Bernard Germain Etienne Médard de la Ville-sur-Illon, Comte de Lacépède

Bernard Germain Étienne Médard de Lacépède, Count of La Ville-sur-Illon, was a French naturalist who, alongside his scientific work, pursued a parallel career as a composer and music theorist. Born in Agen in 1756 and dying in Epinay-sur-Seine in 1825, he lived through the cultural ferment of pre-revolutionary and Imperial France, and his case is singular for the seriousness with which he approached both fields.

His musical training began in Agen and Bordeaux, and from 1775 he corresponded with D'Alembert on theoretical questions. In 1777 he travelled to Paris, where he was warmly received by Buffon and by Gluck. That same year Gluck had just composed Armide; despite his enthusiasm, Lacépède destroyed his own version of that libretto. For a brief period he tried to combine science and music, although in the former he eventually achieved great prestige as Buffon's successor and as director of the Jardin des Plantes, where he published works on mammals, among them whales and humans.

After receiving lessons from Gossec, in 1783 his Omphale was accepted and rehearsed at the Opéra, but the whim of the principal singer, St Huberty, led to its withdrawal. From then on Lacépède confined his dramatic and instrumental music to private performances. His Poétique de la musique (1785) offered an unusually serious analysis of instrumental music, indebted to the Encyclopedists' theory of imitation and marked by Gluck's influence in the idea that music in the theatre serves a dramatic function rather than a merely pleasurable one. His descriptive music for Fénelon's Télémaque sought to illustrate these ideas.

Today his musical output is known almost exclusively through written testimonies, as all of it has been lost. His importance lies above all in his theoretical writings, which reflect the aesthetic debate of his time on the expressive role of music.