A composer from Geneva
Michel Cardinaux retraces the career of this 19th-century pianist and composer from Geneva, with a remarkable catalog of works.
At the start of the 21st century, Swiss music is attracting new interest. Between scientific studies, score publications, recordings and festivals under this motto, music lovers are discovering with surprise and curiosity works written in Switzerland and/or by Swiss composers.
Successfully transcending the canon that still governs musical life and is conditioned by the search for geniuses and superlatives, Yverdon-based musician, pedagogue and music historian Michel Cardinaux takes a particular interest in his instrument, studying the careers of pianists who worked in French-speaking Switzerland in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Charles Bovy-Lysberg (1821-1873), one of Geneva's most influential pianists of the mid-19th century. We don't know who introduced this son of a Geneva medallist to music, but in 1835 he began training as a professional pianist in Paris, where his father had already established a highly productive medallist's workshop. There, he took composition lessons with Antoine François Marmontel and rubbed shoulders with Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin, the latter particularly appreciative of Bovy-Lysberg's interpretative talents.
On his return to Geneva, he developed an intense activity as a musician, and belonged to that first generation of Swiss musicians who, having acquired a professional training that was impossible to follow in their own country and in a still floating institutional context, nevertheless managed to make a living from music, and who contributed to shaping the fertile Swiss musical soil we know today. Charles Bovy-Lysberg is a composer, concert performer and arranger. He is also a piano teacher, renowned and appreciated for his sensitivity and humanism. His catalog of works includes over 150 pieces for piano, dozens of melodies for song and piano, and pieces for choir, music written to touch, not to impress, which owes more to the simplicity of a Chopin than to the unbridled virtuosity of a Liszt. These pieces, mainly published in Paris, met with great success, both in terms of esteem and financial returns. On the other hand, the composer's only opera failed to find an audience.
With his elegant pen, Michel Cardinaux presents the musician in his family, social, artistic and political context, providing the information needed to understand the audacity of a craftsman's son with no ties to the musical world. By presenting some of the pieces with an analysis and musical incipits, Michel Cardinaux gives potential performers the practical tools to familiarize themselves with this musical heritage that has been forgotten for too long. May it now appear on our concert programs!
Michel Cardinaux, Charles Bovy-Lysberg. Un compositeur dans son siècle, 157 p., Fr. 25.00, Harmonia Helvetica, Morges 2016, ISBN 978-2-9700871-4-4
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