Napoléon Alexandre Alkan, born Napoléon Alexandre Morhange (2 February 1826 – August 1906), was a French composer and music teacher.

Career

Alkan was born in Paris, one of six children of Alkan Morhange and Julie Abraham. The family was Jewish, and Alkan Morhange ran a successful music school. All of the Morhange children adopted their father's name as their surname, and all successfully attended the

Conservatoire de Paris The Conservatoire de Paris (), or 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 Jean Ja ...

. Céleste Alkan (married surname Mayer-Marix) (25 February 1811 – 1891) began her training at the Conservatoire at the age of seven and won first prize in solfège at the age of eleven.

Charles-Valentin Alkan Charles-Valentin Alkan (; 30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, amon ...

(1813–1888), the most distinguished of the siblings, became a well-known composer and piano virtuoso. Ernest Alkan (11 July 1816 – 1876) was a student of

Jean-Louis Tulou Jean-Louis Tulou (born 12 September 1786 in Paris – died 23 July 1865 in Nantes) was a French flute teacher and player, composer, and instrument maker. Family and life His father, Louis-Prosper Tulou (1749–1799), was a bassoonist in the ...

and became known as a flutist. Maxime Alkan (28 May 1818 – 1891) wrote popular music including dances for piano. The youngest of the siblings was Gustave Alkan (24 March 1827 – 1882). Napoléon became a student at the Conservatoire in 1835 where he studied piano with Pierre Zimmermann, organ with

François Benoist François Benoist (; 10 September 1794 – 6 May 1878) was a French organist, pedagogue, and composer. Life and career Benoist was born in Nantes on 10 September 1794. He took his first music lessons under Georges Scheuermann. Benoist studied m ...

and

counterpoint In music theory, counterpoint is the relationship of two or more simultaneous musical lines (also called voices) that are harmonically dependent on each other, yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. The term originates from the Latin ...

and

fugue In classical music, a fugue (, from Latin ''fuga'', meaning "flight" or "escape""Fugue, ''n''." ''The Concise Oxford English Dictionary'', eleventh edition, revised, ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (Oxford and New York: Oxford Universit ...

with

Adolphe Adam Adolphe Charles Adam (; 24 July 1803 – 3 May 1856) was a French composer, teacher and music critic. A prolific composer for the theatre, he is best known today for his ballets ''Giselle'' (1841) and ''Le corsaire'' (1856), his operas ''Le post ...

. In 1843 he won first prize for piano at the Conservatoire. From 1845 he taught at the Conservatoire as a repetiteur for

solfège In music, solfège (British English or American English , ) or solfeggio (; ), also called sol-fa, solfa, solfeo, among many names, is a mnemonic used in teaching aural skills, Pitch (music), pitch and sight-reading of Western classical music, W ...

. In 1850 he won the Second Grand Prix in the

Prix de Rome The Prix de Rome () or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them t ...

with the cantata ''Emma et Eginhard'' based on a poem by Anne Bignan. In June 1857, he taught in the class of military students, then from April 1866 was tenured as associate professor of solfeggio.François-Sappey (2013), p. 140. He retained this position until 1 October 1896, when he retired at the age of 70. In 1895 he was made a Chevalier of the

Légion d'honneur The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...

.Prix de Rome website
"Napoléon MOHRANGE dit ALKAN (1826–1906)", accessed 10 May 2020). He died in Paris aged 80, leaving a daughter, Emma Liernut. He composed a number of original piano works and piano transcriptions of works by classical composers such as Mozart and Haydn.

References

Bibliography

* Brigitte and François Luguenot François-Sappey: ''Charles-Valentin Alkan'' (Paris: Bleu Nuit, 2013); .

External links

on Prix de Rome 1850-1859
Napoléon Alkan
on IMSLP {{DEFAULTSORT:Alkan, Napoleon 1826 births 1906 deaths 19th-century French classical composers 19th-century French male musicians Academic staff of the Conservatoire de Paris Knights of the Legion of Honour Conservatoire de Paris alumni French Ashkenazi Jews French classical composers French male classical composers Jewish classical composers Jewish classical pianists Musicians from Paris Composers awarded knighthoods