Maria Luigi Carlo Zenobia Salvatore Cherubini

CHERUBINI, MARIA LUIGI CARLO ZENOBIA SALVATORE (176o-1842), Italian musical composer, was born at Florence on Sept. 14, 1760, and died on March 15, 1842 in Paris. His father was Maestro al Cembalo at the Pergola theatre, and began to teach him music when he was six. By the time he was 16 he had composed a great deal of Church music, and in 1777 he went to Bologna, where for four years he studied under Sarti. This famous master well earned the gratitude which after wards impelled Cherubini to place one of his double choruses by the side of his own Et Vitam Venturi as the crown of his Treatise on Counterpoint and Fugue, though the juxtaposition does Sarti's music no good. Cherubini also worked at operatic composition, and Sarti sometimes, like the great masters of painting, entrusted his pupil with minor parts of his own works. Cherubini's first complete opera, Quinto Fabio was produced in 178o and was followed in 1782 by Armida, Adriano in Siria, and other works. In 1784 he was invited to London to produce two works for the Italian opera there, one of which, La Finta Principessa, was favourably received while the other, Giulio Sabino, was, accord ing to a contemporary witness, "murdered" by the critics.

In 1786 he left London for Paris, which became his home after a visit to Turin in 1787-88 on the occasion of the produc tion there of his I figenia in Aulide. His first French opera, Demophon (1788), which was not a popular success, already marks a departure from the Italian style, which Cherubini still cultivated in the pieces he introduced into the works of Anfossi, Paisiello and Cimarosa, produced by him as director of the Ital ian opera in Paris (established in 1789). In Paris Cherubini be came a great composer. If his melodic invention had been as warm as Gluck's, his masterly technique would have made him one of the greatest composers that ever lived. But his personal character shows in its Johnsonian "anfractuosities" an un Johnsonian "unclubability," which extends to the centre of his art and deprives even his finest music of the glow of inspiration that fears nothing.

With Lodoiska (1791) the series of Cherubini's master-pieces begins, and Medee (1797) shows his full powers. Cherubini's creative genius was never more brilliant than at this period, as the wonderful two-act ballet, Anacreon, shows ; but his temper and spirits were not improved by a series of disappointments which culminated in the collapse of his prospects of congenial success at Vienna, where he went in 1805 in compliance with an invitation to compose an opera for the Imperial theatre. Here he produced, under the title of Der W assertrdger, the great work which, on its first production on January 7, 18o1 (26 Nivose, An 8) as Les Deux Journees, had thrilled Paris with the accents of a humanity restored to health and peace. It was by this time an established favourite in Austria. On February 25 Cherubini produced Faniska, but the war between Austria and France had broken out immediately after his arrival, and the run of Faniska was stopped by the bombardment and capitulation of Vienna.

His stay at Vienna is memorable for his intercourse with Beethoven, the most whole-hearted admirer he and his works have ever met in a century and a quarter. The mighty genius of Beethoven, which broke through all rules in vindication of the principles underlying them, was incomprehensible to Cherubini, in whose mind the creative faculties were finely developed, but whose critical faculty was supplanted by a mere disciplinary code inadequate even as a basis for the analysis of his own works. On the other hand, it would be impossible to exaggerate the in fluence Les Deux Journees had on the lighter parts of Beethoven's Fidelio. Cherubini's librettist was also the author of the libretto from which Fidelio was adapted, and Cherubini's score was a constant object of Beethoven's study, not only before the pro duction of the first version of Fidelio (as Leonore) but also throughout Beethoven's life. Cherubini's record of Beethoven's character is contained in the single phrase, "Il etait toujours brusque," a fine example of the pot's opinion of the kettle. The overture to Leonore merely puzzled Cherubini as to what key it might be in. Beethoven's brusqueness did not prevent him from assuring Cherubini that he considered him the greatest composer of the age and that he loved and honoured him. Cherubini's incapacity to understand Beethoven did not prevent him from working on the grand scale which Beethoven had by that time established as a permanent standard for musical art. The colos sal breadth of the duet Per fides ennenzis in Medee is almost in conceivable without the example of Beethoven's C minor trio, op. I, No. 3, published two years before it. On the other hand the cavatina Eterno iddio in Faniska is of a terseness and depth not only worthy of Beethoven but surprisingly like him in style.

After Cherubini's disappointing visit to Vienna he did little until 1809 when his friends with much difficulty persuaded him to write a mass for the consecration of a church at the country seat of the prince de Chimay, where he was staying. With this mass (in F, for three-part chorus and orchestra), the period of his great Church music begins; although it was by no means the end of his career as an opera writer, which lasted as late as his 73rd year (1832). This third period is also marked by sev eral instrumental compositions. An early event in the annals of the Philharmonic Society was the invitation of Cherubini to London in 1815 to produce a symphony, an overture and a vocal piece. The symphony (in D) was afterwards arranged, with a new slow movement, as the string quartet in C (1829), a curious illustration of Cherubini's notions of symphonic as well as of chamber-music style, for the quartet-writing is just like that of his other quartets; oil-painting restricted to black and white. Nevertheless the first three of the six string quartets written between 1814 and 1837 are interesting works performed with success at the present day, and the last three, discovered in 1889 are not without fine passages.

At the eleventh hour Cherubini received recognition from Napoleon, who, during the Hundred Days, made him chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Then, with the restoration of the Bourbons, Cherubini's position improved. He was appointed, jointly with Lesueur, as composer and conductor to the Chapel Royal, and in 1822 he obtained the permanent directorship of the conservatoire.

In 1833 Cherubini produced his last work for the stage,

Ali Baba, adapted (with new and noisy features which excited Men delssohn's astonished disgust) from a manuscript opera, Kou kourgi, written 4o years earlier. It is therefore not one of the brighter rockets from what Mendelssohn called "the extinct volcano." But the requiem in D minor (for male voices), writ ten in 1836, is one of Cherubini's greatest works, and, though not actually his last composition, is a worthy close to the long career of an artist of high ideals who, while neither by birth nor temperament a Frenchman, must yet be counted with a still greater foreigner, Gluck, as among the glories of French classical music. Cherubini's Treatise on Counterpoint and Fugue embodies his views as a theorist. Concerning one 16th century idiom, as natural in pure polyphony as "attraction of the relative" is in classical Greek. Cherubini remarks, "No tradition gives us any reason why the classics thus faultily deviated from the rule." On another point where there is a fine opportunity for stimulating a sense of harmonic values, he inculcates a mechanical pseudo logic with the remark that "The opinion of the classics appears to me erroneous, notwithstanding that custom has sanctioned it, for on the principle that the discord is a mere suspension of the chord, it should not affect the nature of the chord. But since the classics have pronounced judgment we must of course sub mit." On the whole Cherubini's career as a teacher did more harm than good in his lifetime, and his Treatise on Counterpoint and Fugue continues at the present day to invest disastrous mis interpretations of classical art forms with the authority of a great composer.

And yet as a composer Cherubini was no psuedo-classic but a really great artist. His purity of style rarely joined itself to matter that could express the ideals he kept always in view. In his love of those ideals there was too much fear : but Beethoven's estimate of him is more just than the contemptuous neglect with which his art is treated now.

His principal works are summarized by Fetis as 32 operas, 29 Church compositions, four cantatas and several instrumental pieces, besides the treatise on counterpoint and fugue.

Good modern full scores of the two Requiems and of Les Deux Journees (the latter unfortunately without the dialogue, which, however, is accessible in a careful German translation in the Reclam Bibliothek), and also of ten opera overtures, are cur rent in the Peters edition. Vocal scores of some of the other operas are not difficult to get. The great Credo is in the Peters edition, but is becoming scarce. The string quartets are in Payne's Miniature Scores. It is very desirable that the operas, from Demo phon onwards, should be republished in full score.

(D. F. T.) Deane-Baron, Cherubini (1862) ; E. Bellasis, Cherubini (1874 and 1912) ; Crowest, Cherubini, 189o; R. Hohenemser, Luigi Cherubini, sein Leben and Seine Werke (Leipzig, 1913) ; M. Quatrelles 1'Epine, Cherubini 1760-1842; Notes et Documents inedits (Lille, 1913) .