Gossec: Aux Armes, Citoyens! (Revolutionary Music for Winds) - Les Jacobins, Mathieu Lussier

Product Description:

The son of a small farmer, Gossec was born at the village of Vergnies, in Hainaut, then French, now Belgian. He went to Paris in 1751 and was taken on by the great composer, Jean-Philippe Rameau.

Gossec's own first symphony was performed in 1754, and as conductor to the Prince de Condé's orchestra he produced several operas and other compositions of his own. He imposed his influence on French music with remarkable success. He premiered his Requiem in 1760, a piece ninety minutes in length, which made him famous overnight. The piece was later admired by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Gossec founded the Concert des Amateurs in 1770 and in 1773 he reorganised the Concert Spirituel together with Simon Leduc and Pierre Gaviniès. In this concert series he presented and conducted his own symphonies as well as those by his contemporaries, especially works by Joseph Haydn, whose music became more and more popular in Paris, and finally even superseded Gossec's symphonic work. He organized the École de Chant in 1784, together with Etienne Méhul, was conductor of the band of the Garde Nationale at the French Revolution, and was appointed (again with Méhul and Luigi Cherubini) inspector of the Conservatoire de Musique on its creation in 1795. In 1815, after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, the Conservatoire was closed for some time by Louis XVIII, and the eighty-one year-old Gossec had to retire. He died in the Parisian suburb of Passy. The funeral service was attended by former colleagues, including Cherubini, at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. His grave is near those of Méhul and Grétry.

He wrote many works in honor of the French revolution, including Le Triomphe de la République, and L'Offrande à la Liberté and this charming collection represents some of his smaller scale music for Wind Instruments. Alongside La Marseillaise we get suites of music on Revolutionary hymns and even a work depicting a battle.

Re-order code: CD183831