Adam Cappeau – Cantique de Noël (Easy Piano solo with voice or instrument sheet music, Noten, partition)

Cantique de Noël

Cantique de Noël, ‘Minuit, chrétiens’, known in Spanish as ‘Oh Santa noche’ and in English as ‘O Holy Night’ is a Christmas song composed in 1847 with music by the composer Adolphe Adam and lyrics written in 1843 originally in French by Placide Cappeau.

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Adolphe Charles Adam (24 July 1803 – 3 May 1856) was a French composer, pianist and music critic. Today he is best known for his ballets Giselle (1844) and Le Corsaire (1856, his last work), for his 39 operas, including Le Postillon de Lonjumeau (1836) and Si j’étais roi (1852), and his carol Minuit, chrétiens (1847).

Adam was born in Paris, where his father Louis Adam (1758-1848) was a pianist, composer and professor at the Conservatoire. His mother was the daughter of a doctor. As a child, Adolphe Adam preferred to improvise his own music rather than study music seriously.

He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1821 where he studied organ and harmony with the famous opera composer François Adrien Boieldieu, who was the one who guided him towards opéra-comique and a way of understanding music that made it close to the public .

Adam also played the triangle in the Conservatoire orchestra to gain experience in rhythm and reading (many of his compositions make great use of the triangle). However, not winning the Rome Prize, his father did not encourage him to pursue a career in music.

Before the age of 20, he wrote songs for Paris vaudeville houses and played in the orchestra of the Gymnasie Dramatique, where he would later become choir master. Like many other French composers, he made his living largely by playing the organ.

In 1825, he helped Boieldieu in the composition of La Dame blanche and made a piano version of it. He could travel across Europe with the money he earned, and met Eugène Scribe, with whom he later collaborated, in Geneva.

His career was full of successes, the first of which, Le Chalet (1834), had more than a thousand performances at the Opéra-Comique over the next forty years.

After falling out with the director of the Opéra, Adam invested his money and went into considerable debt to open a third opera house in Paris: the Théâtre National. It opened in 1847, but had to be closed because of the Revolution of 1848, leaving Adam with overwhelming debts. To get ahead, he briefly worked as a journalist. From 1849 until his death, he taught composition at the Paris Conservatoire, where he had among other students his compatriot Ferdinand Poise and the Portuguese Guilherme Cossoul.

His carol Cantique de Noël (Minuit, chrétiens! or Weihnachts Gesang, Noche de Paz), better known by its English title O Holy Night, has become one of the favorites around the world.

Adolphe Adam died in Paris and was buried in the Montmartre cemetery.

Main works

Ballets :

La Chatte blanche (1830)
Faust (1833)
La Fille du Danube (1836)
Les Mohicans (1837)
L'Écumeur des mers (1840)
Les Hamadryades (1840)
Giselle ou les Willis 1841
La jolie Fille de Gand (1842)
Le Diable à quatre (1843)
La Fille de marbre (1845)
Griseldis ou Les Cinq Sens (1848)
Le Filleule des fées (1849)
Orfa (1852)
Le Corsaire (1856)

Operas :

Le Mal du pays ou La Bâtelière de Brientz (1827)
Le Jeune Propriétaire et le vieux fermier (1829)
Pierre et Catherine (1829)
Danilowa (1830)
Les Trois Catherine (1830)
Trois Jours en une heure (1830)
Joséphine ou Le Retour de Wagram (1830)
Le Morceau d'ensemble (1831)
Le Grand Prix ou Le Voyage à frais communs (1831)
Casimir ou Le Premier Tête-à-tête (1831)
His First Campaign (1832)
The Dark Diamond (1832)
Le Proscrit ou Le Tribunal (1833)
Une Bonne Fortune (1834)
Le Chalet (1834)
La Marquise (1835)
Micheline ou L'Heure de l'esprit (1835)
Le Postillon de Lonjumeau (1836)
Le Fidèle Berger (1838)
Le Brasseur de Preston (1838)
Régine ou Les Deux Nuits (1839)
La Reine d'un jour (1839)
La Rose de Péronne (1840)
La Main de fer ou Un mariage secret (1841)
Le Roi d'Yvetôt (1842)
Lambert Simnel (1843)
Cagliostro (1844)
Richard en Palestine (1844)
La Bouquetière (1847)
Les Premiers Pas ou Les Deux Génies ou Les Mémoires de la blanchisseuse (1847)
Le Toréador ou L'Accord parfait (1849)
Le Fanal (1849)
Giralda ou La Nouvelle Psyché (1850)
Le Farfadet (1852)
La Poupée de Nuremberg (1852)
Si j'étais roi (1852)
Le Sourd ou L'Auberge pleine (1853)
Le Roi des halles (1853)
Le Bijou perdu (1853)
Le Muletier de Tolède (1854)
À Clichy, épisode de la vie d'un artiste (1854)
Mam'zelle Geneviève (1856)
Falstaff (1856)
Les Pantins de Violette (1856)