Sur la musique comme art purement sentimental

The Department of Music of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France holds, in its archive of manuscripts in French, two versions of the same text entitled “Sur la musique comme art purement sentimental” (Rés. F 145, sketch; Rés. F 146, fair copy). This is more a philosophical essay than a treatise on music. The document, whose writing can be placed between 1809 and 1813, i.e. shortly after Antoine (Anton) Reicha settled in Paris in 1808, remained unpublished until 2011. The manuscript F 146 comprises 91 pages of text presented in one column with references to marginal notes, prolonged by 24 pages of 72 additional notes. A third manuscript (Rés. F 147) brings together a dozen plates of music examples. Since the captions given these examples show a quite limited mastery of French, the main text must have been carefully edited. The title page of F 146 names François Fayolle, collaborator of Alexandre Choron, as publisher of the work; this would make him the editor, as he was also the promoter of Reicha’s music in Paris. Fayolle would publish Reicha’s Traité de mélodie in 1814, but with the fall of the Empire had to relocate to London where he would remain until 1829. This might explain the abandonment of the essay, still mentioned in the Traité de mélodie (pg. 60), to which it itself refers (pg. 28).

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genreEssay
languagesfrançais
date1813
physical and bibliographical description

Manuscrit du département de la musique de la Bibliothèque nationale de France :

-Rés F 145 (brouillon raturé)

-Rés F 146 (mise au propre : 91 pages de texte et 24 pages de notes)

-Rés F 147 (exemples musicaux)

Cet essai a été édité récemment : Antoine Reicha, Écrits inédits et oubiés, tome 1, Hervé Audéon, Alban Ramaut et Herbert Schneider éds, (édition bilingue français/allemand), Hildesheim, Olms, 2011.

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