Italian composer and music theorist.

Career Summary

Cherubini composed some thirty operas and other stage works, also Masses, cantatas, motets, canticles, antiphons, and works for special and ceremonial occasions, many solo vocal works, duets, etc., much chamber music, and several pedagogical works.

He was director of the Paris Conservatory from 1822 to 1842, and it was during this period that, in conjunction from Fromental Halévy, he wrote his highly successful Cours de contre-point et de fugue (Paris: Maurice Schlesinger, [1835]), twice translated into English, twice into German, and once into Italian. This was the last of three rival treatises on the subject all produced at the same institution, the other two being by Antonín Reich (1824‒26) and François-Joseph Fétis (1824).

Cherubini and Schenker

Schenker owned a copy of the German translation of Cherubini's treatise by Gustav Jensen (Köln, 1896) (see Heinrich Hinterberger, Music und Theater enthaltend die Bibliothek des Herrn Dr. Heinrich Schenker, Wien (1836), item 88). As his diary tells us, he read Cherubini's treatise in August 1907 as part of his preparation for writing Kontrapunkt (1910, 1922), in which he cites and quotes extensively from Cherubini on numerous occasions throughout the two volumes (including the final "Bridges to Free Composition"). On each principal topic, Schenker conducts a review of the historical literature, drawing on the treatises of Fux, Albrechtsberger, Cherubini, and Bellermann in that order. Cherubini's very inclusion in these literature reviews, and the exclusion of so many other theorists ‒ even though he often finds Cherubini's opinion "misguided" or "wrong-headed"! ‒ bears witness to his respect for the Italian's work.

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