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For more information on Jules-Émile-Frédéric Massenet, visit Britannica.com.
| Music Encyclopedia: Jules (Emile Frédéric) Massenet |
(b Montand, St Etienne, 12 May 1842; d Paris, 13 Aug 1912). French composer. His family moved to Paris in 1847 and he entered the Conservatoire at the age of 11 as a piano pupil of Adolphe Laurent. He later studied harmony with Reber and composition with Ambroise Thomas, winning the Prix de Rome in 1863. In Rome he got to know Liszt and, through him, Constance de Sainte Marie, who became his pupil and, in 1866 after his return to Paris, his wife. The following year his opera La grand′tante was given at the Opéra-Comique, and in1873 Marie-Magdeleine at the Théâtre de l′Odéon initiated a series of drames sacrés based on the lives of female biblical characters. Many of his secular operas, too, are in effect portraits of women.
In 1878 Massenet was made a teacher of composition at the Conservatoire, where he remained all his life, influencing many younger French composers, including Charpentier, Koechlin, Pierné and Hahn. In his own music he began to move away from the suave, sentimental melodic style derived from Gounod and to adopt a more Wagnerian type of lyrical declamation. The change is apparent in Manon (1884), which placed Massenet in the forefront of French opera composers, and still more in Werther (1892).
But as early as 1877, in Hérodiade, Massenet had begun to modify the symmetry and loosen the syntax of his melodies to give them a more speaking, intimate, conversational character. Repetitions are usually masked or transferred to the orchestra while the voice takes a lyrical recitative line in the Wagnerian manner; literal repetitions are carefully calculated to provide an insistent, emotional quality. Often his melodies have a swaying, hesitant character (9/8 or 6/8) - first and most effectively used in Act 1 of Manon to express a girl's hesitant yet delighted awareness of her own charms. By Werther, the relationship of voice and orchestra is more sophisticated, and that opera contains clear examples of Massenet's dissolution of formal melody into rhapsodic recitative-like writing as evolved by Wagner. Massenet's music is harmonically conservative, rarely venturing beyond modest chromaticisms; rhythmically, it is original in the variations he uses to give the melody a more caressing, intimate character. He had a characteristically French ear for orchestral nuance. Though primarily a lyrical composer, he was also a master of scenes of action, as for example at the opening of Manon.
After Sapho (1897) Massenet scored few major successes. His conception of opera became outdated long before his death and his position as France's leading opera composer was finally challenged when Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande was given at the Opéra-Comique in 1902. The unpretentiousness of his best works recommends their melodic charm and gracefulness, and they remain firmly in the standard opera-house repertory.
works:| French Literature Companion: Jules Massenet |
Massenet, Jules (1842-1912) was in his time an extraordinarily successful and prolific French opera composer. His musical style has a melodic charm and grace, aptly described by d'Indy as a discreet and quasi-religious eroticism. His most famous operas are Werther (1892, based on Goethe's novel), Manon (1894, based on Prévost's novel), and Thaïs (1894, based on a novel by Anatole France). He also collaborated with Catulle Mendès on two operas and based compositions on works by Hugo, Alphonse Daudet, Flaubert, and many other contemporary authors. Professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire from 1878 until his death, Massenet had an impact on a generation of French composers, some of whom reacted violently against what they saw as the facile charm of his music.
[Kerry Murphy]
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Jules Massenet |
Bibliography
See his memoirs (tr. 1919, repr. 1970); study by J. Harding (1970).
Dictionary:
Mas·se·net (măs'ə-nā', mäs-nā') , Jules Émile Frédéric
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| Artist: Jules Massenet |

| Wikipedia: Jules Massenet |
Jules (Émile Frédéric) Massenet (May 12, 1842 – August 13, 1912) was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, his style went out of fashion, and many of his operas fell into almost total oblivion. Apart from Manon and Werther, his works were rarely performed. However, since the mid-1970s, many of his operas such as Esclarmonde, have undergone periodic revivals.
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Massenet was born in Montaud, then an outlying hamlet and now a part of the city of Saint-Étienne, in the Loire. When he was six, his family moved to Paris due to his father's ill-health. There, his mother (Adélaïde Massenet, née Royer; her husband's second wife) started taking piano pupils. She also taught Jules so well that at eleven he was able to enter the Paris Conservatoire. He was still a student when his family moved from Paris to Chambéry, but Jules returned to Paris after a few months, living with a married member of his father's family by his first wife. To support himself during his studies, he worked as timpanist for six years at the Théâtre Lyrique, playing also other percussion instruments in other theatres, and working as a pianist in the Café de Belleville.
Although, at first, some of his teachers had not predicted for him any career in music, this changed in 1862 when he won the Grand Prix de Rome with his cantata David Rizzio, and spent three years in Rome. There he met Franz Liszt, at whose request he gave piano lessons to the daughter of Mme. Sainte-Marie; within three years, his pupil became his wife.
His first opera La Grand' Tante was a one-act production at the Opéra-Comique in 1867. Nevertheless it was his dramatic oratorio Marie-Magdeleine (first performed in 1873) that won him praise from the likes of Tchaikovsky, Vincent d'Indy (who afterwards turned against him), and Charles Gounod. His real mentor, though, was the composer Ambroise Thomas, a man with important contacts in theatrical milieux. Another important early patron was his publisher, Georges Hartmann, whose connections with journalistic circles aided him in becoming better known during the difficult initial years of his composing activity. Even Massenet's marriage to Louise-Constance de Gressy (1866) helped him a great deal in social circles, which was important during this time.
Massenet took a break from his composing to serve as a soldier in the Franco-Prussian War, but returned to his art following the end of the conflict in 1871. From 1878 he was professor of composition at the Paris Conservatory where his pupils included Gustave Charpentier, Reynaldo Hahn and Charles Koechlin. His greatest successes were Manon in 1884, Werther in 1892, and Thaïs in 1894. Notable later operas were Le jongleur de Notre-Dame, produced in 1902, and Don Quichotte, produced in Monte Carlo 1910, with the legendary Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin in the title-role.
In 1876 he received the Légion d'honneur, and was appointed a Grand Officer in 1899. In 1878 he was elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, to the exclusion of Camille Saint-Saëns. He was only 36, the youngest member ever elected to the Académie.
In addition to his operas, Massenet composed concert suites, ballet music, oratorios and cantatas and about two hundred songs. Some of his non-vocal output has achieved widespread popularity, and is commonly performed: for example the Méditation from Thaïs, which is a violin solo with orchestra, as well as the Aragonaise, from his opera Le Cid and the Élégie for cello and orchestra (from his incidental music to Les Érinnyes). The latter two pieces are commonly played by piano students, and the Élégie became world famous in many arrangements.
Massenet died in Paris at the age of 70, after suffering from a long illness (cancer).[1] [2]
Being a very prolific, hard-working composer (over 25 extant operas, with his daily schedule starting frequently from as early as 4 a.m.), he created his pieces not "at the piano" (as so many other composers do), but entirely from his imagination. That ability greatly helped him to achieve his high standards as an orchestrator: even in his loudest passages, the instrumental texture is always lucid. It is curious that he was also known to avoid all public dress rehearsals and performances of his works; often he would have to be informed by others of his own operatic successes.
| "Va! laisse couler mes larmes" | |
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| From Werther (1892); Sung by Jeanette Ekornaasvaag. | |
| Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux | |
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| From Le Cid (1885). Sung by Marguerita Sylva in 1910. | |
| O souverain, O juge, O père! | |
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| From Le Cid (1885). Sung by Enrico Caruso in 1916. | |
| Manon! avez-vous peur...On l'appelle Manon | |
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| From Manon (1884), performed by Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar in 1912. | |
| Ah! fuyez, douce image | |
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| From Manon (1884). Recorded in 1910 by Aristodemo Giorgini for Edison Records. | |
| Notre Père | |
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| Performed by l'Atelier Vocal des Herbiers | |
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