Music, Pantomime & Freedom in Enlightenment France by Hedy Law (review)

Abstract

“There must be few cities in France where there isn’t at least one teacher who claims to be Reicha’s pupil,” as Jelensperger put it (p. 438, my trans.). The ensuing exhibition catalog presents a wide variety of documentary material and manuscripts reproduced attractively in full-color illustrations, progressing chronologically through all stations and facets of Reicha’s career. The annotations are engaging, scrupulously precise as to the current state of knowledge, and often disarmingly incisive about the potential biographical and music-historical value. Like the rest of the volume, the objects under consideration attest to the depth and richness of Reicha-related material in the BnF. To cite just one example of how seemingly innocuous items can be the result of groundbreaking new discoveries: The inclusion of Reicha’s Concertante for Flute, Violin, and Orchestra in G major, composed in Bonn, provides the occasion for Goy to mention that two missing gatherings of the original manuscript, which contain sixty-seven measures of the first movement, were only discovered in March 2021 (pp. 486–89). These sixteen pages of music had been slumbering in another box (MS-9153) alongside a quite radical symphony in E-flat, which watermark analysis has revealed to be another work from the Bonn period. (See my own article on the chronology of Reicha’s Bonn works from the aforementioned Antoine Reicha visionnaire [forthcoming].) Seeing as all previous works lists, most recently those by Peter Eliot Stone in Grove Music Online (s.v. “Reicha [Rejcha], Antoine (-Joseph)” [2001], doi:10.1093/gmo /9781561592630.article.23093 [accessed 31 December 2022]) and by Ludwig Finscher in MGG Online, (s.v. “Reicha, Anton, Werke” [November 2016], https://www-mgg-online-com/mgg /stable/401130 [accessed 31 December 2022]) declare most of Reicha’s Bonn works lost, this alone represents a significant leap forward in understanding his early compositional efforts. It also unfortunately reveals the two fine recordings of this delightful work, by the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra in 1995 (Anton Reicha, Orchestral Works, cond. Peter Gülke, MDG Gold MDG 355 0661-2, CD) and Gli Angeli Genève in 2020 (Anton Reicha, Symphonies concertantes, cond. Stephan Macleod, Claves 50-3011, CD), as incomplete. Altogether, this catalog and essay collection should inspire further fascination in a still under-researched musical giant—not even a reliable list of Reicha’s authentic works exists, to say nothing of a state-of-the-art thematic catalog. The rich array of objects under consideration, the majority of which still await detailed scholarly attention, will hopefully motivate further researchers to join the effort.