François Fayolle

François Joseph Marie Fayolle (Paris, 1774 – Paris, 1852) was a French writer who treated music from the standpoints of history and literary criticism. Although he initially trained with a view to mathematics at the École Polytechnique, he ultimately devoted himself chiefly to literature and musical scholarship, a field in which he enjoyed a notable presence during the Napoleonic Empire and the Restoration.

In his youth he studied the cello with Barny and received singing and harmony lessons from Perne, although his interest soon turned towards literary history. Between 1805 and 1809 he published Les quatre saisons du Parnasse, a sixteen-volume work containing articles on music, among them reviews of works by Le Sueur, Méhul, Spontini and Kreutzer. In 1810–1811, together with Alexandre Choron, he brought out the Dictionnaire historique des musiciens. Between 1815 and 1829 he lived in London, where he worked at the British Museum and contributed to The Harmonicon, and after returning to Paris he contributed to the supplement of Michaud's Biographie universelle. He died in poverty, almost forgotten by his contemporaries.

His name is mainly associated with his compilation of the music dictionary, which drew heavily on the earlier work of Gerber, Forkel, Burney and La Borde. Fétis accused him of plagiarism, and Choron's contribution was, according to some accounts, practically nil apart from the introduction and a few articles. Fayolle also wrote about violinists, and in his pamphlet on Paganini and Bériot he questioned whether mere technical virtuosity amounted to genuine talent. He also planned a Histoire du violon that was never published.

His legacy is today chiefly documentary: although his compositions have barely survived and the operas attributed to him are doubtful, his work offers useful material for studying the musical life of the Empire, especially opera.