considerable time. He was never in favour with Napoleon, for which some account by the emperor's liking for light Italian music, others, by his personal disinclination for Cherubini. He wrote, it is true, some odes and other occasional pieces for public festivals during the Bonaparte administration; but he appears to have had all the difficulties of the want of court countenance to prevent his theatrical prosperity. He spent much of the latter part of 1808 on a visit at Chimay, where he commenced his admired mass in F for three voices, which he completed at Paris the following year. This recurrence to ecclesiastical composition gave a new direction to his genius; and the many grand works of the same class—of which that just mentioned is to be dated as the first—that he produced during the latter half of his career, redound as much to his glory, and prove as decidedly his individuality, as anything he wrote. Some circumstances of special good fortune led to his being commissioned to compose a one-act Italian opera, "Pimmalione," to be performed before the emperor at the theatre in the Tuileries in November, 1809; and still in court favour, he wrote an ode for the imperial marriage in the following May. The opera of "Les Abencérages" was produced in 1813, but its first success was greatly qualified by the public grief for the calamities of Moscow. Cherubini was engaged by our Philharmonic Society in 1815, the third year of its existence, to write an overture, a symphony, and a vocal quartet for their concerts, and he came to London in the February of that year, to complete the commission, and to direct the performance of the works. His celebrity at this time as a composer in the classical style, was second to that of no contemporary, save only Beethoven; and the active energy of the young society whose inaugural concert had been opened with his overture to Anacreon, directed this application, as a measure for advancing the art for the furtherance of which they were associated. The result proved, however, that their estimate was erroneous of Cherubini's genius, the power of which was quite unfitted for concert composition; neither the overture nor the symphony was ever played after the first performance.
The Bourbon restoration made a complete change in the circumstances of our composer, if not in the consideration in which the world held him; he was appointed in 1816 surintendant de la musique du roi and master of the royal chapel; he was created chevalier of the legion of honour, and invested with the order of St. Michael; and these beams of royal grace were reflected by the public establishments, the Institut des Beaux Arts admitting him as a member, and the conservatoire, on its reorganization, appointing him chief professor of composition. From this time until the choir was dismembered in consequence of the revolution of 1830, Cherubini was indefatigable in his labours for the service of the chapel; he produced, in the year of his appointment his masterly requiem in C minor, and this was followed by a constant succession of masses and lesser pieces of ecclesiastical music. Of these may be specialized the mass in G, composed in 1819 for the coronation of Louis XVIII., and that in A, comprising an unusual number of pieces for the coronation of Charles X., which was completed in April, 1825. He was installed director of the conservatoire in 1822, and held this most important office till his death. The celebrated party led by Baillot, played in 1829 Cherubini's violin quartet in E flat, which was written fifteen years previously; the impression made by this induced the composer to adapt as a quartet the symphony produced in London, transposing the work from the key of D to C, and substituting a new adagio for a movement of the original. These quartets were published with a third, and dedicated to the eminent violinist to whose playing is due the good effect they made; their merit entitles them to no distinction, and it is scarcely to be supposed that his several subsequent works of the same class which have not been printed, can possess any greater interest, since these prove the author's entire want of feeling for the style, and aptitude for the form of instrumental chamber music. In 1831 Cherubini wrote a portion, in company with several others, of the opera of "La Marquise de Brinvilliers," and in 1833 produced "Ali Baba" at the academic, portions of which had been long composed, but which had been extended from three into four acts, and finally completed, immediately before its performance. The success of this work, remarkable for its merit, and still more so from the great age of its author, was but indifferent in Paris; the opera, however, excited the warmest admiration in Germany, where it was received with applause, and criticized with enthusiasm. The last composition of magnitude that Cherubini produced was his requiem for male voices, which he wrote in 1836, because a recent ecclesiastical regulation forbidding the employment of females in church choirs, had prevented the performance of his requiem in C minor at the funeral of Boieldieu, in the preceding year. This extraordinary effort of a man of seventy-six years proves the unabated activity of his mind, if not the unexhausted freshness of his invention; it was first performed at the obsequies of the composer. The last six years of Cherubini's life were constantly occupied in composition, and in the discharge of his duties at the conservatoire. A month before his death, Louis Philippe conferred on him the grand cross of the legion of honour, this being the only occasion on which that special distinction has been received by a musician; and the most rare testimony to the eminence of the master may be regarded as a symbol of the reverence of the whole artistic world.
Cherubini produced twenty-four complete operas, besides participating in the composition of four more with other authors, writing many additional pieces for introduction in standard works, and commencing several operas which he abandoned. He wrote eighteen masses besides his two requiems, and an enormous number of minor pieces for the church. He composed many odes and cantatas for the frequent public occasions of the first quarter of a century of his residence in Paris, and chamber music of almost every class, to a scarcely conceivable extent. His countless solfeggios and other exercises for the use of the conservatoire, are held in great estimation. In addition to these works of instruction, he was prominently concerned in writing the treatise on singing adopted by the same institution, and his course of counterpoint and fugue is one of the most perspicuous books upon the subject that exists. Of this last, however, it must be admitted, that admirable as are its rules, and lucid as is their explanation, there is not one of them which is not violated in some or other of the illustrative examples—a fact to induce the supposition that the principles may have been taken down from his oral teaching, and the examples supplied by one of his pupils who had a better memory for the rules than capacity for their application, and this at a period when the infirmity of advancing age disinclined the master for his strict revision of the work. Cherubini's position is unique in the history of his art; actively before the world as a composer for threescore years and ten, his career spans over more vicissitudes in the progress of music than that of any other man. Beginning to write in the same year with Cimarosa, and even earlier than Mozart, and being the contemporary of Verdi and of Wagner, he witnessed almost the origin of the two modern classic schools of France and Germany, their rise to perfection, and, if not their decline, the arrival of a time when criticism would usurp the place of creation, and when, to propound new rules for art, claims higher consideration than to act according to its ever unalterable principles. His artistic life was indeed a rainbow based upon the two extremes of modern music, which shed light and glory on the great art cycle over which it arched. Notwithstanding the great merit of some of his overtures, this appears to have been the result of momentary inspiration rather than of mastery in that style of writing; for he was manifestly deficient in the principles of construction, and instrumental music was therefore a department in which he was unqualified for success. Though evincing a rare power of dramatic effect, even the best of his operas are blemished by a disregard of the exigencies of the scene, which are often sacrificed to the technical development of the musical idea. His excellence consists in his unswerving earnestness of purpose, in the individuality of his manner, in the vigour of his ideas, in the fluency of his melody, and in the purity of his harmony. His personal manners appear to have been harsh and repulsive to strangers, but to have grown so cordial with familiarity, as to have bound to him in inseparable friendship all who approached near enough to him to experience his amiable qualities. Foremost in the list of his friends was M. Halévy, who witnessed his dying moments. A singular proof of the orderly precision of mind which eminently characterizes his scores, is an accurate chronological catalogue in his own writing of everything he composed from 1773 to 1839, by which interesting document the chief facts of the present notice have been verified. In conclusion, his powerfully beneficial influence upon music in France is proved by his having produced as pupils the following—the most eminent musicians of that country of the present century—Boieldieu, Auber, Carafa, Halévy, and Berton.—G. A. M.
