It’s Bastille Day. A French toast for breakfast, and a nod to two of France’s greatest composers of the Revolutionary Era.
On top of the usual burden of trying to cobble together a living as working musicians, both Étienne-Nicolas Méhul (1763-1817) and Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842) bore the additional stress of having to navigate an incendiary political environment.
When Méhul’s opera “Adrien” was banned, he quickly figured out which side his baguette was buttered on and began writing propaganda pieces and patriotic songs. Vive la France! He was rewarded by being the first composer named to the newly-established Institute de France in 1795. He was also installed as an inspector at the Paris Conservatory.
Allegedly, he was one of the favorite composers of Napoleon, with whom he was on friendly terms. He became one of the first recipients of Napoleon’s Légion d’honneur. According to musicologist and Berlioz biographer David Cairns, Méhul was also the first composer to be classified as “Romantic.”
Cherubini was born in Florence. He arrived in France in 1785. There, he was introduced to Marie Antoinette and, of necessity, as a musician, had many interactions with the aristocracy – which likely caused sweat to bead on his forehead in 1789.
Following the Revolution, Cherubini (born Maria Luigi Carlo Zenobio Salvatore Cherubini) adopted the French version of his name (Marie-Louis-Charles-Zénobi-Salvador Cherubini). It was during this period that his music began to really take flight. His works became more adventurous, more dynamic, more heroic. It’s not for no reason that Beethoven claimed him as an influence. His rescue opera “Lodoiska” served as a model for Beethoven’s “Fidelio.” Beethoven is also said to have found inspiration in Cherubini for the writing of his Fifth Symphony.
Following the Revolution, Cherubini took great care to play down his former aristocratic connections and cleave to the prevailing government. Every year for over a decade, he was mindful of composing at least one overtly patriotic work.
While Napoleon is said to have disliked Cherubini’s music, finding it “too complex,” he did appoint him director of music in Vienna. Perhaps Cherubini’s best-known work, the comic opera “Les deux journée” (“The Two Days”), was written in an intentionally simplified style and became an enormous hit. Beethoven kept Cherubini’s score on his desk at the time he was engaged in the writing of “Fidelio.” The incident upon which the opera is based allegedly occurred during the time of the Revolution, but again, treading lightly, Cherubini and his librettist, Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, erred on the side of caution, setting the action in a safely remote 1647.
Gradually, as Cherubini’s operas began to fall out of fashion, he transitioned to writing church music. His Requiem in C minor, again, was particularly admired by Beethoven (also Schumann and Brahms).
In 1822, Cherubini became director of the Paris Conservatory. There he came into conflict with a young firebrand by the name of Hector Berlioz. Berlioz’s withering and amusing portrayal of Cherubini in his “Mémoires,” as a hidebound pedant, has colored the elder composer’s reputation to the present day, more indelibly than has any of Cherubini’s own music.
However, during his lifetime, the composer enjoyed fame and fortune and was the recipient of France’s highest and most prestigious honors.
Méhul, Symphony No. 3
Méhul, “Le chant du départ”
Cherubini, “Anacréon” Overture
Cherubini, “Hymn du Panthéon”
Berlioz’s arrangement of “La Marseillaise”
They kept their heads: Luigi Cherubini (left) and Étienne-Nicolas Méhul
