Jean Antoine Meissonnier

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Jean Antoine Meissonnier (born December 8, 1783 in Marseille , † 1857 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye ) was a French music publisher , guitarist and composer .

Life

Meissonnier grew up in Marseille. He left his hometown against his parents' wishes at the age of 16 and took composition and guitar lessons in Naples . Here he wrote a comic opera ( La Donna corretta ), which was performed in an amateur theater.

After a few years, Meissonnier returned to France and settled in Paris, where he worked as a composer and music teacher and in 1812 (or 1814) founded his own music publishing company on Rue Vivienne in Paris . During this time he also taught his brother Joseph (born around 1790 in Marseille, also known as Meissonnier Jeune ) to play the guitar.

After his first work in Italy, Meissonnier wrote sonatas , trios , variations , divertissements and fantasies for guitar in France , which he published himself, as well as a guitar school ( Méthode simplifié pour la lyre ou guitare ), which was published by Sieber in Paris.

Meissonnier dedicated himself to playing the guitar in Paris at a time when artists such as Ferdinando Carulli (in Paris since 1808), Fernando Sor and Dionisio Aguado (both in Paris since 1826) or Napoléon Coste (in Paris since 1830) were making the guitar socially acceptable. Meissonnier met the demand for popular pieces, for example with guitar arrangements from the then popular opera Le Rossignol by Louis-Sébastien Lebrun and the overture to Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville .

In 1839, Meissonnier took Jaques Leopold Heugel into his publishing business as a partner and retired from active business three years later, in 1842. The publishing house was then renamed Heugel and exists to this day, but only as a brand of the Alphonse Leduc publishing house .

Together with Fernando Sor and Matteo Carcassi , Meissonnier was an advocate of the tip instead of the nail attachment.

Works (selection)

  • Etudes Progressives ou Exercices pour la Lyre ou Guitarre Facsimile
  • Quatre Nocturnes pour Lyre ou Guitare (dediér à Monsieur F. Hadenbrock) ( Facsimile )

literature

  • Donald William Krummel, Stanley Sadie: Music printing and publishing . New York 1990, p. 286
  • Music in the past and present , personal section, Volume 6, Kassel 1997, p. 335
  • François-Joseph Fétis : Biographie universelle des musiciens et biographie générale de la musique , 2nd edition, Volume 6, Paris 1866, p. 70 ( facsimile )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James Burke: American Connections , New York 2007, p. 214. Burke comments on the overture arrangement with "avoid it if you can"
  2. ^ Information on Alphonse Leduc's website
  3. ^ Konrad Ragossnig : Handbook of the guitar and lute. Mainz 1978, p. 102
personal data
SURNAME Meissonnier, Jean Antoine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French guitarist, composer and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1783
PLACE OF BIRTH Marseille
DATE OF DEATH 1857
Place of death Saint-Germain-en-Laye