O Holy Night
Adolphe Adam
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Browse piano sheets by Adolphe Adam on Zen Virtual Piano. Adam's father was a well-known composer and pianist, yet he did not want his son to follow a musical career. Adam's formal training came at the Conservatoire, which he entered at 17: François Benoist taught him the organ, Anton Reicha counterpoint, and Adrien Boieldieu composition. A father who did not want a musical career for his son, and a Conservatoire place at 17 all the same, make an early tension between home and ambition. Music lessons and songs for the Paris vaudeville theatres kept him busy by the age of 20, and he later called what he wrote then bad romances and worse piano pieces. In Geneva he met the librettist Eugène Scribe, with whom he later collaborated on nine stage works. Songs for the vaudeville theatres by 20 and a later partnership with a librettist give the stage a central role in how his career grew. Adam wrote more than 70 operas, the best liked in their time being Le Châlet (1834), Le Postillon de Longjumeau (1836) and Giralda (1850). Opera came to him in great quantity, yet ballet music came more fluently still, and he remarked that writing it felt like fun, not work. Carlotta Grisi took the title role when one ballet, drawn from Heinrich Heine's version of an old tale, opened at the Opéra on 28 June 1841. Opera in quantity and ballet with ease suggest that he took more pleasure in the dance scores than the larger stage works. He wrote reviews and articles for Le Constitutionnel and the Assemblée nationale, and took up teaching as professor of composition at the Conservatoire, where Léo Delibes was among his students. The text of O Holy Night is based on the 1847 French poem Minuit, chrétiens by Placide Cappeau, which Adam set to music, completing the musical setting within days, and Cappeau called the finished work Cantique de Noël. He died in his sleep at 52 and was buried in the Montmartre Cemetery, and his memoirs were published after his death in two volumes, Souvenirs d'un musicien (1857) and Derniers souvenirs d'un musicien (1859). A setting completed within days of a poem, alongside memoirs published after his death, leaves one quick piece and one reflective record as the last marks of his work.
Browse piano sheets by Adolphe Adam on Zen Virtual Piano.
Adam's father was a well-known composer and pianist, yet he did not want his son to follow a musical career. Adam's formal training came at the Conservatoire, which he entered at 17: François Benoist taught him the organ, Anton Reicha counterpoint, and Adrien Boieldieu composition. A father who did not want a musical career for his son, and a Conservatoire place at 17 all the same, make an early tension between home and ambition.
Music lessons and songs for the Paris vaudeville theatres kept him busy by the age of 20, and he later called what he wrote then bad romances and worse piano pieces. In Geneva he met the librettist Eugène Scribe, with whom he later collaborated on nine stage works. Songs for the vaudeville theatres by 20 and a later partnership with a librettist give the stage a central role in how his career grew.
Adam wrote more than 70 operas, the best liked in their time being Le Châlet (1834), Le Postillon de Longjumeau (1836) and Giralda (1850). Opera came to him in great quantity, yet ballet music came more fluently still, and he remarked that writing it felt like fun, not work. Carlotta Grisi took the title role when one ballet, drawn from Heinrich Heine's version of an old tale, opened at the Opéra on 28 June 1841. Opera in quantity and ballet with ease suggest that he took more pleasure in the dance scores than the larger stage works.
He wrote reviews and articles for Le Constitutionnel and the Assemblée nationale, and took up teaching as professor of composition at the Conservatoire, where Léo Delibes was among his students. The text of O Holy Night is based on the 1847 French poem Minuit, chrétiens by Placide Cappeau, which Adam set to music, completing the musical setting within days, and Cappeau called the finished work Cantique de Noël. He died in his sleep at 52 and was buried in the Montmartre Cemetery, and his memoirs were published after his death in two volumes, Souvenirs d'un musicien (1857) and Derniers souvenirs d'un musicien (1859). A setting completed within days of a poem, alongside memoirs published after his death, leaves one quick piece and one reflective record as the last marks of his work.
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Adolphe Adam
Common questions
Adolphe Adam was a composer who wrote more than 70 operas and ballet music and taught composition at the Conservatoire.
Placide Cappeau's 1847 French poem Minuit, chrétiens is the basis for its text, and Adam set it to music, finishing the setting within days.
They were Le Châlet (1834), Le Postillon de Longjumeau (1836) and Giralda (1850).
He became professor of composition at the Conservatoire, where his students included Léo Delibes.