François-Joseph Gossec

Born in present-day Belgium in 1734, two years after Haydn, François-Joseph Gossec enjoyed a remarkably long career and witnessed a radical transformation in French music and culture before he died in 1829. He was a protégé of Rameau, drove the early development of the French symphony, wrote the first requiem to become a popular concert-hall hit, found himself de facto composer of the French Revolution and was one of the first professors at the Conservatoire de Paris. His 1760 requiem, the Grande Messe Des Morts, demonstrated a talent for musical drama that transferred more readily to his symphonies than to his operas. After the revolution, he composed civic music—popular songs and marches—to espouse the objectives of the republican regime. Many of his symphonies have enjoyed new life on recordings, but the Grande Messe Des Morts remains his most important work, not least for the audible influence it cast over composers such as Mozart and Berlioz.