Charles Malo

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Portrait photo from Paulus : Trente ans de café-concert

Charles Malo (born July 29, 1835 in Boulogne-sur-Mer , † December 5, 1914 , probably in Toulouse ) was a French orchestra conductor and composer .

Life

Café Concert (around 1877). Pastel by Edgar Degas. The conductor on the right has been identified as Malo.

Malo was a nephew of Hervé . He began his musical training at the music school in Boulogne and then went to Paris, where he received violin lessons from Jean-Delphin Alard . For two years he directed the orchestra of the Virginie Déjazet drama troupe who traveled to the French provinces; from 1859 he worked as Kapellmeister at the Théâtre du Gymnase in Marseille . Returning to Paris, Malo took over the management of the orchestra at the Théâtre Déjazet in 1862 as the successor to Hervé . On May 1, 1868, he succeeded Hervé as orchestra leader in Eldorado , one of the most famous and largest café concerts in Paris. He held this post for 25 years; He was also a guest conductor at spa concerts, often in the Grand Casino in Cauterets or in the park of Néris-les-Bains . In 1893 he moved to the Théâtre de la Gaîté . Since October 1900 he has also conducted at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens . On May 23, 1907, he retired with a farewell concert in the Palais du Trocadéro , which was organized by his former companions in his honor. Some of the musicians in the orchestra led by Malo later became celebrated soloists at the Paris Opera. A contemporary report praised Malo especially for his ability to "make the clarinets whimper".

During this whole time, Malo also composed: a whole series of operettas , which usually premiered in Eldorado , as well as numerous, in some cases quite successful chansons and other pieces of music.

According to information from SACEM , which is documented by the French National Library , the date of Malo's death can be set as December 5, 1914. Since a report by Figaro of December 7, 1914 states that the news of his death had been received from Toulouse, this city can be assumed to be the place of death.

On a pastel by Edgar Degas that shows a scene from a café concert, the art historian Michael Shapiro identified Malo as the conductor who leads the singer with his violin bow. Shapiro relies on a photo of Malo, which has been handed down in Paulus ' Trente ans de Café-concert and shows pronounced similarities with the conductor from Degas' picture (hairstyle, ear shape, mustache), as well as extensive research among connoisseurs of the café -concert concert.

Compositional work

Complete score of the chanson Tu ne m'aimais pas for voice and piano, Bathlot, Paris 1875. Illustration: Edward Ancourt

Malo was a very fruitful composer. Franz Pazdírek's Universal Handbook of Music and Literature of All Nations lists no fewer than 79 Malo titles. Franz Stieger's large opera lexicon counts ten operettas and one opéra comique . In the supplement to the Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique by François-Joseph Fétis , the arranger, Arthur Pougin , already spoke in 1880 of "almost 200 romances, chansons and dramatic scenes" that Malo had composed and attested to their above-average quality.

Two compositions by Malo in particular met with a greater response. In the French-speaking world, the Figaro obituary from 1914, certainly also motivated by the renewed start of the war, reminded of "some remarkable patriotic chansons" which he had composed in 1872 and with which the singer Amiati had celebrated great success in the Eldorado. This is especially true for Une tombe dans les blés (“A grave in the wheat”) based on a text by Gaston Villemer and Lucien Delormel . A few years later in Figaro it was said, not without malice, that Malo had managed with this song to “trigger a flood of real tears that poured into his host's beer glasses”. Malo had artistically tailored the melody to the limited vocal range of Amiati, as Théodore Massiac pointed out in a retrospective of 1899.

A Malos chanson from 1875, Tu ne m'aimais pas (“You didn't love me”) based on a text by Léon Laroche , enjoyed an astonishing success in the German-speaking world decades later under the title “Verlor'nes Glück” after the Viennese Composer Leopold Sprowacker translated it into German and edited it musically. At the turn of the century the piece was well known as a hit , there are arrangements for almost every conceivable line-up, including the accordion orchestra, and it even appeared in print on postcards. Karl Valentin has been around since 1915, as sequence of scenes theater in the suburbs (as Tingeltangel known) parodied , and Bertolt Brecht later the melody (with support from Franz Servatius Bruinier ) as the basis for his song memory of Marie A. used.

Compositions (selection)

Operettas

  • Les jumeaux de Paimpol ("The Twins of Paimpol "). Operetta in one act. Text: Péricaud & Delormel. Feuchot, Paris 1879. Score from the International Music Score Library Project .
  • Robert Macaire et Bertrand en voyage (“Robert Macaire and Bertrand on the journey”). Operetta in one act, text: Auguste Jouhaud, Tresse, Paris 1880.
  • Comédie à Compiègne ("Comedy in Compiègne "). Opéra comique in one act, text: Édouard Noël, Henri Malo, first performed in Biarritz , September 1902. Score from the International Music Score Library Project.

Other works

  • Une tombe dans les blés . Chanson, text: Villemer & Delormel, 1872.
  • Tu ne m'aimais pas . Romance, text: Léon Laroche, 1875.
  • A travers les rideaux . Chansonnette, text: Péricaud. Online on Gallica.

literature

  • François-Joseph Fétis: Malo (Charles). In: Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique. Supplément et complément, 2nd volume . Modified by Arthur Pougin. Firmin-Didot, Paris 1880, p. 153.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pierre Dufay: De L'Alcazar au Cinéma . In: Mercure de France , Vol. 44, No. 845, September 1, 1933, pp. 302–334, here: pp. 322–323.
  2. ^ François-Joseph Fétis: Biography universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique. Supplément et complément, 2nd volume . Firmin-Didot, Paris 1880, p. 153. Online .
  3. ↑ Le Figaro , May 4, 1868, p. 3 on Gallica.
  4. ↑ Gil Blas , August 1, 1880, p. 3, online ; L'Europe artiste , January 7, 1883, p. 4 , and January 10, 1892, pp. 2 and 3 .
  5. ↑ Facsimile of a program slip for June 19, 1904 in: Patrick Delmont: Néris-les-Bains. Les années “belle époque”. 1880-1930 . Éditions Créer, Nonette 2002, p. 141.
  6. ↑ Le Matin , June 1, 1893, online .
  7. ↑ Announcement in: Le Rappel , May 17, 1907, p. 4 on Gallica; see. also Le Figaro , October 1, 1900, online .
  8. ^ Maxime Boucheron: Petits tableaux parisiens. Le monde où l'on chante . In: Le Figaro , September 17, 1882, pp. 1–2, here: p. 1 on Gallica. In the original: "Excelle dans l'art de faire pleurnicher les clarinettes."
  9. ↑ See the Notice d'autorité personne at the BNF; see also: Le Figaro , December 7, 1914, p. 4, on Gallica; as well as: La Musique pendant la guerre. Revue mensuelle, No. 3, December 10, 1915, p. 47, where Malo is included in the list of musicians who died in the war.
  10. ^ Michael Shapiro: Degas and the Siamese Twins of the Café Concert. The Ambassadeurs and the Alcazar-d'Été . In: Gazette des Beaux-Arts , vol. 95, no. 1335 (April 1980), pp. 153-164, here: p. 153. See also Jean Sutherland Boggs, Anne F. Maheux: Degas Pastels , Braziller, New York 1992, p. 56.
  11. ↑ Franz Pazdírek: Universal manual of the music literature of all peoples . Vol. XVIII, Vienna undated, p. 105 ff.
  12. ^ Franz Stieger: Opernlexikon. Part II: Composers. 2nd volume: G-M. Hans Schneider, Tutzing 1977, p. 870. Stieger incorrectly assigns La Comédie à Compiègne here to Henri Malo as composer and lists Charles Malo as librettist , but the mistake is corrected in the librettist section of the lexicon, which appeared three years later.
  13. ^ François-Joseph Fétis: Biography universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique. Supplément et complément, 2nd volume . Firmin-Didot, Paris 1880, p. 153. Online .
  14. ↑ Paulus : Trente ans de café-concert. Souvenirs recueillis par Octave Pradels . Paris, online reissue 2008 , p. 139.
  15. ^ Maxime Boucheron: Petits tableaux parisiens. Le monde où l'on chante . In: Le Figaro , September 17, 1882, pp. 1–2, here: p. 1, online on Gallica. In the original: "A su provoquer un déluge des vraies larmes, dans les bocks de son patron, avec une tombe dans les blés ."
  16. ^ Théodore Massiac: Amiati . In: Gil Blas , January 29, 1899, p. 2. Quoted here after the reproduction on the page dutempsdescerisesauxfeuillesmortes.net, online .
  17. ↑ See Karl Valentin: Theater in der Vorstadt . In: ders .: All works in nine volumes. Volume 5: The Confirmation. Pieces , Piper, Munich 2007, pp. 11–37, here: pp. 15 f.
  18. ^ Fritz Hennenberg : "On that day in the blue moon September ..." A Brecht poem and its source . In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik , vol. 149, no. 7/8, July / August 1988, pp. 24-29. There also, on p. 25, a facsimile of the title page by Malos Chanson.
  19. ↑ Robert Macaire was a well-known literary figure in France, a criminal as a comic figure on the stage. Bertrand was his companion. See Noémi Carrique: Le succès du crime sur scène avec Robert Macaire: modernité théâtrale et protestation sociale au xixe siècle , online .
personal data
SURNAME Malo, Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French orchestra leader and composer
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1835
PLACE OF BIRTH Boulogne-sur-Mer , France
DATE OF DEATH December 5, 1914
Place of death unsure: Toulouse , France