The Revue musicale was a weekly musical review founded in 1827 by the Belgian musicologist, teacher and composer François-Joseph Fétis, then working as professor of counterpoint and fugue at the Conservatoire de Paris. It was the first French-language journal dedicated entirely to classical music. In November 1835 it merged with Maurice Schlesinger's Gazette musicale de Paris to form Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, first published on 1 November 1835. It ceased publication in 1880.
History
By 1830 the Revue musicale, written and published by Fétis, was on sale at Maurice Schlesinger's music seller's premises. Schlesinger was a German music editor who had moved to Paris in 1821. Schlesinger published editions of classical and modern music under his own name at a reasonable price, most notably works by Mozart, Haydn, Weber, Beethoven, Hummel and Berlioz. He also published Robert le diable and Les Huguenots by Giacomo Meyerbeer, as well as La Juive by Fromental Halévy. Schlesinger founded his own rival publication, the Gazette Musicale de Paris, which first appeared on 5 January 1834. Another music journal, Le Ménestrel, had first appeared the previous month on 1 December 1833. Until La Revue et Gazette ceased publication in 1880, Le Ménestrel was to be its main rival in terms of influence and breadth of coverage. In 1835, Schlesinger bought the Revue musicale from Fétis and merged the two journals into the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris. He widened the subject matter of the Gazette musicale from music itself to also include literature about music – in 1837 he commissioned from Honoré de Balzac for the Gazette the novellaGambara. The name Revue musicale returned for six months in 1839 as the Revue musicale, journal des artistes, des amateurs et des théatres while the journal was a bi-weekly publication. The list of contributors to the Revue et gazette musicale in 1840 included: François Benoist, Hector Berlioz, Castil-Blaze, Antoine Elwart, Stephen Heller, Jules Janin, Jean-Georges Kastner, Franz Liszt, Édouard Monnais, Joseph d'Ortigue, Theodor Panofka, Ludwig Rellstab, Georges Sand, Robert Schumann and Richard Wagner. The French-language monthly magazine Revue des deux Mondes, founded in July 1829, also featured a section named "Revue musicale".
Publication chronology, 1827—1850
;Revue musicale First series - published monthly by Fétis.
Second series - published weekly on Saturdays by Fétis.
Vol. 13
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Vol. 14
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Published on Sundays
;Gazette musicale de Paris Published weekly by Schlesinger on Sundays.
. In issue 44, pp. 353–4 Schlesinger - comparing himself to a general of Ancient Greece - announced on 1 November 1835 in glowing terms that the struggle with Fétis had been won, and that La Revue Musicale would pass, with arms and baggage-train, ensigns flying and with all the honours of war, into the Gazette musicale. Fétis announced that subscribers to his Revue would receive the Gazette under the Revue's masthead until 1 January 1836, and that he would continue to write exclusively for the Gazette.
; Revue et gazette musicale de Paris Appeared on Sundays. * * *
6th year, 1839. From January 1839 until 11 April 1841 the journal appeared twice weekly, on Thursdays and Sundays. For the first six months,, the Thursday edition appeared as
Revue musicale, journal des artistes, des amateurs et des théatres with similar font and masthead design. The first edition appeared on Thursday, 3 January 1839, with consistent volume numbering, as 6e année, No. 1.
