Musical education and journeys

George Onslow : Musical education and journeys from 1784 to 1807 as evidenced in 19th-century sources and documents

Viviane Niaux

In French

The question of George Onslow's musical education and his journeying outside France during the first 26 years of his life is particularly interesting when considered within the framework of a comparative analysis of 19th-century sources of documents. It is noticeable, in fact, that this period in the composer's life, if it is not simply glossed over, has given rise to rash or unwarranted suppositions in almost all writings from the 19th century up to the present day. An exegesis of this kind, which has not been done up to now, should make it possible to draw up an inventory of the texts, comparing them and setting them in a hierarchical order. It should also bring us closer to the true situation, which is not easy to discern, and shed light on the obscure and eventful years of a young pianist whose education was determined to a great extent by the chance events of the French Revolution. The present analysis will be confined to three specific points : travel outside France before 1808 ; instruction in theory before being taught by Reicha ; the three piano teachers Hüllmandel, Dussek, and Cramer.

Several distinct types of document exist for our subject : George Onslow’s autobiography, correspondence (only a tiny part of which concerns us), short articles in 19th-century musical biographical dictionaries or periodicals, and separately published texts. I shall avoid the issue of articles in French in general biographical dictionaries of the 19th century (Larousse, Hoeffer, etc) as they drew inspiration from Fétis or the major articles published in the middle of that century.

It is as well to begin with the only autobiographical document in existence. This is a short text from 1833, written in the third person in the composer’s own hand and preserved in the French National Library (1). The writing is perfectly easily identifiable and the authenticity is confirmed in a short handwritten note by Joseph d'Ortigue to whom Onslow had entrusted this document. With respect to the musical instruction received during his childhood, Onslow merely writes, tersely enough : "His music studies formed but a secondary part of his education and were initially confined to the piano ; he is honoured to number Dussek et Cramer among his teachers." Onslow does not mention Hüllmandel, who is generally regarded as his third teacher and, unfortunately, he specifies neither the time nor the place in which these different periods of instruction night have occurred. Likewise, he does not speak of any journeys made in his youth.

It was Choron (2) who, in 1811, wrote was is probably the oldest article about Onslow. The author remains fairly vague, writing merely that Onslow "took lessons with Mr Dussek, Mr Hüllmandel, and Mr Cramer successively." When he wrote the article, Choron was clearly unaware that it was Reicha who taught Onslow how to compose since he states that Onslow had composition lessons from Cramer in London.

Fétis (3), whose article on Onslow is one of the most extensive in the last edition of his Universal Biography of Musicians, tells us that the composer "during a fairly long stay in London in his youth received piano lessons from Hüllmandel ; he later became a pupil of Dussek's and, after the latter left England, continued his studies under Cramer." While granting Fétis the merit of performing impressive and, more often than not, unparalleled work in the 19th century, we must also allow for his possible lack of precision. Although we do not know how well the two men were acquainted, we do know that they were as they exchanged correspondence. Moreover, as Fétis was frequently the only writer to provide information about musicians or events of his time, we are often obliged to take him at his word. In this particular case, we are not prepared to believe him outright, as other, first-hand sources enable us to refine or even correct the information he provides. I shall come back to this.

In Bulletin No 1 of the Association George Onslow (4), I had the pleasure, in collaboration with Sylvia L'Ecuyer, of reprinting the article published by Joseph d'Ortigue. Remember that this was written in 1833 in connection with an article intended for the Revue de Paris (5). The text is, in fact, an account of a visit to Onslow. In a lively style, d'Ortigue takes evident pleasure in, first, reproducing the conversations between the composer and himself and, secondly, describing the Château of Chalendrat together with the setting in which the composer lived. The purely biographical part boils down to the above-mentioned brief autobiographical note requested by d'Ortigue from his host.

Murat (6), whose article was written just after the composer's death, is a reliable source to the extent that Onslow was one of his closest friends. Unfortunately, he gives no information on the latter's travels in his youth, no more than he broaches the question of his piano teachers. On the other hand, he proves more informative under the heading of composition, for it was he who taught Onslow the first elements : "I was his childhood friend and I would be careful not to say that I was his first composition teacher were it not that he himself was pleased to announce it on every occasion. I shall therefore say only that I taught him the first elements and thus provided him with the means of delving more deeply into the art... He urged me to teach him what I knew of a science that had occupied much of my time in my early youth and on which I had worked under the guidance of a most highly distinguished amateur, and then that of Catel, who, as everyone knows, was a great master. Onslow, with his great intelligence and powers of self-organization was promptly initiated into the mysteries of harmony and the rules of composition."

The composer himself confirms Murat's role as initiator, but states in his autobiography (1), that "for want of a teacher, he used an elementary treatise on harmony". Unfortunately, our composer does not give the title. This work was lent to him by Murat, according to Stoepel (7), who writes : "one of his musical friends encouraged him [to compose], lending him a Theory of Harmony. From this book, Onslow learnt how to build chords."

Looking at this information, I may quite logically put forward the following hypothesis : Murat no doubt lent Onslow Catel's Treatise on Harmony (8). Alongside this, in his book, Baudime Jam (9) presents a personal intuition as a fact, claiming that Murat lent Onslow Rodolphe's Theory of Accompaniment and Composition. In support of his affirmation, B. Jam follows it up with a truncated fragment of Stoepel's article : "From this book, Onslow learnt how to build chords", thus misappropriating the original meaning of the quotation (see above). To conclude with Stoepel, we find that he turns out to be as vague as the other writers concerning the piano teachers, of whom he merely gives a list. As regards travel abroad, he proves cautious, merely mentioning two years spent in Germany. The special nature and interest of his note derive from his one-sided intention to define and explain Onslow's compositional approach.

A fellow-member of George Onslow in the Institut and permanent secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts, Halévy favours us with an interesting article, including information unpublished elsewhere and rich in lyrical flights (10). In the case of the subject that concerns us, he proves to be as imprecise as his peers : George Onslow, he tells us, "was sent to London to be educated and was immediately placed in the hands of Hüllmandel and Dussek [...] In order to perfect his already remarkable performing talents he put himself under the guidance [...] of Cramer." Here, again, we shall not learn any more.

Faced with these incomplete or contradictory accounts, one is sorely tempted to sum up this period in three lines and not to look any further than the meagre information handed down by our predecessors. We shall see that, on the contrary, meticulous investigative work together with a reconstitution of the schedules of all those concerned makes it possible to get a much more accurate view than these texts would seem to indicate.

But first of all we ought to tackle the question of a journey that Onslow is said to have made to Austria in his youth, a visit that is basically mentioned in German writings. In my book, I did not touch on this topic as my researches had confirmed that this biographical detail was really and truly incorrect. One of the first instances I was able to find in the literature mentioning such a journey dates back to 1835. Gustav Schilling (11) tells us that Onslow, prompted by an overwhelming desire to study, left his family at the age of 18 and, at great personal sacrifice, went to Vienna to throw himself "body and soul into the arms of Beethoven" with whom he studied for two years. This unwarranted assertion is to be found in no French text previous to or contemporary with Schilling and leaves the musicologist perplexed, to say the least. How could Onslow have studied with Beethoven in Vienna and afterwards said nothing about it? How could contemporary and future French biographers have left out such a significant piece of information?

Of the German writers, only one seems to be concerned about the truth and made it his mission to set matters right. In a study devoted to Onslow published in the journal Monatsschrift für Theater und Musik, August Gathy (12) quite categorically states that the composer never went to Vienna. He states specifically that he had checked this point in particular and had the benefit of reliable sources (testimonies of the composer's friends and of his widow, who wrote to him to refute the whole question of a visit to Vienna and a meeting with Beethoven). Finally, in order to give weight to his argument Gathy went as far as to ask Fétis to confirm the truth of his statement and received the following reply from Brussels : "Mr Onslow never went to Vienna, did not know Beethoven, and never had any other composition teacher than Reicha. He had no regular instruction in harmony or counterpoint ; Reicha gave him lessons on his own works by correcting his mistakes in his part-writing. [...]." Gathy died in 1858, i.e. three years after writing this article. Moreover, he has bequeathed us a considerable body of writings, in particular his Musikalisches Conversations-Lexicon (13), which has several surprises in store for us in the entry on Onslow. The only copy of this work I have been able to consult in the French National Library dates from 1874 : this is a third edition under the editorship of Reissmann, 16 years after Gathy's death. Amongst other errors, one can read in it that Onslow went to Vienna to be taught by Beethoven! I conclude from this, as I do not have all the editions available to me, that in his 1835 edition Gathy published an entry on Onslow containing errors similar to those in Schilling. Reissmann failed to notice the corrections made in the article printed in the Monatsschrift für Theater und Musik when preparing the 1874 edition.

This is how information circulates! Doubtless printed for the first time by Schilling and Gathy, this story about a stay in Vienna has been going the rounds every since amongst authors handing it down from one century to another. So it was that Mendel (14), for instance, published an important article on Onslow at the end of the 19th century in which he re-affirms that the composer went to Vienna, and Boris Schwarz, the quality and considerable extent of whose work on French music are certainly not to be called into question on this occasion, passed on the information in turn in the entry "Onslow" in the M.G.G. (15). Passing from one country to another, the error was to appear occasionally in a few subsequent publications (16) right down to 2003 (17).

On the basis of these certainties and these doubts, it remains for us to define what really was the teaching received by Onslow and the places where this instruction was given.

To return to the question of the visit(s) to London, we see that it comes up more than once but that the actual dates remain very vague.

If Fétis and his successors are right when they state that Onslow studied first of all with Hüllmandel in London, this could only have taken place between 1790 and 1792. George was then between six and eight years old. This is the age at which he might have started to study his instrument and have actually been sent to England for the first time to stay with his uncle Thomas Onslow. Hüllmandel in turn had himself just arrived in London, driven out by the French Revolution. But this teaching, if it did in fact take place, will remain totally hypothetical as long as we have not found any documentary evidence in the archives.

The revolutionary period (1789-1797) during which the composer's father became involved in counter-revolutionary activities in the Auvergne, allows us to obtain comparatively precise information as to the Onslow family's political activities and the presence or otherwise of its members in the province. Thanks to a letter by Edward Onslow we know for certain that his son lived in France from 1792 and 1797. It was not until the beginning of 1798 that George followed his father into exile in Hamburg. During this period (1798-1799) he met Dussek who had left England for other reasons and studied the piano with him. These studies are confirmed in a letter by Onslow himself. It must hence be admitted that Fétis and the other biographers were wrong when they stated that the composer studied the piano in England with Dussek.

Lastly, to my knowledge there is no written document specifying precisely the dates between which Onslow studied with Cramer in London, but we do know that the latter settled definitively in England from 1800 onwards. Knowing that on that same date Onslow had just returned to France after two years in exile in Hamburg, it is hard to imagine his parents, especially his mother, sending him immediately to England for a family visit or piano studies. Moreover, we know that he was in France in 1801 because that was when he discovered Stratonice in Paris. W might therefore hazard a guess that these studies took place between 1802 and 1805.

The last point to bring up is the possibility of parallel studies with Hüllmandel during the same period. There is nothing to rule out such a hypothesis, but one cannot help wondering about the timetable of any teaching shared with Cramer. At all events, it is conceivable that Onslow's failing to list Hüllmandel among his teachers can be explained by the fact that at the time he wrote his autobiographical note (1833), Hüllmandel was outmoded or even forgotten as a musician.(18)

Faced with the large number of sources and documents, most of them with their own internal contradictions, this brief summary does not pretend to supply definitive answers to the questions that spring to mind concerning the composer's musical childhood. On the contrary, the aim is to open up the discussion both with experts on Dussek, Cramer, and Hüllmandel, and with scholars taking a particular interest in this little-known transitional period in French music. Still to be explored is the question of the musical influence that these three masters had on their pupil as seen through his writing for piano. This should form the subject of a further article…

Paris, 15 January 2004
(c) Viviane Niaux, 2004
Translation : Keith Edgerley

(1) Bibliothèque nationale de France under reference : Mus l.a. Onslow, n°26
(2) Alexandre-Etienne CHORON and François-Joseph FAYOLLE, Dictionnaire historique des musiciens..., Paris, 1811.
(3) François-Joseph FÉTIS, Biographie universelle des musiciens, Paris, Firmin Didot, 1860-1881
(4) Sylvia L'ÉCUYER and Viviane NIAUX, "Biographie musicale : George Onslow par Joseph d'Ortigue", Bulletin de l'Association George Onslow, No 1, 1994, pp. 3-24.
(5) Joseph d'ORTIGUE, "Biographie musicale, George Onslow", Revue de Paris, 1st series, LVI, November 1833, p. 148-163.
(6) Hypolite de MURAT, Notice sur George Onslow, Clermont-Ferrand, printed by Thibaud-Landriot, 1853.
(7) François STOEPEL, "George Onslow : esquisse biographique", Gazette musicale de Paris, 1834, 11/5, No 19, pp. 149-153.
(8) Viviane NIAUX, George Onslow : Gentleman Compositeur, Presses universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2003, p. 49.
(9) Baudime JAM, George Onslow, Clermont-Ferrand, 2003, p. 64.
(10) Jacques Fromental HALEVY, "Notice historique sur la vie et les travaux de George Onslow", Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris, 1855, 7/10, pp. 307-312.
(11) Gustav SCHILLING, Enzyclopädie der gesamten musikalischen Wissenschaften oder Universal-Lexicon der Tonkunst, Stuttgart, F.H. Kohler, 1835-1837, p. 218.
(12) Auguste GATHY, "Biographische. George Onslow, eine Skizze", Monatsschrift für Theater und Musik, I, Wien, 1855. It should be noted that this text is extensively referenced in NOBACH Untersuchungen zu George Onslows Kammermusik, Kassel, Bärenreiter, 1985, pp. 10-11 in invalidating Onslow's visit to Vienna.
(13) Auguste GATHY, Musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon. Encyclopädie der gesammten Musik-Wissenschaft (1st ed. 1835 ; 2nd ed. 1840 ; 3rd ed. Under the editorship of Reissmann 1874)
(14) Hermann MENDEL, Musikalisches Conversations-Lexicon : eine Enzyclopädie der gesamten musikalischen Wissenschaften, Berlin, L. Heiman ; J. Schubert, 1870-1879.
(15) Boris SCHWARZ, "Onslow", Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Kassel, Bärenreiter, 1961.
(16) See, for instance, the article "Onslow " in the Dictionnaire de la conversation et de la lecture..., Paris, Firmin Didot, 1872.
(17) Baudime JAM, George Onslow, Clermont-Ferrand, 2003, p. 62.
(18) See for all details and mentions of sources : Viviane Niaux, George Onslow : Gentleman Compositeur, Presses universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2003, pp. 27-48.