François-Joseph Gossec

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François-Joseph Gossec (1791)

François-Joseph Gossec, also Gaussé , Gossé , Gosset or Gossez (born January 17, 1734 in Lusties near Froidchapelle , County of Hainaut , Austrian Netherlands , today Belgium ; † February 16, 1829 in Passy near Paris ) was a Walloon- French composer .

Life

Born the son of a farmer, François-Joseph Gossec came to the collegiate church of Walcourt and later to St. Aldegonde in Maubeuge as a choirboy at the age of 6 . There he joined the chapel of St. Peter , whose music director was Jean Vanderbelen, who gave him his first lessons in violin, keyboard instruments, harmony and composition. From 1741 to 1751 he was a choirboy at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Antwerp and received further lessons from the cathedral music director André-Joseph Blavier . He felt at home in this new environment, but completely lost contact with his family. Even during his tour to the performance of his operas in liberated Belgium in 1792 and 1793, he had no contact with his parents or siblings. In 1751 he went to Paris with a letter of recommendation to Jean-Philippe Rameau , who at the time was orchestra director of the private orchestra of the general tenant Alexandre Le Riche de La Pouplinière , and became a violinist there .

After Rameau's departure from La Pouplinières' chapel, Gossec made the acquaintance of his successor Johann Stamitz and learned from him the achievements of the Mannheim School : homophonic orchestral symphonies and novel dynamic effects with the necessary clarinets, basset horns and other wind instruments.

In 1751 he became a member of the Masonic Lodge "La Réunion des Arts" in which Méhul and Cherubini were also. In 1758 he married the singer Marie-Elisabeth Georges. A son Alexandre-François-Joseph was born in 1760.

Gossec composed chamber music and then symphonies . He published the first 6 symphonies in 1756 as opus 3. At the age of 25 he decided to compose a tremendous work, a Requiem - Grand Mass des Morts . In May 1760, this 90-minute funeral mass had its first performance in the church of the Jacobin monastery, in the Rue St. Jacques , in Paris and made Gossec famous overnight.

From 1762 to 1769 he took over the management of the chapel of Louis V Joseph de Bourbon, prince de Condé , in Chantilly and from 1766 also the management of the chapel of the Prince of Conti, Louis-François de Bourbon . With these orchestras he achieved a great reputation. He wasn't very lucky with his stage works, on the one hand because of the bad libretti , on the other hand, his contemporaries André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry and Christoph Willibald Gluck dominated this field.

From 1769 to 1773 he was director of the Concert des Amateurs orchestra , which was dedicated to the performance of contemporary works and which quickly achieved great fame throughout Europe; Concertmaster Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges , succeeded him. Between 1773 and 1777 he was director of Concert Spirituel together with Simon Leduc and Pierre Gaviniès and thus used every opportunity to make his own works and those of his friends heard. In 1775 he received the title of “maître de la musique”.

From 1778 he worked at the Académie de Musique, first as choir conductor and from 1780 as second director. From 1784 he headed the newly founded École de chant . Another compositional milestone was the Te Deum of 1779, which was created on the occasion of Marie Antoinette's pregnancy .

Despite years of support from aristocratic patrons, Gossec was enthusiastic about the ideas of the French Revolution. In 1790 Gossec composed another Te Deum for male choir and wind orchestra for the Federation ceremony on the Champ de Mars on July 14th.

When the Paris Conservatory was founded in 1795 , he was appointed to inspect the institute together with Jean-François Lesueur , Étienne-Nicolas Méhul , Luigi Cherubini and Grétry.

The extremely productive Gossec became the official composer of the French Republic and wrote numerous representative works for the festivities of the revolutionary era; his Marche lugubre on the death of Mirabeau from September 1790 was, so to speak, the standard work for the revolutionary ceremonies.

Work overview

Works for orchestra

  • 1760 Requiem - Grande Messe des Morts / Missa Pro Defunctis
  • 1774 Symphony in F major
  • 1775 Symphony in D major
  • 1776 Symphony in C major
  • 1777 Symphony in D major
  • 1791 Invocation - chantée pour la translation des cendres de Voltaire au Panthéon à la station de l'Opera le 11. juillet 1791
  • Dernière fair des vivants
  • Symphony in E flat major opus 5 No. 2
  • Symphony à grand orchester “La Chasse” in D major opus 13 No. 3
  • Sinfonia à più stromenti, C minor

Works for wind orchestra

  • 1790 Te Deum for 3-part male choirs and wind orchestra
  • 1790 Le Chant du 14 Juillet (The Song of July 14th, revolutionary hymn) for 3-part male choir and wind orchestra
  • 1793–1794 Symphonie pour Musique Militaire
  • 1793 Marche Lugubre
  • 1793 Symphonie concertante D major du ballet "Mirza"
  • 1794 Chœur patriotique for 3-part male choir and wind orchestra - Text: Voltaire
  • 1794 Chœur à la liberté for mixed choir and wind orchestra - Text: Marie-Joseph Chénier
  • 1794 Hymne à l'Être Suprème for soloists, choir and wind orchestra
  • 1809 Symphony in F major "Symphony à 17 parties"
  • Aux Manes de la Gironde for soloists, mixed choir and wind orchestra
  • Chant funèbre sur al mort de Ferraud singer, male choir and wind orchestra
  • Chœur patriotique for 3-part male choir and wind orchestra - Text: Jean-Antoine Roucher
  • Domine Salvum for 3-part male choirs and wind orchestra
  • Marche religieuse
  • Hymne à Voltaire - Hymn on the translation du corps de Voltaire au Panthéon - Text: Marie-Joseph Chénier
  • Hymn funèbre
  • Hymn à la nature for mixed choir and wind orchestra - Text: Varon
  • (Untitled hymn) for mixed choir and wind orchestra
  • Hymn to Jean-Jacques Rousseau for singers and wind orchestra
  • Hymne a Humanité for mixed choir and wind orchestra
  • Hymn à la liberté - Text: Caron
  • Hymn à la liberté - Text: Varon
  • Hymn à la statue de la liberté - Text: Varon
  • Hymn a victoire for mixed choir and wind orchestra
  • Hymn pour la celebariton de victoire for soloists, mixed choir and wind orchestra
  • Hymn pour la 14 Juillet - Text: Marie-Joseph Chénier
  • L'Offrande à la Liberté (Revolutionary Anthem)
  • La Marseillaise (French national anthem) for 3-part male choir and wind orchestra
  • Marche funèbre
  • Marche vitorieuse
  • Marche for 2 small flutes, 2 clarinets, trumpet, 2 horns in F, 2 bassoons and serpent
  • Marche for 2 small flutes, 2 clarinets, trumpet in F, 2 horns in F, 2 bassoons and serpent
  • National ronde - Text: Marie-Joseph Chénier
  • Peuple, éveille-toi (revolutionary anthem)
  • Symphony in C

Chamber music

  • op. 14 6 string quartets (1770)
  • op.15 6 string quartets (1772)

Oratorios and stage works

  • 1765 Le tonnelier [The Cooper], Opéra-comique in one act, libretto: Nicolas-Médard Audinot (1732–1801) in collaboration with Antoine-François Quétant (1733–1822)The work is a pasticcio that uses the music of other contemporary composers in addition to Gossec's music. Included musical forms include air , romance , vaudeville and recitative . The world premiere took place on March 16, 1765 in Paris, performed by the Comédiens italiens ordinaires du Roi.
  • 1766 Les Pêcheurs , opera
  • 1767 Toinon et Toinette , Opera
  • 1767 Le Double Déguisement , opera
  • 1768 Les Agréments d'Hylas et Silvie , Opera
  • 1792 Le Triomphe de la Republique ou Le Campde Grand Pré
  • Alexis and Daphné
  • La Nativité , oratorio

literature

  • Fernand Tonnard: François-Joseph Gossec, musicien hennuyer de la révolution française. Vanderlinden, Brussels 1938.
  • Jacques-Gabriel Prod'homme: François-Joseph Gossec (1734-1829). La vie, les œuvre, l'homme et l'artiste. La Colombe, Paris 1949 ( Euterpe Collection 8).
  • Roland Mortier (ed.): Fêtes et musiques révolutionnaires. Grétry and Gossec. Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles, Brussels 1990, ISBN 2-8004-0994-0 ( Études sur le XVIIIe siècle 17).
  • Claude Role: François-Joseph Gossec (1734-1829). Un musicien à Paris, de l'Ancien Régime à Charles X. L 'Harmattan, Paris et al. 2000, ISBN 2-7384-9678-4 .

Web links

Commons : François Joseph Gossec  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Digital copies

  1. ^ Gossec: Le Tonnelier , libretto as digitized version in the UNT Digital Library of the University of North Texas

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Clive Unger-Hamilton, Neil Fairbairn, Derek Walters; German arrangement: Christian Barth, Holger Fliessbach, Horst Leuchtmann, et al .: The music - 1000 years of illustrated music history . Unipart-Verlag, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-8122-0132-1 , p. 92 .
  2. A resume Gossec in the Cahiers Philidor / Center Musique Baroque de Versailles ( Memento of 13 November 2008 at the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Nicolas Médard Audinot, Antoine-François Quétant: Le tonnelier. In: https://digital.library.unt.edu . University of North Texas, accessed August 4, 2020 .