A requiem by Massenet?

[kolaboy]

I'd not been aware that he'd written one until Demar Irvine's very fine biography (which I've recently begun). Just wondering if it still exists, incomplete or otherwise - or was it perhaps incorporated into other works...?

[Alan Howe]

Wikipedia has this:

Massenet returned to Paris in 1866. He made a living by teaching the piano and publishing songs, piano pieces and orchestral suites, all in the popular style of the day. Prix de Rome winners were sometimes invited by the Opéra-Comique in Paris to compose a work for performance there. At Thomas's instigation, Massenet was commissioned to write a one-act opéra comique, La grand'tante, presented in April 1867. At around the same time he composed a Requiem, which has not survived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Massenet#Early_works (emphasis added)

[eschiss1]

Further on the Requiem: see http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb42493189w/PUBLIC

describing "1 lettre de Czartorysky à Jules Massenet"

"Au sujet du "Requiem" de Massenet : souhaiterait que le musicien lui apporte sa partition le lendemain. - La lettre est datée "jeudi 9" sans précision du mois et de l'année."

Hopes that Massenet will bring (send?) Czartorysky the score on the next day (or maybe the next day possible, or...).
The letter is dated "Thursday 9", without specifying month or year.

Anyhow, that's a bit of additional evidence that the Requiem may have existed, for those who find a Wikipedia quote understandably insufficient... (note: I'm an editor/lapsed admin there, I'm not biased against the site, that's not where I'm coming from...) (Ah, I see that Wikipedia's source for this is Calvocoressi's 1912 Musical Times article on Massenet.)

[Alan Howe]

Of course, the phrases 'which has not survived' and 'may have existed' are not mutually exclusive.

[eschiss1]

Oh, I was assuming from the phrasing- that he did compose one, and that it did not survive- that the claim was being made (by C. in 1912) that it did, indeed, exist at one point. I was just bringing in some corroborating evidence. Sorry to be unclear...

[jdperdrix]

The letter by Czartorysky is not easily legible. Here's the French text:
Monsieur,
Vous m'avez laissé espérer que vous me feriez connaître quelque chose de votre Requiem; voulez-vous être assez aimable pour nous apporter la partition demain? Nous vous attendons à dîner à 7 heures.
Mille compliments.
([initial?]) Czartorysky
Jeudi 9
Translation:
"Sir,
You've let me hope that you would make me know something of your Requiem; would you please be kind enough to bring us the score tomorrow? We'll be waiting for you for dinner at 7pm."

It does not mean that a full score did exist. But clearly Mr Czartowitsky was expecting a visit by Massenet the day after for dinner... Mr Czartowitzky just believed that Massenet had some information about a projected (?) Requiem.

[eschiss1]

Interesting- thank you!

[kolaboy]

Just wondering if "does not exist" means destroyed (and he DID destroy several other early works) or assimilated into later works - in which case the source material may possibly still exist... in a steamer trunk, or dusty attic drawer... somewhere...

[eschiss1]

Demar Irvine does mention that Massenet in his letters to Thomas in the mid-1860s while at the Villa Medici mentions his dismay at having finished no more, at one point, than 40 pages of a Requiem (letter of 27 June 1865. See Irvine, Massenet: A Chronicle of His Life and Times, page 37. The first suite followed quickly after that later that year. No idea here if any music from the Requiem is known to have made it into other compositions, but 40 pages might have been a few movements' worth of material to scavenge from...)