Joseph Napoléon Ney, Prince de la Moskova

Joseph Napoléon Ney, Prince of the Moskova, was born in Paris in 1803 and died in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1857. His name survives chiefly through his association with early and sacred music, where he combined composition with editing and research.

In 1831 he entered the Chambre des Pairs and published articles in the Revue des deux mondes and Le constitutionnel. That same year, pupils of Choron performed one of his masses, which was highly praised by Fétis. In 1843 he founded the Société des Concerts de Musique Religieuse et Classique and published much of its repertoire in the eleven-volume Recueil des morceaux de musique ancienne.

The society aimed to bring the sixteenth-century repertoire of the Sistine Chapel to Paris and to revive Franco-Flemish polyphony, but the Recueil covers a far wider range: Italian and English madrigals, excerpts from Bach's Matthäus-Passion, operas and oratorios by Handel, and Haydn's The Creation. At least two pieces are nineteenth-century imitations of Arcadelt and Stradella, the work of Dietsch and, probably, of Niedermeyer.

In 1851 he published an important article in the Revue et gazette musicale on the chiavette in sixteenth-century vocal music. He also wrote two one-act operas, Le cent-suisse (1840) and Yvonne (1855). His legacy lies in his role as a populariser of early music in the Paris of his day.