Jean Massin (historian)

Jean Massin (* 1917 ; † 1986 ) was a French musicologist and historian.

After resigning himself from the priesthood, he presented musicological works on Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the second half of the 1950s and contributed considerably to a revival of the scientific-historical debate with both composers in France. Together with his wife Brigitte (1927–2002), he published a three-volume work on the history of music from 1600 to 1945 in 1977/78.

As a historian, he studied the French Revolution in depth . He also wrote biographies about Robespierre and Marat, among other things . He was also the editor of an annotated edition of Rousseau's autobiographical writings .

In his publications, Massin also dealt with great intellectuals in French literature, such as Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo , whose complete, chronologically ordered work was published in 36 volumes under Massin's direction in 1980. This edition of the work is still considered to be the most serious.

Selection of works

• Baudelaire devant la douleur , 1944
• Ludwig van Beethoven , 1955
• Écrits autobiographiques. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Confessions. Choix de lettres. Histoire du précédent écrit et Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (introduction et notes de Jean Massin), 1955.
• Robespierre 1956
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , 1959
• Marat , 1960
• Victor Hugo - Œuvres complètes , Massin (ed.), Paris 1980, 36 volumes
• Histoire de la musique: de Monteverdi à Varèse 1600-1945 , 1977-1978, 3 volumes

Web links

• Literature by and about Jean Massin in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)