Feature

Composer of the month: Gounod

Feted in his own era, the French composer deserves to be remembered for more than the small handful of his works that are familiar today, says Roger Nichols.

by Roger Nichols on 22 October, 2019

Lived 1818–1893
Mostly in Paris
Best Known For Faust, Roméo et Juliette, Ave Maria, Songs, St Cecilia Mass
Similar To Meyerbeer, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Halévy

Gounod

We’ve probably heard a few arias from his opera Faust; we’ll certainly know his Ave Maria, based on Bach’s C Major Prelude, and maybe a few of his songs; and if we’re wind players, we may have enjoyed contributing to his delightful 1888 Petite Symphonie for wind octet. But beyond that? Gounod is a composer whose currency has devalued steeply from those late Victorian days when he sold his oratorio Mors et Vita to the music publisher Novello for 100,000 francs.

But already, even then, the critics were sharpening their pens. In 1893, the year of Charles Gounod’s death, George Bernard Shaw complained that most probably his eyesight had been “damaged by protracted contemplation of the scarlet red coat and red limelight of Mephistopheles”,...