HALÉVY, Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie.
Autograph musical quotation, signed.
Paris, 15 May 1846.
Oblong 8vo (160 x 240 mm), pp. [1], on a leaf evidently cut out of an album, 22 bars of music on three staves, marked ‘Scherzando’; some light soiling, but in very good condition.
Fromental Halévy (1799–1862) showed musical promise at an early age and entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1810, becoming a pupil of Cherubini for composition the following year. In 1827 he became professor of harmony and accompaniment there, in 1833 of counterpoint and fugue, and in 1840 of composition. His pupils included Gounod, Massé, Deldevez, Bizet, Lecocq and Saint-Saëns.
The present extensive quotation is from one of Halévy’s hugely popular comic operas, Les mousquetaires de la reine, set in Poitiers during the reign of Louis XIII, one month before the siege of La Rochelle. It had its première at the salle Favart of the Opéra-Comique on 3 February 1846.
‘Halévy’s music was fluent and professional. The style, like Meyerbeer’s, owed much to Italian music and also to Boieldieu and Auber. His works display most of the mannerisms associated with 19th-century grand opera, both French and Italian: block choruses without counterpoint, triple metres, dotted rhythms, large ensembles built out of a single dramatic moment, and fondness for local colour, especially in divertissements’ (Grove online).
