Marc Charles Constant Bénézit (; 23 November 1815 – 10 July 1900) was a French musician, writer, and music teacher.

Biography

Bénézit was born in 1819 in

Rennes Rennes (; ; Gallo language, Gallo: ''Resnn''; ) is a city in the east of Brittany in Northwestern France at the confluence of the rivers Ille and Vilaine. Rennes is the prefecture of the Brittany (administrative region), Brittany Regions of F ...

Ille-et-Vilaine Ille-et-Vilaine (; Gallo language, Gallo: ''Ill-e-Vilaenn'', ) is a departments of France, department of France, located in the regions of France, region of Brittany (administrative region), Brittany in the northwest of the country. It is named a ...

. He was a friend and publishing collaborator in

Brittany Brittany ( ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the north-west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica in Roman Gaul. It became an Kingdom of Brittany, independent kingdom and then a Duch ...

of the young

Leconte de Lisle Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle (; 22 October 1818 – 17 July 1894) was a French poet of the Parnassian movement. He is traditionally known by his surname only, Leconte de Lisle. Biography Leconte de Lisle was born on the French overseas i ...

, two years his junior, and the humourist M. Mille in Brittany. He later wrote the musical ''Jacquerie''. Leconte's correspondence contains twelve letters to Charles, mainly from 1845 to 1847. With Leconte de Lisle's encouragement, M. Mille wrote the comic text and Charles Bénézit the music for two vaudevilles, ''Les Mémoires d'une puce de qualité (une puce de Napoléon Ier!)'' and ''L'Orphelin, roman musical''. Later he became a close friend of

Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo, vicomte Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romanticism, Romantic author, poet, essayist, playwright, journalist, human rights activist and politician. His most famous works are the novels ''The Hunchbac ...

. When

Napoléon III Napoleon III (Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was President of France from 1848 to 1852 and then Emperor of the French from 1852 until his deposition in 1870. He was the first president, second emperor, and last ...

seized power in 1851, many French exiled to

Jersey Jersey ( ; ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey, is an autonomous and self-governing island territory of the British Islands. Although as a British Crown Dependency it is not a sovereign state, it has its own distinguishing civil and gov ...

; Charles and his family, marked as being "from France" were recorded in the Jersey census in 1851, and still in the 1861 and 1871 censuses. Victor Hugo had gone first to Brussels, but in 1855 joined other exiles in Jersey. Bénézit became close and permanent friends with Hugo and maintained the friendship after Hugo returned to France in 1870. In 1840, he married Euphrosine Marie Perrine Boulangé.''Upper Brittany, France Marriages, 1536–1907'' They had eight children, including art historian

Emmanuel Bénézit Charles Emmanuel Bénézit (; Jersey, 1854 – Paris, 1920) was a French gallery owner, collector, art historian and editor of the Benezit Dictionary of Artists The ''Benezit Dictionary of Artists'' (in French, ''Bénézit: Dictionnaire des pe ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Benezit, Charles 1815 births 1900 deaths People from Rennes French Romantic composers