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Charles Gounod

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

Charles François Gounod


(born June 17, 1818, Paris, Fr. — died Oct. 18, 1893, Saint-Cloud, near Paris) French composer. He studied music at the Paris Conservatory and in Rome. He also studied for the priesthood and worked as an organist, and he remained torn between the theatre and the church. His reputation largely rests on his hugely popular opera Faust (1859). His 15 other operas include Romeo and Juliet (1867), The Mock Doctor (1858), Philemon and Baucis (1860), and Mireille (1864); other works include 17 masses, more than 150 songs, and 2 symphonies.

For more information on Charles François Gounod, visit Britannica.com.

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Oxford Grove Music Encyclopedia:

Charles (François) Gounod

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(b Paris, 17 June 1818; d St Cloud, 18 Oct 1893). French composer. He studied privately with Reicha and at the Paris Conservatoire with Halévy (counterpoint) and Le Sueur (composition), winning the Prix de Rome in 1839. At Rome (1840-42) he was deeply impressed by the 16th-century polyphonic music (particularly Palestrina's) he heard in the Sistine Chapel and wrote some rather austere masses; for a time a church organist in Paris, he considered joining the priesthood. The climax of his liturgical work came in 1855 with the florid Messe solennelle de Ste Cécile, a favourite setting scarcely superseded by his 12 later ones (1870-92). Meanwhile he wrote a Gluckian, then a Meyerbeerian opera, both failures; the succeeding five, all first performed at the Théâtre-Lyrique, are the works by which he is remembered, namely the small-scale Le médecin malgré lui (1858) and Philémon et Baucis (1860), the triumphant Faust (1859), in which sensitive musical characterization and a refreshing naturalness set new standards on the French operatic stage, and the major successes Mireille (1864) and Roméo et Juliette (1867).

In 1870 Gounod took refuge in England from the Franco-Prussian War, staying some four years to exploit the English demand for choral music. The first conductor of the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society (1871), he produced dozens of choruses and songs. But he experienced considerable intrigue in his private life, effectively marking the end of his fruitfulness as a composer. His oratorios for Birmingham, La rédemption and Mors et vita, if banal and facilely emotional, were nonetheless successful. Gounod's influence on the next generation of French composers, including Bizet, Fauré and especially Massenet, was enormous. Tchaikovsky and later Poulenc, Auric and Ravel admired his clean workmanship, delicate sentiment, gift for orchestral colour and, in his best songs, unpretentious lyrical charm.

works:
Dramatic music
  • Le médecin malgré lui (1858)
  • Faust (1859)
  • Philémon et Baucis (1860)
  • Mireille (1864)
  • Roméo et Juliette (1867)
  • Polyeucte (1878)
  • 6 other operas
  • incidental music to Jeanne d′Arc (1873) and 4 other plays
Vocal music
  • Messe solennelle de Ste Cécile (1855)
  • 16 other masses
  • 4 oratorios, incl. La rédemption (1882), Mors et vita (?1885)
  • sacred pieces
  • partsongs, solo songs, duets
Instrumental music
  • 2 syms.
  • Petite symphonie, wind (1885)
  • Str Qt chamber and orch pieces
  • pf, org music


Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:

Charles François Gounod

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The French composer Charles François Gounod (1818-1893) is best known for his operas. His music tends to be more lyric than dramatic, his melodic writing at its best revealing a considerable warmth of feeling.

Charles Gounod was born on June 17, 1818, in Paris. His father was a prominent painter; his mother was a pianist, and Charles received his first musical education from her. In 1836 he entered the Paris Conservatory, where he studied counterpoint with Jacques Fromentin Halévy and composition with Jean François Lesueur.

In 1837 Gounod won second place in the coveted Prix de Rome award and in 1839 the Grand Prix. This enabled him to study in Italy, where he was exposed to the choral music of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. This remained an important influence throughout his life, perhaps even to the detriment of his own choral writing. Returning from Rome through Austria, he also had the chance to hear some of the more romantic compositions of Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn.

For a time Gounod studied theology and even considered becoming a priest. His theological interests ultimately earned him the title "Abbé." Eventually he returned to music, and he attempted to gain success through the composition of operas, the surest road to fame for any French composer. His first opera, Sapho (1851), achieved only a moderate success. With his fourth opera, Faust (1859), he achieved international renown. Although both the libretto and the music have been criticized for their sentimental oversimplification of Goethe's great drama, Faust maintained its position as the most popular French opera in the repertoire for almost a century. Gounod completed 12 operas, but only one other, Roméo et Juliette (composed 1864, first performed 1867), has remained in the repertoire. Its fame rests on Juliette's waltz song and the numerous love duets.

From 1870 to 1875 Gounod lived in London, where, in addition to presenting concerts and composing a number of religious works, he organized the Gounod Choir, later to become the Royal Choral Society. In his last years he concentrated almost exclusively on composing large choral works, but none of these added to his stature as a composer. He died at Saint-Cloud on Oct. 18, 1893.

Two short compositions by Gounod have attained sufficient popularity to merit mention. One is the orchestral Funeral March for a Marionette (1873), which captures perfectly the peculiar humor suggested in the title. The other is the Ave Maria (1859) based on Johann Sebastian Bach's first prelude from The Well-tempered Clavier. This has been criticized as a sentimentalization of the work of a great master, but it is in actuality an ingenious display of compositional craft in which Gounod kept Bach's prelude unchanged but used it as an accompaniment for his own expressive melody.

Further Reading

Gounod wrote his Autobiographical Reminiscences (trans. 1896; repr. 1970). There are no major biographies of Gounod in English. Norman Demuth, Introduction to the Music of Gounod (1950), is a study of his work. Brief material on Gounod is in Edward J. Dent, Opera (1940; rev. ed. 1949), and Donald Jay Grout, A Short History of Opera (1947; 2d ed. 1965).

Gounod, Charles (1818-52). French composer; his opera Faust (1859) won lasting popularity.

Answer of the Day:

Faust

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<i>Faust</i> Poster  
Faust Poster
On this date in 1859, Charles Gounod's opera, Faust, premiered in Paris. Though it got off to a rocky start, after delays and rejections (because it wasn't "showy" enough), the opera became a mainstay of many of the opera theaters over the years. New York's Metropolitan Opera House opened with a production of Faust in 1883. Gounod based his opera on the German alchemist who, according to legend, sold his soul to the devil in exchange for youth, power and knowledge.

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Columbia Encyclopedia:

Charles François Gounod

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Gounod, Charles François (shärl fräNswä' gūnō'), 1818-93, French composer, studied at the Paris Conservatory and received the Grand Prix de Rome in 1839. His fame rests chiefly on his operas Faust (1859) and Romeo and Juliet (1867), marked by their richly lyrical romantic music. One other opera, Mireille (1864), had some success. His oratorios La Rédemption (1882) and Mors et Vita (1885) and his funeral cantata, Gallia (1871) are worthy of note. He spent some years in the study of theology and greatly admired the church music of Palestrina.

Bibliography

See his reminiscences (tr. 1896, repr. 1970); biography by J. Harding (1973).

Charles Gounod
  • Genres: Chamber Music, Choral Music, Keyboard Music, Opera, Symphony, Vocal Music

Biography

Charles Gounod (1818-1893) was one of the most popular French composers of the nineteenth century. He is best known for Faust, which remains at the core of the operatic repertoire, and his version of Roméo et Juliette is also frequently performed. A musical conservative rather than an innovator, Gounod wrote music notable for its lyricism and tunefulness. Although he wrote in many genres, he is remembered especially for his vocal music, much of which was composed for the church. His setting of Ave Maria, which uses Bach's C major Prelude as its accompaniment, is among the most familiar pieces of classical music. ~ Stephen Eddins, Rovi
Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Charles Gounod

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Charles Gounod

Charles-François Gounod (French pronunciation: [ʃaʁl fʁɑ̃swa ɡuno]; 17 June 1818 – 17 October[1][2] or 18 October[3][4] 1893) was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.

Contents

Biography

Charles Gounod in 1859, the year of the premiere of Faust

Gounod was born in Paris, the son of a pianist mother and an artist father. His mother was his first piano teacher. Under her tutelage, Gounod first showed his musical talents. He entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied under Fromental Halévy and Pierre Zimmermann (he later married Zimmermann's daughter). In 1839, he won the Prix de Rome for his cantata Fernand. He was following his father; François-Louis Gounod (d. 1823) had won the second Prix de Rome in painting in 1783.[4] While in Italy, Gounod studied the music of Palestrina and other sacred works of the sixteenth century; these he never ceased to cherish. Around 1846-47 he gave serious consideration to joining the priesthood, but he changed his mind before actually taking holy orders, and went back to composition.[5]

In 1854, Gounod completed a Messe Solennelle, also known as the Saint Cecilia Mass. This work was first performed, in its entirety, for the church of Saint Eustache in Paris on Saint Cecilia's Day, November 22, 1855; from this rendition dates Gounod's fame as a noteworthy composer.

Gounod late in his career.

During 1855 Gounod wrote two symphonies. His Symphony No. 1 in D major was the inspiration for the Symphony in C, composed later that year by Georges Bizet, who was then Gounod's 17-year-old student. In the CD era a few recordings of these pieces have emerged: by Michel Plasson conducting the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse, and by Sir Neville Marriner with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Fanny Mendelssohn, sister of Felix Mendelssohn, introduced the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach to Gounod, who came to revere Bach. For him, The Well-Tempered Clavier was "the law to pianoforte study...the unquestioned textbook of musical composition". It inspired Gounod to devise an improvisation of a melody over the C major Prelude (BWV 846) from the collection's first book. To this melody, in 1859 (after the deaths of both Mendelssohn siblings), Gounod fitted the words of the Ave Maria, resulting in a setting that became world-famous.[6]

Gounod wrote his first opera, Sapho, in 1851, at the urging of a friend of his, the singer Pauline Viardot; it was a commercial failure. He had no great theatrical success until Faust (1859), derived from Goethe. This remains the composition for which he is best known; and although it took a while to achieve popularity, it became one of the most frequently staged operas of all time, with no fewer than 2,000 performances of the work having taken place by 1975 at the Paris Opéra alone, not counting other theatres.[7] The romantic and melodious Roméo et Juliette (based on the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet), premiered in 1867, is revived now and then but has never come close to matching Faust's popular following. Mireille, first performed in 1864, has been admired by connoisseurs rather than by the general public. The other Gounod operas have fallen into oblivion.

Caricature from Punch, 1882

From 1870 to 1874 Gounod lived in England. In 17 Morden Road, Blackheath. A blue plaque has been put up on the house to show where he lived.[8] He became the first conductor of what is now the Royal Choral Society. Much of his music from this time is vocal. He became entangled with the amateur English singer Georgina Weldon,[9] a relationship (platonic, it seems) which ended in great acrimony and embittered litigation.[10] Gounod had lodged with Weldon and her husband in London's Tavistock House.

Later in his life, Gounod returned to his early religious impulses, writing much sacred music. His Pontifical Anthem (Marche Pontificale, 1869) eventually (1949) became the official national anthem of Vatican City. He expressed a desire to compose his Messe à la mémoire de Jeanne d'Arc (1887) while kneeling on the stone on which Joan of Arc knelt at the coronation of Charles VII of France.[4] A devout Catholic, he had on his piano a music-rack in which was carved an image of the face of Jesus.

He was made a Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur in July 1888.[4] In 1893, shortly after he had put the finishing touches to a requiem written for his grandson, he died of a stroke in Saint-Cloud, France.

One of Gounod's short pieces for piano, "Funeral March of a Marionette", received a new and unexpected lease of life from 1955 when it was first used as the theme for the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The March was one of the eight records that Alfred Hitchcock selected to take to his desert island when he appeared on the BBC radio program Desert Island Disks in 1959.[11]. The March had earlier been used to produce an equally suspenseful moment in Harold Lloyd's first sound film, Welcome Danger (1929).[12].

Gounod's secular piano-accompanied songs were numerous and much praised by Ravel, but are seldom heard in recitals today.

Compositions

Audio files

References

  1. ^ Harding, James. Gounod, Stein & Day, 1973.
  2. ^ Biography at charles-gounod.com
  3. ^ Slonimsky, Nicholas, ed. Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 7th ed.
  4. ^ a b c d Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed. 1954.
  5. ^ Cooper M. French Music from the death of Berlioz to the death of Fauré. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1951.
  6. ^ Joan Benson: Bach and the Clavier
  7. ^ Giroud, V. French Opera: A Short History. Yale University Press, 2010.
  8. ^ http://openplaques.org/plaques/5286
  9. ^ Weldon G. My Orphanage and Gounod in England. London, 1882.
  10. ^ Huebner S. The Operas of Charles Gounod. Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1990.
  11. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/94e588c8
  12. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020572/soundtrack

Sources

External links

Portraits

Articles

Sheet music

Recordings


 
 

 

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Oxford Grove Music Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.  Read more
$copyright.smallImage.alttext Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Oxford Companion to French Literature. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
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Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
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Wikipedia on Answers.com. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Charles Gounod Read more

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