Étienne Méhul: Encyclopedia II - Étienne Méhul - Life and Work

Étienne Méhul - Life and Work

He was born at Givet in Ardennes. His father being too poor to give him a regular musical education, his first lessons came from a poor blind organist of Givet; yet such was his aptitude that, when ten years old, he was appointed organist of the convent of the Récollets. In 1775 a German musician and organist, Wilhelm Hauser, was engaged for the monastery of Lavaldieu, a few miles from Givet, and Méhul became his occasional pupil.

In 1778 he was taken to Paris by a military officer, and placed himself under Edelmann, a harpsichord player. His first attempts at instrumental composition in 1781 did not succeed, and he therefore turned his attention to sacred and dramatic music. Christoph Willibald Gluck gave him advice in his studies.

After various disappointments during his efforts for six years to obtain, at the Grand Opéra, a production of his Cora et Alonzo, he offered to the Opéra Comique his Euphrosine et Coradin, which, being accepted and performed in 1790, at once fixed his reputation. His opera, Stratonice, was also received with enthusiasm in 1792 (years later, Berlioz was an admirer of that piece, especially praising the overture). After several less successful productions, his Adrien appeared, and his fame was further increased by his three best works, La jeunesse d'Henri IV, Uthal and Joseph, the finest of the series. Uthal was written for an orchestra without violins.

Méhul held a post as one of the four inspectors of the Conservatoire de Paris, though this office made him feel continually the insufficiency of his early studies. Timoléon, Ariodant (1799) and Bion followed. Epicure was composed by Méhul, and Cherubini jointly. Méhul's next opera, dedicated to the First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, L'irato, ou l'emporté (1801), failed.

Besides forty-two operas, Méhul composed a number of songs for the festivals of the republic (often commissioned by the emperor Napoleon), cantatas, and four symphonies in the years 1808 to 1810. The First Symphony was revived in one of Felix Mendelssohn's concerts with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in the late 1830s to an audience including Robert Schumann, who praised the piece. In all four movements there are some stylistic similarities with Beethoven's Symphony No.5 (including the dissonant, furious mood of the first movement and the string pizzicatos in the third), which left Schumann wondering if Méhul had heard Beethoven's piece. Actually both symphonies were composed in the same year, 1808, were published in the following, 1809, and continued the path Haydn (the Paris Symphonies, 1785-86, for example) and Mozart (Symphony No. 40, K.550, 1788) had taken, two composers who enjoyed great popularity in France in the early 19th century.

Méhul's health gave way from an affection of the chest, and he died in Paris in 1817. His grave is at the cemetery of Père Lachaise, near the grave of another French composer, his contemporary François-Joseph Gossec. His music influenced numerous composers, among them Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Life and Work", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki