Александр Лекок: 19-20 ғасырлар француз композиторы

19th and 20th century French musical composer

Alexandre Charles Lecocq (3 June 183224 October 1918) was a French composer, known for his opérettes and opéras comiques. He became the most prominent successor to Jacques Offenbach in this sphere, and enjoyed considerable success in the 1870s and early 1880s, before the changing musical fashions of the late 19th century made his style of composition less popular. His few serious works include the opera Plutus (1886), which was not a success, and the ballet Le cygne (1899). His only piece to survive in the regular modern operatic repertory is his 1872 opéra comique La fille de Madame Angot (Mme Angot's Daughter). Others of his more than forty stage works receive occasional revivals. After study at the Paris Conservatoire, Lecocq shared the first prize with Georges Bizet in an operetta writing contest organised in 1856 by Offenbach. Lecocq's next successful composition was an opéra bouffe, Fleur de Thé (Tea flower), twelve years later. His comic operas Les cent vierges (The Hundred Virgins, 1872), La fille de Madame Angot (1872) and Giroflé Girofla (1874) were all successes and established his international reputation. Critics remarked on the elegance of the music in Lecocq's best works. His other popular pieces in the 1870s included La petite mariée (The Little Bride, 1875) and Le petit duc (The Little Duke, 1878). Although a few of his works in the early 1880s were well received, and he continued composing for more than two decades afterwards, his later works never achieved the same admiration.

Lecocq was born in Paris, the son of a copyist at the Commercial Court of the Seine. His father was not highly paid, but supported a family of five children. As a boy Lecocq suffered from a hip condition that obliged him to use crutches throughout his life.|group= n His first musical instrument was the flageolet; a music teacher, discerning his talent, persuaded his parents to buy a piano. By the age of 16 Lecocq was giving private piano lessons which funded the lessons he himself was taking in harmony.|group= n He thought little of Halévy as a teacher,

At the time when Lecocq left the Conservatoire, the genre of popular musical theatre known as opérette was becoming popular. It had been introduced by the composer Hervé and its principal exponent was Jacques Offenbach, who presented his works at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens from 1855. In 1856 he organised an open competition for aspiring composers. A jury of French composers and playwrights including Daniel Auber, Halévy, Ambroise Thomas, Charles Gounod and Eugène Scribe considered 78 entries; the five short listed entrants were all asked to set a libretto, Le docteur miracle, written by Ludovic Halévy and Léon Battu. The joint winners were Bizet and Lecocq. refn|Lecocq believed that he should have won the competition outright, but that Halévy influenced the other jurors in Bizet's favour. Bizet became, and remained, a devoted friend of Offenbach; Lecocq and Offenbach took a dislike to one another, and their rivalry in later years was not altogether friendly. Lecocq's setting of Le Docteur Miracle, was given eleven performances at Offenbach's theatre, but this early success was followed by eleven years of obscurity and routine work as a teacher, accompanist and répétiteur.

The Franco Prussian War in 1870–1871 temporarily interrupted Lecocq's rise, and he was gloomy about his prospects after it. While Offenbach struggled to re establish himself in Parisian theatres, Lecocq began to occupy his place. After the outbreak of the war Lecocq moved temporarily to Brussels, where he premiered Les cent vierges (The Hundred Virgins, 1872), La fille de Madame Angot (Madame Angot's Daughter, 1872) and Giroflé Girofla (1874), all great successes there and then in Paris and elsewhere. La fille de Madame Angot was most conspicuous of these successes. At the Parisian premiere in February 1873, Saint Saëns said, "It's much more serious than you think; it's a success without parallel!" The work ran for 411 performances in Paris and was given in 103 cities and towns in France, and theatres in other countries: its London premiere was within three months of the first Paris performances. In 1874 the London paper The Morning Post commented that twelve months earlier scarcely anyone in England had heard of Lecocq, but now it was doubtful if there was anyone "who has not played sung or whistled one or more of Lecocq's charming melodies". So great was the composer's popularity as a composer of operétte that he felt obliged to use a pen name ("Georges Stern") for his serious music such as his Miettes musicales, Op. 21 (Musical crumbs). which, in Traubner's words, "left no doubt that the composer had succeeded Offenbach". Nonetheless, by this time Offenbach had recovered much of his pre war popularity with Parisian audiences, and Lecocq's pre eminence was briefly threatened by the older composer's successful Madame Favart (1878) and La fille du tambour major (1879), but the latter was Offenbach's last completed work and he died in 1880.

At the turn of the decade Lecocq had a year's break from composition as a result of illness and domestic problems. The failure led to the break up of Lecocq's association with Koning and the Renaissance. The most successful of Lecocq's works for the Nouveautés were the opéra bouffe Le jour et la nuit (Day and Night, 1881) and the opéra comique Le coeur et la main (The Heart and the Hand, 1882), both variations on his familiar theme of wedding nights disrupted by farcical complications. In Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Andrew Lamb describes these as Lecocq's last real successes. Lamb writes that he accepted that fashion in comic opera had changed, and he turned to other genres. In 1886 his opera, Plutus, a "morality" based on a play by Aristophanes, was presented at the Opéra Comique. After the premiere the Paris correspondent of The Era called it "the most unsuccessful and insignificant of his works utterly devoid of originality, altogether wanting in inspiration, and without a genuine sparkle from end to end." The run closed after eight performances. Lecocq was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1900 and promoted to Officier in 1910. He died in his home city of Paris, aged 85. refn|In this regard, Senelick groups Lecocq with Hervé, Planquette and "even Chabrier". For the same period, Operabase records more than five hundred productions of nearly forty different operas by Offenbach. Several writers have discussed why Lecocq's music is neglected. In 1911 an anonymous critic in The Observer wrote, "Lecocq succeeded in being a formidable rival to Offenbach. As a composer he was one of the happiest of melodists, but never attained the heights of fascinating vulgarity and bustling originality of his more famous contemporary." Lamb writes that much of Lecocq's music is characterised by a light touch, although "he could also adopt a more lyrical and elevated style than Offenbach". Florian Bruyas in his Histoire de l'opérette en France makes a similar point. When Giroflé Girofla opened at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in 1874, the reviewer in the Chronique Musicale wrote that the music seemed to him superior to that of Offenbach – or even of earlier pieces by Lecocq, including La fille de Madame Angot – but that it was composed in a style that was possibly too refined to appeal to operetta audiences. This style came into its own in the 1870s and 1880s, but went out of fashion before the turn of the century. This, in Letellier's view, led to the oblivion of much excellent music, lost when works with bad libretti failed. Traubner observes that many critics rate Lecocq higher than Offenbach as an orchestrator and harmonist, although melodically he did not rival the "startling immediacy" of Offenbach's tunes. Lecocq disliked being compared to Offenbach, and went out of his way to avoid rhythmic devices familiar from the older composer's works.