Charles Gounod

Like his contemporary Liszt, Gounod was a composer in whom the sacred and the sensual vied for supremacy. Unlike Liszt, he didn’t take holy orders, but church music looms large in his output. Born in Paris in 1818, Gounod secured the Prix de Rome at the age of 20, and the ensuing study abroad instilled in him a keen admiration for Palestrina. He was also a fan of J.S. Bach, which perhaps explains the element of craftsmanship that underpins the many mass settings crowned by the still-popular large-scale Messe Solennelle de Sainte Cécile (1855), and the oratorios he wrote for England, where he was exiled at the start of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. His songs disclose an instinctive melodic gift (though sometimes of a sweetness composers such as Berlioz found excessive), but his most enduring legacy lies in opera. Premiered in 1859 and based on Goethe, Faust was Gounod’s first truly international success, a potent cocktail of brooding diabolical drama and coquettish abandon. Five years before his death in 1893, it had notched up 500 performances at the Paris Opéra alone.