Joseph d'Ortigue

Five of the twelve brothers and sisters of d'Ortigue's grandfather, Henri Francois Xavier, had entered religious orders (two Carmelites, two Jesuits and one Bernardin).

He returned to Paris in 1829, continued writing for Mémorial Catholique, and produced his first pamphlet, De la Guerre des dilettanti.

The pamphlet which was critical of Rossini's influence on France's operatic and artistic life in general caused a considerable stir.

During his six months at La Chênaie d'Ortigue immersed himself in Lamennais's extensive library, became acquainted with the German philosophers, and researched the music of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

In 1833 he published Le Balcon de l'Opéra, a collection of his music criticism, and the following year a two-volume novel, La Sainte-Baume.

It was d'Ortigue who arranged for Liszt, who shared many of his views on Catholicism and the role of the artist in society, to meet Abbé Lammenais in 1834.

In 1840 they moved to a town house in Paris on the Rue Saint-Lazare where d'Ortigue would live for the rest of his life and where their youngest child, Jeanne, was born in 1843.

In 1837 he was hired to catalogue the medieval music manuscripts in the Royal Library and in 1839 he was appointed professor of choral singing at the Lycée Henri-IV.

[4][10][11][12] In 1852 d'Ortigue published the work which cemented his reputation as a musicologist—Dictionnaire liturgique, historique et théorique de plain-chant et le musique d'église.

They also co-wrote Traité théorique et pratique de l'accompagnement du Plain-Chant, a treatise on the theory and practice of plain chant accompaniment published in 1856.

Armand de Pontmartin wrote in one the many obituaries lamenting his early death that d'Ortigue had died in the fullness of his intellectual powers and at the climax of his career, surrounded by a brilliant group of younger musicians and critics who looked to him for guidance.

Frontispiece by Célestin Nanteuil for d'Ortigue's book Le balcon de l'opéra