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52-636: He was born in Ruppersthal  [ de ] in Lower Austria, the son of a schoolmaster named Martin Pleyl. Despite the fact that some sources claim that he had 37 siblings, he was the eighth and last child of his father's first marriage to Anna Theresia née Forster and he had eight more half siblings from his father's second marriage to Maria Anna née Placho. While still young, he probably studied with Johann Baptist Wanhal , and from 1772 he became

104-709: A "Military Spectacle" about the Duke of Marlborough , with music by Adam. The piece was received with "loud and general plaudits", but The Dark Diamond , a historical melodrama in three acts, which followed on 5 November, failed to repeat its success, and Adam went home to Paris in December. He returned briefly to London when his ballet Faust was presented at the King's Theatre in February and March 1833. In 1834 Adam had one of his greatest popular successes with Le chalet , at

156-666: A château, and his ties with the Strasbourg Cathedral. He was subsequently labeled a "Royalist collaborator". The outcome of the committee's attentions could easily have been imprisonment or even execution. With prudent opportunism, Pleyel preserved his future by composing several pieces in honor of the new republic, all of which were written in Strasbourg around the time of the Terror. Those pieces, with dates of publication and details: Most of these compositions debuted at

208-623: A complete edition of Haydn's string quartets (1801), as well as the first miniature scores for study (the Bibliothèque musicale , "musical library"). The publishing business lasted for 39 years and published about 4,000 works during this time, including compositions by Adolphe Adam , Luigi Boccherini , Ludwig van Beethoven , Muzio Clementi , Johann Baptist Cramer , Johann Ladislaus Dussek , Johann Nepomuk Hummel , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , and Georges Onslow . Pleyel visited Vienna on business in 1805, meeting his now elderly mentor Haydn for

260-466: A composer of didactic music. Generations of beginning violin and flute students, for example, learn to play the numerous duets he wrote for those instruments. The piano firm Pleyel et Cie was founded by Ignace Pleyel and continued by Pleyel's son Camille (1788–1855), a piano virtuoso who became his father's business partner as of 1815. The firm provided pianos used by Frédéric Chopin , who considered Pleyel pianos to be non plus ultra . It also ran

312-629: A concert hall, the Salle Pleyel , in which Chopin performed his first—and also his last—Paris concerts. In September 2009 a replica of the 1830 model of Pleyel's piano was built by Paul McNulty which is now in the collection Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw and was used in the 1st International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments . Sources Ruppersthal From Misplaced Pages,

364-602: A final time and hearing Beethoven play. In 1807, Pleyel became a manufacturer of pianos; for more on the Pleyel piano firm, see Pleyel et Cie . Pleyel retired in 1824 and moved to the countryside about 50 km outside Paris. He died in 1831, apparently quite aware that his own musical style had been fully displaced by the new Romanticism in music. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Pleyel

416-605: A full orchestra, a choir, and a large budget devoted to performances. After establishing himself in France, Pleyel voluntarily called himself by the French version of his name, Ignace. While he was the assistant maître de chapelle at Strasbourg Cathedral, he wrote more works than during any other period in his musical career (1783–1793). At the cathedral, he would organize concerts that featured his symphonies concertantes and liturgical music. After Richter's death in 1789, Pleyel assumed

468-598: A large house, the moated Château d'Ittenwiller  [ fr ] , about 35 km south of the city, between nearby Saint-Pierre and Eichhoffen in the Bas-Rhin department. With the onset of the Reign of Terror in 1793 and 1794, life in France became dangerous for many, including Pleyel. He was brought before the Committee of Public Safety a total of seven times, due to his foreign status, his recent purchase of

520-574: A member of the chorus at the Vaudeville. Adam's biographer Arthur Pougin describes the marriage as "an important and unfortunate event for him". By Pougin's account, Lescot manoeuvred Adam into marriage, and on his side – and later hers also – it was a loveless union; they separated in 1835. Their only child, Léopold-Adrien, born in 1832, killed himself in 1851. Adam's first full length operas were premiered in 1829: Le jeune propriétaire et le vieux fermier and Danilowa , opéras comiques given at

572-407: A more universal reputation or a more absolute domination of the field of instrumental music? Over more than twenty years, there was no amateur or professional musician who did not delight in his genius." Pleyel's fame even reached the then-remote musical regions of America. There was a Pleyel Society on the island of Nantucket off the coast of Massachusetts , and tunes by Pleyel made their way into

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624-624: A musical career. Adam defied his father, and his many operas and ballets earned him a good living until he lost all his money in 1848 in a disastrous bid to open a new opera house in Paris in competition with the Opéra and Opéra-Comique . He recovered, and extended his activities to journalism and teaching. He was appointed as a professor at the Paris Conservatoire , France's principal music academy. Together with his older contemporary Daniel Auber and his teacher Adrien Boieldieu , Adam

676-691: A poem by Byron ; it was presented at the Opéra in January 1856, after a year's preparation. His final stage work, the one-act opérette Les Pantins de Violette (Violette's Puppets) was given at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens on 29 April 1856. Four nights later Adam died in his sleep, at the age of 52. He was buried in the Montmartre Cemetery . In Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians , Forbes writes that much of Adam's prolific output

728-409: A professional composer: he would have preferred him to pursue a commercial or academic career, and although he gave Adam board and lodging he refused to subsidise any musical activities. By the age of 20 Adam was contributing songs to the Paris vaudeville theatres, writing what he later called "bad romances and worse piano pieces", and giving music lessons. Duchaume, timpanist and chorus master of

780-412: Is credited with creating the later Romantic French form of opera. Adam was born in Paris on 24 July 1803, the elder of the two children, both sons, of (Jean) Louis Adam and his third wife, Élisa, née Coste. She was the daughter of a prominent physician, and was a former pupil of her husband, a well-known composer, pianist and professor at the Paris Conservatoire . Louis Adam gave his son lessons, but

832-404: Is one instance of the phenomenon of a composer (others include Cherubini , Meyerbeer , and Thalberg ) who was very famous in his own time but currently is obscure. Keefe (2005) describes a "craze for his music c. 1780–1800", and quotes a number of contemporary witnesses to this surge. For instance François-Joseph Fétis wrote, "What composer ever created more of a craze than Pleyel? Who enjoyed

884-797: The Théâtre des Nouveautés and the Opéra-Comique respectively. Danilowa ran well until Parisian life was disrupted by the July Revolution . That, and an outbreak of cholera , led Adam to move to London; this was at the suggestion of his brother-in-law, Pierre François Laporte, manager of the King's Theatre, Haymarket . In 1832 Laporte leased the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden , and in October, as an afterpiece to The Merchant of Venice , he presented James Planché 's His First Campaign ,

936-523: The article wizard to submit a draft for review, or request a new article . Search for " Ruppersthal " in existing articles. Look for pages within Misplaced Pages that link to this title . Other reasons this message may be displayed: If a page was recently created here, it may not be visible yet because of a delay in updating the database; wait a few minutes or try the purge function . Titles on Misplaced Pages are case sensitive except for

988-482: The " Professional Concerts " organized by Wilhelm Cramer . In this capacity Pleyel inadvertently played the role of his teacher's rival, as Haydn was at the same time leading the concert series organized by Johann Peter Salomon . Although the two composers were rivals professionally, they remained on good terms personally. Like Haydn, Pleyel made a fortune during his time in London. On his return to Strasbourg, he bought

1040-608: The Bargewoman of Brientz), comprising an overture and eleven numbers; it was produced at the Gymnase on 28 December 1827. A little over a year later, in February 1829, Adam's second one-act opera, Pierre et Catherine was given in a double bill at the Opéra-Comique with Auber and Scribe's La Fiancée , and ran for more than 80 performances. Seven months after the premiere of Pierre et Catherine Adam married Sara Lescot,

1092-484: The Opéra-Comique at the time of the revolution, Adam was able to return to what Forbes calls his spiritual home under its new director, Émile Perrin . In July 1850 Giralda , ou La nouvelle psyché – one of Adam's best operas in Forbes's view – was given at the Opéra-Comique. In 1851 his estranged wife died, and Adam married the singer Chérie-Louise Couraud (1817–1880), with whom he lived for his remaining years. For

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1144-621: The Opéra-Comique. This was a one-act opéra comique with words by Scribe and Mélesville based on Goethe 's Jery und Bätely . It was given more than 1000 times in Paris over the next four decades. In May 1836 Adam was appointed as a chevalier of the Legion of Honour , later promoted to officer of the order. His first work for the Paris Opéra was a ballet, La fille du Danube , introduced by Marie Taglioni in September 1836. Within days of

1196-560: The Strasbourg Cathedral, which was known at the time as the Temple de l'Être Suprême (Temple of the Supreme Being), as churches were outlawed during the Terror. Pleyel became a naturalized French citizen and thus came to be known as Citoyen (citizen) Pleyel. With his involvement in artistic propaganda and loyalism to the new regime, Pleyel can be seen as the ultimate musical champion of Strasbourg republicanism. In addition to composing

1248-473: The Théâtre-Lyrique, the revived incarnation of his failed Opéra-National, Adam wrote the successful Si j'étais roi , first given in September 1852. In that year he produced six new works, enabling him to clear all his debts. During the last three years of his life Adam continued to compose prolifically. His late works include what Forbes rates as one of his finest ballets, Le Corsaire , based on

1300-552: The above works for the Strasbourg public, Pleyel also contributed to the Parisian music scene during the Revolution. One example is Le Jugement de Pâris , a pantomime-ballet by Citoyen (Citizen) Gardel and performed with Pleyel's music (along with that of Haydn and Étienne Méhul ) on 5 March 1793. Pleyel moved to Paris in 1795. In 1797, he set up a business as a music publisher ("Maison Pleyel"), which among other works produced

1352-604: The advantage of a particularly memorable plot, La jolie fille de Gand , La filleule des fées and Le corsaire are of equal quality musically. Little of Adam's religious music has entered the regular repertory, with the exception of his Cantique de Noël , "Minuit, chrétiens!", known in English as " O Holy Night ". Adam's memoirs were published posthumously, in two volumes: Souvenirs d'un musicien (1857) and Derniers souvenirs d'un musicien (1859). In 2023 an exhaustive two-volume study of his stage works (one volume on opera,

1404-521: The age of 17 Adam enrolled at the Conservatoire, where he studied the organ with François Benoist , counterpoint with Anton Reicha and composition with Adrien Boieldieu . Adam's biographer Elizabeth Forbes calls Boieldieu the chief architect of Adam's musical development. He set his student exercises that taught him to compose sustained melodies without showy modulations and other technical devices. Adam's father did not want his son to become

1456-468: The ballet premiered at the Opéra on 28 June 1841 with Carlotta Grisi in the title role. Adam continued his prolific output, including his first grand opera , Richard en Palestine , which was produced at the Opéra in 1844 but aroused little interest. In that year he was elected to membership of the Académie des Beaux-Arts . In 1845 François-Louis Crosnier , director of the Opéra-Comique, resigned and

1508-584: The boy was reluctant to learn even the basics of musical theory, and instead played fluently by ear: He later said that he never became a fluent sight-reader of a score. His mother concluded that her son needed a rigorous education, and he was sent to a boarding school, the Hix institute in the Champs-Élysées . It had a high reputation both academically and musically: his elder contemporary (and pupil of Louis Adam) Ferdinand Hérold had been educated there, and

1560-405: The cantata he wrote for the 1825 Prix de Rome competition) which she ranks with Adam's best works for its freshness of invention. For the musicologist Theodore Baker , Adam ranks with Auber and Boieldieu as one of the creators of French opera, thanks to the expressive power of his melodic material and his keen sense of dramatic development. In France, during Adam's lifetime and beyond, Le chalet

1612-546: The early 1780s, Pleyel visited Italy, where he composed an opera ( Ifigenia in Aulide ) and works commissioned by the king of Naples, Ferdinand I . Attracted to the benefits associated with an organist position, Pleyel moved to Strasbourg , France, in 1783 to work alongside Franz Xaver Richter , the maître de chapelle at the Strasbourg Cathedral . The cathedral was extremely appealing to Pleyel as it possessed

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1664-420: The first character; please check alternative capitalizations and consider adding a redirect here to the correct title. If the page has been deleted, check the deletion log , and see Why was the page I created deleted? Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruppersthal " Adolphe Adam Adolphe Charles Adam ( French: [adɔlf adɑ̃] ; 24 July 1803 – 3 May 1856)

1716-899: The 💕 Look for Ruppersthal on one of Misplaced Pages's sister projects : [REDACTED] Wiktionary (dictionary) [REDACTED] Wikibooks (textbooks) [REDACTED] Wikiquote (quotations) [REDACTED] Wikisource (library) [REDACTED] Wikiversity (learning resources) [REDACTED] Commons (media) [REDACTED] Wikivoyage (travel guide) [REDACTED] Wikinews (news source) [REDACTED] Wikidata (linked database) [REDACTED] Wikispecies (species directory) Misplaced Pages does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for Ruppersthal in Misplaced Pages to check for alternative titles or spellings. You need to log in or create an account and be autoconfirmed to create new articles. Alternatively, you can use

1768-575: The function of full maître de chapelle . In 1788, Pleyel married Françoise-Gabrielle Lefebvre, the daughter of a Strasbourg carpet weaver. The couple had four children, the eldest being their son Camille . Marie Pleyel , née Moke (1811–1875), the future wife of Camille, became one of the most accomplished pianists of her time. In 1791, the French Revolution abolished musical performances in church as well as public concerts. Seeking alternative employment, Pleyel traveled to London, where he led

1820-467: The intricacies of science than the charm of simplicity and feeling." In the mid twentieth century, the harpsichord builder Wolfgang Zuckermann reminisced about playing Pleyel in his childhood in the 1930s: "When I was ten years old, my family string quartet played a lot of Pleyel since it was the only thing easy enough to keep us going. My cello part consisted of unending stretches of quarter notes played on open strings." Pleyel continues to be known today as

1872-449: The later operas, Grove singles out Giralda and Si j'étais roi as "the most stylish, tuneful and accomplished". Although he was a prolific composer of opera, Adam wrote ballet music even more fluently. He commented that it was fun, rather than work. Giselle is the best known; Baker calls it a major work in the history of choreography, which continues to be performed with the same success. Forbes comments that although Giselle has

1924-426: The librettist Eugène Scribe , with whom he later collaborated on nine stage works. During 1824–1827 Adam wrote or arranged the music for several one-act vaudevilles given at the Gymnase and the Théâtre du Vaudeville , including four written by Scribe as sole or co-author. In late 1827 Scribe provided the text for Adam's first opera, a one-act comic piece, Le Mal du pays, ou La Batelière de Brientz (Homesickness, or

1976-472: The marionette theater at the palace of Eszterháza and in Vienna. Pleyel apparently also wrote at least part of the overture of Haydn's opera Das abgebrannte Haus , from about the same time. Pleyel's first professional position may have been as Kapellmeister for Count Erdődy, although this is not known for certain. Among his early publications was a set of six string quartets , his Opus number  1. In

2028-547: The music master was Henry Lemoine , another of Louis' former students. Adolphe was not an academic child, and recalled in his memoirs how he had recoiled from the study of Latin, which he found "barbaric". The fall of the French Empire in 1814–15, and the ensuing economic problems badly affected Louis Adam's income, and to save money his son was sent to a less expensive school. The staff there were capable, but Adam remained as indifferent to musical theory as to Latin. At

2080-488: The new Théâtre du Gymnase , offered Adam an unpaid post playing the triangle in the orchestra. Adam said that as he would have paid to be allowed to join he was happy to serve without a salary, but he was quickly promoted to a well paid position: In 1824 Adam entered the Conservatoire's most important musical competition, the Prix de Rome . He gained an honourable mention, and the following year, at his second attempt, he won

2132-459: The outset its prospects looked doubtful. Financial and artistic performance alike were poor, and the 1848 Revolution was the final blow to the enterprise. The theatres were closed by the incoming régime, and when they were permitted to re-open, there was little demand for tickets at Adam's opera house, which closed on 28 March 1848, after the production of nine operas during its four months of existence, leaving him financially ruined. Adam assigned

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2184-524: The premiere of that piece, his three-act opéra comique Le postillon de Lonjumeau opened successfully at the Opéra-Comique. It was the composer's greatest operatic success internationally, quickly taken up by foreign managements and seen in London in 1837 and New York in 1840. During 1838 and 1839 Adam composed the music for Les Mohicans , a ballet for the Opéra, and four operas for the Opéra-Comique, and in September 1839 he left Paris for St Petersburg. His ballet for Taglioni, L'Écumeur de mer (The Pirate)

2236-466: The pupil of Joseph Haydn in Eisenstadt . As with Beethoven , born 13 years later, Pleyel benefited in his study from the sponsorship of aristocracy, in this case Count Ladislaus Erdődy (1746–1786). Pleyel evidently had a close relationship with Haydn, who considered him to be a superb student. Among Pleyel's apprentice work from this time was a puppet opera Die Fee Urgele , (1776) performed in

2288-482: The royalties from his earlier works to help pay off his debts, and like many other French composers in need of money he turned to journalism to earn extra income. He contributed reviews and articles to Le Constitutionnel and the Assemblée nationale . He also became a teacher, accepting the post of professor of composition at the Conservatoire, where his students included Léo Delibes . Meanwhile, Basset having left

2340-475: The second prize. Forbes writes that Adam derived more benefit from helping Boieldieu with the preparation of his opera La Dame blanche , produced at the Opéra-Comique in December 1825. Adam's piano transcriptions of themes from the opera were published in 1826 and made him enough money to tour the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland in summer 1826 with a family friend, Sébastien Guillié. In Geneva he met

2392-488: The then-popular shape note tunebooks. Pleyel's work is twice represented in the principal modern descendant of these books, The Sacred Harp . In his own time, Pleyel's reputation rested at least in part on the undemanding character of his music. A reviewer writing in the Morning Herald of London (1791) said that Pleyel "is becoming even more popular than his master [Haydn], as his works are characterized less by

2444-463: 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 postillon de Lonjumeau (1836) and Si j'étais roi (1852) and his Christmas carol "Minuit, chrétiens!" (Midnight, Christians, 1844, known in English as " O Holy Night "). Adam was the son of a well-known composer and pianist, but his father did not wish him to pursue

2496-468: Was ephemeral. This includes the many popular numbers he wrote for vaudevilles in his early years, a large number of piano arrangements, transcriptions and potpourris of favourite operatic arias, and numerous light songs and ballads. Nonetheless, "there remain several operas and ballets that are not merely delightful examples of their kind, but are also scores full of genuine inspiration". In this category Forbes includes Le chalet (which incorporates music from

2548-610: Was given before the imperial court in February 1840, and two of his operas were staged. He left Russia for Paris at the end of March, stopping off in Berlin, where he wrote an opera-ballet, Die Hamadryaden (The Tree Nymphs), which he conducted at the Court Opera in April 1840. Adam's next substantial work was the composition by which he has become best known: the ballet Giselle . Based on Heinrich Heine 's version of an old tale,

2600-418: Was his most popular opera. In other countries the favourite was Le postillon de Lonjumeau . In Germany in particular the opera was celebrated for its tenor aria "Mes amis, écoutez l'histoire" (given in translation as "Freunde, vernehmet die Geschichte") , with its demanding high D . Grove comments that the opera has distinctive and well characterised roles and a sense of theatre, found in all Adam's operas. Of

2652-506: Was prolific, composing at least 42 symphonies, 70 string quartets , and several operas. Many of these works date from the Strasbourg period; Pleyel's production tailed off after he had become a businessman. Recent scholarship has suggested that the theme for the Variations on a Theme by Haydn , by Johannes Brahms , Op. 56a, was probably composed not by Haydn — but by Ignaz Pleyel. Pleyel also wrote music for masonic rituals. Pleyel

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2704-714: Was succeeded by Alexandre Basset . Basset soon fell out with Adam and told him that as long as he was director, Adam's works would never be performed at the Opéra-Comique. Early in 1847 a theatre in the Boulevard du Temple became available, and Adam, in partnership with the actor Achille Mirecour, took it over, rechristening it the Opéra-National . The cost of refurbishing the theatre was enormous, and in addition to investing his own money, Adam raised large sums in loans. The new opera house opened in November 1847, but from

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