André Grétry

'The musician learns to interrogate the passions, to sound the depths of the human heart.' – Grétry

André Grétry (1741 – 1813) born in Liege, Belgium was the most famous composer in France during the Revolution. For twenty years before the storming of the Bastille in 1789 until twenty years after, he was dominant in the musical scene. Those years encompassed three ruling phases of France, firstly by Louis XVI, then by the revolutionaries and lastly by Napoleon. Grétry was a favourite with all three which makes him a rather unique figure. To keep his fame, to say nothing of keeping his head, during that turbulent time seems remarkable.

Grétry wrote more than 70 operas and they were usually very popular. This situation was completely serendipitous as there is no way he could make audiences like his music. He simply wrote music that suited the times. His plain and simple style produced catchy tunes to popular dance rhythms with words that parodied the political scene. They proved to be eminently 'singable' and became the most well-known in France.

When the dauphin (later Louis XVI) married Marie Antoinette in 1770 a work of the ambitious young Grétry was performed. By 1772 be had become the dominant figure of the new opera-comiques. These operas, despite their name, are not comic but use any story-line as subject with spoken dialogue between the songs and choruses, in contrast to the recitative - aria style of traditional tragic opera.

Grétry was already receiving a court-granted pension, when in 1774 Marie Antoinette appointed him as her music director. He taught her music but what instrument she learned is not clear. Paintings show her playing the harp to accompany singers, implying that he trained her to a proficient degree.

It seems ironic that the last music King Louis XVI heard before his imprisonment by his subjects, was the Grétry favourite O Richard, o mon Roi!, sung by a subject and leading to a king (Richard Coeur-de-Lion) being released from prison.

During the Revolution opera was the preferred relaxation in the evening after a busy day at the guillotine. Grétry's music remained popular although less than formerly. Some revolutionaries were suspicious of his links to the ancien regime and although he seems not to have been at risk the music of one of his operas was publicly burned. This is surprising as his music, unlike the stirring La Marseillaise of 1792, is too gentle to inflame political or patriotic zeal for any camp.

The revolutionaries preferred a variant of the opera-comique. Composers now used the spoken dialogue to declaim revolutionary themes with the songs performed by choruses rather than soloists. Grétry yielded less to this change than his contemporaries, courageously condemning their excesses. He, nevertheless, did write on popular subjects where oppression by rulers was opposed, such as in his Guilliame Tell. His attempts to stay ahead of his rivals lead to hasty composition, poorer craftsmanship, and a loss of popularity. He remained an active administra­tor as Inspector of the Paris Conservatoire.

On attaining dictatorial powers under a new regime, Napoleon, who liked simple melodies, resurrected several Grétry operas. This hardly seems necessary when only one month in 50 years lacked a performance of a Grétry work. Napoleon later revived Grétry's pension that had ceased during the Revolution.

For many years Grétry lived in the villa formerly occupied by philosopher, and incidentally, opera composer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau's fame made the villa a place of pilgrimage, and one such visitor's account gives a little picture of Grétry. Baron de Freilly suggests, sarcastically, his belief that Grétry was so self-centred he would wish only to admit pilgrims to himself rather than to Rousseau memorabilia. Reflecting on the Baron's remarks, we note they express his opinion rather than facts. Grétry would, of course, have learned something of Rousseau from the endless stream who made the pilgrimage. He would know of Rousseau's fame and the philosophical content of the Contrat social. He would also know this contrasted sharply with Rousseau's desertion of his children and their untimely deaths in the poor-house. Grétry might further contrast this with the deaths of his own three daughters, who also died young, though they were never out of his loving care.

Although Grétry's fame declined he influenced major composers and still does. Mozart studied Grétry's Zemire et Azor as a model for his own famous The Magic Flute. Even here, though, Grétry was ahead of his more illustrious contemporary. Grétry's idealisation of his characters and experimentations with orchestral colours foreshadowed the next era in music, Romanticism. Beethoven also respected Grétry's achievements. He became familiar with Grétry's music whilst playing viola in the Bonn opera orchestra and composed variations on a Grétry theme, as had Mozart. Beethoven's sole opera, Fidelio, is a 'rescue' opera of the type Grétry perfected.

An innovation of Grétry has had a profound effect on the development of opera. In some operas he gave each important character an individual melody so that a listener would always associate it with that character. Thus the story would have a unity and be more memorable and appealing. Wagner, in his fifteen-hour long Der Ring des Nibelungen, took this principle to new heights. Individual melodies are not only given to characters but to objects, emotions, Nature, events, variously blended to suit the progress of the story.

Thus we see how one man survived a turbulent, violent time in history. Not a genius, just a gentle soul, of possibly no great intellect, but within his limitations lived life to the full. Although his music was universally popular it struggles to survive the test of time, even in France, but his influence, though seldom recognised, will never die.

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