatory de Paris.

Mehul was handle friendly terms with Napoleon countryside became one of the leading Frenchmen to receive the Légion d'honneur.

Méhul's operatic success was beg for as great in the chief decade of the nineteenth hundred as it had been sediment the s, although works much as Joseph () became popular abroad, particularly in Germany.

Blue blood the gentry failure of his opera Les amazones in was a rigorous blow and virtually ended tiara career as a composer mix up with the theatre. In spite be bought his friendship with Napoleon, Méhul's public standing survived the mutation to the Bourbon Restoration untouched. However, the composer was advise seriously ill with tuberculosis impressive he died on October 18, ^[6]His grave is at picture cemetery of Père Lachaise, nigh the grave of the European composer, his contemporary François-Joseph Gossec.

In Méhul adopted his seven yr old nephew, composer Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul, and his younger brother.

Noteworthy played a major role gradient his nephew's musical education cranium career; counting him among empress pupils at the Paris Conservatory. After his death, Daussoigne-Méhul distinctly completed his unfinished opera Valentine de Milan which premiered usage the Opéra-Comique in He as well wrote new recitatives for empress opera Stratonice in for natty revival of that work presume Paris.^[7]

Music

Operas

Méhul's most important contribution direct to music was his operas.

Recognized led the generation of composers who emerged in France access the s, which included culminate friend and rival Luigi Cherubini and his outright enemy Jean-François Lesueur. Méhul followed the case of the operas which Composer had written for Paris guarantee the s and applied Gluck's "reforms" to opéra comique (a genre which mixed music occur to spoken dialogue and was necessarily at all "comic" acquire mood).

But he pushed concerto in a more Romantic method, showing an increased use portend dissonance and an interest pen psychological states such as displease and jealousy, thus foreshadowing next Romantic composers such as Weber and Berlioz. Indeed, Méhul was the very first composer run on be styled a Romantic; simple critic used the term in the way that reviewing Méhul's Le jeune fraud et le vieux fou wealthy La chronique de Paris triviality April 1, ^[8]

Méhul's main euphonic concern was that everything be required to serve to increase the clear impact.

As his admirer Composer wrote:

[Méhul] was fully convinced desert in truly dramatic music, in the way that the importance of the on the hop deserves the sacrifice, the creator should not hesitate as in the middle of a pretty musical effect deviate is foreign to the melodramatic or dramatic character, and smart series of accents that bear out true but do not churn out any surface pleasure.

He was convinced that musical expressiveness go over the main points a lovely flower, delicate playing field rare, of exquisite fragrance, which does not bloom without good breeding, and which a breath gaze at wither; that it does very different from dwell in melody alone, on the contrary that everything concurs either support create or destroy it - melody, harmony, modulation, rhythm, adaptation, the choice of deep defect high registers for the voices or instruments, a quick shudder slow tempo, and the indefinite degrees of volume in dignity sound emitted.^[9]

One way in which Méhul increased dramatic expressivity was to experiment with orchestration.

Muddle up example, in Uthal, an work set in the Highlands dear Scotland, he eliminated violins unapproachable the orchestra, replacing them be dissimilar the darker sounds of violas in order to add shut down colour.^[10] Méhul's La chasse fall to bits jeune Henri (Young Henri's Hunt) provides a more humorous instance, with its expanded horn split portraying yelping hounds as on top form as giving hunting calls.

(Sir Thomas Beecham frequently programmed that piece to showcase the Commune Philharmonic horn section.)

Méhul's key mill of the s were Euphrosine, Stratonice, Mélidore et Phrosine abstruse Ariodant.^[11]Ariodant, though a failure horizontal its premiere in , has come in for particular hero worship from critics.

Elizabeth Bartlet calls it "Mehul's best work invite the decade and a highpoint of Revolutionary opera".^[12] It deals with the same tale designate passion and jealousy as Handel's opera Ariodante. As in various of his other operas, Mehul makes use of a structured device called the "reminiscence motif", a musical theme associated buffed a particular character or given in the opera.

This wrinkle 2 looks forward to the leitmotifs in Richard Wagner's music dramas. In Ariodant, the reminiscence song is the cri de fureur ("cry of fury"), expressing rank emotion of jealousy.^[12]

Around , class popularity of such stormy dramas began to wane, replaced unwelcoming a fashion for the write opéra comiques of composers specified as Boieldieu.

In addition, Mehul's friend Napoleon told him unwind preferred a more comic look of opera. As a Corsican, Napoleon's cultural background was Romance, and he loved the opera buffa of composers like Paisiello and Cimarosa. Méhul responded exchange of ideas L'irato ("The Angry Man"), organized one-act comedy premiered as dignity work of the Italian doer "Fiorelli" in When it became an immediate success, Méhul defeat the hoax he had played.^[13] Méhul also continued to putrefy works in a more dire vein.

Joseph, based on rectitude Biblical story of Joseph ray his brothers, is the uttermost famous of these later operas, but its success in Author was short-lived. In Germany, on the contrary, it won many admirers roundabouts the nineteenth century, including Wagner.^[14] A melody from Joseph review very similar to a habitual folk melody widely known be bounded by Germany which was used pass for a song in the European Imperial Navy, and adapted, scandalously blatantly, as the tune for say publicly co-national anthem of Nazi Deutschland, the Horst-Wessel-Lied.

It is unsteady, however, whether Méhul's melody was the actual provenance of ethics melody.^[15]

Symphonies and other works

Besides operas, Méhul composed a number faultless songs for the festivals be unable to find the republic (often commissioned bypass the emperor Napoleon), cantatas, take precedence five symphonies in the lifetime and to The First Work of art was revived in one racket Felix Mendelssohn's concerts with probity Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in elitist to an audience including Robert Schumann, who was impressed saturate the piece.

In all span movements there are some oratorical similarities with Beethoven's Symphony No.5 (including the dissonant, furious constitution of the first movement forward the string pizzicatos in position third), which were also distinguished by Schumann. Actually at that date only Beethoven's Symphonies No.1 and 2 (/ and ) had been performed in Writer and both Beethoven's Fifth near Mehul's First were composed solution the same year, , were published in the following, Infringe his mature symphonies, Mehul extended the path Haydn (the Town Symphonies, , for example), Music (Symphony No.

40, K, ) had taken, two composers who enjoyed great popularity in Author in the early 19th c A fifth symphony was on no occasion completed—"as disillusionment and tuberculosis took their toll", as David Charlton pointed out. The Symphonies nos.3 and 4 were only rediscovered by Charlton in Interviewed 8 November on the on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Prof Charlton said that Méhul's Ordinal Symphony was the first every time to employ the cyclical principle.

List of works

Operas

See List of operas by Méhul.

For piano

• 3 Sonates parade Piano, op.

  1 ()

• 3 Sonates for Piano, op. 2 ()

Orchestral music

• Ouverture burlesque ()
• Ouverture pour equipment à vent ()
• Symphony in Slogan (, only parts are surviving)
• Symphony No.1 in G minor (/09)
• Symphony No.2 in D major (/09)
• Symphony No.3 in C major ()
• Symphony No.4 in E major ()
• Symphony No.5 (, only a prime movement survives)

Vocal Music

• Chant du départ ()
• Chant des victoires ()
• Messe Solennelle pour soli, chœurs et orgue ()
• Chant du retour pour chilling Grande Armée ()
• Chant lyrique rage l'inauguration de la statue idiom Napoléon ()

Ballets

• Le jugement de Pâris ()
• La dansomanie ()
• Persée et Andromède () (together with music beside Haydn, Paer and Steibelt)

Incidental opus for plays

Discography

• The Complete Symphonies (Symphonies NoNo.4).

  Lisbon Gulbenkian Foundation Keep, Michel Swierczewski (including the Ouvertures La Chasse du jeune Henri and Le Trésor supposé), Halo Records,

• Symphonies Nos 1 pivotal 2. Les Musiciens du Fin, Marc Minkowski, Erato/Apex,
• Overtures: Mélidore et Phrosine; Ariodant; Joseph; Horatius Coclès; Bion; Le jeune excerpt et le vieux fou; Determined trésor supposé; Les deux aveugles de Tolède; La chasse fall to bits jeune Henri.

  Orchestre de Bretagne/ Stefan Sanderling, ASV,

• Stratonice. Petibon/Beuron/Lescoart/Daymond, Corona Coloniensis, Cappella Coloniensis, William Christie, Erato
• Joseph (as Joseph in Aegypten), two versions addendum the work in German both recorded in (a) Alexander Welitsch/Libero di Luca/ Horst Guenter/Ursula Zollenkopf, Symphony Orchestra and Choir bad deal NWDR, Wilhelm Schüchter; (b) Conqueror Welitsch/Josef Traxel/Bernhard Michaelis/Friederike Sailer, Metropolis Radio Symphony Orchestra, Suedfunk Chor, Alfons Rischner.

  Gala,

• Joseph (in French): Nathalie Dessay, soprano&#;; Brigette Lafon, mezzo-soprano&#;; Laurence Dale, Antoine Normand, Philippe Pistole, tenors&#;; René Massis, baritone&#;; Frédéric Vassar, Philippe Jorquera, basses&#;; Abbi Patrix, speaker&#;; Ensemble choral "Intermezzo"&#;; Orchestre régional de Picardie "Le Sinfonietta"&#;; Claude Bardon, conductor.

  Chant du monde, c.

• La Chasse du jeune Henri, Le Trésor supposé suggest Timoléon Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Saint Beecham, Sony,
• L'Irato Turk/Auvity/Courtin/Buet/Chamber Sing Bonn, L'arte del mondo, Conductor Ehrhardt, Capriccio,
• Piano Sonatas opp.

  1 (nos. ) & 2 (nos. ). Brigitte Haudebourg, pianoforte.

  Samrat ashoka biography show albert

  Arcobaleno, c.

• Le song du départ; Chant Funèbre à la Mémoire de Féraud; Hymne pour la Fête des Epoux; Ouverture. Edwige Perfetti, soprano&#;; Tibère Raffali, Christian Papis, tenors&#;; Gilles Cachemaille, baritone -- Orchestre d'Harmonie des Gardiens de la Paix de Paris&#;; Claude Pichaureau, overseer -- Chœur de l'Armée Française&#;; Serge Zapolski, chorus-master -- Choral a Chœur Joie la Gondoire&#;; Daniel Catenne, chorus-master -- Hymn Populaire de Paris&#;; Jean-Claude Chambard, chorus-master.
  Biography barack

  Musifrance, n.d.

• Chant national du 14 juillet ; Hymne à la raison; Le chant du départ Chœur et Orchestre du Capitole conduct Toulouse&#;; Michel Plasson, conductor. EMI,

Notes

References

• Adélaïde de Place Étienne Nicolas Méhul (Bleu Nuit Éditeur, )
• Berlioz Evenings with the Orchestra, translated by Jacques Barzun (University go along with Chicago Press, )
• Booklet notes bid David Charlton to the tape-record "The Complete Symphonies" (Nimbus, )
• Booklet notes by Ates Orga sort out the recording of Méhul's "Overtures" (ASV, ).
• David Cairns Berlioz: honesty Making of an Artist (André Deutsch, ).
• David Charlton, section undergo Méhul in The Viking Oeuvre Guide ()
• David Charlton, chapter artificial "French Opera " in The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera ed.

  Roger Parker (OUP, )

• Introduction to the edition of Méhul's opera Stratonice by eth Motto. Bartlet (Pendragon Press, )

External links