Henry Fothergill Chorley by Robert Terrell Bledsoe

Author:Robert Terrell Bledsoe [Bledsoe, Robert Terrell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138317437
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

2 Gounod: The Discovery

Chorley announced Gounod’s genius to the English reading public in ‘Musical and Dramatic Gossip’ for 26 January 1850. He predicted there on good authority that a great new composer was about to emerge in France (107). Not long after that, Viardot introduced Chorley to Gounod, and Chorley reacted as if thunderstruck, recording in his journal for March, 1850: ‘It was great pleasure to me in Paris to add to my list of sensations Gounod, of whom the world will one day hear as the composer, or else H.F.C. is much mistaken’ (Hewlett, 2: 94). That same month in the Athenæum Chorley announced that the ‘new composer’ — as we know from ‘private information’ was writing an opera for the Opéra, to be performed in next winter’s season (23 March 1850: 321).

Again in the issue of 27 April 1850, Chorley mentioned the French ‘composer of extraordinary distinction and promise’ (259). Gounod is mentioned by name in the issue of 22 June 1850, where the ‘Gossip’ mentioned that he won a prize for composition ten years ago at the Conservatoire and that in his new opera there would be a principal part for Viardot.

Gounod sent Chorley some sacred choral works, hoping he could get them performed (MS letter cited in Huebner, Gounod: 34); Chorley obligingly urged John Hullah to agree to perform them. This created awkwardness, as Frances Hullah explained, since Chorley was more certain of their genius than was Hullah. As Hullah’s wife later recalled, Chorley,

having found ‘a new composer, Gounod by name,’ wished to secure him a hearing rather on trust, Mr. Hullah preferring to wait till he could call on Gounod in Paris, where he meant to pass his next Easter vacation. Fortunately he was able to agree with Mr. Chorley in his estimation of Gounod, though he wrote somewhat cautiously: ‘I carried off four compositions from Madame Viardot’s house … Of these things it is difficult to speak confidently. A great original musical genius is such a creation that one is slow to come to any conclusion. That the pieces I have seen and heard, in a way, are thoroughly workmanlike is their least praise; perhaps their most extraordinary quality is their simplicity.’ (Hullah, 57)

Chorley, of course, shared none of Hullah’s tentativeness about Gounod’s genius. Personally, too, he was flattered by Gounod’s fervent attentions. Gounod wrote to him (as ‘mon bon, bien cher, excellent ami’) on 11 October 1850 with news about the progress of Sapho and the revisions it was undergoing; he charged Chorley to keep this all confidential.14 By December, Gounod was addressing Chorley as ‘mon bien cher ami et frère’.15

When Hullah performed four pieces by Gounod at St Martin’s Hall in January, 1851, Chorley announced in the Athenæum that ‘we augur a career of no ordinary interest for M. Gounod’ because he has ‘a genius at once true and new’ (18 January 1851: 89).

In the same year, Chorley joined Viardot, Turgenev, and others hovering around Gounod in Courtavenel as he put finishing touches on Sapho.

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