The Prix de Rome for music (1803-1968)

Created on the joint initiative of Colbert and Lebrun in 1666, the Académie de France in Rome did not admit musicians until 1803, when the institution moved to the prestigious Villa Medici acquired by Napoleon. Winning the Prix de Rome, with a scholarship to spend a number of years at the Académie in Rome, represented for musicians of the Paris Conservatoire the culmination of their studies. The Prix de Rome competition for them was in two stages: in the first, candidates were required to compose a fugue and a chorus with orchestral accompaniment to a set text. Five or six musicians were selected to go on to the second and final round, in which they were expected to compose an operatic scene (scène lyrique) or ‘cantata’, on a subject taken from history, mythology, the Bible or a novel. The set libretto, lasting about twenty minutes, aimed to present the main dramatic situations a composer could encounter when writing an opera. Many fine composers, such as Halévy, Berlioz, Ambroise Thomas, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Debussy and Ravel, competed and altogether left hundreds of works, most of which are yet to be discovered.

From the CD-Book Paul Dukas. Cantates, chœurs et musique symphonique (Palazzetto Bru Zane, collection Prix de Rome, 2015).