Le Don Juan de Mozart

Written in the spring of 1890, this analysis is the testimony of a composer still dazzled by a masterpiece discovered fifty years earlier. The circumstances of this discovery Gounod had recounted in a memorandum on the same subject, but entirely different, read on 25 October 1882 at the Institut (subsequently published in Le Ménestrel). This earlier text, less detailed, begins with an account of the performance at the Théâtre Italien and of Gounod’s emotion, then goes on to become a kind of sermon. Certain striking expressions were omitted in 1890; thus:  “The whole of drama is already contained in this prodigious overture composed in one night: a fecund night, of which it could be said, as with the inspired writer prophesying that of the birth of the Christ Child: Nox sicut dies illuminabitur! This night will be lit up like the day . . . How overpowering it is! How terrifying! This man of stone who advances with a step as monotonous and implacable as fate! He resembles the dull groan of a rising ocean that will submerge everything; this Man is a deluge unto himself!” Or, apropos of the first finale: “What light in this tempest! What brilliance in this riot! And all that without violence in the instrumentation, for sonority lies in strength and strength lies in the idea.”

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genreEssay
editorOllendorff
place of publicationParis
years of publication1890
pages216
languagesfrançais
compositeur