François Arnaud (Abbé)

François Arnaud (1721–1784)

François Arnaud (born July 27, 1721 in Aubignan ; † December 2, 1784 in Paris ) was a French Roman Catholic clergyman, commendatarian abbot , journalist, man of letters, music theorist, Graecist and member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and the Académie française .

life and work

The learned clergyman

François Arnaud, whose father was a violinist, grew up in a musical environment in Carpentras in Provence , which belonged to the papal Comtat Venaissin . He attended the Jesuit college in Carpentras and the seminary in Viviers , but was mainly attached to the study of Greek and to learning in general. As a priest he was able to return to Carpentras and, supported by Bishop Inguimbert , use his library, which had just been enriched by the library estate of the polymath Peiresc († 1637).

The journalist

In 1753 he went to Paris, became the librarian of Ludwig Eugen von Württemberg , employee of Fréron and caused a sensation in 1754 with a music-theoretical treatise in the form of a letter to Count Caylus . He made Jean Baptiste Antoine Suard a friend and together with him published the Journal étranger from 1760 . In 1762 he became a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres , editor of the library of the Count of Provence (later: Louis XVIII. ) And librarian of the Order of Lazarus . He stopped the publication of the Journal étranger and founded the Gazette littéraire de l'Europe under the auspices of the Duke of Praslin in 1764 , but gave it up in 1766 and took over the management of the Gazette de France , which he had in 1770 because Praslin had fallen out of favor , had to give up. In order to improve his finances, a friend got him the office of Commendatabbot at Grandchamp Abbey .

The man of letters

In 1771 he was elected to the Académie française (seat no. 15). From 1777 he wrote for the Journal de Paris . In the five-year dispute that broke out in 1777 between the supporters of the composer Gluck and those of Niccolò Piccinni , he was on Gluck's side against Marmontel and La Harpe . Dominique Joseph Garat called him the Paul of the Gluck cult. Arnaud was a welcome guest in the salons of Madame Saurin, wife of Bernard-Joseph Saurin , Madame Geoffrin , Madame Necker , Mademoiselle Lespinasse and the Abbé Morellet . His friends included the painter van Loo , the musicians Grétry and Duni , and Count Caylus. He was known to Hume , Sterne , Garrick , Karl Heinrich von Gleichen and Gustaf Philip Creutz (1731–1785), Swedish ambassador to France. Vittorio Alfieri sought his advice. His numerous smaller writings were collected in three volumes in 1808, edited by Léonard Boudou (1765–1809) and reprinted in 1971. His portrait, painted by Joseph-Siffrein Duplessis , was exhibited in the Salon de Paris in 1769 and is now in the museum in Carpentras.

Works

• Caractère des langues anciennes, comparées avec la langue françoise , discours de réception, prononcé le 13 may 1771. (Inaugural address in the Académie française)
• Oeuvres complètes de l'abbé Arnaud . 3 vols. Ed. Léonard Boudou. Leopold Collin, Paris 1808. Geneva 1971. (therein: biography by the editor, pp. 1–24, and “Éloge de M. L'Abbé Arnaud” by Bon-Joseph Dacier, 1742–1833, pp. 29–48) .

literature

• Eugène H. de Bricqueville (1854–1933): Un critique musical au siècle dernier. In: Le Ménestrel 49, 1883, pp. 337-338, 345-347, 353-354, 361-363.

Web links

• Information on François Arnaud in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .
• Literature by and about François Arnaud in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
• Entry in the journalists' dictionary , French