Jean-Baptiste Cardon

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Jean-Baptiste Cardon (* 1760 in Rethel ; † March 11, 1803 in Saint Petersburg ) was a French harpist and composer .

Life

Jean-Baptiste Cardon was a son of the violinist and composer Jean-Guillain Cardon . After his father became court violinist at Versailles , the latter Italianized his name to Giovanni Battista Cardoni , which resulted in frequent confusions with the son in early biographies, including those of François-Joseph Fétis . As a fifteen-year-old harpist, he entered the service of Maria Theresa of Savoy , who was known by the name of Countess von Artois. He began to publish his own works early on, first under the name Cardon fils and from his op. 19 as Jean-Baptiste Cardon. In the 1780s he married the actress Charlotte-Rosalie Pitrot. Shortly before emigrating to Russia, Cardon may have worked in Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

Due to the turmoil of the French Revolution, Tsarina Catherine II of Russia offered numerous artists a safe stay in Saint Petersburg, which Cardon also accepted. From 1789 he was a member of the orchestra and music teacher of the patron and director of the Imperial Theater, Count Nikolai Petrovich Sheremetev . In September 1790 Cardon was appointed to the court of the tsars, where he was awarded the title of concert master a year later. After the end of his contract he entered the service of Pavel Petrovich, who later became Tsar Paul I, and taught his daughters to play the harp.

Cardon's later compositions are shaped by Russian culture. Similar to the later harpist Carl Oberthür (1819–1895), Cardon now based his works on melodies and themes from folk music, not always to the satisfaction of the imperial family, who spoke French and cultivated Prussian culture.

His textbook L'Art de jouer de la harpe is an important continuation of the harp school of his Parisian publisher, harp maker and composer Pierre-Joseph Cousineau , which was also published in 1784. Cardon further developed the technique of his instrument considerably and thus contributed to a previously unknown virtuosity of harp playing.

In 1802 Jean-Baptiste Cardon prepared his final return to Paris, he stayed there for a long time and traveled back to Saint Petersburg a few months before his death.

Works (selection)

  • Deux simphonies concertantes pour la harpe avec accompagnement de deux violons, alto et basse. (1787)
  • Quatre Quatuors concertants pour une harpe, un violon et un violoncelle op.20 .
  • 2 trios. (1790)
  • Trois sonates pour harpe avec accompagnement d'un violon op.11 (around 1800)
  • Concerto pour harpe op.21 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wenonah Milton Govea: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Harpists. Greenwood Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-31327866-2 , pp. 34-36.
personal data
SURNAME Cardon, Jean-Baptiste
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cardon fils
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French harpist and composer
DATE OF BIRTH 1760
PLACE OF BIRTH Rethel
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1803
Place of death St. Petersburg