Antonín Rejcha (Anton Reicha): Symphony in F Major

 

Anton Reicha, 1815

 

 

Anton (Antonín, Antoine) Reicha (Rejcha) (26 February 1770 – 28 May 1836) was a Czech-born, later naturalized French composer of music very much in the German style. A contemporary and lifelong friend of Beethoven, He is now best remembered for his substantial early contributions to the wind quintet literature and his role as teacher of pupils including Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz and César Franck.]

 

Symphony in F Major

Dvořák Chamber Orchestra, Petr Altrichter (conductor) I. Introduction. Lento Poco

Andante – 0:00​ II. Adagio – 12:56​ III. Menuetto. Allegro – 24:12​ IV. Finale. Allegro Vivace – 34:06

 

His enduring reputation is of a composer whose music contained features of late Classicism and early Romanticism while retaining elements of the Baroque tradition. Reicha is best remembered as a major nineteenth-century theorist. He is also remembered for his substantial early contributions to the wind quintet literature. In 1780 Antonin ran away from home following a sudden impulse – as he recounted in his memoirs, he jumped onto a passing carriage, and then his paternal uncle Josef Reicha, a virtuoso cellist, conductor and composer living in Wallerstein, Bavaria, adopted him. Josef and his wife, being childless, could give young Anton their full attention: Josef taught him violin and piano, his wife insisted on his being taught French and German, and he was also taught the flute. In 1785 the family moved to Bonn, where Reicha became a member of the Hofkapelle of Max Franz, Elector of Cologne, playing violin and second flute in the court orchestra under his uncle's direction. From about 1785 Reicha studied composition secretly, against his uncle's wishes, composing and conducting his first symphony in 1787 and entering the University of Bonn in 1789, where he studied and performed until 1794. He continued composing and studied mathematics, philosophy and, significantly, methods of teaching composition. In 1799 he moved to Paris, hoping to achieve success as an opera composer. These hopes were dashed, however: he could neither get his old librettos accepted nor find suitable new ones. He moved on to Vienna in 1801. Once there, like Beethoven and the young Schubert, he studied with Antonio Salieri and Johann Georg Albrechtsberger. Reicha's move to Vienna marked the beginning of a more productive and successful period in his life. As he wrote in his memoirs, "The number of works I finished in Vienna is astonishing. Once started, my verve and imagination were indefatigable. Ideas came to me so rapidly it was often difficult to set them down without losing some of them. I always had a great penchant for doing the unusual in composition. When writing in an original vein, my creative faculties and spirit seemed keener than when following the precepts of my predecessors." By 1808 Reicha decided to move back to Paris. He was soon teaching composition privately, future prolific composer George Onslow being one of his pupils. Three of his many operas were produced, but they all failed; yet his fame as theorist and teacher increased steadily, and by 1817 most of his pupils became professors at the Conservatoire de Paris. The following year, Reicha himself was appointed professor of counterpoint and fugue at the Conservatoire with the support of Louis XVIII, despite opposition from its influential professor of composition and (from 1822) director Luigi Cherubini. Reicha stayed in Paris for the rest of his life. He became a naturalized citizen of his adopted country in 1829 and Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1835. That same year, he succeeded François-Adrien Boieldieu at the Académie française. He published two more large treatises about musical composition. His ideas sparked some controversy at the Conservatoire. In 1826 Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz and Henri Cohen became students of his, as did composers Charles Gounod and Pauline Viardot sometime later. On 28 May 1836, Reicha lost a short battle with pneumonia and died in his home. Much of Reicha's music remained unpublished and/or unperformed during his life, and virtually all of it fell into obscurity after his death. This is partly explained by Reicha's own decisions he reflected on in his autobiography: "Many of my works have never been heard because of my aversion to seeking performances [...] I counted the time spent in such efforts as lost, and preferred to remain at my desk."