Étienne Méhul facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Étienne Méhul
Méhul in 1799, portrait attributed to Antoine-Jean Gros
Born	16 November 1765 Givet,  France
Died	24 December 1817 (aged 52) Paris,  France

Étienne Nicolas Méhul (born November 16, 1765, died December 24, 1817) was a famous French composer. He lived during the Classical music period. People called him "the most important opera composer in France" during the French Revolution. He was even one of the first composers to be called "Romantic". Méhul was especially known for his operas. He followed the new ideas of composers like Christoph Willibald Gluck and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Étienne Méhul's Early Life

Méhul was born in a town called Givet in France. His father, Jean-François Méhul, was a wine merchant. Étienne started learning music from a local organist who was blind. When he showed a lot of talent, he went to study with a German musician named Wilhelm Hanser. Méhul studied with Hanser at a monastery near Givet. It was there that he developed a love for flowers that lasted his whole life.

Around 1778 or 1779, Méhul moved to Paris. He began studying with Jean-Frédéric Edelmann, a harpsichord player. Edelmann was a friend of Méhul's hero, Christoph Willibald Gluck. Méhul's first published music was a book of piano pieces in 1783. He also arranged songs from popular operas. By the late 1780s, he started thinking about writing his own operas.

Becoming a Famous Opera Composer

In 1787, a writer named Valadier offered Méhul a story for an opera called Cora. This story had been turned down by Gluck earlier. The main opera house in Paris, the Académie royale de musique, started practicing Méhul's opera, now called Alonzo et Cora, in 1789. However, they stopped rehearsals because the opera house had money problems. The opera finally premiered in 1791.

Meanwhile, Méhul found a great partner in the writer François-Benoît Hoffman. Hoffman wrote the story for Méhul's first opera to be performed, Euphrosine. It premiered in 1790 and was a huge success! This made Méhul known as a new, talented composer. It also started his long relationship with the Comédie Italienne theatre, which later became the Opéra-Comique.

Even though Cora wasn't a big hit in 1791, and another opera, Adrien, was banned for political reasons, Méhul became very famous. He wrote successful operas like Stratonice and Mélidore et Phrosine.

Méhul and the French Revolution

During the French Revolution, Méhul wrote many patriotic songs. These songs were meant to inspire people and spread messages. His most famous patriotic song is the Chant du départ.

Méhul was honored for his work. In 1795, he became one of the first composers chosen for the new Institut de France. He also worked as one of the five inspectors at the Conservatoire de Paris, a famous music school. Méhul was friends with Napoleon Bonaparte, who later became emperor. Napoleon even gave Méhul one of the first Légion d'honneur awards, a very important French honor.

Méhul's operas were not as popular in the early 1800s as they had been in the 1790s. However, some of his works, like Joseph (1807), became famous in other countries, especially Germany. The failure of his opera Les amazones in 1811 was a big disappointment for him. It almost ended his career as a theater composer.

Even after Napoleon's time, Méhul remained respected by the new government. Sadly, Méhul became very ill with tuberculosis. He passed away on December 24, 1817, at the age of 52. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

In 1797, Méhul adopted his seven-year-old nephew, Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul, who also became a composer. Méhul played a big part in his nephew's music education. After Méhul's death, Joseph finished his uncle's unfinished opera, Valentine de Milan. It was performed in 1822.

Méhul's Musical Style

Operas

Méhul's most important musical works were his operas. He was a leader among French composers in the 1790s. This group included his friend and rival Luigi Cherubini. Méhul followed the ideas of Gluck's operas from the 1770s. He used Gluck's "reforms" in a type of opera called opéra comique. This style mixed music with spoken talking, and it wasn't always "funny" like the name might suggest.

Méhul pushed music in a more Romantic direction. He used more unusual harmonies and showed strong feelings like anger and jealousy in his music. This was a hint of what later Romantic composers like Weber and Berlioz would do. In fact, Méhul was the very first composer to be called "Romantic" by a music critic in 1793.

Méhul wanted everything in his music to make the story more dramatic. His admirer, Berlioz, said that Méhul believed a composer should always choose music that fits the story, even if it's not the prettiest tune. He thought that musical expression was a "lovely flower" that needed care to bloom. It wasn't just about the melody, but also the harmony, rhythm, and instruments used.

Méhul liked to experiment with how he used instruments. For example, in his opera Uthal, which was set in the Scottish Highlands, he didn't use violins. Instead, he used violas, which have a darker sound. This helped create the feeling of the Scottish Highlands. In another piece, La chasse du jeune Henri (Young Henri's Hunt), he used many horns to sound like barking dogs and hunting calls.

Some of Méhul's most important operas from the 1790s were Euphrosine, Stratonice, Mélidore et Phrosine, and Ariodant. Ariodant is especially praised by critics. It tells a story of passion and jealousy. In many of his operas, Méhul used a special musical idea called a "reminiscence motif." This is a musical theme linked to a specific character or idea. It was a bit like the "leitmotifs" that Richard Wagner would use later in his operas. In Ariodant, a "cry of fury" motif shows the feeling of jealousy.

Around 1800, very dramatic operas became less popular. People started to prefer lighter opéra comique works by composers like François-Adrien Boieldieu. Also, Méhul's friend Napoleon told him he liked more comedic operas. Napoleon, who was from Corsica, preferred the Italian comic operas. Méhul responded by writing L'irato ("The Angry Man"), a one-act comedy. He first released it in 1801 under a fake Italian composer's name, "Fiorelli." When it became a big hit, Méhul revealed his trick!

Méhul also kept writing serious works. Joseph, based on the Biblical story of Joseph and his brothers, is his most famous later opera. While it wasn't popular in France for long, it was loved in Germany throughout the 1800s.

Symphonies and Other Works

Besides operas, Méhul wrote many songs for public celebrations. Napoleon often asked him to write these. He also composed cantatas (pieces for singers and instruments) and five symphonies between 1797 and 1810.

Méhul's First Symphony (1808) is known for its strong and sometimes harsh sound. It has been compared to Beethoven's famous Symphony No. 5, which was written in the same year. Méhul's symphonies were inspired by the more emotional works of Haydn and Mozart. His First Symphony was even performed again by Felix Mendelssohn in 1838 and 1846, impressing composer Robert Schumann.

Méhul never finished his fifth symphony because he became ill. His Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 were only rediscovered in 1979 by David Charlton. Professor Charlton said that Méhul's 4th Symphony was the first ever to use a "cyclical principle." This means a musical idea from one part of the symphony comes back in later parts.

List of Works

Operas

For piano

• 3 Sonates for Piano, op. 1 (1783)
• 3 Sonates for Piano, op. 2 (1788)

Orchestral music

• Ouverture burlesque (1794)
• Ouverture pour instruments à vent (1794)
• Symphony in C (1797, only parts are surviving)
• Symphony No. 1 in G minor (1808/09)
• Symphony No. 2 in D major (1808/09)
• Symphony No. 3 in C major (1809)
• Symphony No. 4 in E major (1810)
• Symphony No. 5 (1810, only the first movement survives; incomplete and unperformed)

Vocal music

• Chant du départ (1794)
• Chant des victoires (1794)
• Messe Solennelle pour soli, chœurs et orgue (1804)
• Chant du retour pour la Grande Armée (1808)
• Chant lyrique pour l'inauguration de la statue de Napoléon (1811)

Ballets

• Le jugement de Pâris (1793)
• La dansomanie (1800)
• Persée et Andromède (1810) (together with music by Haydn, Paer, and Steibelt)

Incidental music for plays

• Timoléon (by Marie-Joseph Chénier)
• Les Hussites (by Alexandre Duval)

Images for kids

• 

  Méhul's grave in Paris

See also

In Spanish: Étienne Nicolas Méhul para niños