Edmond Michotte fund

The Edmond Michotte collection is a donation to the Royal Conservatory of Brussels phased between 1897 and 1913, by the Belgian homonymous composer and musicographer, of an important part of the private library of Rossini with whom he became friendly.

Biography

Born into a wealthy Belgian noble family, Edmond Michotte (1831–1914) is educated in Belgium and Paris. Back in his home country after the 1848 revolution, he chooses to start music studies after an aborted bachelorship in Philosophy at the Free University of Brussels. Pianist and composer, he gains a wide reputation as a mattauphone[1] virtuoso. As of 1854 he lives between Brussels and Paris, where he moves in the celebrity circles of the musical crowd and becomes acquainted with Rossini – then almost forty years his senior – who considers him as his quasi figlio. After having had the opportunity to attend the meeting of the composer with Richard Wagner, he publishes a short review of the event.[2] Back in Belgium in 1870, he becomes a member of several associations and presides the vigilance committee of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels to which he donates his vast rossinian collection in subsequent phases. He dies in 1914 after a missile hits his house in Leuven, without having achieved his ambition to dedicate a museum to his illustrious friend and protector.

Rossini's « imaginary museum »

Photo of Rossini from Nadar, dedicated to Edmond Michotte (Library of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, B-Bc, FEM-932)

Wishing to provide a worthy case to his prestigious collection, Edmond Michotte, in his quality of President of the surveillance committee of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, disregards involved expenditures. Intending to have his collection transferred one day to an autonomous museum,[3] he orders sculpted furniture boasting the « R » of Rossini, tailor-made caskets and showcases, which he displays in a room of the conservatory inaccessible to the public. But the librarian in office,[4] hostile to this partial « seclusion », manages to keep part of the collection in the library, preventing its gathering in one spot and, by the same token, the projected creation of an independent museum. It is not until 1992, at the occasion of the bicentennial of composer's birth, that the entire collection was catalogued electronically by the Flemish team of the conservatory library.[5]

The collection

Showcase top with "R" for Rossini's "imaginary museum" (Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Surveillance Committee room)

Appreciated by rossinian scholars[6] for the rarity of certain documents, the Michotte collection essentially contains pieces from Rossini's library: handwritten and printed scores, books, libretti and various publications, correspondence, iconographic material and various objects.

Autographs and printed scores

Holding close to 300 musical manuscripts, among which 26 autograph ones, the major part of these are works by Rossini, including 180 compositions pertaining to the lyrical repertoire – mostly unedited airs, fragments or variations – written for the soprano Isabella Colbran (1785–1845), his first wife and acclaimed creator of major parts, as well as vocal and instrumental music.

The most remarkable manuscript in this section is undoubtedly the handwritten score of Matilde di Shabran (1821) – a minor work of the composer, but the only one to have landed in Belgium, be it incompletely[7] – as it sheds light on the evolution of Rossini's bel canto.

Cavatine of La Sonnambula (s.d.) (Library of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, B-Bc, FEM-881)

Among some forty manuscripts from other composers, the autograph version of Six Polonaises D824, op. 61 from Schubert, is part of the rarities of this collection, although no information is available as to how it became part of Rossini's library.

Books, libretti and various publications

The Michotte collection also comprises 420 titles of musical editions, of which approximately 120 from Rossini and 300 Italian or French publications from the XIXe century, as well as a complete edition of the works of J.S. Bach and of Beethoven's symphonies. It is complemented by a precious collection of libretti of the first performances of the Pesarese composer, carefully assembled and bound by his father.

Other publications, many of which contain a dedication to Rossini, are of a different nature, but undoubtedly belonged to the shelves of the musician, such as the 1818 edition of Dante's Divina Commedia and the Répertoire général du théâtre français.

Monographs and press articles concerning Rossini, several printed programmes of the Soirées musicales – private concerts organised in Paris by the composer and his second wife Olympe Pélissier – witness the esthetic taste of the time.

Correspondence

Caricature of Rossini by A. Gill, 1864 (Library of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, B-Bc, FEM-883)
Letter from Rossini to his secretary, Angelo Mignani, May 26, 1862 (Library of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, B-Bc, FEM-588)

The collection includes more than two hundred letters and different handwritten texts – invitations, programs, poetry, furniture inventories, condolences, or the impressive list of celebrities attending the composer's funeral. The correspondence, of which half is autograph, holds some thirty letters from Rossini to his Bolognese secretary, Angelo Mignani, the others being addressed to the composer himself.

Iconographic material and various objects

The iconographic part of the collection, representing some hundred fifty images, covers lithographs of the young Rossini, photos – some by Nadar – of the old artist, his funeral and his exhumation,[8] or of portraits of his parents, as well as some engravings featuring Colbran.

Of the ten personal objects in this section, the most surprising is a fan-formed vase with seven musical quotations from Rossini, representing the allegory of the « swan of Pesaro8 », next to a miniature biscuit bust, a paper cutter, a pince-nez and a tie-pin offered by Bellini. A pair of ravelled mittens and a blessed boxwood twig used during his funeral, recall the last moments of the legendary author of Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

Allegorical vase representing Rossini as the "swan of Pesaro" backed by seven musical quotations (Library of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, E. Michotte collection)

Still largely unexplored, the Michotte collection offers an indipensable source for musicologists and historians interested in Rossini.

Appendix

Bibliography

References and notes

  1. ↑ Instrument developed by Joseph Mattau, inspired by Benjamin Franklin's famous Glassharmonica, made of a leg-mounted box containing a series of water-filled glasses that resonate when their edge is rubbed with the hand or the finger.
  2. ↑ Edmond Michotte, La visite de Wagner à Rossini, Paris 1860, Bruxelles, 1906.
  3. ↑ In a letter of October 8, 1910 to the Ministry of Sciences and Fine Arts, Edgar Tinel, director of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels between 1908 and 1912, establishes that the entire collection should be transferred to a new museum of musical instruments.
  4. ↑ The Belgian bibliographer Alfred Wotquenne (1867-1939), known for his homonymous catalogue of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels' library.
  5. ↑ See http://www.kuleuven.be/doctoraatsverdediging/fiches/3H05/3H050659.htm
  6. ↑ E.g. Philip Gossett, who explored the Michotte collection in Brussels in 2014 (cf. bibliography).
  7. ↑ The Italian musicologist Rita Marchetti, having analyzed and compared this manuscript to the edition of the score in Rome in 1821 (also present in the Michotte collection), has ascertained the absence of nine scenes.
  8. ↑ Rossini's corpse, first buried in the French Père Lachaise Cemetery, was transferred to Italy in 1887, nine years after the death of Olympe Pélissier.
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