Emil Chavé

A carte-de-visite portrait of the French music theorist and music teacher Émile-Joseph-Maurice Chevé (1804-1864).

Born at Douarnenez on 31 May 1804, Chevé originally studied medicine and mathematics but in 1835 he enrolled in a course taught by Aimé Paris, who propagated a musical notation system he had inherited from Pierre Galin. Chevé married Paris’s sister Nanine, and, together with his new brother-in-law, he began to develop and promote the system, which became known as the Galin-Paris-Chevé method. He and his wife also edited a series of textbooks that were used at such schools as the École normale supérieure, the École polytechnique and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand.

Under John Curwen the system came into the English-speaking world and Lowell Mason carried it into the United States. A hundred years later, the Hungarian music educator Zoltán Kodály adapted the system in his Kodály Method.

Chevé died on 21 August 1864.

Photographer unidentified.