• Source: Oscar Comettant

Oscar Comettant (18 April 1819 – 24 January 1898) was a 19th-century French composer, musicologist and traveller.




Biography


Commettant studied the piano and musical composition at the Conservatoire de Paris (1839–1843) and made a long tour in the United-States from 1852 to 1855 as a soloist.
He left Le Havre on 1 September 1852 and arrived in New York City on the 13th. He then visited the Niagara Falls, Mammoth Cave, saw the Mississippi, Lake Superior, Cedar Creek, among other places.
His circuit began on a steamer on the Hudson River. The train then led him from Albany to Buffalo, with a stop at Niagara Falls. He went to Toronto, Kingston, Mille-Isles, and Montréal, then south to Saratoga and returned to New York where he rested for two weeks.
Comettant later visited Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Richmond (Virginia), and Charleston, then spent a month in Mobile in a cotton plantation. On his way to New Orleans, he sailed on the Mississippi and went through Vicksburg, Memphis and Louisville, where he took the opportunity to admire Mammoth Cave and ended his journey by Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.
Unlike many travelers, Comettant focused on American society and institutions; the great spaces of nature were indifferent to him. Although very detailed on political life, religions, education etc. and the American cod, his works, where he invented the character of the French painter Marcel Bonneau, were fictional.
In 1855, on his return to France, he became a professor of music; while composing, he worked as a music critic for Le Siècle and Le Ménestrel.
Comettant went again on a journey in 1864 and visited Denmark, then in July 1888 was appointed French juror at the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition (1888) where he arrived 6 September after he left Marseille 1 August.
He visited Lilydale where he met squatters and Indigenous Australians and, in October 1888, the mines of Ballarat and Sandhurst. He also traveled in the Great Western, where he admired the vines before going to Sydney to attend a banquet (December).
After composing his "Salute to Melbourne" for piano, he returned to France on 28 December 1888.




Publications


1858: Trois ans aux États-Unis. Étude des mœurs et coutumes américaines
1861: Le Nouveau Monde. Scènes de la vie américaine
1861: Les Secrets de la mer, short story
1862: Physiologie du mal de mer
1863: Les Civilisations inconnues
1864: L'Amérique telle qu'elle est. Voyage anecdotique de M. Bonneau dans le nord et le sud des États-Unis. Excursion au Canada
1864: En vacances
1865: En Amérique, en France et Ailleurs
1865: Le Danemark tel qu'il est
1865: Un Petit rien tout neuf
1866: Voyage pittoresque et anecdotique dans le nord et le sud des États-Unis d'Amérique
1868: De haut en bas, impressions pyrénéennes
1868: Gustave Lambert au Pôle Nord, ce qu'il y va faire
1869: De Paris à quelque part
1883: Histoires de bonne humeur
1890: Au pays des kangourous et des mines d'or. Étude des mœurs et coutumes australiennes, impressions de voyage
1895: L'homme et les bêtes, moral studies




Musicology


1857: La Propriété intellectuelle au point de vue de la morale et du progrès
1860: Histoire d'un inventeur au XIXe siècle. Adolphe Sax, ses ouvrages et ses luttes
1862: Musique et musiciens
1869: La musique, les musiciens et les instruments de musique chez les différents peuples du monde
1870: Les Musiciens, les philosophes et les gaietés de la musique en chiffres
1875: Comédies en quatre lignes
1875: Francis Planté, portrait musical à la plume
1877: Enseignement du piano. Le Guide-mains W. Bohrer. Notice illustrée de deux dessins, explications et conseils sur l'emploi du Guide-mains W. Bohrer
1883: Les Compositeurs illustres de notre siècle : Rossini, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, Halévy, Gounod, Félicien David
1885: Un Nid d'autographes. Lettres inédites recueillies et annotées par Oscar Comettant
1889: La Norvège musicale à Paris
1890: Histoire de cent mille pianos et d'une salle de concert
1891: La Hollande musicale à Paris
1894: La musique de la garde républicaine en Amérique
1894–1898 La Musique de chambre, 6 vols.




Compositions






Bibliography


1870: Gustave Vapereau, Dictionnaire universel des contemporains, Hachette, p. 428 read on line available at Gallica
1995: Malou Haine (1995). 400 lettres de musiciens au Musée royal de Mariemont. Musique, musicologie (in French). Liège: Éditions Mardaga. pp. 448–449. ISBN 2870095783. OCLC 35666301. with an 1860 photograph.
1999: Numa Broc, Dictionnaire des Explorateurs français du XIXe siècle, T.3, Amérique, CTHS, p. 86-87
2005: Jean Roy, « Comettant (Oscar) », in Marc Vignal (2005). Dictionnaire de la musique (in French). Paris: Larousse. p. 232. ISBN 2-03-505545-8. OCLC 896013420. Vignal2005.




References






External links


Oscar Comettant on Encyclopédie Larouse
Oscar Comettant on Médias 19
Festival commémoratif d’Hector Berlioz by Oscar Comettant on Site Hector Berloz (Le Ménestrel 27 mars 1870, p. 130-2)
Online Books by Oscar Comettant on The Online Books Page
Oscar Comettant's discography on Discogs
Comettant Oscar on IMSLP

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