A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Batiste, Antoine-Edouard

BATISTE, Antoine-Edouard, organist and professor of music, born in Paris Mar. 28, 1820, died suddenly there Nov. 9, 1876, was a son of the eminent comedian Batiste, whose memory is still fresh in the annals of the Comédie Française, and uncle of Léo Delibes, He was one of the pages in the chapel of Charles X., but after 1830 he was sent to the Conservatoire, where he went through a course of solfeggio, harmony, organ, counterpoint and fugue. As a student he was most successful, carrying off the first prizes in these studies, and in 1840, as a pupil of Halévy's, obtaining the second Prix de Rome. In 1836, before he had finished his course at the Conservatoire, he had been appointed deputy professor of the solfeggio class; after which he was successively appointed professor of the male choral class, of the joint singing class (suppressed in 1870), and of the solfeggio class for mixed voices. He also instituted an evening choral class at the Conservatoire. In Oct. 1872 he took a class for harmony and accompaniment for women. These professorial duties did not prevent him from pursuing his organ studies, and after having held from 1842 to 1854 the post of organist at St. Nicolas des Champs, he was given a similar post at St. Eustache, which he filled until his death, with so much ability that in consideration of his long tenure of office the curé was allowed to celebrate his funeral obsequies at St. Eustache, though Batiste did not reside in the parish. A musician of severe and unerring taste, Batiste was one of the most noted organists of our time, but his compositions for the organ were far from equalling his talents as professor and executant. He will be chiefly remembered by his educational works, and particularly by his Petit Solfège Harmonique, an introduction to the Solfeggio and method of the Conservatoire, by his diagrams for reading music, and above all, by his accompaniments for organ or piano written on the figured basses of celebrated solfeggi by Cherubini, Catel, Gossec, and other masters of that date, entitled Solfèges du Conservatoire; in short, he was a hard worker, wholly devoted to his pupils and to his art.

[ A. J. ]