Georges Thill (14 December 1897 – 17 October 1984) was a French opera singer, often considered to be his country's greatest lyric-dramatic tenor. Born in Paris, his career lasted from 1924 to 1953, peaking during the 1930s.

Career

A pupil of the Neapolitan tenor Fernando De Lucia (1860-1925), Thill made his opera debut at the Paris Opéra in 1924, and he continued to appear there and at the Opéra-Comique for several decades, undertaking a busy schedule of performances.

In addition, he sang throughout Europe and in South America, receiving the acclaim of audiences and critics at La Scala, Milan, the Rome Opera, the Verona Arena, the Vienna State Opera, the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. He also gave 14 performances, of seven roles, across two seasons (1931-1932), at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City; but he had difficulty fitting in with the unfamiliar American cultural environment, experiencing health difficulties, and he was less well received by the Met's patrons as a consequence.

His voice began to show signs of decline during the 1940s and he retired from the stage in 1953. He died in 1984 in Draguignan.

Chronologically, Thill's operatic repertoire ranged from Gluck to Puccini and embraced works by Gounod, Massenet, Berlioz, Meyerbeer, Wagner, Verdi and Leoncavallo, among others. He also gave song recitals and was a frequent visitor to the recording studio. He cut many 78-rpm discs of French, Italian and German operatic arias and duets, and participated in the recording of an entire performance of Massenet's Werther by French Columbia Records. The finest of his 78s, dating from 1927 to circa 1940, display the gleaming tone of his voice at its superlative best, as well as demonstrating his spotless taste, stylish phrasing and pellucid diction.

Thill also appeared in several film clips and French-language motion pictures, including Louise (1939), based on Gustave Charpentier's opera. It was directed by Abel Gance and featured Grace Moore as Thill's co-star. Privately, Thill, while a dedicated musician, enjoyed a convivial off-stage lifestyle, and he later blamed his propensity to burn the candle at both ends for shortening the span of his vocal prime.

Selected Recordings on CD

Many of Thill's 78-rpm records are available on CD reissues by EMI and the Preiser label. Naxos Records has produced a two-CD set featuring his singing of six Massenet arias plus his recording of the complete role of Werther, in Massenet's opera of the same name, which he made in January 1931. On it, he partners Ninon Vallin and Germaine Féraldy, with the Chorus and Orchestra of the Paris Opera: Elie Cohen, conductor. (Naxos Historical 8.110061-62.)

References

Bel Canto Society Store, Reviews and biographies for Louise.

External links

History of the Tenor - Sound Clips and Narration

Category:1897 births Category:1984 deaths Category:People from Paris Category:French opera singers Category:Operatic tenors

, after his own 1825 watercolor portrait]] Franz Peter Schubert (; January 31, 1797 – November 19, 1828) was an Austrian composer.

Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous "Unfinished Symphony"), liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music. Appreciation of his music during his lifetime was limited, but interest in Schubert's work increased dramatically in the decades following his death at the age of 31. Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn, among others, discovered and championed his works in the 19th Century. Today, Schubert is admired as one of the leading exponents of the early Romantic era in music and he remains one of the most frequently performed composers.

Biography

Early life and education

Schubert was born in Himmelpfortgrund (now a part of Alsergrund), Vienna on January 31, 1797. His father, Franz Theodor Schubert, the son of a Moravian peasant, was a parish schoolmaster; his mother, Elisabeth Vietz, was the daughter of a Silesian master locksmith, and had also been a housemaid for a Viennese family prior to her marriage. Of Franz Theodor's fourteen children (one illegitimate child was born in 1783), nine died in infancy; five survived. Their father was a well-known teacher, and his school in Lichtental, a part of Vienna's 9th district, was well attended. He was not a musician of fame or with formal training, but he taught his son some elements of music. 54, in the 9th district of Vienna.]]

At the age of five, Schubert began receiving regular instruction from his father and a year later was enrolled at his father's school. His formal musical education also began around the same time. His father continued to teach him the basics of the violin, At 7, Schubert began receiving lessons from Michael Holzer, the local church organist and choirmaster. Holzer's lessons seem to have mainly consisted of conversations and expressions of admiration and the boy gained more from his acquaintance with a friendly joiner's apprentice who used to take him to a neighboring pianoforte warehouse where he had the opportunity to practice on better instruments. He also played the viola in the family string quartet, with brothers Ferdinand and Ignaz on violin and his father on the cello. Schubert wrote many of his early string quartets for this ensemble.

Schubert first came to the attention of Antonio Salieri, then Vienna's leading musical authority, in 1804, when his vocal talent was recognized. His exposure to these pieces and various lighter compositions, combined with his occasional visits to the opera set the foundation for his greater musical knowledge. Schubert's friendship with Spaun began at the Stadtkonvikt and endured through his lifetime. In those early days, the more well-to-do Spaun furnished the impoverished Schubert with manuscript paper.

Meanwhile, his genius began to show in his compositions. Schubert was occasionally permitted to lead the Stadtkonvikt's orchestra, and Salieri decided to begin training him privately in musical composition and theory in these years. It was the first germ of that amateur orchestra for which, in later years, many of his compositions were written. During the remainder of his stay at the Stadtkonvikt he wrote a good deal of chamber music, several songs, some miscellaneous pieces for the pianoforte and, among his more ambitious efforts, a Kyrie (D. 31) and Salve Regina (D. 27), an octet for wind instruments (D. 72/72a, said to commemorate the 1812 death of his mother), a cantata for guitar and male voices (D. 110, in honor of his father's birthday in 1813), and his first symphony (D. 82).

Teacher at his father's school

At the end of 1813, he left the Stadtkonvikt, and returned home for studies at the Normalhauptschule to train as a teacher. In 1814, he entered his father's school as teacher of the youngest students. For over two years, the young man endured the drudgery of the work, which he performed with very indifferent success. There were, however, other interests to compensate. He continued to receive private lessons in composition from Salieri, who did more for Schubert’s musical training than any of his other teachers. Salieri and Schubert would part ways in 1817. 1814. which required the ability to show the means to support a family. In November 1816, after failing to gain a position at Laibach, Schubert sent Grob's brother Heinrich a collection of songs, which were retained by her family into the 20th century. In that year, he was also introduced to Anselm Hüttenbrenner and Franz von Schober, who would become his lifelong friends. Another friend, Johann Mayrhofer, was introduced to him by Spaun in 1814. Some scholars, such as Maynard Solomon, have suggested that Schubert was erotically attracted to men, a thesis that has at times been heatedly debated.

Supported by friends

Significant changes happened in 1816. Schober, a student of good family and some means, invited Schubert to room with him at his mother's house. The proposal was particularly opportune, for Schubert had just made the unsuccessful application for the post of Kapellmeister at Laibach, and he had also decided not to resume teaching duties at his father's school. By the end of the year, he became a guest in Schober's lodgings. For a time, he attempted to increase the household resources by giving music lessons, but they were soon abandoned, and he devoted himself to composition. "I compose every morning, and when one piece is done, I begin another." During this year, he focused on orchestral and choral works, although he also continued to write Lieder. Much of this work was unpublished, but manuscripts and copies circulated among friends and admirers.

In early 1817, Schober introduced Schubert to Johann Michael Vogl, a prominent baritone twenty years Schubert's senior. Vogl, for whom Schubert went on to write a great many songs, became one of Schubert's main proponents in Viennese musical circles. He also met Joseph Hüttenbrenner (brother to Anselm), who also played a role in promoting Schubert's music. These, and an increasing circle of friends and musicians, became responsible for promoting, collecting, and, after his death, preserving, his work.

In late 1817, Schubert's father gained a new position at a school in Rossau (not far from Lichtental). Schubert rejoined his father and reluctantly took up teaching duties there. In early 1818, he was rejected for membership in the prestigious Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, something that might have furthered his musical career.

Schubert spent the summer of 1818 as music teacher to the family of Count Johann Karl Esterházy at their château in Zseliz (then in Hungary, now in Slovakia). His duties were relatively light (teaching piano and singing to the two daughters, Marie and Karoline), and the pay was relatively good. As a result, he happily continued to compose during this time. It may have been at this time that he wrote one of his now world-famous compositions, the Marche militaire No. 1 in D major. Marie and Karoline both being his piano students, and the original score of "Marche Militaire" being a piano duet, lend credence to this view. On his return from Zseliz, he took up residence with his friend Mayrhofer. The respite at Zseliz led to a succession of compositions for piano duet.

The tight circle of friends that Schubert surrounded himself with was dealt a blow in early 1820. Schubert and four of his friends were arrested by the Austrian secret police, who were suspicious of any type of student gatherings. One of Schubert's friends, Johann Senn, was put on trial, imprisoned for over a year, and then permanently banned from Vienna. The other four, including Schubert, were "severely reprimanded", in part for "inveighing against [officials] with insulting and opprobrious language". While Schubert never saw Senn again, he did set some of his poems, "Selige Welt" and "Schwanengesang", to music. The incident may have played a role in a falling-out with Mayrhofer, with whom he was living at the time.

He was nicknamed "Schwämmerl" by his friends, which Gibbs describes as translating "Tubby" or "Little Mushroom". "Schwammerl" is Austrian (and other) dialect for mushroom; the umlaut makes it a diminutive.

Musical maturity

The compositions of 1819 and 1820 show a marked advance in development and maturity of style. The unfinished oratorio "Lazarus" (D. 689) was begun in February; later followed, amid a number of smaller works, by the 23rd Psalm (D. 706), the Gesang der Geister (D. 705/714), the Quartettsatz in C minor (D. 703), and the "Wanderer Fantasy" for piano (D. 760). Of most notable interest is the staging in 1820 of two of Schubert's operas: Die Zwillingsbrüder (D. 647) appeared at the Theater am Kärntnertor on June 14, and Die Zauberharfe (D. 644) appeared at the Theater an der Wien on August 21. Hitherto, his larger compositions (apart from his masses) had been restricted to the amateur orchestra at the Gundelhof, a society which grew out of the quartet-parties at his home. Now he began to assume a more prominent position, addressing a wider public. The first seven opus numbers (all songs) appeared on these terms; then the commission ceased, and he began to receive the meager pittances which were all that the great publishing houses ever accorded to him. The situation improved somewhat in March 1821 when Vogl sang "Der Erlkönig" at a concert that was extremely well received. That month, he composed a variation on a waltz by Anton Diabelli (D. 718), being one of the fifty composers who contributed to Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. , D. 960]] (composed in 1828) |description|played by Randolph Hokanson |filename=Schubert - Piano Sonatas - 5 Moderato.ogg|title=1. Molto moderato|description=|format=Ogg |filename2=Schubert - Piano Sonatas - 6 Andante.ogg|title2=2. Andante sostenuto|description2=|format2=Ogg |filename3=Schubert - Piano Sonatas - 7 Scherzo.ogg|title3=3. Scherzo. Allegro vivace con delicatezza|description3=|format3=Ogg |filename4=Schubert - Piano Sonatas - 8 Allegro.ogg|title4=4. Allegro, ma non troppo|description4=Performed by Randolph Hokanson|format4=Ogg }} The production of the two operas turned Schubert's attention more firmly than ever in the direction of the stage, where, for a variety of reasons, he was almost completely unsuccessful. In 1822, Alfonso und Estrella was refused, partly owing to its libretto. Fierrabras (D. 796) was rejected in the fall of 1823, but this was largely due to the popularity of Rossini and the Italian operatic style, and the failure of Carl Maria von Weber's Euryanthe. Die Verschworenen (The Conspirators, D. 787) was prohibited by the censor (apparently on the grounds of its title), and Rosamunde (D. 797) was withdrawn after two nights, owing to the poor quality of the play for which Schubert had written incidental music. Of these works, the two former are written on a scale which would make their performances exceedingly difficult (Fierrabras, for instance, contains over 1,000 pages of manuscript score), but Die Verschworenen is a bright attractive comedy, and Rosamunde contains some of the most charming music that Schubert ever composed. In 1822, he made the acquaintance of both Weber and Beethoven, but little came of it in either case. Beethoven is said to have acknowledged the younger man's gifts on a few occasions, but some of this is likely legend and in any case he could not have known the real scope of Schubert's music - especially not the instrumental works - as so little of it was printed or performed in the composer's lifetime. On his deathbed, Beethoven is said to have looked into some of the younger man's works and exclaimed, "Truly, the spark of divine genius resides in this Schubert!" but what would have come of it if he had recovered we can never know.

In the autumn of 1822, Schubert embarked suddenly on a work which more decisively than almost any other in those years showed his maturing personal vision, the "Unfinished Symphony" in B minor. The reason he left it unfinished after two movements and sketches some way into a third remains an enigma, and it is also remarkable that he didn't mention it to any of his friends even though, as Brian Newbould notes, he must have felt thrilled by what he was achieving here.

Last years and masterworks

In 1823 Schubert, in addition to Fierrabras, also wrote his first song cycle, Die schöne Müllerin (D. 795), setting poems by Wilhelm Müller. This series, together with the later cycle "Winterreise" (D. 911, also setting texts of Müller in 1827) is widely considered one of the pinnacles of Lieder. He also composed the song Du bist die Ruh ("You are stillness/peace") D. 776 during this year. Also in that year, symptoms of syphilis first appeared.

In the spring of 1824 he wrote the Octet in F (D. 803), "A Sketch for a Grand Symphony"; and in the summer went back to Zseliz. There he became attracted to Hungarian musical idiom, and wrote the Divertissement à la hongroise (D. 818) for piano duet and the String Quartet in A minor (D. 804).

It has been said that he held a hopeless passion for his pupil, the Countess Karoline Eszterházy, but the only work he dedicated to her was his Fantasie in F minor (D. 940) for piano duet. His friend Bauernfeld penned the following verse, which appears to reference Schubert's unrequited sentiments:

In love with a Countess of youthful grace, —A pupil of Galt's; in desperate case Young Schubert surrenders himself to another, And fain would avoid such affectionate pother

Despite his preoccupation with the stage, and later with his official duties, he found time during these years for a significant amount of composition. He completed the Mass in A flat (D. 678) and, in 1822, began the "Unfinished Symphony" (Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759). Why the symphony was "unfinished" has been debated endlessly without resolution. In 1824, he wrote the variations for flute and piano on "Trockne Blumen", from the cycle Die schöne Müllerin, and several string quartets. He also wrote the Arpeggione Sonata (D. 821), at a time when there was a minor craze over that instrument.

The setbacks of previous years were compensated for by the prosperity and happiness of 1825. Publication had been moving more rapidly; the stress of poverty was for a time lightened; and in the summer he had a pleasant holiday in Upper Austria, where he was welcomed with enthusiasm. It was during this tour that he produced his "Songs from Sir Walter Scott". This cycle contains Ellens dritter Gesang (D. 839), a setting of Adam Storck's German translation of Scott's hymn from The Lady of the Lake, which is widely, though mistakenly, referred to as "Schubert's Ave Maria". It opens with the greeting Ave Maria, which recurs in the refrain; the entire Scott/Storck text in Schubert's song is frequently substituted with the complete Latin text of the traditional Ave Maria prayer. In 1825, Schubert also wrote the Piano Sonata in A minor (Op. 42, D. 845), and began the "Great" C major Symphony (Symphony No. 9, D. 944), which was completed the following year.

From 1826 to 1828, Schubert resided continuously in Vienna, except for a brief visit to Graz in 1827. The history of his life during these three years was relatively uneventful, and is little more than a record of his compositions. In 1826, he dedicated a symphony (D. 944, that later came to be known as the "Great") to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and received an honorarium in return. In the spring of 1828, he gave, for the first and only time in his career, a public concert of his own works, which was very well received. The compositions themselves are a sufficient biography. The String Quartet in D minor (D. 810), with the variations on "Death and the Maiden", was written during the winter of 1825–1826, and first played on 25 January 1826. Later in the year came the String Quartet in G major, (D. 887, Op. 161), the "Rondeau brillant" for piano and violin (D. 895, Op. 70), and the Piano Sonata in G (D. 894, Op. 78) (first published under the title "Fantasia in G"). To these should be added the three Shakespearian songs, of which "Hark! Hark! the Lark" (D. 889) and "An Sylvia" (D. 891) were allegedly written on the same day, the former at a tavern where he broke his afternoon's walk, the latter on his return to his lodging in the evening.

In 1827, Schubert wrote the song cycle Winterreise (D. 911), a colossal peak of the art of art song ("remarkable" was the way it was described at the Schubertiades), the Fantasia for piano and violin in C (D. 934), the Impromptus for piano, and the two piano trios (the first in B flat (D. 898), and the second in E flat, D. 929); in 1828 the Mirjams Siegesgesang (Song of Miriam, D. 942) on a text by Franz Grillparzer, the Mass in E-flat (D. 950), the Tantum Ergo (D. 962) in the same key, the String Quintet in C (D. 956), the second Benedictus to the Mass in C, the last three piano sonatas, and the collection of songs published posthumously as Schwanengesang ("Swan-song", D. 957). This collection, while not a true song cycle, retains a unity of style amongst the individual songs, touching depths of tragedy and of the morbidly supernatural which had rarely been plumbed by any composer in the century preceding it. Six of these are set to words by Heinrich Heine, whose Buch der Lieder appeared in the autumn. The Symphony No. 9 (D. 944) is dated 1828, but Schubert scholars believe that this symphony was largely written in 1825–1826 (being referred to while he was on holiday at Gastein in 1825 - that work, once considered lost, now is generally seen as an early stage of his C major symphony) and was revised for prospective performance in 1828. This was a fairly unusual practice for Schubert, for whom publication, let alone performance, was rarely contemplated for most of his larger-scale works during his lifetime. In the last weeks of his life, he began to sketch three movements for a new Symphony in D (D. 936A).

D. 935 No. 3|description = This Impromptu is a theme and variations based on a theme from Rosamunde. Performed by Randolph Hokanson.|pos=left|format = Ogg}} The works of his last two years reveal a composer increasingly meditating on the darker side of the human psyche and human relationships, and with a deeper sense of spiritual awareness and conception of the 'beyond'. He reaches extraordinary depths in several chillingly dark songs of this period, especially in the larger cycles. For example, the song Der Doppelgänger reaching an extraordinary climax, conveying madness at the realization of rejection and imminent death - a stark and visionary picture in sound and words that had been prefigured a year before by "Der Leiermann" (The Hurdy-Gurdy Man) at the end of Winterreise - and yet the composer is able to touch repose and communion with the infinite in the almost timeless ebb and flow of the String Quintet and his last three piano sonatas, moving between joyful, vibrant poetry and remote introspection. Even in large-scale works he was sometimes using increasingly sparse textures; Newbould compares his writing in the fragmentary Tenth Symphony (D.936A), probably the work of his very last two months) with Mahler's use of folksong-like harmonics and bare soundscapes. Schubert expressed the wish, were he to survive his final illness, to further develop his knowledge of harmony and counterpoint, and had actually made appointments for lessons with the counterpoint master Simon Sechter.

Final illness and death

's Stadtpark]] In the midst of this creative activity, his health deteriorated. The cause of his death was officially diagnosed as typhoid fever, though other theories have been proposed, including the tertiary stage of syphilis. By the late 1820s Schubert's health was failing and he confided to some friends that he feared that he was near death. In the late summer of 1828, the composer saw court physician Ernst Rinna, who may have confirmed Schubert's suspicions that he was ill beyond cure and likely to die soon. Some of his symptoms matched those of mercury poisoning (mercury was then a common treatment for syphilis, again suggesting that Schubert suffered from it). At the beginning of November he again fell ill, experiencing headaches, fever, swollen joints, and vomiting. He was generally unable to retain solid food and his condition worsened. Schubert died in Vienna, at age 31, on November 19, 1828, at the apartment of his brother Ferdinand. The last musical work he had wished to hear was Beethoven's String Quartet No.14 in C sharp minor, Op. 131; his friend, violinist Karl Holz, who was present at the gathering, 5 days before Schubert's death, commented: "The King of Harmony has sent the King of Song a friendly bidding to the crossing". It was next to Beethoven, whom he had admired all his life, that Schubert was buried by his own request, in the village cemetery of Währing. In 1888, both Schubert's and Beethoven's graves were moved to the Zentralfriedhof, where they can now be found next to those of Johann Strauss II and Johannes Brahms. The cemetery in Währing was converted into a park in 1925, called the Schubert Park, and his former grave site was marked by a bust.

Music

Schubert wrote almost 1000 works in a remarkably short career. The largest number (over 600) of these are songs. He wrote seven complete symphonies, as well as the two movements of the "Unfinished" Symphony, a complete sketch (with partial orchestration) of a ninth, and arguable fragments of a 10th. There is a large body of music for solo piano, including 21 complete sonatas and many short dances, and a relatively large set of works for piano duet. There are nearly 30 chamber works, including some fragmentary works. His choral output includes six masses. He wrote only five operas, and no concertos.

Style and reception

In July 1947 the twentieth-century composer Ernst Krenek discussed Schubert's style, abashedly admitting that he at first "shared the wide-spread opinion that Schubert was a lucky inventor of pleasing tunes ... lacking the dramatic power and searching intelligence which distinguished such 'real' masters as Bach or Beethoven". Krenek wrote that he reached a completely different assessment after close study of Schubert's songs at the urging of friend and fellow composer Eduard Erdmann. Krenek pointed to the piano sonatas as giving "ample evidence that [Schubert] was much more than an easy-going tune-smith who did not know, and did not care, about the craft of composition." Each sonata then in print, according to Krenek, exhibited "a great wealth of technical finesse" and revealed Schubert as "far from satisfied with pouring his charming ideas into conventional molds; on the contrary he was a thinking artist with a keen appetite for experimentation."

That "appetite for experimentation" manifests itself repeatedly in Schubert's output in a wide variety of forms and genres, including opera, liturgical music, chamber and solo piano music, and symphonic works. Perhaps most familiarly, his adventurousness manifests itself as a notably original sense of modulation, as in the second movement of the String Quintet, where he modulates from C major, through E major, to reach the tonic key of C major. It also appears in unusual choices of instrumentation, as in the Arpeggione Sonata or the unconventional scoring of the Trout Quintet. If it not infrequently led Schubert up blind alleys, resulting in fragmentary works, it also enabled him to create music unlike anything that had come before, such as his two song cycles of unprecedented scope.

While he was clearly influenced by the Classical sonata forms of Beethoven and Mozart (his early works, among them notably the 5th Symphony, are particularly Mozartean), his formal structures and his developments tend to give the impression more of melodic development than of harmonic drama. This combination of Classical form and long-breathed Romantic melody sometimes lends them a discursive style: his 9th Symphony was described by Robert Schumann as running to "heavenly lengths". His harmonic innovations include movements in which the first section ends in the key of the subdominant rather than the dominant (as in the last movement of the Trout Quintet). Schubert's practice here was a forerunner of the common Romantic technique of relaxing, rather than raising, tension in the middle of a movement, with final resolution postponed to the very end.

It was in the genre of the Lied, however, that Schubert made his most indelible mark. Plantinga remarks, "In his more than six hundred Lieder he explored and expanded the potentialities of the genre as no composer before him." Prior to Schubert's influence, Lieder tended toward a strophic, syllabic treatment of text, evoking the folksong qualities burgeoned by the stirrings of Romantic nationalism. Among Schubert's treatments of the poetry of Goethe, his settings of Gretchen am Spinnrade and Der Erlkönig are particularly striking for their dramatic content, forward-looking uses of harmony, and their use of eloquent pictorial keyboard figurations, such as the depiction of the spinning wheel and treadle in the piano in Gretchen and the furious and ceaseless gallop in Erlkönig. Also of particular note are his two song cycles on the poems of Wilhelm Müller, Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, which helped to establish the genre and its potential for musical, poetic, and almost operatic dramatic narrative. The Theaterzeitung, writing about Winterreise at the time, commented that it was a work that "none can sing or hear without being deeply moved". Antonín Dvořák wrote in 1894 that Schubert, whom he considered one of the truly great composers, was clearly influential on shorter works, especially Lieder and shorter piano works: "The tendency of the romantic school has been toward short forms, and although Weber helped to show the way, to Schubert belongs the chief credit of originating the short models of piano forte pieces which the romantic school has preferably cultivated. [...] Schubert created a new epoch with the Lied. [...] All other songwriters have followed in his footsteps."

Schubert's compositional style progressed rapidly throughout his short life. The loss of potential masterpieces caused by his early death at 31 was perhaps best expressed in the epitaph on his large tombstone written by the poet Franz Grillparzer, "Here music has buried a treasure, but even fairer hopes."

Schubert's chamber music continues to be popular. In a poll of classical music listeners announced in October 2008, the ABC in Australia found that Schubert's chamber works dominated the field, with the Trout Quintet coming first, followed by two of his other works.

The New York Times music critic, Anthony Tommasini, who ranked Schubert as the fourth greatest composer wrote, "Four? Schubert. You have to love the guy, who died at 31, ill, impoverished and neglected except by a circle of friends who were in awe of his genius. For his hundreds of songs alone — including the haunting cycle “Winterreise,” which will never release its tenacious hold on singers and audiences — Schubert is central to our concert life.... Schubert’s first few symphonies may be works in progress. But the “Unfinished” and especially the Ninth Symphony are astonishing. The Ninth paves the way for Bruckner and prefigures Mahler.".

Posthumous history of Schubert's music

Some of his smaller pieces were printed shortly after his death, but the manuscripts of many of the longer works, whose existence was not widely known, remained hidden in cabinets and file boxes of Schubert's family, friends, and publishers. In 1838 Robert Schumann, on a visit to Vienna, found the dusty manuscript of the C major symphony (the "Great", D. 944) and took it back to Leipzig, where it was performed by Felix Mendelssohn and celebrated in the Neue Zeitschrift. The most important step towards the recovery of the neglected works was the journey to Vienna which Sir George Grove (widely known for the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians) and Arthur Sullivan made in the autumn of 1867. The travellers rescued from oblivion seven symphonies, the Rosamunde incidental music, some of the Masses and operas, some of the chamber works, and a vast quantity of miscellaneous pieces and songs. This led to more widespread public interest in Schubert's work.

From the 1830s through the 1870s, Franz Liszt transcribed and arranged a number of Schubert's works, particularly the songs. Liszt, who was a significant force in spreading Schubert's work after his death, said Schubert was "the most poetic musician who ever lived." Schubert's symphonies were of particular interest to Antonín Dvořák, with Hector Berlioz and Anton Bruckner acknowledging the influence of the "Great" Symphony.

Numbering of symphonies

Confusion arose quite early over the numbering of Schubert's symphonies, in particular the "Great" C Major Symphony. George Grove, who rediscovered many of Schubert's symphonies, assigned the following numbering after his 1867 visit to Vienna:

Number 7: E major D. 729 (completely sketched but not completely scored by Schubert, with multiple historic and modern completions)

Number 8: B minor Unfinished D. 759

Number 9: C major Great D. 944

Breitkopf & Härtel, when preparing the 1897 complete works publication, originally planned to only publish complete works (which would have given the Great number 7), with "fragments", including the Unfinished and the D. 729 sketch, receiving no number at all. When Johannes Brahms became general editor of that project, he assigned the following numbers:

Number 7: C major Great

Number 8: B minor Unfinished

no number: E major D. 729

Some of the disagreement continued into the 20th century. George Grove in his 1908 Dictionary of Music and Musicians, assigned the Great as number 10, and the Unfinished as number 9. (It is unclear from his article which symphonies, fragmentary or otherwise, are numbers 7 and 8.) However, the Unfinished is now generally referred to as number 8 in the English-speaking world, with the Great at number 9. Number 10 is generally acknowledged to be the D. 936a fragment, for which a completion by Brian Newbould exists. The 1978 revision to the Deutsch catalog leaves D. 729 without a number (in spite of numerous completions), and assigns number 7 to the Unfinished and number 8 to the Great. As a consequence, generally available scores for the later symphonies may be published using conflicting numbers.

Grove and Sullivan also suggested that there may have been a "lost" symphony. Immediately before Schubert's death, his friend Eduard von Bauernfeld recorded the existence of an additional symphony, dated 1828 (although this does not necessarily indicate the year of composition) named the "Letzte" or "Last" symphony. Brian Newbould Karlsruhe saw the first production of his opera Fierrabras.

In 1928, Schubert week was held in Europe and the United States to mark the centenary of the composer's death. Works by Schubert were performed in churches, in concert halls, and on radio stations. A competition, with top prize money of $10,000 and sponsorship by the Columbia Phonograph Company, was held for "original symphonic works presented as an apotheosis of the lyrical genius of Schubert, and dedicated to his memory".

In 1977, the German electronic band Kraftwerk recorded a tribute song called "Franz Schubert", which can be found on the album Trans-Europe Express.

Catalogue

Since relatively few of his works were published in Schubert's lifetime, only a small number of them have opus numbers assigned, and, even in those cases, the sequence of the numbers does not give a good indication of the order of composition. In 1951, musicologist Otto Erich Deutsch published a "thematic catalogue" of Schubert's works that lists his compositions numerically by their composition date.

Catalogue by Deutsch number: D 1 to 500 — D 501 to 998

List of compositions by Franz Schubert — by musical genre

Wikipedia articles about Schubert's compositions

Notes

References

The first significant biography of Schubert. This edition is available at German Google Books. English translations and abridgements of this biography from the 1860s are available at Google Books. The second volume is notable in that it contains Sir George Grove's description of the trip to Vienna in which he recovered a number of Schubert's works. (roughly, volume 1 of Kreissle) (roughly, volume 2 of Kreissle)

Nineteenth and early 20th-century scholarship

Modern scholarship

Symphony numbers

The following citations illustrate the confusion around the numbering of Schubert's late symphonies. The B minor Unfinished Symphony is variously published as Number 7 and Number 8, in both German and English. All of these editions appeared to be in print (or at least somewhat readily available) in 2008. German-language publication of the Unfinished Symphony score as Number 7. English-language publication of the Unfinished Symphony score as Number 7. English-language publication of the Unfinished Symphony score as Number 8.

Further reading

Otto Erich Deutsch, working in the first half of the 20th century, was probably the preeminent scholar of Schubert's life and music. In addition to the catalog of Schubert's works, he collected and organized a great deal of material about Schubert, some of which is still in print.

Elizabeth Norman McKay and Brian Newbould have done a great deal of research on the life and music of Schubert in recent years, including scholarly journal articles and books. Newbould composed a completion of Schubert's fragmentary 10th symphony.

Additional readings (sources from German Wikipedia article):

Walther Dürr, Andreas Krause (ed.): Schubert-Handbuch. Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01418-5

Ernst Hilmar: Verzeichnis der Schubert-Handschriften in der Musiksammlung der Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek. Kassel u. a. 1978 (Catalogus Musicus 8).

Ernst Hilmar, Margret Jestremski (ed.): Schubert-Enzyklopädie. 2 Bände. Hans Schneider, Tutzing 2004, ISBN 3-7952-1155-7

H.-J. Hinrichsen: Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung der Sonatenform in der Instrumentalmu­sik Franz Schuberts. Tutzing 1994

Elizabeth Norman McKay: Franz Schubert's Music for the Theatre. Foreword by Claudio Abbado. (Veröffentlichungen des IFSI, 5), Tutzing 1991

Christian Pollack (ed.): Franz Schubert: Bühnenwerke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe der Texte. Tutzing 1988

Ernst Hilmar, Otto Brusatti (ed., mit einer Einleitung von Walter Obermaier): Franz Schubert. Ausstellung der Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek zum 150. Todestag des Komponisten. Katalog. Wien 1978.

Ernst Hilmar: Schubert. Graz 1989

Till Gerrit Waidelich (ed., together with R. Hilmar-Voit, A. Mayer): Franz Schubert. Dokumente 1817–1830. Erster Band: Texte. Programme, Rezensionen, Anzeigen, Nekrologe, Musikbeilagen und andere gedruckte Quellen (Veröffentlichungen des IFSI, 10/1), Tutzing 1993

Ernst Hilmar (ed.): Franz Schubert. Dokumente 1801–1830. Erster Band. Addenda und Kommentar. (Veröffentlichungen des IFSI, 10/2), Tutzing 2003

Ernst Hilmar (ed.): Schubert durch die Brille. Mitteilungen des Internationalen Franz Schubert Instituts. Wien/Tutzing 1988–2003

Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen, Till Gerrit Waidelich (ed.): Schubert : Perspektiven Stuttgart 2001ff. (content since 2001)

External links

The Lied and Arts Song Texts Page

Catalogue of Works by Franz Schubert

Digital reproductions of score manuscripts and letters by Franz Schubert

Notes on Franz Schubert by pianist Bart Berman

The Schubert Institute (UK), detailed time-line, biography, work list and (flawed) family tree

The Schubert Society of the USA

The Franz Schubert Society of Victoria

Franz-Schubert-Institut in Baden bei Wien

Recordings and MIDI files

Schubertsongs.com – free Recordings of all works by Schubert for voice and piano (mp3)

Schubert cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.

Sheet music

Kreusch-sheet-music.net Schubert's Piano Works

Shubertline.co.uk about 250 of Schubert's Songs (Schubertline edition)

Schubert's Sheet Music by Mutopia Project

Lieder sheet music

Category:1797 births Category:1828 deaths Category:People from Alsergrund * Category:19th-century Austrian people Category:19th-century composers Category:Austrian composers Category:Austrian expatriates in Hungary Category:Austrian people of Moravian German descent Category:Austrian people of Silesian German descent Category:Burials at the Zentralfriedhof Category:Child classical musicians Category:Classical era composers Category:House of Esterházy Category:Opera composers Category:Romantic composers Category:Viennese composers

Name	Sir Noël Coward
Caption	Coward in 1972, by Allan Warren
Birth name	Noël Peirce Coward
Birth date	December 16, 1899
Birth place	Teddington, Middlesex, England
Death date	March 26, 1973
Death place	Blue Harbour, Port Maria, Jamaica
Occupation	Actor, playwright, director, composer, singer
Years active	1911–1973
Partner	Graham Payn}}

Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 1899 – 26 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".

Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays would be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Present Laughter and Blithe Spirit, have remained in the regular theatre repertoire. He composed hundreds of songs, in addition to well over a dozen musical theatre works (including the operetta Bitter Sweet and comic revues), poetry, several volumes of short stories, the novel Pomp and Circumstance, and a three-volume autobiography. Coward's stage and film acting and directing career spanned six decades, during which he starred in many of his own works.

At the outbreak of World War II, Coward volunteered for war work, running the British propaganda office in Paris. He also worked with the Secret Service, seeking to use his influence to persuade the American public and government to help Britain. Coward won an Academy Honorary Award in 1943 for his naval film drama, In Which We Serve, and was knighted in 1969. In the 1950s he achieved fresh success as a cabaret performer, performing his own songs, such as "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", "London Pride" and "I Went to a Marvellous Party".

His plays and songs achieved new popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, and his work and style continue to influence popular culture. Coward did not publicly acknowledge his homosexuality, but it was discussed candidly after his death by biographers including Graham Payn, his long-time partner, and in Coward's diaries and letters, published posthumously. The former Albery Theatre (originally the New Theatre) in London was renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in his honour in 2006.

Biography

Early years

Coward was born in 1899 in Teddington, England, a suburb of London. His parents were Arthur Sabin Coward (1856–1937), a piano salesman, and Violet Agnes Coward (1863–1954), daughter of Henry Gordon Veitch, a captain and surveyor in the Royal Navy. Noël Coward was the second of their three sons, the eldest of whom had died in 1898 at the age of six. Coward's father lacked ambition and industry, and family finances were often poor. Coward was bitten by the performing bug early and appeared in amateur concerts by the age of seven. He attended the Chapel Royal Choir School as a young child. He had little formal schooling but was a voracious reader.

Encouraged by his ambitious mother, who sent him to a dance academy in London, Coward's first professional engagement was in January 1911 as Prince Mussel in the children's play The Goldfish. In Present Indicative, his first volume of memoirs, Coward wrote:

(centre) and Charles Hawtrey, 1911]] The leading actor-manager Charles Hawtrey, whom the young Coward idolised and from whom he learned a great deal about the theatre, cast him in the children's play Where the Rainbow Ends. Coward played in the piece in 1911 and 1912 at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End. In 1912 Coward also appeared at the Savoy Theatre in An Autumn Idyll (as a dancer in the ballet) and at the London Coliseum in A Little Fowl Play, by Harold Owen, in which Hawtrey starred. Italia Conti engaged Coward to appear at the Liverpool Repertory Theatre in 1913, and in the same year he was cast as the Lost Boy Slightly in Peter Pan. He reappeared in Peter Pan the following year, and in 1915 he was again in Where the Rainbow Ends. He worked with other child actors in this period, including Hermione Gingold (whose mother threatened to turn "that naughty boy" out); Fabia Drake; Esmé Wynne, with whom he collaborated on his earliest plays; Alfred Willmore, later known as Micheál MacLíammóir; and Gertrude Lawrence who, Coward wrote in his memoirs, "gave me an orange and told me a few mildly dirty stories, and I loved her from then onwards."

In 1913, when Coward was 14, he became the protégé and probably the lover of Philip Streatfeild, a society painter. Streatfeild introduced him to Mrs Astley Cooper and her high society friends. Streatfeild died from tuberculosis in 1915, but Mrs Astley Cooper continued to encourage her late friend's protégé, who remained a frequent guest at her estate, Hambleton Hall.

Coward continued to perform during most of World War I, appearing at the Prince of Wales's Theatre in 1916 in The Happy Family

In 1918, Coward was drafted into the Artists Rifles but was assessed as unfit for active service because of a tubercular tendency, and he was discharged on health grounds after nine months. That year he appeared in the D. W. Griffith film Hearts of the World in an uncredited role. He sold short stories to several magazines to help his family financially. His first solo effort as a playwright was The Rat Trap (1918) which was eventually produced at the Everyman Theatre, Hampstead, in October 1926. During these years, he met Lorn McNaughtan, who became his private secretary and served in that capacity for more than forty years, until her death. Neville Cardus's praise in The Manchester Guardian was grudging. Notices for the London production were mixed, but encouraging. The Times, on the other hand, was enthusiastic: "It is a remarkable piece of work from so young a head – spontaneous, light, and always 'brainy'."

, 1920]] The play ran for a month (and was Coward's first play seen in America), He did not enjoy the role, finding Francis Beaumont and his sometime collaborator John Fletcher "two of the dullest Elizabethan writers ever known ... I had a very, very long part, but I was very, very bad at it". Nevertheless, The Manchester Guardian thought that Coward got the best out of the role, and The Times called the play "the jolliest thing in London".

Coward completed a one-act satire, The Better Half, about a man's relationship with two women. It had a short run at The Little Theatre, London, in 1922. The critic St. John Ervine wrote of the piece, "When Mr Coward has learned that tea-table chitter-chatter had better remain the prerogative of women he will write more interesting plays than he now seems likely to write." The play was thought to be lost until a typescript was found in 2007 in the archive of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, the official censor of stage plays in the UK until 1968.

In 1921, Coward made his first trip to America, hoping to interest producers there in his plays. Although he had little luck, he found the Broadway theatre stimulating. The reviews were good: "Mr Noël Coward calls his brilliant little farce a 'comedy of youth', and so it is. And youth pervaded the Savoy last night, applauding everything so boisterously that you felt, not without exhilaration, that you were in the midst of a 'rag'." One critic, who noted the influence of George Bernard Shaw on Coward's writing, thought more highly of the play than of Coward's newly found fans: "I was unfortunately wedged in the centre of a group of his more exuberant friends who greeted each of his sallies with 'That's a Noëlism!'" The play ran in London from 1 February to 24 March 1923, after which Coward turned to revue, co-writing and performing in André Charlot's London Calling!

, his co-star in The Vortex and mother of his close friend Joyce Carey]] In 1924, Coward achieved his first great critical and financial success as a playwright with The Vortex. The story is about a nymphomaniac socialite and her cocaine-addicted son (played by Coward). Some saw the drugs as a mask for homosexuality, while Kenneth Tynan later described it as "a jeremiad against narcotics with dialogue that sounds today not so much stilted as high-heeled". The Vortex was considered shocking in its day for its depiction of sexual vanity and drug abuse among the upper classes. Its notoriety and fiery performances attracted large audiences, justifying a move from a small suburban theatre to a larger one in the West End. Coward, still having trouble finding producers, raised the money to produce the play himself. During the run of The Vortex, Coward met Jack Wilson, an American stockbroker (later a director and producer), who became his business manager and lover. Wilson used his position to steal from Coward, but the playwright was in love and accepted both the larceny and Wilson's heavy drinking.

The success of The Vortex in both London and America caused a great demand for new Coward plays. In 1925 he premiered Fallen Angels, a three-act comedy that amused and shocked audiences with the spectacle of two middle-aged women slowly getting drunk while awaiting the arrival of their mutual lover. Hay Fever, the first of Coward's plays to gain an enduring place in the mainstream theatrical repertoire, also appeared in 1925. It is a comedy about four egocentric members of an artistic family who casually invite acquaintances to their country house for the weekend and bemuse and enrage each other's guests. Some writers have seen elements of Coward's old mentor, Mrs Astley Cooper, and her set in the characters of the family. By the 1970s the play was recognised as a classic, described in The Times as a "dazzling achievement; like The Importance of Being Earnest, it is pure comedy with no mission but to delight, and it depends purely on the interplay of characters, not on elaborate comic machinery." Coward was turning out numerous plays and acting in his own works and others'. Soon, his frantic pace caught up with him, and he collapsed on stage in 1926 while starring in The Constant Nymph and had to take an extended rest in Hawaii. His biggest failure in this period was the play Sirocco (1927), which concerns free love among the wealthy. It starred Ivor Novello, of whom Coward said, "the two most beautiful things in the world are Ivor's profile and my mind". Theatregoers hated the play, showing violent disapproval at the curtain calls and spitting at Coward as he left the theatre.

By then one of the world's highest-earning writers, with an annual income in 1929 of £50,000, Coward thrived during the Great Depression, writing a succession of popular hits. These ranged from large-scale spectaculars to intimate comedies. Examples of the former were the operetta Bitter Sweet (1929), about a woman who elopes with her music teacher, and the historical extravaganza Cavalcade (1931) at Drury Lane, about thirty years in the lives of two families, which required a huge cast, gargantuan sets and a complex hydraulic stage. Its 1933 film adaptation won the Academy Award for best picture. Coward's intimate-scale hits of the period included Private Lives (1930) and Design for Living (1932). In Private Lives, Coward starred alongside his most famous stage partner, Gertrude Lawrence, together with the young Laurence Olivier. It was a highlight of both Coward's and Lawrence's career, selling out in both London and New York. Coward disliked long runs, and after this he made a rule of starring in a play for no more than three months at any venue.

, top l.; Alfred Lunt, top r.; Lynn Fontanne, lower l.; and Judy Campbell – stars of Coward premières of the 1920s–1940s]] In 1933, Coward wrote, directed and co-starred with French singer Yvonne Printemps in both London and New York productions of an operetta, Conversation Piece (1933). Tonight at 8:30 was followed by a musical, Operette (1937), from which the most famous number is "The Stately Homes of England", and a revue entitled Set to Music (1938, a Broadway version of his 1932 London revue, Words and Music). Coward's last pre-war plays were This Happy Breed, a drama about a working-class family, and Present Laughter, a comic self-caricature with an egomaniac actor as the central character. These were first performed in 1942, although they were both written in 1939.

Between 1929 and 1936, Coward recorded many of his best-known songs for His Master's Voice (HMV), now reissued on CD, including the romantic "I'll See You Again" from Bitter Sweet, the comic "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" from Words and Music, and "Mrs Worthington".

World War II

With the outbreak of World War II, Coward abandoned the theatre and sought official war work. After running the British propaganda office in Paris, where he concluded that "if the policy of His Majesty's Government is to bore the Germans to death I don't think we have time", he worked on behalf of British intelligence. His task was to use his celebrity to influence American public and political opinion in favour of helping Britain. He was frustrated by British press criticism of his foreign travel while his countrymen suffered at home, but he was unable to reveal that he was acting on behalf of the Secret Service. In 1942, George VI wished to award Coward a knighthood for his efforts, but was dissuaded by Winston Churchill. Mindful of the public view of Coward's flamboyant lifestyle, Churchill used as his reason Coward's ₤200 fine for contravening currency regulations in 1941.

Churchill's view was that Coward would do more for the war effort by entertaining the troops and the home front than by intelligence work: "Go and sing to them when the guns are firing – that's your job!" Coward, though disappointed, followed this advice. He toured, acted and sang indefatigably in Europe, Africa, Asia and America. He wrote and recorded war-themed popular songs, including "London Pride" and "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans". His London home was wrecked by German bombs in 1941, and he took up temporary residence at the Savoy Hotel. During one air raid on the area around the Savoy he joined Carroll Gibbons and Judy Campbell in impromptu cabaret to divert the captive guests from their fears. Another of Coward's wartime projects, as writer, star, composer and co-director (alongside David Lean), was the naval film drama In Which We Serve. The film was popular on both sides of the Atlantic, and he was awarded an honorary certificate of merit at the 1943 Academy Awards ceremony. Coward played a naval captain, basing the character on his friend Lord Louis Mountbatten. Lean went on to direct and adapt film versions of several Coward plays. The play was later filmed by David Lean. Coward toured during the war years in Blithe Spirit, alternating the piece with his comedy Present Laughter and his working-class drama This Happy Breed.

In Coward's Middle East Diary, he made several statements that offended many Americans. In particular, he commented that he was "less impressed by some of the mournful little Brooklyn boys lying there in tears amid the alien corn with nothing worse than a bullet wound in the leg or a fractured arm". After protests from both The New York Times and the Washington Post, the Foreign Office urged Coward not to visit the United States in January 1945. He did not return to America again during the war. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Coward wrote an alternate history, Peace In Our Time, a play depicting an England occupied by Nazi Germany. Relative Values (1951) addresses the culture clash between an English aristocratic family and a Hollywood actress with matrimonial ambitions; South Sea Bubble (1951) is a political comedy set in a British colony; Quadrille (1952) is a drama about Victorian love and elopement; and Nude with Violin (1956, starring John Gielgud in London and Coward in New York) is a satire on modern art. A revue, Sigh No More (1945), was a moderate success, but two musicals, Pacific 1860 (1946), a lavish South Seas romance, and Ace of Clubs (1949), set in a night club, were financial failures. In addition, his friends Charles Cochran and Gertrude Lawrence died in 1951 and 1952, respectively. Despite his disappointments during this period, Coward maintained a high public profile; his performance as King Magnus in Shaw's The Apple Cart for the Coronation season of 1953, co-starring Margaret Leighton, received much coverage in the press, and his cabaret act, honed during his wartime tours entertaining the troops, was a supreme success, first in London at the Café de Paris, and later in Las Vegas. The theatre critic Kenneth Tynan wrote:

In 1955, Coward's cabaret act at Las Vegas, recorded live for the gramophone, and released as Noël Coward at Las Vegas was so successful that CBS engaged him to write and direct a series of three 90-minute television specials for the 1955-1956 season. The first of these, Together With Music, paired Coward with Mary Martin, featuring him in many of the numbers from his Las Vegas act. It was followed by productions of Blithe Spirit in which he starred with Claudette Colbert, Lauren Bacall and Mildred Natwick and This Happy Breed with Edna Best and Roger Moore. Despite excellent reviews, the audience viewing figures were moderate.

's drawing of Coward rather than the stars of this 1968 revival.]] During the 1950s and 1960s, Coward continued to write musicals and plays. After the Ball, his 1953 adaptation of Lady Windermere's Fan, was the last musical he debuted in the West End; his last two musicals premiered on Broadway. Sail Away (1961), set on a luxury cruise liner, was Coward's most successful post-war musical, with productions in America, Britain and Australia. The Girl Who Came to Supper, a musical adaptation of The Sleeping Prince (1963), ran for only three months. He directed the successful 1964 Broadway musical adaptation of Blithe Spirit, called High Spirits. Coward's late plays include a farce, Look After Lulu! (1959), and a tragi-comic study of old age, Waiting in the Wings (1960), both of which were successful despite "critical disdain". Coward argued that the primary purpose of a play was to entertain, and he made no attempt at modernism, which he felt was boring to the audience although fascinating to the critics. His comic novel, Pomp and Circumstance (1960), about life in a tropical British colony, met with more critical success. Coward's final stage success came with Suite in Three Keys (1966), a trilogy set in a hotel penthouse suite. He wrote it as his swan song as a stage actor: "I would like to act once more before I fold my bedraggled wings." The trilogy gained glowing reviews and did good box office business in the UK. In one of the three plays, A Song at Twilight, Coward abandoned his customary reticence on the subject and played an explicitly homosexual character. The daring piece earned Coward new critical praise. He intended to star in the trilogy on Broadway but was too ill to travel. Only two of the Suite in Three Keys plays were performed in New York, with the title changed to Noël Coward in Two Keys, starring Hume Cronyn.

Coward won new popularity in several notable films later in his career, such as Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Our Man in Havana (1959), Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), Boom! (1968) and The Italian Job (1969). Stage and film opportunities he turned down in the 1950s included an invitation to compose a musical version of Pygmalion (two years before My Fair Lady was written), and offers of the roles of the king in the original stage production of The King and I, and Colonel Nicholson in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. Invited to play the title role in the 1962 film Dr. No, he replied, "No, no, no, a thousand times, no." In the same year, he turned down the role of Humbert Humbert in Lolita, saying, "At my time of life the film story would be logical if the 12-year-old heroine was a sweet little old lady."

In the mid-1960s and early 1970s successful productions of his 1920s and 1930s plays, and new revues celebrating his music, including Oh, Coward! on Broadway and Cowardy Custard in London, revived Coward's popularity and critical reputation. He dubbed this comeback "Dad's Renaissance". This began with a hit 1963 revival of Private Lives in London and then New York. Invited to direct Hay Fever with Edith Evans at the National Theatre, he wrote in 1964, "I am thrilled and flattered and frankly a little flabbergasted that the National Theatre should have had the curious perceptiveness to choose a very early play of mine and to give it a cast that could play the Albanian telephone directory."

Other examples of "Dad's Renaissance" included a 1968 Off Broadway production of Private Lives at the Theatre de Lys starring Elaine Stritch, Lee Bowman and Betsy von Furstenberg, and directed by Charles Nelson Reilly. Despite this impressive cast, Coward's popularity had risen so high that the theatre poster for the production used an Al Hirschfeld caricature of Coward (pictured) instead of an image of the production or its stars. The illustration captures how Coward's image had changed by the 1960s: he was no longer seen as the smooth 1930s sophisticate, but as the doyen of the theatre. As The New Statesman wrote in 1964: "Who would have thought the landmarks of the Sixties would include the emergence of Noël Coward as the grand old man of British drama? There he was one morning, flipping verbal tiddlywinks with reporters about "Dad's Renaissance"; the next he was... beside Forster, T. S. Eliot and the OMs, demonstrably the greatest living English playwright." Time magazine wrote that "in the '60s... his best work, with its inspired inconsequentiality, seemed to exert not only a period charm but charm, period." This also affected his work in The Italian Job, and he retired from acting immediately afterwards. He died at his home, Firefly Estate, in Jamaica on 26 March 1973 of heart failure John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier read verse and Yehudi Menuhin played Bach. On 28 March 1984 a memorial stone was unveiled by the Queen Mother in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. Thanked by Coward's partner, Graham Payn, for attending, the Queen Mother replied, "I came because he was my friend."

Coward was knighted in 1969 and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement.

The Noël Coward Theatre in St Martin's Lane, originally opened in 1903 as the New Theatre and later called the Albery, was renamed in his honour after extensive refurbishment, re-opening on 1 June 2006. A statue of Coward was unveiled by the Queen Mother in the foyer of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1998. There are also sculptures of Coward displayed in New York and Jamaica. In 2008 an exhibition devoted to Coward was mounted at the National Theatre in London. The exhibition was later hosted by the Museum of Performance & Design in San Francisco and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California.

Personal life

Coward was homosexual but, following the convention of his times, this was never publicly mentioned. The critic Kenneth Tynan's description in 1953 was close to an acknowledgment of Coward's sexuality: "Forty years ago he was Slightly in Peter Pan, and you might say that he has been wholly in Peter Pan ever since. No private considerations have been allowed to deflect the drive of his career; like Gielgud and Rattigan, like the late Ivor Novello, he is a congenital bachelor." Even in the 1960s, Coward refused to acknowledge his sexual orientation publicly, wryly observing, "There are still a few old ladies in Worthing who don't know." Despite this reticence, he encouraged his secretary Cole Lesley to write a frank biography once Coward was safely dead. Details of his sexual life emerged; for instance, from his youth Coward had a distaste for penetrative sex.

Coward's most important relationship, which began in the mid-1940s and lasted until his death, was with the South African stage and film actor Graham Payn. Coward featured Payn in several of his London productions. Payn later co-edited with Sheridan Morley the collection of Coward's diaries, published in 1982. Coward's other relationships included the playwright Keith Winter, actors Louis Hayward and Alan Webb, his manager John (Jack) C. Wilson (1899–1961) and the composer Ned Rorem, who published details of their relationship in his diaries. Coward had a 19-year friendship with Prince George, Duke of Kent, but biographers differ on whether it was platonic. According to Payn, Coward maintained that it was simply a friendship. Coward said, on the duke's death, "I suddenly find that I loved him more than I knew."

Coward maintained close friendships with many women, including the actress and author Esmé Wynne-Tyson, his first collaborator and constant correspondent; Gladys Calthrop, who designed sets and costumes for many of his works; his secretary and close confidante Lorn Loraine; the actresses Gertrude Lawrence, Joyce Carey and Judy Campbell; and "his loyal and lifelong amitié amoureuse", Marlene Dietrich.

In his profession, Coward was widely admired and loved for his generosity and kindness to those who fell on hard times. Stories are told of the unobtrusive way in which he relieved the needs or paid the debts of old theatrical acquaintances who had no claim on him.

In the 1950s, Coward left the UK for tax reasons, receiving harsh criticism in the press. He first settled in Bermuda but later bought houses in Jamaica and Switzerland (in the village of Les Avants, near Montreux), which remained his homes for the rest of his life. His expatriate neighbours and friends included Joan Sutherland, David Niven, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards in Switzerland and Ian Fleming and his wife Ann in Jamaica. Coward was a witness at the Flemings' wedding, but his diaries record his exasperation with their constant bickering.

Coward's political views were Conservative, but not unswervingly so: he despised the government of Neville Chamberlain for its policy of appeasing Nazi Germany, and he differed sharply with Winston Churchill over the abdication crisis of 1936. Whereas Churchill supported Edward VIII's wish to marry "his cutie", Wallis Simpson, Coward thought the king irresponsible, telling Churchill, "England doesn't wish for a Queen Cutie." Coward disliked propaganda in plays: "The theatre is a wonderful place, a house of strange enchantment, a temple of illusion. What it most emphatically is not and never will be is a scruffy, ill-lit, fumed-oak drill hall serving as a temporary soap box for political propaganda." Nevertheless, his own views sometimes surfaced in his plays: both Cavalcade and This Happy Breed are "overtly Conservative political plays written in the Brechtian epic manner." In religion, Coward was agnostic. He wrote of his views, "Do I believe in God? I can't say No and I can't say Yes, To me it's anybody's guess."

Coward spelled his first name with the diæresis ("I didn't put the dots over the 'e' in Noël. The language did. Otherwise it's not Noël but Nool!"). The press and many book publishers failed to follow suit, and his name was printed as 'Noel' in The Times, The Observer and other contemporary newspapers and books.

The papers of Noël Coward are held in the University of Birmingham Special Collections.

The Coward image

, 1930]]

"Why", asked Coward, "am I always expected to wear a dressing-gown, smoke cigarettes in a long holder and say 'Darling, how wonderful'?" The answer lay in Coward's assiduous cultivation of a carefully crafted image. As a suburban boy who had been taken up by the upper classes, he rapidly acquired the taste for high life: "I am determined to travel through life first class." He first wore a dressing gown onstage in The Vortex and used the fashion in several of his other famous plays, including Private Lives and Present Laughter. In connection with the National Theatre's 2008 exhibition, The Independent commented, "His famous silk, polka-dot dressing gown and elegant cigarette holder both seem to belong to another era. But 2008 is proving to be the year that Britain falls in love with Noël Coward all over again." Soon after that, Coward wrote, "I took to wearing coloured turtle-necked jerseys, actually more for comfort than for effect, and soon I was informed by my evening paper that I had started a fashion. I believe that to a certain extent this was true; at any rate, during the ensuing months I noticed more and more of our seedier West-End chorus boys parading about London in them." He soon became more cautious about overdoing the flamboyance, advising Cecil Beaton to tone down his outfits: "It is important not to let the public have a loophole to lampoon you." However, Coward was happy to generate publicity from his lifestyle. His nickname, "The Master", "started as a joke and became true", according to Coward. It was used of him from the 1920s onwards. Coward himself made light of it: when asked by a journalist why he was known as "The Master", he replied, "Oh, you know – Jack of all trades, master of none." He could, however, joke about his own immodesty: "My sense of my importance to the world is relatively small. On the other hand, my sense of my own importance to myself is tremendous." When a Time interviewer apologised, "I hope you haven't been bored having to go through all these interviews for your [70th] birthday, having to answer the same old questions about yourself", Coward rejoined, "Not at all. I'm fascinated by the subject." Kenneth Tynan wrote in 1964, "Even the youngest of us will know, in fifty years' time, exactly what we mean by 'a very Noel Coward sort of person'."

Tynan's was the first generation of critics to realise that Coward's plays might enjoy more than ephemeral success. In the 1930s, Cyril Connolly wrote that they were "written in the most topical and perishable way imaginable, the cream in them turns sour overnight". What seemed daring in the 1920s and 1930s came to seem old-fashioned in the 1950s, and Coward never replicated the success of his pre-war plays. By the time of his death, The Times was writing of him, "None of the great figures of the English theatre has been more versatile than he", and the paper ranked his plays in "the classical tradition of Congreve, Sheridan, Wilde and Shaw".

A symposium published in 1999 to mark the centenary of Coward's birth listed some of his major productions scheduled for the year in Britain and North America, including Ace of Clubs, After the Ball, Blithe Spirit, Cavalcade, Easy Virtue, Hay Fever, Present Laughter, Private Lives, Sail Away, A Song at Twilight, The Young Idea and Waiting in the Wings, with stars including Lauren Bacall, Rosemary Harris, Ian McKellen, Corin Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave and Elaine Stritch. In another tribute, Tim Rice said of Coward's songs: "The wit and wisdom of Noël Coward's lyrics will be as lively and contemporary in 100 years' time as they are today",

Coward's music and writings and his characteristic voice and style have been widely parodied and imitated, for instance by Jonathan Meese and in Monty Python, Round the Horne and Privates on Parade. Coward has frequently been depicted as a character in plays, films, television and radio shows, for example, in the 1969 Julie Andrews film Star! (in which Coward was portrayed by his godson, Daniel Massey), the award-winning BBC sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart and a BBC Radio 4 series. On stage, characters based on Coward have included Beverly Carlton in the 1939 Broadway play The Man Who Came to Dinner. A play about the friendship between Coward and Marlene Dietrich, called Lunch with Marlene, by Chris Burgess, ran at the New End Theatre in 2008. The second act presents a musical revue, including Coward songs such as "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans".

Coward was an early admirer of the plays of Harold Pinter, and backed Pinter's film version of The Caretaker with a £1,000 investment. Some critics have detected Coward's influence in Pinter's plays. Tynan compared Pinter's "elliptical patter" to Coward's "stylised dialogue".

Plays

:''For plays that were written more than two years before the original production, a date of composition is given and the second date given is the year when first produced (fp).

The Last Chapter (Ida Collaborates) (1917), one-act comedy, co-written with Esmé Wynne under their joint pen name, Esnomel

Woman and Whisky (1918), one-act play, co-written with Wynne

The Rat Trap (1918), play in four acts; fp 1926

I'll Leave It to You (1920), light comedy in three acts

The Young Idea (1922), comedy of youth in three acts

Sirocco (1921), play in three acts, revised 1927

The Better Half (1922), comedy in one act

The Queen Was in the Parlour (1922), play in three acts, fp 1926

Weatherwise (1923), comedy in two scenes, fp 1932

Fallen Angels (1925), comedy in three acts

The Vortex (1924), play in three acts

Hay Fever (1925), comedy

Easy Virtue (1925), play in three acts

Semi-Monde originally Ritz Bar (1926), play in three acts, fp 1988

This Was a Man (1926), comedy in three acts

The Marquise (1927), comedy in three acts

Home Chat (1927), play in three acts

Private Lives (1930), intimate comedy in three acts

Post Mortem (1932), play in eight scenes, fp 1992

Cavalcade (1931), play in three parts

Design For Living (1933), comedy in three acts

Point Valaine (1934), play in three acts

(1935/36), three programmes of the following one-act plays:

*We Were Dancing, The Astonished Heart, Red Peppers, Hands Across the Sea, Fumed Oak, Shadow Play, Ways and Means, Still Life, Family Album, Star Chamber

Present Laughter (1939), play in three acts, fp 1942

This Happy Breed (1939), play in three acts, fp 1942

Blithe Spirit (1941), play in three acts

Peace In Our Time (1947), play in two acts

Long Island Sound (1947), comedy adapted from his short story What Mad Pursuit?, fp 1989 (Windsor gala performance)

South Sea Bubble (Island Fling in USA), (1951), comedy in three acts

Relative Values (1951), comedy in three acts

Quadrille (1952), romantic comedy in three acts

Nude with Violin (1956), comedy in three acts

Volcano (1957), play in two acts, Mill at Sonning, staged reading 1989

Look After Lulu! (1959), three act farce adapted from Georges Feydeau

Waiting in the Wings (1960), play in three acts

Suite in Three Keys: A Song at Twilight; Shadows of the Evening; Come into the Garden, Maud (1966), a trilogy

Star Quality (1967), Coward's last play, comedy in three acts, fp Bath, 1985

Revues, musicals, operetta and songs

London Calling! (1922, 1923), revue in collaboration with Ronald Jeans

On With the Dance (1924, 1925), revue

This Year of Grace (1927, 1928), revue, originally Charles B. Cochran's 1928 Revue

Bitter Sweet (1928, 1929), operetta

Words and Music (1932), revue

Conversation Piece (1933), comedy with music

Operette (1937), musical play

Set to Music (1939), revue (a Broadway rewrite of Words and Music)

Sigh No More (1945), revue

Pacific 1860 (1946), musical romance

Ace of Clubs (1949), musical play

After the Ball (1953), musical based on Lady Windermere's Fan

Sail Away (1959–61), musical comedy

The Girl Who Came to Supper (1963), musical comedy based on The Sleeping Prince

Oh, Coward! (1972) revue

Cowardy Custard (1972) revue

Songs

Coward wrote more than three hundred songs. The Noël Coward Society's website, drawing on performing statistics from the publishers and the Performing Rights Society, names "Mad About the Boy" (from Words and Music) as Coward's most popular song, followed, in order, by:

"I'll See You Again" (Bitter Sweet)

"Mad Dogs and Englishmen" (Words and Music)

"If Love Were All" (Bitter Sweet)

"Someday I'll Find You" (Private Lives)

"I'll Follow My Secret Heart" (Conversation Piece)

"London Pride" (1941)

"A Room With a View" (This Year of Grace)

"Mrs Worthington" (1934)

"Poor Little Rich Girl" (On With the Dance)

"The Stately Homes of England" (Operette)

In the society's second tier of favourites are:

"The Party's Over Now" (Words and Music)

"Dearest Love" (Operette)

"Dear Little Café" (Bitter Sweet)

"Parisian Pierrot" (London Calling!)

"Men About Town" (Tonight at 8:30)

"Twentieth Century Blues" (Cavalcade)

"Uncle Harry" (Pacific 1860)

"Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans" (1943)

"There Are Bad Times Just Around the Corner" (Globe Review)

"Dance, Little Lady" (This Year of Grace)

"Has Anybody Seen Our Ship?" (Tonight at 8:30)

"I Went to a Marvellous Party" (Set to Music)

"Nina" (Sigh No More)

"A Bar on the Piccola Marina" (1954)

"Why Must the Show Go On?" (Together With Music)

"Sail Away" (Ace of Clubs and Sail Away)

"Zigeuner" (Bitter Sweet) He recalled: "I was born into a generation that still took light music seriously. The lyrics and melodies of Gilbert and Sullivan were hummed and strummed into my consciousness at an early age. My father sang them, my mother played them... my aunts and uncles, who were legion, sang them singly and in unison at the slightest provocation." His colleague Terence Rattigan wrote that as a lyricist Coward was "the best of his kind since W. S. Gilbert."

Films

Coward's plays adapted for film include:

Easy Virtue (1928; remade, 2008)

Private Lives, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1931)

Bitter Sweet, British & Dominion (1933)

Design for Living, Paramount (1933)

Cavalcade, Twentieth Century-Fox (1933)

Tonight Is Ours (based on the play The Queen Was in the Parlour), Paramount (1933)

Bitter Sweet, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1940)

We Were Dancing (based on Tonight at 8:30), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1942)

This Happy Breed, Universal (1944)

Brief Encounter (based on Still Life), Cineguild (1945)

The Astonished Heart, Universal (1950)

Tonight at Eight-Thirty (based on Ways and Means, Red Peppers, and Fumed Oak), British Film Makers (1953)

Pretty Polly (A Matter of Innocence) (based on his short story Pretty Polly Barlow), Universal (1967)

Relative Values (2000)

Films in which he participated as actor, screenwriter, director or producer are as follows:

Hearts of the World (1918, uncredited)

Across the Continent (1922, uncredited)

The Scoundrel (1935)

In Which We Serve (1942, also director/screenwriter)

This Happy Breed (1944, as producer)

Blithe Spirit (1945, as screenwriter)

Brief Encounter (1945) screenwriter

The Astonished Heart (1950)

Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)

Our Man in Havana (1959)

Surprise Package (1960)

Paris, When It Sizzles (1964)

Present Laughter (1964, TV)

The Vortex (1964, TV)

Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)

Androcles and the Lion (1967, TV)

Boom! (1968)

The Italian Job (1969)

Notes

References

Castle, Charles. Noël, W. H. Allen, London, 1972. ISBN 0-491-00534-2.

Coward, Noël. Plays, Five. Introduction by Sheridan Morley. Methuen, 1994. ISBN 0-413-51740-3

Coward, Noël. Present Indicative. Autobiography to 1931. Heinemann, 1937. Methuen reissue, 2004 ISBN 978-0-413-77413-2

Day, Barry (ed). The Letters of Noël Coward. Methuen, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7136-8578-7.

Hoare, Philip. Noël Coward, A Biography. Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995. ISBN 1-85619-265-2.

Kaplan, Joel and Sheila Stowel. Look Back in Pleasure: Noël Coward Reconsidered. Methuen, 2000. ISBN 0-413-75500-2.

Lahr, John. Coward the Playwright, Methuen, London, 1982. ISBN 0-413-48050-X.

Lesley, Cole. The Life of Noël Coward. Cape, 1976. ISBN 0-224-01288-6.

Mander, Raymond and Joe Mitchenson. Theatrical Companion to Coward. Updated by Barry Day and Sheridan Morley. Oberon, 2000. ISBN 1-84002-054-7.

Morley, Sheridan. A Talent to Amuse. Heinemann 1969/Penguin Books, London, 1974. ISBN 0-14-003863-9.

Payn, Graham and Sheridan Morley (eds.) The Noël Coward Diaries (1941–1969); Methuen, 1982. ISBN 0-297-78142-1.

Payn, Graham. My Life with Noël Coward, Applause Books, 1994. ISBN 1-55783-190-4.

Richards, Dick. The Wit of Noël Coward, Sphere Books, 1970. ISBN 0722136765

Tynan, Kenneth. Tynan on Theatre, Penguin Books, London, 1964. OCLC 949598

Further reading

Braybrooke, Patrick. The Amazing Mr Noel Coward. Denis Archer, 1933.

Coward, Noël. Future Indefinite. Second volume of autobiography, World War II. Heinemann, 1954.

Coward, Noël. Middle East Diary. A diary of a wartime tour to entertain the troops "from Gib to Baghdad". Heinemann, 1944.

Coward, Noël. Past Conditional. Third volume (unfinished) of autobiography. Heinemann, 1986. ISBN 0-413-60660-0

Coward, Noël. The Complete Stories. Methuen Paperback Original, 1985. ISBN 0-413-59970-1.

Day, Barry (ed). Noël Coward: The Complete Lyrics. Methuen, 1998. ISBN 0-413-73230-4.

Fisher, Clive. Noël Coward. Weidenfeld, 1992. ISBN 0-297-81180-0.

Payn, Graham and Martin Tickner (eds.) Noël Coward: Collected Verse. Methuen, 1984, corrected edition 1987. ISBN 0-413-55150-4.

Wynne-Tyson, Jon. Finding the Words: A Publishing Life, Michael Russell Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-85955-287-X.

External links

Works (plain text and HTML)

Works by Noël Coward at Internet Archive (audio, video, text)

Rare videos of Noël Coward performing in 1955

Noël Coward Collection in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin

Audio (.ram files) of a 1969 interview by Patrick Garland for the BBC

Portals

The Noël Coward Society

Noël Coward 101 at the Cyber Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre, Television and Film

Coward timeline and photos of Coward

Noel Coward plays on radio

Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward Exhibition at the Museum of Performance & Design, April 17 – August 29, 2009

Misc

Category:1899 births Category:1973 deaths Category:Academy Honorary Award recipients Category:Actors awarded British knighthoods Category:Artists' Rifles soldiers Category:British expatriates in Jamaica Category:Cabaret singers Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in Jamaica Category:Deaths from heart failure Category:English dramatists and playwrights Category:English film actors Category:English lyricists Category:English musical theatre composers Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:Gay actors Category:LGBT musicians from the United Kingdom Category:Gay writers Category:Alumni of the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts Category:Knights Bachelor Category:LGBT composers Category:LGBT directors Category:LGBT people from England Category:LGBT screenwriters Category:LGBT writers from the United Kingdom Category:MI5 personnel Category:People from Teddington Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:World War II spies

Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (May 12, 1842August 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, Massenet's 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 operas of his such as Thaïs and Esclarmonde have undergone periodic revivals.

Biography

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 the age of 11 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 Louise-Constance "Ninon" de Gressy, the daughter of a wealthy lady named Mme Sainte-Marie. Ninon became Massenet's wife in 1866.

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, d'Indy (who afterwards turned against him), and 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 Ninon helped him a great deal in securing commissions and garnering fame in important social circles.

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 worked as professor of composition at the Paris Conservatory where his pupils included André Bloch, Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Reynaldo Hahn, Georges Enesco, 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).

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.

The only known recording by Massenet is a scene from Sapho where he accompanies the soprano Georgette Leblanc on the piano; never published, it is in the Historical Sound Recordings collection of Yale University.

Compositions

, near Fontainebleau.]]

Operas

See List of operas by Massenet

Oratorios and cantatas

David Rizzio - 1863

Marie-Magdeleine - 1873

Ève - 1875

Narcisse - 1877

La Vierge - 1880

Biblis - 1886

La Terre Promise - 1900

Ballets

Le carillon - 1892

Cigale - 1904

Espada - 1908

L'histoire de Manon (arr. Leighton Lucas) - 1974

Orchestral compositions

Première suite d'orchestre - 1867

Scènes hongroises - 1870

Scènes pittoresques - 1874

Scènes dramatiques - 1875

Scènes napolitaines - 1876

Scènes de féerie - 1881

Scènes alsaciennes - 1882

Fantasy for cello and orchestra - 1897

Piano Concerto - 1903

Ouverture de concert

Overture to Racine's Phèdre

Sarabande espagnole

Incidental music

Les érinnyes (containing the famous Élégie) - 1873

Un drame sous Philippe II - 1875

La vie de bohème - 1876

L'Hetman - 1877

Notre-Dame de Paris - 1879

Michel Strogoff - 1880

Nana-Sahin - 1883

Théodora - 1884

Le crocodile - 1900

Phèdre - 1900

Le grillon du foyer - 1904

Le manteau du roi - 1907

Perce-Beige et les sept gnomes - 1909

Jérusalem - 1914

Song collections and cycles

Poëme d'Avril (Armand Silvestre), Op. 14, songs, declaimed poems and piano solos, c.1866, published 1868

Poëme pastoral (Florian and Armand Silvestre), baritone, 3 female voices, piano, 1870–72, published 1872

Chansons des bois d'Amaranthe (M. Legrand, after Redwitz), four solo voices (SATB) and piano, 1900, published 1901

Songs

À Colombine (Serenade d’Arlequin) (Louis Gallet)

À la trépassée (Armand Silvestre)

À la Zuecca (Alfred de Musset)

À Mignonne (Gustave Chouquet)

Adieu (Complainte) (Armand Silvestre)

Adieux (Gilbert)

Anniversaire (Armand Silvestre)

Aubade (Gabriel Prévost)

Automne (Paul Collin)

Berceuse (Gustave Chouquet)

Bonne nuit! (Camille Distel)

Ce que disent les cloches (Jean de la Vingtrie)

C'est l'amour (Victor Hugo)

Chant provençal (Michel Carré)

Crépuscule (Armand Silvestre)

Dans l'air plein de fils de soie (Armand Silvestre)

Declaration (Gustave Chouquet)

Élégie (Louis Gallet)

Epitaphe (Armand Silvestre)

Être aimé (Jules Massenet after Victor Hugo)

Guitare (Victor Hugo)

La mort de la cigale (Maurice Fauré)

La veillée du Petit Jésus (André (Theuriet)

La vie d'une rose, Op. 12, No. 3 (Jules Ruelle)

L'air du soir emportati (Armand Silvestre)

L'âme des oiseau (Elena Vacarescu)

Le portrait d'une enfant, Op. 12, No. 4 (Pierre de Ronsard)

Le sais-tu? (Stéphan Bordèse)

Le sentier perdu (Paul de Choudens)

Le verger (Camille Distel)

Les alcyons (Joseph Antoine Autran)

Les bois de pins (Camille Distel)

Les enfants

Les femmes de Magdala (Louis Gallet)

Les mains (Noel Bazan)

Les oiselets (Jacques Normand)

L'esclave, Op. 12, No. 1 (Théophile Gautier)

Lève-toi (Armand Silvestre)

Loin de moi ta lèvre Qui Ment (Jean Aicard)

Madrigal (Armand Silvestre)

Musette (Jean Pierre Claris de Florian)

Narcisse à la fontaine (Paul Collin)

Néére (Michel Carré)

Nouvelle chanson sur un vieil air (Victor Hugo)

Nuit d'Espagne (Louis Gallet)

Ouvre tes yeux bleus (Paul Robiquet)

Pensée d'automne (Armand Silvestre)

Pour qu'à l'espérance (Armand Silvestre)

Prélude (Armand Silvestre)

Première danse (Jacques Clary Jean Normand)

Puisqu’elle a pris ma vie (Paul Robiquet)

Que l'heure est donc brève (Armand Silvestre)

Rêvons, c'est l'heure (Paul Verlaine)

Riez-vous (Armand Silvestre)

Rondel de la belle au bois (Julien Gruaz)

Roses d’Octobre (Paul Collin)

Sérénade (Molière)

Sérénade aux mariés, Op. 12, No. 2 (Jules Ruelle)

Sérénade de Zanetto (François Coppée) *Sérénade du passant (François Coppée)

Si tu veux, Mignonne (Abbé Claude Georges Boyer)

Soir de rêve (Antonin Lugnier)

Soleil couchant (Victor Hugo)

Sonnet (Georges Pradel)

Sonnet matinal (Armand Silvestre)

Sonnet payen (Armand Silvestre)

Souhait (Jacques Normand)

Sous les branches (Armand Silvestre)

Souvenez-vous, Vierge Marie! (Georges Boyer)

Souvenir de Venise (Alfred de Musset)

Stances (Gilbert)

Sur la source (Armand Silvestre)

Un adieu (Armand Silvestre)

Un souffle de parfums (Armand Silvestre)

Voici que les grans lys (Armand Silvestre)

Voix suprême (Antoinette Lafaix-Gontié)

Vous aimerez demain (Armand Silvestre)

Other

Miscellaneous piano pieces

Massenet completed and orchestrated Léo Delibes' unfinished opera Kassya.

Prelude in C major for organ.

Media

Notes

References

Full text of My recollections at archive.org

External links

for cello and orchestra.

Masters of French Music: Jules Massenet by Arthur Hervey

[ All Music biographical notes on Massenet (in English)]

Extensive biography with list of references and compositions (in French)

Scores and Vocal Scores on Indiana University Bloomington Libraries:

Werther: Full orchestral score, French text only

Manon: Full orchestral score, French text only

Don Quichotte: Vocal score (piano reduction), French and English libretto

Category:1842 births Category:1912 deaths Category:People from Saint-Étienne Category:Romantic composers Category:Opera composers Category:French composers Category:Ballet composers Category:Prix de Rome for composition Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society Category:Grand Officiers of the Légion d'honneur