Adolphe Samuel

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Adolphe-Abraham Samuel (born July 11, 1824 in Liège , † September 14, 1898 in Ghent ) was a Belgian composer, music critic, music teacher and conductor.

Life

Samuel began his musical training at the conservatory in his native city with Louis-Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul and in the piano class of Étienne Soubre . In 1838 his family moved to Brussels, where he performed together with Charles de Bériot and the singer Pauline García . From 1839, on the advice of François-Joseph Fétis, he studied piano with Jean-Baptiste Michelot at the Brussels Conservatory , harmony with Charles Bosselet , organ with Christian Friedrich Girschner, and counterpoint and fugue with Fétis.

In 1845 he won the Belgian Prix ​​de Rome with the cantata La Vendetta . On the related study trip, he visited Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Leipzig, Giacomo Meyerbeer in Berlin and Ferdinand Hiller in Dresden. He reached Rome at the end of 1846 via stops in Prague and Vienna. It was there that he composed his Opera seria Giovanni da Procida and his Second Symphony, which Fétis performed after his return to Brussels in 1849. In the same year, the world premiere of his opera Madelaine took place.

The symphonic poem Roland à Ronceveaux was performed at a meeting of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1850. The following year he began work on the comic opera Les deux prétendants on behalf of the Belgian government . For the 25th anniversary of the coronation of Belgium's first King Leopold von Sachsen-Coburg in 1856, he composed the cantata L'union fait la force . A cantata for the inauguration of the Congress Column in Brussels was performed with 2,500 choristers and instrumentalists.

Samuel had been friends with Hector Berlioz since 1853 , after he had attended the London premiere of his opera Benvenuto Cellini as a critic of the newspaper Le Télégraphe and, contrary to popular opinion of music critics, had praised the work. After a time as a répétiteur in solfège and piano classes, he became professor of harmony at the Brussels Conservatory in 1860.

In 1865 he founded a series of concerts based on the model of Jules Pasdeloup in Brussels , which was intended to raise the level of musical education of the people and spread interest in good music. In addition to works by contemporary composers and by Berlioz, the series also performed compositions by Peter Benoit , Léon de Burbure , François-Joseph Fétis, Gustave Huberti and Henri Vieuxtemps . There were Anton Rubinstein as conductor and musicians such as Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim as soloists.

After he became director of the Ghent Conservatory in 1871, he had to give up his Concerts populaires . As part of the conservatory concerts at his new place of work, his Wagner performances in particular met with applause.

Samuel's most important works were his last two symphonies. The Sixth, which was written as the third version of the Second Symphony over a period of 45 years, was intended as a symphony à program to represent human history with musical means. It premiered at a concert at the Ghent Conservatory in late 1889. The Seventh Symphony as a mystique symphony was entitled Christ .

Adolphe Samuel's son Eugène Samuel Holeman (1866-1942) was known as a pianist and avant-garde composer who before Arnold Schoenberg , the atonality anwandte.

Works

  • Il a rêvé , comic opera, 1845
  • La Vendetta , cantata, 1845
  • 1st Symphony, Op. 8, 1846
  • 2nd symphony op.9, 1847
  • Giovanni da Procida , great opera, 1847
  • Madeleine , comic opera, (Libretto: Gustave Vaëz ), 1850
  • Roland à Ronceveaux , Poème symphonique, 1850
  • Les Deux Précendants , comic opera, (Libretto: Louis Schoonen ), 1851
  • L'Heure de la retraite , comic opera, (Libretto: Eugène van Bemmel ), 1854
  • Cantate du jubilée , cantata, 1855
  • L'union fait la force , cantata, 1856
  • 3rd Symphony, Op. 28, 1858
  • Cantate nationale , cantata op.29, 1859
  • 4th Symphony op.33, 1863
  • 5th Symphony op.35, 1869
  • De Wederkomst , Cantata, op.38 , 1875
  • Leopold I. , cantata, 1880
  • 6th Symphony ( Symphony à program ) op.44, 1889
  • 7th Symphony "Christ" op. 48, 1893

literature

  • Thierry Levaux: Le Dictionnaire des Compositeurs de Belgique du Moyen-Age à nos jours , pp. 550–551, Editions: “Art in Belgium” 2006, ISBN 2-930338-37-7
personal data
SURNAME Samuel, Adolphe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Samuel, Adolphe-Abraham (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian composer, conductor and music teacher
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1824
PLACE OF BIRTH Liege
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 1898
Place of death Ghent