Marie-Désiré Martin-Beaulieu (11 April 1791 – 21 December 1863) was a French composer and concert organizer.
Life
Born in Paris, Beaulieu was the son of an artillery officer and descendant of a rich cloth merchant family based in Niort. He adopted the name Beaulieu after the Beaulieu estate bought by his grandfather in 1761.
However, he renounced his stay in Rome and settled with his wife Francoise Caroline Rouget de Gourcez in Niort, where her father had been mayor until the French Revolution. Nevertheless, he fulfilled his obligations as a winner of the Prix de Rome and sent several church music pieces to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. After the death of his teacher Méhul, he composed a Requiem in 1819, which was also performed in 1851 in memory of Kreutzer and in 1863 for his own funeral.
In 1827, he founded a "Société Philharmonique" in Niort, from which the "Association musicale de l'Ouest" was born in collaboration with the violinist and conductor Jules Norès. This was the first symphonic association in the region to organise concerts in Niort, La Rochelle, Angoulème, Rochefort, Poitiers and Limoges and to organise an annual musical congress. The society was active until 1879 and led among other things Mendelssohns' oratoriosPaulus and Elias, HändelsAlexander's Feast, Ludwig Wilhelm MaurersSymphonie concertante and Antonin Reicha's wind quintets.
Vocal music was at the centre of Beaulieu's compositional work. In addition to operas, cantatas and lyrical scenes, he composed secular and religious choral works as well as songs and romances with different accompaniments and two string quartets.
Interested in public life in his city, Beaulieu was a member of the city council of Niort from 1840 until his death in 1863.[1]