Charles Gounod-Part 5
"If I have worked any good during
my life, by word or deed, I owe it to my mother and to her I give the
praise. She sleeps beneath a stone as simple as her blameless life had been.
May this tribute from the son she loved so tenderly form a more imperishable
crown than the wreaths of fading immortelles he laid upon her grave, and
clothe her memory with a halo of reverence and respect he fain would have
endure long after he himself is dead and gone."
 As
a child Gounod possessed the gift of absolute pitch. He discovered that the
dogs barked in certain pitches and that the street venders sang "as if
they were crying" when they sang in the minor mode. His early training
was almost entirely received from his mother who, however, did not wish to
have her son a musician, knowing the privations which many unsuccessful
artists undergo. She did, however, place him under the instruction of the
noted contrapuntalist Anton Reicha, who advised Madame Gounod to make a
musician of the boy. Accordingly, after he had received his Bachelor's
Degree from the Lycee St. Louis, he entered the Paris Conservatoire where he
studied with Halevy, Lesueur and Paer. In 1837, after he had been in the
conservatoire but one year, he won the second Prix de Rome with his cantata
Marie Stuart and Rizzio; and in 1839 he won the Grand Prix de Rome with his
cantata Fernand, carrying twenty-five votes out of twenty-seven.
The Etude
Magazine November 1912
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