Classical music This article is more than 7 years oldÉtienne Méhul: Romantic vanguard who deserves a fresh revolution
This article is more than 7 years oldThomas Beecham devoted himself to discovering the lost works of the French composer, a favourite of Napoleon, and as instrumental as Beethoven. It’s time we did the same
Having come into some money, young Thomas Beecham went on a study trip to Paris. Here he discovered many of the neglected composers he went on to conduct in later life – Grétry, Cherubini, Hérold and Étienne Méhul. It was the start of a lifelong interest in the latter. “It took me several months to compile a complete set of [Méhul’s] operas,” he wrote later in his autobiography A Mingled Chime. As there are more than 30 of them, this was an enormous undertaking, completed by hiring his own team of copyists.
Beecham’s own recordings of the French composer’s music would include a powerful, brooding account of his Timoléon overture, composed during the French revolution, and a handful of opera overtures that are still performed today, especially his orchestral hunting piece, La Chasse du jeune Henri.
Born in 1763, halfway between Beethoven and Mozart’s birth-years, Méhul became the leading French composer under the revolution and empire. He was a favourite of Napoleon’s, who gave him state commissions for cantatas, and in 1794 Méhul had a major success: commissioned by the ruling National Convention, he composed a rousing followup to La Marseillaise, entitled Chant du Départ. It has never been forgotten in France, and it rather suggests that Méhul could have had a different kind of career, had he chosen to be “popular”.
Instead he carved out a place for himself in France’s musical landscape with a series of operas set in passionate and troubled situations. His music’s energy and unexpected harmonies was suited to obsessive characters such as the villainous Coradin in Euphrosine or the doomed couple Mélidore and Phrosine. His comic opera Joseph won him success throughout Europe (among those who conducted performances are Weber, Mahler and Richard Strauss), and a new production was mounted in Paris in 1989 as part of the French revolution’s bicentennial celebrations.
But Méhul also was a talented symphonist.
When Robert Schumann first heard his passionate G minor symphony, he was convinced that either Beethoven must have cribbed from Méhul, or the other way round. Like Beethoven in his Fifth Symphony, Méhul put a ghostly pizzicato dance in the third movement of his. Also, the “victory” rhythm from the opening of the Fifth was echoed in the finale of the French work, or so Schumann thought. Had one influenced the other? They certainly knew of each other, and Beethoven undoubtedly heard the Frenchman’s operas in Vienna, where French dramatic opera (with spoken dialogue, as in Fidelio) was almost daily fare. And in Paris, we know that Méhul’s interest in symphonies was kickstarted by hearing Beethoven’s first two symphonies at the Conservatoire concerts.
Several decades after Beecham’s discoveries, in the early 1970s, a surprise recording made its way into my hands from East Berlin: it was Méhul’s G minor symphony, conducted by Kurt Masur. It proved that Méhul was more than an interesting forgotten composer. There was energy, rhythm, inspiration, soulful orchestration. Not for nothing had his music been labelled Romantic, and I was able to create the first modern edition of the score.
Two of his symphonies were still lost, but these too came miraculously to light, discovered by chance in the collection of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. Thus the complete set of four were recorded for the first time by Michel Swierczewski, in time for the Revolution bicentennial celebrations in 1989.
But why do we hear so little of his works today? Some say he was as important as Beethoven in dragging music kicking and screaming into the Romantic age. His legacy should be recognised, not least for his musical experimentation. It was acknowledged by Brahms, who, like Méhul did in his opera Uthal, banished all violins from his Second Serenade. Wagner’s Parsifal, too, must have had its musical origins in Méhul’s Joseph. And Berlioz’s The Childhood of Christ, especially The Shepherds’ Farewell, surely owes a debt to Méhul’s legacy of a romanticised Old Testament.
His music deserves to be heard. Maybe it’s time to take a leaf from Beecham’s book, and start an orchestra and conduct them ourselves.
- The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s concert, Méhul, the first Romantic, is at St John’s Smith Square, London, on 10 February.
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