Antoine François Marmontel
Encyclopedia
Clermont-Ferrand
Clermont-Ferrand is a city and commune of France, in the Auvergne region, with a population of 140,700 . Its metropolitan area had 409,558 inhabitants at the 1999 census. It is the prefecture of the Puy-de-Dôme department...
–16 January 1898, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
) was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
, teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
and musicographer
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
.
Marmontel entered the Paris Conservatory
Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...
in 1827. His teachers were Pierre Zimmerman
Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmermann
Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmermann, , known as Pierre Zimmerman and Joseph Zimmermann, was a French pianist, composer, and music teacher.Zimmermann was born in Paris, the son of a piano maker...
in pianoforte, Victor Dourlen in harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
, Jacques Fromental Halévy
Fromental Halévy
Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy , was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.-Early career:...
in fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
and Jean-François Le Sueur
Jean-François Le Sueur
Jean-François Le Sueur was a French composer, best known for his oratorios and operas.-Life:...
in composition
Musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
. He achieved first prizes in theory of music
Music theory
Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...
and piano. In 1837, he became an assistant in theory of music at the Conservatory. In 1848 he succeeded Zimmerman as Professor of Keyboard at the Conservatory, beating his former teacher Charles-Valentin Alkan
Charles-Valentin Alkan
Charles-Valentin Alkan was a French composer and one of the greatest virtuoso pianists of his day. His attachment to his Jewish origins is displayed both in his life and his work. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of six, earning many awards, and as an adult became a famous virtuoso...
, and as a consequence derailing the latter's career. His memoir of his sometime colleague in his book 'Les pianistes célèbres' is nonetheless one of the most valuable sources for Alkan's biography.
Marmontel achieved renown as an effective and imaginative teacher. He had many pupils including Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
, Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy was a French composer and teacher.-Life:Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed him on to Antoine François Marmontel and...
, Théodore Dubois
Théodore Dubois
François-Clément Théodore Dubois was a French composer, organist and music teacher.-Biography:Théodore Dubois was born in Rosnay in Marne. He studied first under Louis Fanart and later at the Paris Conservatoire under Ambroise Thomas. He won the Prix de Rome in 1861...
, Dominique Ducharme
Dominique Ducharme (musician)
Dominique Ducharme was a Canadian pianist, organist, and music educator. He studied with Paul Letondal and Charles Wugk Sabatier in Canada before studying for 5 years at the Conservatoire de Paris in France with Antoine Marmontel and François Bazin...
, Gustave Gagnon
Gustave Gagnon
Gustave Adolphe Mathurin Gagnon was a Canadian organist, composer, and music educator.-Family background and education:...
, Ernest Guiraud
Ernest Guiraud
Ernest Guiraud was a French composer and music teacher born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is best known for writing the traditional orchestral recitatives used for Bizet's opera Carmen and for Offenbach's opera Les contes d'Hoffmann .- Biography :Guiraud began his schooling in Louisiana under the...
, Émile Paladilhe
Emile Paladilhe
Émile Paladilhe was a French composer of the late romantic period.-Biography:Émile Paladilhe was born in Montpellier. He was a musical child prodigy, and moved from his home in the south of France to Paris to begin his studies at the Conservatoire de Paris at age 10...
, Edward MacDowell
Edward MacDowell
Edward Alexander MacDowell was an American composer and pianist of the Romantic period. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites "Woodland Sketches", "Sea Pieces", and "New England Idylls". "Woodland Sketches" includes his most popular short piece, "To a Wild Rose"...
, Gabriel Pierné
Gabriel Pierné
Henri Constant Gabriel Pierné was a French composer, conductor, and organist.-Biography:Gabriel Pierné was born in Metz in 1863. His family moved to Paris to escape the Franco-Prussian War. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, gaining first prizes for solfège, piano, organ, counterpoint and fugue...
, Louis Diémer
Louis Diémer
Louis-Joseph Diémer was a French pianist and composer.- Life :Diémer studied at the Paris Conservatoire, winning premiers prix in piano, harmony and accompaniment, counterpoint and fugue, and solfège, and a second prix in organ...
, Francis Planté
Francis Planté
Francis Planté was a French pianist famed as one of the first ever recording artists. He was France's most important pianist in the nineteenth century....
and Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
.
Marmontel's career is marked by a great number of pedagogical works (more than 200 opus number
Opus number
An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...
s) as well as nocturne
Nocturne
A nocturne is usually a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night...
s, romances and many other pieces. Notably, he published L'Art de déchiffrer (cent études faciles) ("The Art of Sight-Reading" (100 Easy Studies); École élémentaire de mécanisme et de style ("Basic School of Fingering and Style") (24 studies) in 1847 ; Étude de mécanisme ("Fingering Study"); Cinq études de salon ("Five Salon Music Studies"); L'Art de déchiffrer à quatre mains ("The Art of Sight-Reading for Four Hands") in 1847 ; and Enseignement progressif et rationnel du piano ("Progressive and Rational Piano Teaching") in 1887.
Marmontel's musicographical works number among the best sources for the history of piano and pianists, particularly for the 19th century. They include his Symphonistes et virtuoses ("Symphonists and Virtuosi") in 1880; Les Pianistes célèbres ("Famous Pianists") in 1878; Virtuoses contemporains ("Contemporary Virtuosi") in 1882; Éléments d'esthétique musicale et considérations sur le beau dans les arts ("Fundamentals of Musical Aesthetics and Thoughts on the Fine Arts") in 1884; and Histoire du piano et de ses origines ("History of the Piano and Its Origins") in 1885.
Marmontel's son, Antonin Emil Louis Corbaz Marmontel (24 April 1850, Paris – 23 July 1907) was also a piano teacher at the Conservatoire. He wrote many salon pieces.