Juan Crisostomo de Arriaga selon Fetis: la construction d'un mythe

Abstract

The young Basque composer Juan Crisostomo de Arriaga had only one work published during his lifetime: a Three String Quartets anthology (Paris, 1824). Then he died in Paris aged twenty in 1826. First studies are due to Spanish amateur investigators - Arriaga's family descendants - at a time (1880-1920) when Spain goes through an identity crisis, and draw the nationalist portrait of an extraordinary gifted young composer destined for a great fame. Next studies, mostly American, compile those first Spanish ones without any critical point of view. But all these studies are based upon a single biographical note published in the Biographie universelle des musiciens (1835) by Arriaga's own counterpoint and fugue teacher Francois-Joseph Fetis. A comparison between that note and the Paris Conservatoire archives shows that Fetis omitted some facts (as Arriaga's real age or his failure in the competition for the prize) and exaggerated some others (such as Arriaga's gifts as a violinist). Arriaga's career in the Paris Conservatoire - when Cherubini was reducing the number of students and when politicians prevented foreigners from registering - demonstrates that Director Cherubini gave Arriaga the benefit of his support so as to promote his own aesthetical classical views as opposed to Reicha's romantic ones.