Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] 83

Folville, Eugénie-Emilie Juliette

(b Liège, 5 Jan 1870; d Castres/Dourgnes, 19/28 Oct 1946). Belgian pianist, violinist, teacher and composer. She began to study music with her father and later entered the violin class of Ovide Musin at the Liège Conservatoire. She also studied the violin with Charles Malherbe and César Thomson, counterpoint and fugue (premier prix 1887) at the Conservatoire, composition with Jean-Théodore Radoux and the piano with Delaborde in Paris. In 1879 she embarked on a virtuoso violin and piano career, travelling throughout Europe. She was also a pioneer in the revival of the harpsichord, and taught historical performing practice and the piano at the Liège Conservatoire.

Her many compositions exhibit a distinctive compositional craft, accomplished scoring, some chromaticism, and an elegance of style paralleling that of Massenet. Her only opera, Atala (1892), was well received when presented in Lille and Rouen in 1892 and 1893. Other significant works include the music for theatre Jean de Chimay (1905), the Concertstück and Triptyque for cello and orchestra, concertos for violin and for piano, the symphonic poem Oceano Nox, and three orchestral suites (Scènes champêtres, Scènes d’hiver, Scènes de la mer). Sacred works include Chant de noël for chorus and orchestra, a cappella motets and organ music. She also composed mélodies, cantatas, piano works and chamber music. (SchmidlD)

JAMES R. BRISCOE

Folz [Voltz], Hans [Hans von Wurmss]

(b Worms, ?before 1440; d Nuremberg, Jan 1513). German Meistersinger. After spending some time in northern Spain and Augsburg, he was settled by 1459 in Nuremberg, where he worked as a barber and surgeon. Between 1479 and 1488 he also engaged in printing, especially his own works. Through his various enterprises he became a wealthy man. As the writer of 48 epigrammatic couplets (Reimpaarsprüche), 12 Shrovetide farces (Fastnachtsspiele), two treatises and nearly 100 Meisterlieder he proved himself the chief exponent of Nuremberg Meistergesang in the 15th century. Hans Sachs, who published reprints of Folz’s works, held him in high esteem, describing him as a ‘durchleuchtig deutsch’ poet. Folz sided vigorously with those who wished to perform their own Töne (see Ton (i)) as well as those of the old masters; this has long been misinterpreted as a reform of Meistergesang but is in fact a conservative defence of established Nuremberg practice. His melodies survive only in late 16th-century sources, though autograph collections (texts only) survive in D-WRz Q566 and Mbs Cgm 6353 (both from the second half of the 15th century). They are firmly within the tradition of this art form, differing at most in a more rational disposition.

WORKS

Editions:Fastnachtsspiele aus dem 15. Jahrhundert, ed. A. von Keller (Stuttgart, 1853–8/R)Das Singebuch des Adam Puschman, ed. G. Münzer (Leipzig, 1906/R)Die Meisterlieder des Hans Folz, ed. A.L. Mayer (Berlin, 1908/R) [texts only] fuller details in Brunner and WachingerDie Reimpaarsprüche des Hanz Folz, ed. H. Fischer (Munich, 1961)Die Töne der Meistersinger, ed. H. Brunner and J. Rettelbach (Göppingen, 1980)

töne

Abenteuerweise, Baumton, Blutweise, Chorweise, Feielweise, Freier Ton, Hahnenkrat, Hoher Ton, Langer Ton, Passional, Schrankweise, Strafweise; 3 others, untitled

Doubtful: Geteilter Ton, Kettenton, Tagweise

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Petzsch: ‘Studien zum Meistergesang des Hans Folz’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, xxxvi (1962), 190–247

C. Petzsch: ‘Zur sogenannten, Hans Folz zugeschriebenen Meistergesangsreform’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, lxxxviii (1966), 110–42

J. Janota: ‘Folz, Hans’, Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon ed. K. Ruh and others (Berlin, 2/1977–)

F. Schanze: Meisterliche Liedkunst zwischen Heinrich von Mügeln und Hans Sachs, i (Munich, 1983), 295–350

H. Brunner and B. Wachinger, eds.: Repertorium der Sangsprüche und Meisterlieder des 12. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, iii (Tübingen, 1986), 280–317

For further bibliography see Meistergesang.

CHRISTOPH PETZSCH/MARTIN KIRNBAUER

Fomin, Yevstigney Ipat'yevich

(b St Petersburg, 5/16 Aug 1761; d St Petersburg, 16/28 April 1800). Russian composer. The orphaned son of a cannoneer, he was admitted shortly before his sixth birthday to the Foundling School of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, a charitable institution set up by Catherine II to foster a new generation of Russian artists. After nine years of general instruction he went on to specialized training in music at the academy, where his teachers included Hermann Raupach, composer of Dobrïye soldatï (‘The Good Soldiers’), a popular Singspiel of the day. On his graduation with honours in 1782, Fomin went on a four-year scholarship to Bologna to study with Padre Martini, though he actually worked mainly with Martini's assistant (and, from 1784, successor) Stanislao Mattei. In 1785 he was elected (as ‘Eugenio Fomini’) to the Accademia Filarmonica. With the possible exception of Maksym Berezovs'ky, his predecessor in Bologna, no countryman of Fomin's could claim a comparable musical education – or a comparable professional technique – until the institution of the conservatory system in Russia some 80 years later. There is no doubt that he was the finest Russian composer of dramatic music in the 18th century.

On his return to St Petersburg in autumn 1786, Fomin was immediately put to work setting one of the empress’s librettos to music: Novogorodskiy bogatïr' Boyeslavich (‘Boyeslavich, Champion of Novogorod’), after one of the Russian national epics (bïlinï) as retold by Chulkov. Fomin completed the work – a ‘comic opera compiled from stories, Russian songs and other sources’ in five acts with ballet – in about a month; it was performed at the Hermitage the same year.

Fomin's effort evidently failed to please. He did not receive a court appointment until 1797, after the accession of Paul I; nor were his operas performed in the capital during the decade following his début. Indeed, Fomin's very whereabouts are uncertain in this period. What evidence there is seems to connect him with Gavriil Derzhavin (1743–1816), not only the greatest poet of the period but also a highly placed official, who in the late 1780s served as provincial governor of Tambov in south-central Russia and opened the first municipal theatre there in 1787. It was in Tambov that the libretto of Fomin's next opera, Yamshchiki na podstave (‘Postal Coachmen at the Relay Station’; 1787), was published (anonymously) in 1788. A manuscript copy discovered in Derzhavin's archive in 1933 has established the great folksong collector Nikolay Aleksandrovich L'vov, Derzhavin's brother-in-law, as the author of the libretto. Whether the composer spent any time in Tambov during the period of Derzhavin's service there, as Dobrokhotov (1968) has suggested, and whether he led provincial serf orchestras or managed the theatre on Count Sheremet'yev's estate (where his unlucky first opera was revived), are at present open questions.

Towards the beginning of this obscure decade Fomin composed what would eventually prove his most successful opera: Amerikantsï (‘The Americans’), to a ‘heroic’ libretto modelled on Sedaine's Le déserteur by the later fabulist Ivan Krïlov (1769–1844), then a youth of 19. According to the title-page of the holograph score, the opera was written in St Petersburg in 1788, but was rejected by P.A. Soymonov, director of the court theatre, on account of its ‘revolting’ scene of attempted human sacrifice. It was not performed until very shortly before the composer's death, when it was given a lavish production in the court theatre. (By this time Fomin had found official employment in the Imperial Theatres, as a répétiteur.) The many ensembles far surpass, in their formal mastery and scope, the work of any Russian contemporary. The success of The Americans made Fomin’s (posthumous) reputation, and was undoubtedly responsible for the many apocryphal attributions to him, the most conspicuous being that of Sokolovsky's Mel'nik-koldun, obmanshchik i svat (‘The Miller who was a Wizard, a Cheat and a Matchmaker’).

Fomin's theatrical masterpiece, however, was not an opera but the melodrama Orfey (‘Orpheus’), set to a tragic poem by the neoclassical author Yakov Knyazhnin as a vehicle for the actor Ivan Dmitrevsky in 1791 (Moscow, 1953). He also wrote choruses for tragedies by Knyazhnin and Vladislav Ozerov. Except for the finale of Act 1, his last opera, the posthumously produced Zolotoye yabloko (‘The Golden Apple’), to a libretto adapted by one I. Ivanov from the myth of Daphnis and Chloë, has reached posterity in the same mutilated form as his first: only the orchestral parts survive.

WORKS

stage

Novogorodskiy bogatïr' Boyeslavich [Boyeslavich, Champion of Novgorod] (comic op, 5, Catherine II), St Petersburg, Hermitage, 27 Nov/8 Dec 1786

Yamshchiki na podstave [Postal Coachmen at the Relay Station] (comic op, 1, N.A. L’vov), ?Tambov, Municipal, 1788, RU-SPtob*, lib SPsc*; ed. I. Vetlivtsïna (Moscow, 1977); excerpts in IRMO

Vecherinki, ili Gaday, gaday devitsa, otagadïvay, krasnaya [Evening Parties, or Tell my Fortune, Fair Maiden] (comic op, 2), estate of A.R. Vorontsov, Tambov province, c1790; music lost, lib (St Petersburg, 1788)

Amerikantsï [The Americans] (comic op, 2, I.A. Krïlov, rev. A.I. Klushin), St Petersburg, Bol'shoy, 8/19 Feb 1800, vs (St Petersburg, 1800); excerpts in IRMO

Klorida i Milon [Chloris and Milo] (pastoral op, 2, V. Kapnist), St Petersburg, Bol'shoy, 6/18 Nov 1800, music lost

Zolotoye yabloko [The Golden Apple] (2, I. Ivanov), St Petersburg, Bol'shoy, 15/27 April 1803

Doubtful (music lost): Koldun, vorozheya i svakha [The Wizard, the Fortune-Teller and the Matchmaker] (comic op, 3, I. Yukin, after A. Ablesimov), lib (St Petersburg, 1789); Nevesta pod fatoyu, ili Meshchanskaya svad'ba [The Bride Takes the Veil, or A Middle-Class Wedding] (comic op, 3), lib (Moscow, 1790); Parisov sud [The Judgment of Paris] (‘heroic trifle’, 1, L'vov), ? not composed, lib dated 17 Oct 1796, intended as entr’acte (intermedio) for Kapnist: Yabeda [Chicane] (see Keldïsh 1985)

sacred vocal

Uslyshit tya, gospod [Hear, o Lord], 4vv (Moscow, 1795)

Kheruvimskaya [Cherubim Hymn], 4vv (Moscow, 1797)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

IRMO

MooserA

A. Finagin: ‘Yevstigney Fomin: zhizn' i tvorchestvo' [Life and works], Muzïka i muzïkal'nïy bït staroy Rossii: materialy i issledovaniya (Leningrad, 1927)

A.S. Rabinovich: Russkaya opera do Glinki [Russian opera before Glinka] (Moscow, 1948)

B. Dobrokhotov: Yevstigney Fomin (Moscow, 1949, 2/1968)

A. Serov: ‘Opera v Rossii: i – russkaya opera’, Izbrannïye stat'i, ed. G. Khubov, i (Moscow and Leningrad, 1950), 202

D. Lehmann: Russlands Oper und Singspiel in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1958)

Yu.I. Keldïsh: Russkaya muzïka XVIII veka [Russian music of the 18th century] (Moscow, 1965), 244–380

G. Fesechko: ‘Novïye materialï o kompozitorakh P.A. Skokove i E.I. Fomine’, Muzïkal'noye nasledstvo, iv, pt.1 (Moscow, 1966), 9–43

A. Rudnyova: ‘Analiz muzïkal'no-poėticheskoy strofï pesni “Vïsoko sokol letayet”’ [An analysis of the musical and poetic strophe of the song ‘The hawk soars aloft’], Muzïkal'naya fol'kloristika, i, ed. A. Banin (Moscow, 1973), 6–34

Yu. Keldïsh: ‘K istorii operï “Yamshchiki na podstave”’, Ocherki i issledovaniya po istorii russkoy muzïki (Moscow, 1978), 130–40

Yu. Keldïsh: ‘Ye.I. Fomin’, Istoriya russkoy muzïki v desyati tomakh [The history of Russian music in ten volumes], iii (Moscow, 1985), 84–110

RICHARD TARUSKIN