Jean Chantavoine (17 May 1877 – 16 July 1952) was a French musicologist and biographer and the secretary general for the
Conservatoire national supérieur de musique
The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...
.
Chantavoine was born in Paris. He published numerous books and articles, including biographies of
Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...
,
Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
,
Saint-Saëns and
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...
.
In 1933, he revealed the existence of Bizet's
Symphony in C, housed in the library of the ''Conservatoire'', in an article in the French periodical ''
Le Ménestrel
''Le Ménestrel'' (The Minstrel) was an influential French music journal published weekly from 1833 until 1940. It was founded by Joseph-Hippolyte l'Henry and originally printed by Poussièlgue. In 1840 it was acquired by the music publishers Heu ...
.'' Chantavoine also was the first to publish many of Beethoven's manuscript sketches and letters, for example in his 1903 ''Correspondance de Beethoven''.
[Malcolm Turner. "Chantavoine, Jean." In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/05417 (accessed April 3, 2010).] He died, aged 75, in
Mussy-sur-Seine.
References
External links
*List of Books by Jean Chantavoin
Google Books
Writers from Paris
1877 births
1952 deaths
French male non-fiction writers
French biographers
20th-century French musicologists
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