Theodore Gouvy

Théodore Gouvy (1819-1898) was born into a French speaking family in the Alsatian village of Goffontaine which at the time belonged to Prussia. As a child, he showed no significant talent for music and after a normal preparatory education was sent to Paris in 1836 to study law. While there, he also continued piano lessons and became friendly with Adolphe Adam. This led to further music studies in Paris and Berlin. Gouvy, drawn toward pure instrumental music as opposed to opera, set himself the unenviable task of becoming a French symphonist. It was unenviable because the French, and especially the Parisians, throughout most of the 19th century were opera-mad and not particularly interested in pure instrumental music. It was this disdain for instrumental music in general which led to Gouvy living the last third of his life almost entirely in Germany where he was much appreciated. During his lifetime, his compositions, and especially his chamber music, were held in high regard and often performed in those countries (Germany, Austria, England, Scandinavia, and Russia) where chamber music mattered. But in France, he never achieved real acclaim. Gouvy was universally acknowledged for being a master of form and for his deft sense of instrumental timbre. Mendelssohn and Schumann were his models and his music developed along the lines one might have expected of those men had they lived longer. Virtually all of his works show that he was a gifted melodist whose music is a joy to hear.

That he and his music were held in high regard but nonetheless failed to achieve great fame is surely in part because he was a man of some means who was not forced to earn his living from music. There has always been a bias against those who had the freedom to live for their art but did not need to live by it. Musicians of the first rank such as Johannes Brahms, Carl Reinecke, and Joseph Joachim, who were familiar with Gouvy's music, held it in high regard.

A list of his works was compiled by François-Joseph Fétis and Pougin.Google books|wR0PAAAAYAAJ|Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians: Ed. by J. A. Fuller Maitland, 1906 edition, page 211]

He wrote seven symphonies of which six are as follows [Rosenkranz, A. (1902). Google books|ZJ9UAAAAMAAJ|Novello's catalogue of orchestral music: a manual of the orchestral literature of all countries, New York: Novello, Ewer & Co., page 51. OCLC|13278734.] :
*no. 1 in E-flat (op. 9, published by Richault of Paris in the 1850s)
*no. 2 in F (op. 12, published by Richault of Paris in the 1850s),
*no. 3 in C (op. 20)
*no. 4 in D minor (op. 25, published by Richault in the 1850s)
*in G (op. 58, entitled Symphonie brève; variations et rondo pour orchestre) [cite web|title=Permanent Link for Catalog Entry at University of Michigan of Gouvy Symphony op. 58|url=http://mirlyn.lib.umich.edu/F/?func=direct&doc_number=001530631&local_base=MIU01_PUB|date=1880s|accessdate=2008-07-08|publisher=Paris: S. Richault]
*no. 7 in G minor (op. 87, his penultimate published work, published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1893 as symphony no. 7)
*and a sinfonietta (not counted among the symphonies, and his op. 80, published by Kistner in 1886).

References

*Some of the information on this page appears on the website of Edition Silvertrust but permission has been granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

External links

* [http://www.editionsilvertrust.com/music-books-a-to-g.htm Theodore Gouvy Chamber Music Soundbites:String Quartet No.5, Op.68, String Quintet, Op.55 & Piano Trio No.2, Op.18]