Two hundred and ten bottles of red Bordeaux wine, one hundred and fifty bottles of assorted wine, twenty bottles of wine from Frontignan, and about one hundred and fifty empty bottles – this impressive oenological list opens the inventory of Antoine Reicha's belongings, compiled about a month after his death in early June 1836. This multi-page document is a priceless source for any biographical or sociocultural approach to Reicha in his Paris years, and it formed part of a paper that started a three-day conference completely devoted to Reicha: most probably the first of its kind, hopefully not the last. The inventory as well as much more biographical information was presented by his great-great-grandson, Philippe Bernard de Raymond, who had dug deeply in French archives, unearthing genealogical, commercial and personal documents reflecting, among other things, the social status of Reicha during his French period from 1808 until his death. We know now that, most probably, his name was pronounced in Paris as ‘Reica’, distinguished from the present-day French usage with [∫] as well as from the German ‘Reicha’ and the Czech ‘Rejcha’.

The conference couldn't have started more fittingly. It was organized chiefly by Bernard de Raymond's daughter Louise (Université de Sorbonne), who is about to finish her dissertation on Reicha's string quartets, and by her supervisor Jean-Pierre Bartoli (Université de Sorbonne). The three days of the conference were distributed between three different venues, partly corresponding to the various organizations that supported the conference, partly reflecting Reicha's cosmopolitan background and his many-sided activity as artist and theorist alike: it began beneath the Eiffel Tower at the Embassy of the Czech Republic, whose conference rooms and terrace overlook the Champ de Mars; the next day the conference party moved to the dignified Salle des Actes of the Sorbonne; and on its last day we stepped down into the subterranean organ room of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in the Cité de la Musique, gargantuan monument to Mitterand's building policy and perennial construction site. Such a three-step descent could even stand metaphorically for the abyss of oblivion into which Reicha, at least the composer, fell a long time ago – in fact, since Maurice Emmanuel's biography of 1937 (Antonin Reicha: biographie critique, illustrée de douze reproductions hors texte (Paris: H. Laurens)). The conference's aim was to counteract this disregard in three ways, through thematic sections devoted respectively to biography, theory and aesthetics, and Reicha's stature as a composer.

After Bernard de Raymond's opening, little was added to biographical aspects. That Reicha's native Bohemia played hardly any role for the rest of his life not only may be deduced from his own words (he considered himself German), but also became evident in the paper by Livia Laifrova (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris), maybe against her will: the many Bohemian musicians working in Paris at that time did not form a cultural or spiritual community, as some years later Polish émigrés would do, and the presence of Bohemian folk style in Reicha's music remains completely hypothetical. Hervé Audéon (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut de Recherche sur le Patrimoine Musical en France, Paris) sketched the development of Reicha's historical thinking through an examination of his writings: while the composer initially thought beauty to be an eternal category, one that could be studied in the ancient masters, he later believed in the progress of art, so much so that Fétis could criticize him as ‘trop moderniste’.

The section dealing with the aesthetics and theoretical writings of Reicha began with a paper by Alban Ramaut (Université Jean Monnet, Saint-Étienne) about the rationalism of Reicha and his function as an interpreter of Viennese classicism for the French. Keith Chapin (Cardiff University) portrayed Reicha as the heir to three different eighteenth-century understandings of the learned man dedicated to music: literate musician, man of letters, and scientist or philosopher. Reicha negotiated these different understandings with a self-consciousness and originality that often led to his encountering problems with various supporting institutions. Just how modern Reicha could have been in the eyes of his pupils is testified to by Berlioz: Frank Heidlberger (University of North Texas) offered striking insights into some (rather subtle) echoes of Reicha's harmonic or orchestral manners in several of his student Berlioz's scores, and into the double function that Reicha had for Berlioz, both as a propagator of innovation and as a link to tradition. This tradition was by no means parochial: that Reicha owed some of his principles to Rousseau was demonstrated by Louise Bernard de Raymond. Martin Kaltenecker (Université Paris Diderot) discussed the analytical approach taken towards melody in Reicha's Traité de mélodie, using an air from Piccinni's Didon as example, as well as the elevated aesthetic position that the composer ascribed to melody in general. The same Traité was characterized by Renate Groth (Universität Bonn) as a sort of foundation for French Formenlehre; while it possibly showed the influence of Koch's Versuch, unlike Koch, it was based on musical examples and a pedagogical ethos that were clearly contemporary. Rainer Schmusch (Universität Basel) compared the Traité to Koch's Versuch in detail and came to the conclusion that while Koch starts with the notion of Periode and then splits it in smaller parts, Reicha begins with the invention and gradually builds up a periodic structure: Reicha's didactic approach is fundamentally different from Koch's analytical one. Eventually, the Traité de mélodie was translated by Carl Czerny, along with Reicha's other major treatises, and Marc Rigaudière (Université de Lorraine) showed that the translator seized the opportunity to make some updates, both inserting references to Beethoven and defending modern virtuoso pieces. He thereby deliberately kept a distance from the French original. That Beethoven reacted to Reicha's innovations – and not vice versa – was argued by Herbert Schneider (Universität des Saarlands). For example, Beethoven's combination of fugue and motivic development in the ‘Eroica’ Variations, Op. 35, might have been a reply to Reicha's ‘nouveau système’, even though Beethoven tried to distance himself from the ‘French’ composer as he wrote to his publisher Breitkopf about his ‘neue Manier’.

Finally, what do we know about Reicha's music? Do we know it at all? The conference gave an opportunity not only to talk about his compositions, but also to hear them in four concerts. They featured some unpublished works, as well as several period keyboard instruments. While the unknown trio for three cellos, the early piano trio (Sonate accompagnée, Op. 47) and the string quartets of Op. 90 gave the impression of being inspired works that would also have readily met the expectations of their respective genres, the monumental Grand Duo for violin and piano and the solo piano music (excerpts from the Practische Beispiele, the Trente-six fugues and several individual pieces) showed a more experimental side to the composer. In these works ‘le caractéristique’ seems to be more important than beauty and harmony, and they sometimes border on the strange and even the bizarre. As such, they are audacious and forward-looking, but not necessarily always convincing music. Amongst the many performers, Christoph Coin (cello) and Jean-Jacques Dünki (fortepiano) merit special mention. The organizers' choice of music was a great benefit since several concerts served to illustrate some of the papers.

In the centre of the section about Reicha the composer stood his piano music, arguably the best-known part of his output. Having recently published a critical edition of the Trente-six fugues, Andrew R. Noble (Freie Universität Berlin) spoke about the unconventional approach to traditional fugal procedures found in this most popular of Reicha's works. Ana Stefanović (Faculty of Music, Univerzitet umetnosti Beogradu) devoted her paper to a comparison of L'art de varier, Op. 57, with Beethoven's variation sets of 1802, highlighting the coexistence of baroque models and proto-romantic piano patterns in Reicha. Jean-Pierre Bartoli began by placing Reicha's fantasias in the context of the genre (or, rather, its different types) around the turn of the century, and built towards a demonstration of the late Reicha's dislike of improvisation as an art form. Cécile Kubik (Université de Sorbonne) gave a very insightful introduction into issues of violinistic interpretation, before playing in concert the Grand Duo that she has been studying from the autograph manuscript. That the all-but-unknown piano trios of Reicha are not only characteristic reflections of the genre's development, but works of astonishing beauty and inventiveness, was demonstrated in my paper (Christoph Flamm, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt). Slightly more available to modern ears are some of Reicha's symphonies, to which Muriel Boulan (Université de Sorbonne) gave a thorough introduction, covering transmission, orchestration, structure and thematic material. Questions concerning Reicha's symphonic style were also covered by Paolo Valenti (Università di Bologna), who spoke about the large-scale Missa pro defunctis, using it to offer a perspective on Berlioz. Finally, the operas Natalie (1816) and Sapho (1822) were discussed in great detail by Emmanuel Reibel (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre) as examples of French works composed on the eve of the birth of grand opera. He discussed their musical and dramaturgical structures, use of harmony and performance history as well as their reception and problems of transmission.

Since research on Reicha has been scarce, few of the invited speakers could claim specialized knowledge. Nevertheless, during the course of the conference participants increasingly had the impression that Reicha's many creative activities could constitute a research field of great promise. They deserve interest not only because they have been neglected, but also because his work is of high quality and great historical value. The planned conference report will be a decisive first step for a more comprehensive understanding of Reicha – and the musical culture of his time.