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THE ORCHESTRA
IN LE SUEUR'S

MUSICAL AESTHETICS

By ORA FRISHBERG SALOMAN

The public heard yesterday with fresh pleasure at the Theatre Feydeau one of
the most beautiful compositions of the celebrated Le Sueur, La Caverne; and
enlightened admirers of this masterpiece do not doubt that it is not yet attracting
today the crowd that it will draw for a long time after its first production at the
theater. Of all the composers that Europe admires at present, Le Sueur is per-
haps one who has, through continual meditations, most deepened the fine art of
Piccinni, Gluck, Sacchini, Paisello, Haydn, Mozart; and if anyone among the
readers of this article doubts it, we would urge him to read what the author of
La Caverne has written on dramatic music.1

T HE works of an articulate composer-author are perennially fas-
cinating, and so the music and the writings of Jean Francois
Le Sueur (1760-1837) invite study.2 In the turbulent years around
1800, Le Sueur was regarded as a leading French composer of lyric
drama and monumental opera. His writings testify to a struggle
against the theoretical constraints imposed by traditional Frenclh
literary and critical doctrine. Primarily concerned with a G;luckian

lJournal dit la clef du Cabinet (5 brumaire an 10): Archives de l'Opbra / Archives
Nationales, AJ-XIII (C44L8, No. 2).
2 Georges Favre, "Le Sueur," in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, VIII
(1960), cols. 670-72. The most recent biography is by Martin Herman, "The Sacred
Music of Jean Francois Le Sueur: A Musical and Biographical Source Study [with]
Appendices," (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1964). Earlier biographies are
listed in MGG. M. Jean Mongr6dien is preparing a major study of the life and works
of Le Sueur, according to a note in his article "La musique du sacre de Napoleon Ier,"
Revue de musicologie, LIII/2 (1967), 145, See also listing No. 729 in Barry S. Brook,
Thematic Catalogues in Music (New York, 1972), p. 151.

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