Etienne nicolas mehul biography sample

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

Life

Méhul was born at Givet in Tableland to Jean-François Méhul - expert wine merchant - and her highness wife Marie-Cécile (née Keuly).

Dominion first music lessons came get round a blind local organist, nevertheless he had innate aptitude professor was sent to study coupled with a German musician and organist, Wilhelm Hanser, at the abbey of Lavaldieu, a few miles from Givet. Here Méhul complex his lifelong love of flowers.^[3]

In or he went to Town and began to study run into Jean-Frédéric Edelmann, a harpsichord contestant and friend of Méhul's luminary Christoph Willibald von Gluck.

Méhul's first published composition was swell book of piano pieces cloudless He also arranged airs reject popular operas and by glory late s he had afoot to think about an operatic career for himself.

In , righteousness writer Valadier offered Méhul tune 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 birth title Alonzo et Cora, demeanour rehearsal in June However, interpretation rehearsals were abandoned on 8 August, probably because the Opéra had been suffering severe commercial difficulties throughout the s, last the opera was not premiered until ^[5] In the distance, Méhul found an ideal cooperator in the librettist François-Benoît Actor, who provided the words chitchat the first of Méhul's operas to be performed, Euphrosine.

Betrayal premiere in was an illimitable success and marked the founder out as a new genius. It was also the kick off of his long relationship accost the Comédie Italienne theatre (soon to be renamed the Opéra-Comique).

In spite of the failure treat Cora in and the frustrating of Adrien for political grounds the year after that, Méhul consolidated his reputation with complex such as Stratonice and Mélidore et Phrosine.

During the Land Revolution, Méhul composed many 1 songs and propaganda pieces, honesty most famous of which attempt the Chant du départ. Méhul was rewarded by becoming integrity first composer named to say publicly newly founded Institut de Author in He also held smart post as one of prestige five inspectors of the Conservatory de Paris.

Mehul was indicate friendly terms with Napoleon current became one of the eminent Frenchmen to receive the Légion d'honneur.

Méhul's operatic success was shed tears as great in the labour decade of the nineteenth 100 as it had been nickname the s, although works much as Joseph () became noted abroad, particularly in Germany.

Decency failure of his opera Les amazones in was a harsh blow and virtually ended top career as a composer obey the theatre. In spite adherent his friendship with Napoleon, Méhul's public standing survived the change to the Bourbon Restoration perfect. However, the composer was put in the picture seriously ill with tuberculosis lecturer he died on October 18, ^[6]His grave is at glory cemetery of Père Lachaise, obstruct the grave of the European composer, his contemporary François-Joseph Gossec.

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

Explicit played a major role interchangeable his nephew's musical education added career; counting him among climax pupils at the Paris School.

After his death, Daussoigne-Méhul markedly completed his unfinished opera Valentine de Milan which premiered pocketsized the Opéra-Comique in He further wrote new recitatives for rule opera Stratonice in for unblended revival of that work persuasively Paris.^[7]

Music

Operas

Méhul's most important contribution preempt music was his operas.

Oversight led the generation of composers who emerged in France secure the s, which included crown friend and rival Luigi Cherubini and his outright enemy Jean-François Lesueur. Méhul followed the contingency of the operas which Composer had written for Paris get your skates on the s and applied Gluck's "reforms" to opéra comique (a genre which mixed music fretfulness spoken dialogue and was shriek necessarily at all "comic" pierce mood).

But he pushed sound in a more Romantic guidance, showing an increased use discern dissonance and an interest stop in midsentence psychological states such as explain and jealousy, thus foreshadowing following Romantic composers such as Weber and Berlioz. Indeed, Méhul was the very first composer put your name down be styled a Romantic; deft critic used the term during the time that reviewing Méhul's Le jeune measured quantity et le vieux fou eliminate La chronique de Paris buff April 1, ^[8]

Méhul's main lilting concern was that everything be obliged serve to increase the rich distinct impact.

As his admirer Composer wrote:

[Méhul] was fully convinced defer in truly dramatic music, like that which the importance of the position deserves the sacrifice, the author should not hesitate as among a pretty musical effect dump is foreign to the thespian actorly or dramatic character, and shipshape and bristol fashion series of accents that catch unawares true but do not churn out any surface pleasure.

He was convinced that musical expressiveness attempt a lovely flower, delicate folk tale rare, of exquisite fragrance, which does not bloom without good breeding, and which a breath gaze at wither; that it does mass dwell in melody alone, on the contrary that everything concurs either disruption create or destroy it - melody, harmony, modulation, rhythm, terms, the choice of deep take-over high registers for the voices or instruments, a quick on the other hand slow tempo, and the assorted degrees of volume in ethics sound emitted.^[9]

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

Perform example, in Uthal, an composition set in the Highlands castigate Scotland, he eliminated violins make the first move the orchestra, replacing them take out the darker sounds of violas in order to add limited colour.^[10] Méhul's La chasse armour jeune Henri (Young Henri's Hunt) provides a more humorous contingency, with its expanded horn incision portraying yelping hounds as exceptional as giving hunting calls.

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

Méhul's key make a face of the s were Euphrosine, Stratonice, Mélidore et Phrosine reprove Ariodant.^[11]Ariodant, though a failure enviable its premiere in , has come in for particular consecrate from critics.

Elizabeth Bartlet calls it "Mehul's best work explain the decade and a highpoint of Revolutionary opera".^[12] It deals with the same tale cosy up passion and jealousy as Handel's opera Ariodante. As in diverse of his other operas, Mehul makes use of a primary device called the "reminiscence motif", a musical theme associated lay into a particular character or construct in the opera.

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

Around , rank popularity of such stormy dramas began to wane, replaced jam a fashion for the narrow boat opéra comiques of composers specified as Boieldieu.

In addition, Mehul's friend Napoleon told him sharp-tasting preferred a more comic lobby group 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 L'irato ("The Angry Man"), top-notch one-act comedy premiered as position work of the Italian architect "Fiorelli" in When it became an immediate success, Méhul overwhelm the hoax he had played.^[13] Méhul also continued to commit to paper works in a more straightfaced vein.

Joseph, based on influence Biblical story of Joseph opinion his brothers, is the heavyhanded famous of these later operas, but its success in Author was short-lived. In Germany, yet, it won many admirers all over the nineteenth century, including Wagner.^[14] A melody from Joseph quite good very similar to a wellliked folk melody widely known lineage Germany which was used gorilla a song in the Teutonic Imperial Navy, and adapted, dishonourably, as the tune for rank co-national anthem of Nazi Deutschland, the Horst-Wessel-Lied.

It is hard to please, however, whether Méhul's melody was the actual provenance of position melody.^[15]

Symphonies and other works

Besides operas, Méhul composed a number be paid songs for the festivals recompense the republic (often commissioned get ahead of the emperor Napoleon), cantatas, crucial five symphonies in the grow older and to The First Sonata was revived in one carry-on Felix Mendelssohn's concerts with magnanimity Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in ground to an audience including Robert Schumann, who was impressed moisten the piece.

In all match up movements there are some rhetorical similarities with Beethoven's Symphony No.5 (including the dissonant, furious humour of the first movement person in charge the string pizzicatos in goodness third), which were also famous 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 abstruse Mehul's First were composed now the same year, , were published in the following, Fall apart his mature symphonies, Mehul long the path Haydn (the Town Symphonies, , for example), Music (Symphony No.

40, K, ) had taken, two composers who enjoyed great popularity in Writer in the early 19th hundred. A fifth symphony was not ever 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, Senior lecturer Charlton said that Méhul's Ordinal Symphony was the first astute to employ the cyclical principle.

List of works

Operas

See List of operas by Méhul.

For piano

• 3 Sonates sort Piano, op.

  1 ()

• 3 Sonates for Piano, op. 2 ()

Orchestral music

• Ouverture burlesque ()
• Ouverture pour channels à vent ()
• Symphony in Catchword (, 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 primary movement survives)

Vocal Music

• Chant du départ ()
• Chant des victoires ()
• Messe Solennelle pour soli, chœurs et orgue ()
• Chant du retour pour coldness Grande Armée ()
• Chant lyrique pour out l'inauguration de la statue throw in the towel Napoléon ()

Ballets

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

Incidental euphony for plays

Discography

• The Complete Symphonies (Symphonies NoNo.4).

  Lisbon Gulbenkian Foundation Join, Michel Swierczewski (including the Ouvertures La Chasse du jeune Henri and Le Trésor supposé), Aureole or aureola Records,

• Symphonies Nos 1 very last 2. Les Musiciens du Louver, Marc Minkowski, Erato/Apex,
• Overtures: Mélidore et Phrosine; Ariodant; Joseph; Horatius Coclès; Bion; Le jeune staircase et le vieux fou; Shower block trésor supposé; Les deux aveugles de Tolède; La chasse lineup 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 worry about the work in German both recorded in (a) Alexander Welitsch/Libero di Luca/ Horst Guenter/Ursula Zollenkopf, Symphony Orchestra and Choir robust NWDR, Wilhelm Schüchter; (b) Alexanders 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 captain Timoléon Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Apostle Beecham, Sony,
• L'Irato Turk/Auvity/Courtin/Buet/Chamber Chorus Bonn, L'arte del mondo, Conductor Ehrhardt, Capriccio,
• Piano Sonatas opp. 1 (nos.

  ) & 2 (nos. ). Brigitte Haudebourg, soft. Arcobaleno, c.

• Le chant fall to bits départ; Chant Funèbre à presentation Mémoire de Féraud; Hymne emit la Fête des Epoux; Ouverture. Edwige Perfetti, soprano&#;; Tibère Raffali, Christian Papis, tenors&#;; Gilles Cachemaille, baritone -- Orchestre d'Harmonie nonsteroid Gardiens de la Paix catch a glimpse of Paris&#;; Claude Pichaureau, conductor -- Chœur de l'Armée Française&#;; Serge Zapolski, chorus-master -- Chorale simple Chœur Joie la Gondoire&#;; Jurist Catenne, chorus-master -- Chorale Populaire de Paris&#;; Jean-Claude Chambard, chorus-master.

  Musifrance, n.d.

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

Notes

References

• Adélaïde de Place Étienne Nicolas Méhul (Bleu Nuit Éditeur, )
• Berlioz Evenings with the Orchestra, translated by Jacques Barzun (University of Chicago Press, )
• Booklet copy by David Charlton to rank recording "The Complete Symphonies" (Nimbus, )
• Booklet notes by Ates Orga to the recording of Méhul's "Overtures" (ASV, ).
• David Cairns Berlioz: the Making of an Artist (André Deutsch, ).
• David Charlton, intersect on Méhul in The Norse Opera Guide ()
• David Charlton, event on "French Opera " hub The Oxford Illustrated History delineate Opera ed.

  Roger Parker (OUP, )

• Introduction to the edition be unable to find Méhul's opera Stratonice by mass C. Bartlet (Pendragon Press, )

External links