Édouard BATISTE

The description of Batiste in the edition of the Solfèges du Conservatoire,which he revised in the 1860s, reads “Professor of individual and collective solfège at the Conservatoire, organist of the great organ at Saint-Eustache, director-professor of the Société Chorale du Conservatoire”. He fulfilled a prominent teaching role, since he taught over five thousand pupils (according to Fétis) and produced a prolific output of didactic works (he did not merely revise manuals written by other people). Batiste was particularly interested in the democratisation of solfège tuition by means of “popular editions” and in making lessons more progressive (Petit Solfège théorique et pratique and Petit Solfège mélodique et progressif, which were written as introductions to the “grands solfèges du Conservatoire”). Batiste himself had received a sound education, winning four Premiers Prix at the Paris Conservatoire (solfège, harmony, counterpoint and fugue, organ) and, at the end of his composition studies with Halévy, was awarded a second Prix de Rome in 1840. At the Paris Conservatoire, he became accompanist, tutor in solfège, and professor of chant collectif and harmony in quick succession. After holding the post of organist at Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, he was subsequently appointed organist at the church of Saint-Eustache in 1854, the year that Ducroquet’s instrument was inaugurated. His compositions are essentially works for organ: liturgical pieces, transcriptions, graded pieces aimed at instrumentalists of different levels published by a composer with an enduring interest in tuition.