Nazareth charles gounod biography
- Charles Gounod was a French composer.
- Gounod's father, François Louis Gounod, a talented and highly esteemed painter, transmitted to him a love of color and a sensitiveness to artistic form.
- Charles-François Gounod usually known as Charles Gounod, was a French composer.
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Gounod, Charles François
1818-1893
Heredity did much for this eminent French composer. Gounod's father, François Louis Gounod, a talented and highly esteemed painter, transmitted to him a love of color and a sensitiveness to artistic form that expressed itself at one time in a desire to follow the same calling, but was diverted into another channel, more familiar through early training; for the elder Gounod died when Charles was a small boy, leaving the support of two sons to the highly gifted and cultivated mother, an accomplished musician, who continued to teach her husband's pupils in drawing, and also began giving music lessons.
The generally accepted date of Gounod's birth, 1818, has been disputed by an old friend and pupil of his mother, who states it must have been as early as 1811 or 1812. At the early age of two he exhibited a keen musical ear, and at eleven he was sent to the Lycee St. Louis to enter upon a course of general study. Here the chapelmaster, Monpou, discovered that the child had a good voice and could read at sight, and at once appointed him sopr
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Collection inventory
Biographical History
Charles François Gounod (1818-1893) was a French composer, conductor, and organist best known for his opera Faust.
Gounod was born in Paris in 1818. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1836 to study with Halévy and Le Sueur. Gounod's first opera, Sapho, came to fruition when Pauline Viardot promised to sing in the title role. Gounod went on to have a successful musical career, composing operas, oratorios, cantatas, church music, and other orchestral works.
Operatic Works | ||
| 1851 | Sapho | |
| 1854 | La Nonne sanglante | |
| 1858 | Le Médecin malgré lui | |
| 1859 | Faust | |
| 1860 | La Colombe | |
| Philémon et Baucis | ||
| 1862 | La Reine de Saba | |
| 1864 | Mireille | |
| 1867 | Roméo et Juliette | |
| 1877 | Cinq Mars | |
| 1878 | Polyeucte | |
| 1881 | Le Tribut de Zamora | |
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The Choral Singer’s Companion
Biography
Like Puccini, Gounod lost his father at age 5. His mother, a fine pianist, took care of her children by opening a piano studio, and gave Gounod his first lessons. Although she did not encourage his musical goals, she permitted Gounod to study composition privately with composer and theorist Antoine Reicha.
Gounod entered the Paris Conservatory at 18, where his teachers included composer and writer Jean-François Le Sueur and Fromental Halévy (composer of La juive). Weirdly, all of his teachers died within a year and a half of teaching Gounod....
On his third try, in 1839, Gounod won the prestigious Prix de Rome, which gave the winner three years in Rome (with Austria and Germany often thrown in as well). Other winners have included Berlioz, Bizet, and Lili Boulanger (the first woman); famously, Ravel never won (despite being much better than the competition).
While in Rome, Gounod heard Palestrina performed in the Sistine Chapel (sacred music and music on sacred themes remained important throughout his life), met Fanny Mend
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