Henry Madin (7 October 1698 – 3 February 1748) was a French composer at the Chapelle royale and music theorist.

Biography

Madin was born in

Verdun Verdun (, , , ; official name before 1970 ''Verdun-sur-Meuse'') is a large city in the Meuse department in Grand Est, northeastern France. It is an arrondissement of the department. Verdun is the biggest city in Meuse, although the capital ...

of Irish parents who had left Ireland in the early 1690s with the Wild Geese and settled in Verdun. His first music studies took place in Verdun, among the children singing in the cathedral school. After having directed church choirs at the cathedrals of Meaux, Verdun, Tours, and Rouen), Madin moved to Versailles, where he was first active for the King's service, in 1738, after having ensured membership in the

royal chapel A royal chapel is a chapel associated with a monarch, a royal court, or in a royal palace. A royal chapel may also be a Chapel (music), body of clergy or musicians serving at a royal court or employed by a monarch. Commonwealth countries Both ...

. From 1741, protected by

Louis XV Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (french: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reache ...

, Madin was appointed Governor of the Pages, succeeding the composer André Campra. After his release in 1740, he shared the responsibilities with the composers

Esprit Antoine Blanchard Esprit-Joseph-Antoine Blanchard (29 February 1696 – 19 April 1770) was a French baroque composer, a contemporary of Jean-Philippe Rameau, and regarded as a representative composer of religious music in eighteenth-century France.Tai Wai Li ''M ...

and

Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville Jean-Joseph de Mondonville (, 25 December 1711 (baptised) – 8 October 1772), also known as Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, was a French violinist and composer. He was a younger contemporary of Jean-Philippe Rameau and enjoyed great suc ...

until his death in

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

). In 1742 Madin published a treatise on

counterpoint In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...

, '' Traité de contrepoint simple'', which was inspired by Louis-Joseph Marchand's earlier 1739 publication ''Traité du contrepoint simple, ou Chant sur le livre''.

Editions

* Henry Madin, ''Les Messes''. Edited by

Jean-Paul C. Montagnier Jean-Paul C. Montagnier (born September 28, 1965 at Lyon) is a French musicologist. He studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where he received two first prizes in musical analysis (1988, professor: Claude Ballif) an ...

(Versailles: Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, 2003). * Henry Madin, ''Te Deum''. Edited by

(La Petite-Raon, Nancy: Entreprise & culture en Lorraine, 2017).

Recordings

* Henry Madin ''Te Deum pour les victoires de Louis XV''. Ensemble Stradivaria, Les Cris de Paris, directed by Daniel Cuiller (Paris: Alpha-Classics, 2016; Alpha 963).

Bibliography

: ''Henry Madin (1698–1748). Un musicien Lorrain au service de Louis XV'' (Langres: Éditions Dominique Guéniot, 2008). * Jean-Paul C. Montagnier: "De Galway à Verdun: les origines irlandaises du compositeur Henry Madin", in: ''Le Pays lorrain'', vol. 108 no. 92 (December 2011), p. 375–377. * Jean-Paul C. Montagnier: ''The Polyphonic Mass in France, 1600–1780: The Evidence of the Printed Choirbooks'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). *Jean-Paul C. Montagnier, "The War of the Austrian Succession and the Masses by Henry Madin (1741-1748)", in: ''Music & Letters'', 100 (August 2019), pp. 391–419.

References

1698 births 1748 deaths 18th-century French composers 18th-century French male musicians French Baroque composers French male classical composers French male composers People from Verdun 17th-century male musicians {{France-composer-stub