François Francoeur
Encyclopedia
François Francœur was a French
composer
and violin
ist.
, the son of Joseph Francœur, a basse de violon player and member of the 24 violons du roy
. Francœur was instructed in music by his father and joined the Académie Royale de Musique
as a violinist at age 15. After travel and performances in the principal European culture centres, he returned to Paris as a member of the Concert Spirituel
. Francœur was appointed to the 24 violons du roy in 1730 and Maître de musique (music instructor) to the Opera in 1739.
In 1744, he and François Rebel
, his lifelong colleague and friend, were appointed inspecteurs musicaux (music directors) of the Paris Opera—centre of the French music world—becoming responsible for all phases of its management in 1757. Rebel and Francœur faced numerous challenges in their joint roles, including a large financial deficit, lack of discipline, as well as handling contentious disagreements between traditionalists who favored French operatic tragedies and its mythological themes versus partisans of Italian opera's simpler lyricism and contemporary subjects matter, known as the Querelle des Bouffons.
King Louis XV appointed Francœur as his Music Master in 1760, ennobling Rebel in the same year and Francœur himself in May 1764. Disaster struck when the Paris Opera by consumed in flames on 6 April 1763, and the two directors were forced to resign in 1767 in its aftermath. However, Louis asked Rebel to return to the Opéra as Administrateur général in 1772, a position he held to shortly before his death three years later. Francœur resigned himself from the music world, living in retirement until his own death in 1787 at age 89. He was thus spared the fate of his nephew, Louis-Joseph Francœur, Master of the King's Chamber music and orchestra director, who was imprisoned during the French Revolution
until the fall of Robespierre
in 1794.
s, 10 opera
s (including one about the life of Skanderbeg
) and some ballet
s, created jointly with François Rebel. Thus he is often quoted as a relatively rare case of collaboration in musical composition
. A sicilienne and rigaudon were initially attributed to him, in a publication by Fritz Kreisler
, but were eventually revealed to be the work of Kreisler himself.
as well as aesthetic reasons. In the transition from ages relatively little interested in earlier music (19th and early 20th Century) to an age where a professional specialization in "ancient music
" has arisen, composers like Francœur, who had relatively modest instrumental production or did not in other ways attract special professional attention, have often remained in obscurity. It is easy to see from Francœur's inventiveness and infectious rhythmic drive why he was esteemed in his lifetime. Had Louis XVI
had him as a music instructor earlier in his life instead of, as biographers suggest, a musical mediocrity who chilled his interest in the violin, he might have become a royal composer like Frederick the Great of Prussia
.
Francœur is sometimes categorised amongst the "Classical-era" composers who avoided the "classical style of Haydn
and Mozart
". The surviving music of Francœur (supposedly composed close to 1773), though contemporary with that of Haydn and Mozart, shows relatively few of the courtly mannerisms that abound in classical music directly sponsored by royalty. Rather, it has more of an "advanced Rococo
" character, spicing strings with creative use of wind instruments. This kind of music seems to have been especially favoured by the rising bourgeoisie and lesser aristocracy in mercantile centres like London
, Hamburg
, Frankfurt
as well as Paris, who provided an increasing market for musical composition.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
ist.
Biography
He was born in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, the son of Joseph Francœur, a basse de violon player and member of the 24 violons du roy
Les Vingt-quatre Violons du Roi
The Vingt-quatre Violons du Roy were a famous five-part string orchestra at the French royal court, existing from 1626 to 1761.-History:...
. Francœur was instructed in music by his father and joined the Académie Royale de Musique
Académie Royale de Musique
The Salle Le Peletier was the home of the Paris Opera from 1821 until the building was destroyed by fire in 1873. The theatre was designed and constructed by the architect François Debret on the site of the former Hôtel de Choiseul...
as a violinist at age 15. After travel and performances in the principal European culture centres, he returned to Paris as a member of the Concert Spirituel
Concert Spirituel
The Concert Spirituel was one of the first public concert series in existence. The concerts began in Paris in 1725 and ended in 1790; later, concerts or series of concerts of the same name occurred in Paris, Vienna, London and elsewhere...
. Francœur was appointed to the 24 violons du roy in 1730 and Maître de musique (music instructor) to the Opera in 1739.
In 1744, he and François Rebel
François Rebel
François Rebel was a French composer of the Baroque era. Born in Paris, the son of the leading composer Jean-Féry Rebel, he was a child prodigy who became a violinist in the orchestra of the Paris Opera at the age of 13...
, his lifelong colleague and friend, were appointed inspecteurs musicaux (music directors) of the Paris Opera—centre of the French music world—becoming responsible for all phases of its management in 1757. Rebel and Francœur faced numerous challenges in their joint roles, including a large financial deficit, lack of discipline, as well as handling contentious disagreements between traditionalists who favored French operatic tragedies and its mythological themes versus partisans of Italian opera's simpler lyricism and contemporary subjects matter, known as the Querelle des Bouffons.
King Louis XV appointed Francœur as his Music Master in 1760, ennobling Rebel in the same year and Francœur himself in May 1764. Disaster struck when the Paris Opera by consumed in flames on 6 April 1763, and the two directors were forced to resign in 1767 in its aftermath. However, Louis asked Rebel to return to the Opéra as Administrateur général in 1772, a position he held to shortly before his death three years later. Francœur resigned himself from the music world, living in retirement until his own death in 1787 at age 89. He was thus spared the fate of his nephew, Louis-Joseph Francœur, Master of the King's Chamber music and orchestra director, who was imprisoned during the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
until the fall of Robespierre
Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre is one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution. He largely dominated the Committee of Public Safety and was instrumental in the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror, which ended with his...
in 1794.
Compositions
His surviving compositions, published in Propylaen der Musik, V. 2 (1989), include two books of violin sonataViolin sonata
A violin sonata is a musical composition for violin, which is nearly always accompanied by a piano or other keyboard instrument, or by figured bass in the Baroque period.-A:*Ella Adayevskaya**Sonata Greca for Violin or Clarinet and Piano...
s, 10 opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s (including one about the life of Skanderbeg
Skanderbeg
George Kastrioti Skanderbeg or Gjergj Kastrioti Skënderbeu , widely known as Skanderbeg , was a 15th-century Albanian lord. He was appointed as the governor of the Sanjak of Dibra by the Ottomans in 1440...
) and some ballet
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
s, created jointly with François Rebel. Thus he is often quoted as a relatively rare case of collaboration in musical composition
Classical music written in collaboration
In classical music, it is relatively rare for a work to be written in collaboration by multiple composers. This contrasts with popular music, where it is common for more than one person to contribute to the music for a song...
. A sicilienne and rigaudon were initially attributed to him, in a publication by Fritz Kreisler
Fritz Kreisler
Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born violinist and composer. One of the most famous violin masters of his or any other day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately...
, but were eventually revealed to be the work of Kreisler himself.
Recordings
Recordings of Francœur's works include a noteworthy LP, Music for the Wedding of the Count d'Artois, on the Music Heritage label, and the Cypres CD 1626 Suites de Simphonies, including what may be the same set of works by Francœur. Hugo Reyne and La Simphonie Du Marais also recorded the Symphonies pour le Festin Royal du Comte d'Artois. There is a 2003 recording of Francœur's Sonata in E for Cello and Piano on Delos by Zuill Bailey which shows off this composer to advantage. The opera Pirame et Thisbe, a collaborative work with Rebel, was released in 2008, and Zélindor, Roi des Sylphes and Le Trophée were released in 2009.Musicological and stylistic notes
Especial emphasis is placed on the above recordings for musicologicalMusicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
as well as aesthetic reasons. In the transition from ages relatively little interested in earlier music (19th and early 20th Century) to an age where a professional specialization in "ancient music
Early music
Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...
" has arisen, composers like Francœur, who had relatively modest instrumental production or did not in other ways attract special professional attention, have often remained in obscurity. It is easy to see from Francœur's inventiveness and infectious rhythmic drive why he was esteemed in his lifetime. Had Louis XVI
Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....
had him as a music instructor earlier in his life instead of, as biographers suggest, a musical mediocrity who chilled his interest in the violin, he might have become a royal composer like Frederick the Great of Prussia
Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
.
Francœur is sometimes categorised amongst the "Classical-era" composers who avoided the "classical style of Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
and Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
". The surviving music of Francœur (supposedly composed close to 1773), though contemporary with that of Haydn and Mozart, shows relatively few of the courtly mannerisms that abound in classical music directly sponsored by royalty. Rather, it has more of an "advanced Rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...
" character, spicing strings with creative use of wind instruments. This kind of music seems to have been especially favoured by the rising bourgeoisie and lesser aristocracy in mercantile centres like London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
as well as Paris, who provided an increasing market for musical composition.
Operas (with François Rebel)
- Pyrame et Thisbé, tragédie en musique (1726)
- Tarsis et Zélie, tragédie en musique (1728)
- Scanderberg, tragédie en musique (1735), 33 performances (see: SkanderbegSkanderbeg (disambiguation)Skanderbeg may refer to:- People :* Skanderbeg - George Kastrioti Skanderbeg , a 15th century Albanian lord....
) - Le ballet de la paix, ballet héroïque (1738)
- Les Augustales, divertissement (1744)
- Zélindor, roi des sylphes, divertissement (1745)
- Le trophée, divertissement (1745)
- La félicité, ballet héroïque (1746)
- Ismène, pastorale héroïquePastorale héroïquePastorale héroïque was a type of ballet héroïque, a form of the opéra-ballet genre of French Baroque opera. The first work to bear the name was Jean-Baptiste Lully's final completed opera Acis et Galatée , although musical works on pastoral themes had already appeared on the French stage...
(1747) - Le prince de Noisy, ballet héroïque in 3 acts, libretto by Charles-Antoine Leclerc de La Bruère, f.p. Versailles, Théâtre des petits appartements, (1749)
- Les génies tutélaires divertissement (1751)
Instrumental music
- Premier Livre de sonates à violon seul et basse continue (1720)
- Deuxième Livre de sonates à violon seul et basse continue (1730)
- Symphonies pour le festin royal du comte d'Artois (1773)
- La symphonie du Marais