Jean-Franсois Lesueur

Jean-François Lesueur was a French composer, music theorist, conductor and influential teacher. Beginning as a cathedral singer in Abbeville and Amiens, he later worked as a choral director in Dijon, Le Mans and Tours. From 1786 he led the chapel of Notre-Dame de Paris. He became professor and later inspector of the National Music Institute, which became the Paris Conservatory. During the French Revolution he wrote ceremonial choruses and hymns for public festivals. Under Napoleon he served as court Kapellmeister. From 1818 he returned to teaching at the Conservatory, where his students included Hector Berlioz, Charles Gounod, Ambroise Thomas and Antoine Marmontel.

He composed operas, sacred music and theoretical writings, and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour after the premiere of his opera Ossian, ou les Bardes.

Born on 15 February 1760 in Plessiel, a hamlet of Drucat near Abbeville, he was a great-nephew of the painter Eustache Le Sueur and pursued further musical studies in Paris under Abbé Nicolas Roze. After introducing orchestral innovations at Notre-Dame that provoked ecclesiastical resistance, he published the pamphlet Exposé d’une musique imitative et particulière à chaque solennité in 1787. Financial pressures forced him to leave his post, after which he spent several years in London before returning to Paris.

His early operatic successes included La Caverne ou le Repentir (1793), Paul et Virginie (1794) and Télémaque dans l'île de Calypso (1796). Later works encompassed L’inauguration du temple de la victoire (1807), Le triomphe de Trajan (1807), La mort d’Adam et son apothéose (1809) and the unfinished Alexandre à Babylone. His oratorio output included Ruth et Noëmi, Ruth et Booz, a Christmas Oratorio and several Passion oratorios.

During his disputes with the Conservatory he published the critical pamphlet Projet d'un plan général de l'instruction musicale en France, which contributed to his dismissal in 1802. Restored to prominence by Napoleon, he composed the Triumphal March for the coronation and was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1813. He later became composer to the royal chapel and conductor at the Paris Opéra. Lesueur died in Paris on 6 October 1837 and was buried at Père-Lachaise.

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