Etienne Nicolas Méhul was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, "the most important opera composer in France during the Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

." He was also the first composer to be called a "Romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

".

Life

Méhul was born at Givet

Givet

Givet is a commune in the Ardennes department in northern France very close to the Belgian border. It lies on the river Meuse where Emperor Charles V built the fortress of Charlemont....

 in Ardennes

Ardennes

The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France , and geologically into the Eifel...

 to Jean-François Méhul - a wine merchant - and his wife Marie-Cécile (née Keuly). His first music lessons came from a blind local organist, but he had innate aptitude and was sent to study with a German musician and organist, Wilhelm Hanser, at the monastery of Lavaldieu, a few miles from Givet. Here Méhul developed his lifelong love of flowers.

In 1778 or 1779 he went to Paris and began to study with Jean-Frédéric Edelmann

Jean-Frédéric Edelmann

Jean-Frédéric Edelmann was a French classical composer. He was born in Strasbourg but, after studying law and music, he moved to Paris in 1774 where he played and taught the piano. It is possible that Edelmann worked for some time in London. During the French Revolution he was appointed...

, a harpsichord

Harpsichord

A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...

 player and friend of Méhul's idol Christoph Willibald von Gluck. Méhul's first published composition was a book of piano pieces in 1783. He also arranged airs from popular operas and by the late 1780s he had begun to think about an operatic career for himself.

In 1787, the writer Valadier offered Méhul one of his libretti, Cora, which had been rejected by Gluck in 1785. The Académie royale de musique

Académie Royale de Musique

The Salle Le Peletier was the home of the Paris Opera from 1821 until the building was destroyed by fire in 1873. The theatre was designed and constructed by the architect François Debret on the site of the former Hôtel de Choiseul...

 (the Paris Opéra

Paris Opera

The Paris Opera is the primary opera company of Paris, France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and renamed the Académie Royale de Musique...

 put Méhul's work, under the title Alonzo et Cora, into rehearsal in June 1789. However, the rehearsals were abandoned on 8 August, probably because the Opéra had been suffering severe financial difficulties throughout the 1780s, and the opera was not premiered until 1791. In the meantime, Méhul found an ideal collaborator in the librettist François-Benoît Hoffman, who provided the words to the first of Méhul's operas to be performed, Euphrosine

Euphrosine

Euphrosine, ou Le tyran corrigé is an opera, designated as a 'comédie mise en musique', by the French composer Étienne Nicolas Méhul with a libretto by François-Benoît Hoffman. It was the first of Méhul's operas to be performed and established his reputation as a leading composer of his time...

. Its premiere in 1790 was an immense success and marked the composer out as a new talent. It was also the start of his long relationship with the Comédie Italienne theatre (soon to be renamed the Opéra-Comique).
In spite of the failure of Cora in 1791 and the banning of Adrien

Adrien (opera)

Adrien is an opera by the French composer Étienne Méhul. The libretto, by François-Benoît Hoffman, is closely based on Metastasio's Adriano in Siria...

for political reasons the year after that, Méhul consolidated his reputation with works such as Stratonice

Stratonice (opera)

Stratonice is a one-act opéra comique by Étienne Méhul to a libretto by François-Benoît Hoffman, first performed at the Théâtre Favart, Paris, on 3 May 1792...

and Mélidore et Phrosine

Mélidore et Phrosine

Mélidore et Phrosine is an opera by the French composer Étienne Méhul. It takes the form of a drame lyrique in three acts. The libretto, by Antoine Vincent Arnault, is loosely based on the myth of Hero and Leander. The work was first performed at the Théâtre Favart, Paris on 6 May 1794...

. During the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, Méhul composed many patriotic songs and propaganda pieces, the most famous of which is the Chant du départ

Chant du départ

The Chant du Départ is a revolutionary and war song written by Étienne Nicolas Méhul and Marie-Joseph Chénier in 1794. It was the official anthem of the First Empire....

. Méhul was rewarded by becoming the first composer named to the newly founded Institut de France in 1795. He also held a post as one of the five inspectors of the Conservatoire de Paris

Conservatoire de Paris

The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...

. Mehul was on friendly terms with Napoleon and became one of the first Frenchmen to receive the Légion d'honneur

Légion d'honneur

The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...

.

Méhul's operatic success was not as great in the first decade of the nineteenth century as it had been in the 1790s, although works such as Joseph

Joseph (opera)

Joseph is an opera in three acts by the French composer Étienne Méhul. The libretto, by Alexandre Duval, is based on the Biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. The work was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 17 February 1807 at the Théâtre Feydeau...

(1807) became famous abroad, particularly in Germany. The failure of his opera Les amazones

Les amazones

Les amazones, ou La fondation de Thèbes is an opera in three acts by the French composer Étienne Méhul with a libretto by Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy. It was first performed at the Paris Opéra on 17 December 1811 with the Emperor Napoleon and his new wife, Marie-Louise in the audience...

in 1811 was a severe blow and virtually ended his career as a composer for the theatre. In spite of his friendship with Napoleon, Méhul's public standing survived the transition to the Bourbon Restoration

Bourbon Restoration

The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution , the end of the First Republic , and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon  – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the...

 intact. However, the composer was now seriously ill with tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 and he died on October 18, 1817.His grave is at the cemetery of Père Lachaise, near the grave of the Belgian composer, his contemporary François-Joseph Gossec.

In 1797 Méhul adopted his seven year old nephew, composer Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul

Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul

Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul was a French composer and music educator. He served as the first director of the Royal Conservatory of Liège from 1826-1862; having been appointed to that post by William I of the Netherlands. In addition to his duties as director, he also taught courses in harmony and...

, and his younger brother. He played a major role in his nephew's musical education and career; counting him among his pupils at the Paris Conservatoire. After his death, Daussoigne-Méhul notably completed his unfinished opera Valentine de Milan which premiered at the Opéra-Comique

Opéra-Comique

The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...

 in 1822. He also wrote new recitatives for his opera Stratonice in 1821 for a revival of that work in Paris.

Operas

Méhul's most important contribution to music was his operas. He led the generation of composers who emerged in France in the 1790s, which included his friend and rival Luigi Cherubini

Luigi Cherubini

Luigi Cherubini was an Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries....

 and his outright enemy Jean-François Lesueur. Méhul followed the example of the operas which Gluck had written for Paris in the 1770s and applied Gluck's "reforms" to opéra comique

Opéra comique

Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

 (a genre which mixed music with spoken dialogue and was not necessarily at all "comic" in mood). But he pushed music in a more Romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 direction, showing an increased use of dissonance and an interest in psychological states such as anger and jealousy, thus foreshadowing later Romantic composers such as Weber

Carl Maria von Weber

Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....

 and Berlioz. Indeed, Méhul was the very first composer to be styled a Romantic; a critic used the term when reviewing Méhul's Le jeune sage et le vieux fou

Le jeune sage et le vieux fou

Le jeune sage et le vieux fou is an opera by the French composer Étienne Méhul with a libretto by François-Benoît Hoffman. It takes the form of a comédie mêlée de musique in one act. It was first performed at the Théâtre Favart on 28 March 1793. A revised version appeared in 1801.The opera was...

in La chronique de Paris on April 1, 1793.

Méhul's main musical concern was that everything should serve to increase the dramatic impact. As his admirer Berlioz wrote:

[Méhul] was fully convinced that in truly dramatic music, when the importance of the situation deserves the sacrifice, the composer should not hesitate as between a pretty musical effect that is foreign to the scenic or dramatic character, and a series of accents that are true but do not yield any surface pleasure. He was convinced that musical expressiveness is a lovely flower, delicate and rare, of exquisite fragrance, which does not bloom without culture, and which a breath can wither; that it does not dwell in melody alone, but that everything concurs either to create or destroy it - melody, harmony, modulation, rhythm, instrumentation, the choice of deep or high registers for the voices or instruments, a quick or slow tempo, and the several degrees of volume in the sound emitted.

One way in which Méhul increased dramatic expressivity was to experiment with orchestration. For example, in Uthal

Uthal (opera)

Uthal is an opéra comique in one act by the French composer Étienne Méhul. The libretto, by Jacques-Benjamin-Maximilien Bins de Saint-Victor is based on the Ossian poems of James Macpherson. It was first performed at the Opéra-Comique, Paris on 17 May 1806...

, an opera set in the Highlands of Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, he eliminated violins from the orchestra, replacing them with the darker sounds of violas in order to add local colour. Méhul's La chasse du jeune Henri (Young Henri's Hunt) provides a more humorous example, with its expanded horn section portraying yelping hounds as well as giving hunting calls. (Sir Thomas Beecham

Thomas Beecham

Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...

 frequently programmed this piece to showcase the Royal Philharmonic

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It tours widely, and is sometimes referred to as "Britain's national orchestra"...

 horn section.)

Méhul's key works of the 1790s were Euphrosine

Euphrosine

Euphrosine, ou Le tyran corrigé is an opera, designated as a 'comédie mise en musique', by the French composer Étienne Nicolas Méhul with a libretto by François-Benoît Hoffman. It was the first of Méhul's operas to be performed and established his reputation as a leading composer of his time...

, Stratonice

Stratonice (opera)

Stratonice is a one-act opéra comique by Étienne Méhul to a libretto by François-Benoît Hoffman, first performed at the Théâtre Favart, Paris, on 3 May 1792...

, Mélidore et Phrosine

Mélidore et Phrosine

Mélidore et Phrosine is an opera by the French composer Étienne Méhul. It takes the form of a drame lyrique in three acts. The libretto, by Antoine Vincent Arnault, is loosely based on the myth of Hero and Leander. The work was first performed at the Théâtre Favart, Paris on 6 May 1794...

and Ariodant

Ariodant

Ariodant is an opéra comique in three acts by the French composer Étienne Méhul first performed at the Théâtre Favart in Paris on 11 October 1799. The libretto, by François-Benoît Hoffman is based on the same episode in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso that also inspired Handel's opera Ariodante...

. Ariodant, though a failure at its premiere in 1799, has come in for particular praise from critics. Elizabeth Bartlet calls it "Mehul's best work of the decade and a highpoint of Revolutionary opera". It deals with the same tale of passion and jealousy as Handel

HANDEL

HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....

's 1735 opera Ariodante

Ariodante

Ariodante is an opera seria in three acts by Handel. The anonymous Italian libretto was based on a work by Antonio Salvi, which in turn was adapted from Canti 5 and 6 of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso...

. As in many of his other operas, Mehul makes use of a structural device called the "reminiscence motif", a musical theme associated with a particular character or idea in the opera. This device looks forward to the leitmotif

Leitmotif

A leitmotif , sometimes written leit-motif, is a musical term , referring to a recurring theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical idea of idée fixe...

s in Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

's music dramas. In Ariodant, the reminiscence motif is the cri de fureur ("cry of fury"), expressing the emotion of jealousy.

Around 1800, the popularity of such stormy dramas began to wane, replaced by a fashion for the lighter opéra comique

Opéra comique

Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

s of composers such as Boieldieu. In addition, Mehul's friend Napoleon told him he preferred a more comic style of opera. As a Corsica

Corsica

Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....

n, Napoleon's cultural background was Italian, and he loved the opera buffa

Opera buffa

Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

 of composers like Paisiello and Cimarosa. Méhul responded with L'irato

L'irato

L'irato, ou L'emporté is an opéra-comique in one act by the French composer Étienne Méhul with a libretto by Benoît-Joseph Marsollier. It was first performed at the Théâtre Favart, Paris on 17 February 1801...

("The Angry Man"), a one-act comedy premiered as the work of the Italian composer "Fiorelli" in 1801. When it became an immediate success, Méhul revealed the hoax he had played. Méhul also continued to compose works in a more serious vein. Joseph

Joseph (opera)

Joseph is an opera in three acts by the French composer Étienne Méhul. The libretto, by Alexandre Duval, is based on the Biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. The work was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 17 February 1807 at the Théâtre Feydeau...

, based on the Biblical

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 story of Joseph

Joseph (Hebrew Bible)

Joseph is an important character in the Hebrew bible, where he connects the story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Canaan to the subsequent story of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt....

 and his brothers, is the most famous of these later operas, but its success in France was short-lived. In Germany, however, it won many admirers throughout the nineteenth century, including Wagner. A melody from Joseph is very similar to a popular folk melody widely known in Germany which was used as a song in the German Imperial Navy, and adapted, notoriously, as the tune for the co-national anthem of Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

, the Horst-Wessel-Lied

Horst-Wessel-Lied

The Horst-Wessel-Lied , also known as Die Fahne hoch from its opening line, was the anthem of the Nazi Party from 1930 to 1945...

. It is unclear, however, whether Méhul's melody was the actual provenance of the melody.

Symphonies and other works

Besides operas, Méhul composed a number of songs for the festivals of the republic (often commissioned by the emperor Napoleon), cantata

Cantata

A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....

s, and five symphonies in the years 1797 and 1808 to 1810.The First Symphony was revived in one of Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

's concerts with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra is one of the the oldest symphony orchestras in the world...

 in 1838 and 1846 to an audience including Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

, who was impressed by the piece. In all four movements there are some stylistic similarities with Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

's Symphony No.5

Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven)

The Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, was written by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1804–08. This symphony is one of the most popular and best-known compositions in all of classical music, and one of the most often played symphonies. It comprises four movements: an opening sonata, an andante, and a fast...

 (including the dissonant, furious mood of the first movement and the string pizzicatos in the third), which were also noted by Schumann. Actually at this date only Beethoven's Symphonies No.1 and 2 (1799/1800 and 1802) had been performed in France and both Beethoven's Fifth and Mehul's First were composed in the same year, 1808, were published in the following, 1809. In his mature symphonies, Mehul continued the path Haydn (the Paris Symphonies, 1785-86, for example), Mozart (Symphony No. 40

Symphony No. 40 (Mozart)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his Symphony No. 40 in G minor, KV. 550, in 1788. It is sometimes referred to as the "Great G minor symphony," to distinguish it from the "Little G minor symphony," No. 25. The two are the only minor key symphonies Mozart wrote....

, K.550, 1788) had taken, two composers who enjoyed great popularity in France in the early 19th century. A fifth symphony was never completed—"as disillusionment and tuberculosis took their toll", as David Charlton pointed out. The Symphonies nos.3 and 4 were only rediscovered by Charlton in 1979. Interviewed 8 November 2010 on the on BBC Radio

BBC Radio

BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...

 4's Today programme, Professor Charlton said that Méhul's 4th Symphony was the first ever to employ the cyclical principle.

Orchestral music

• Ouverture burlesque (1794)
• Ouverture pour instruments à vent (1794)
• Symphony in C (1797, only parts are surviving)
• Symphony No.1 in G minor (1808/09)
• Symphony No.2 in D major (1808/09)
• Symphony No.3 in C major (1809)
• Symphony No.4 in E major (1810)
• Symphony No.5 (1810, only a first movement survives)

Vocal Music

• Chant du départ
  Chant du départ
  The Chant du Départ is a revolutionary and war song written by Étienne Nicolas Méhul and Marie-Joseph Chénier in 1794. It was the official anthem of the First Empire....
  
  (1794)
• (1794)
• (1804)
• (1808)
• (1811)

Ballets

• (1793)
• (1800)
• Persée et Andromède (1810) (together with music by Haydn, Paer and Steibelt)

Incidental music for plays

• (by Marie-Joseph Chénier)
• (by Alexandre Duval)

Discography

• The Complete Symphonies (Symphonies No.1-No.4). Lisbon Gulbenkian Foundation Orchestra, Michel Swierczewski (including the Ouvertures La Chasse du jeune Henri and Le Trésor supposé), Nimbus Records, 1992
• Symphonies Nos 1 and 2. Les Musiciens du Louvre
  Les Musiciens du Louvre
  Les Musiciens du Louvre is a French period instrument ensemble, formed in 1982. Originally based in Paris, since 1996 it has been based in the Couvent des Minimes in Grenoble. The Guardian considers it one of the best orchestras in the world.- History:Founded by Marc Minkowski in 1982, the...
  
  , Marc Minkowski, Erato/Apex, 2003
• Overtures: Mélidore et Phrosine; Ariodant; Joseph; Horatius Coclès; Bion; Le jeune sage et le vieux fou; Le trésor supposé; Les deux aveugles de Tolède; La chasse du jeune Henri. Orchestre de Bretagne/ Stefan Sanderling, ASV, 2003
• Stratonice. Petibon
  Patricia Petibon
  Patricia Petibon is a French coloratura soprano who has been acclaimed for her interpretations of French Baroque music.-Biography:...
  
  /Beuron/Lescoart/Daymond, Corona Coloniensis, Cappella Coloniensis, William Christie, Erato 1996
• Joseph (as Joseph in Aegypten), two versions of the work in German both recorded in 1955: (a) Alexander Welitsch/Libero di Luca/ Horst Guenter/Ursula Zollenkopf, Symphony Orchestra and Choir of NWDR, Wilhelm Schüchter
  Wilhelm Schüchter
  Wilhelm Schüchter was a German conductor. He was Generalmusikdirektor in Dortmund and left a legacy of opera recordings.-Professional career:...
  
  ; (b) Alexander Welitsch/Josef Traxel/Bernhard Michaelis/Friederike Sailer, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Suedfunk Chor, Alfons Rischner. Gala, 2004.
• Joseph (in French): Nathalie Dessay, soprano ; Brigette Lafon, mezzo-soprano ; Laurence Dale, Antoine Normand, Philippe Pistole, tenors ; René Massis, baritone ; Frédéric Vassar, Philippe Jorquera, basses ; Abbi Patrix, speaker ; Ensemble choral "Intermezzo" ; Orchestre régional de Picardie "Le Sinfonietta" ; Claude Bardon, conductor. Chant du monde, c. 1989.
• La Chasse du jeune Henri, Le Trésor supposé and Timoléon Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Thomas Beecham, Sony, 2002.
• L'Irato Turk/Auvity/Courtin/Buet/Chamber Choir Bonn, L'arte del mondo, Walter Ehrhardt, Capriccio, 2006.
• Piano Sonatas opp. 1 (nos. 1-3) & 2 (nos. 4-6). Brigitte Haudebourg, piano. Arcobaleno, c. 1990.
• Le chant du départ; Chant Funèbre à la Mémoire de Féraud; Hymne pour la Fête des Epoux; Ouverture. Edwige Perfetti, soprano ; Tibère Raffali, Christian Papis, tenors ; Gilles Cachemaille, baritone -- Orchestre d'Harmonie des Gardiens de la Paix de Paris ; Claude Pichaureau, conductor -- Chœur de l'Armée Française ; Serge Zapolski, chorus-master -- Chorale a Chœur Joie la Gondoire ; Daniel Catenne, chorus-master -- Chorale Populaire de Paris ; Jean-Claude Chambard, chorus-master. Musifrance, n.d.
• Chant national du 14 juillet 1800; Hymne à la raison; Le chant du départ Chœur et Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse ; Michel Plasson, conductor. EMI, 1990.

External links

• A portrait of Méhul by Antoine-Jean Gros
  Antoine-Jean Gros
  Baron Antoine-Jean Gros , also known as Jean-Antoine Gros, was both a French History and neoclassical painter.-Early life and training:...
  
  
• Biography and Works, France Diplomatie Culture
• Notes on the Symphony No.1 by Herbert Glass, Los Angeles Philharmonic Website
• Berlioz and Méhul, The Hector Berlioz Site