Pelissier, Victor
Pelissier, Victor
Pelissier, Victor , French-American horn player, arranger, and composer; b. probably in Paris, c. 1745; d. c. 1820. His name appears first in 1792 on Philadelphia concert programs as “first horn of the Theatre in Cape François” In 1793 he went to N.Y., where he lived for many years and became the principal horn player, also composer and arranger, of the Old American Co. He composed one of the earliest and most influential melodramas in the U.S., Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus in the Isle of Naxos (N.Y., 1797); also publ, the collection Pelissier’s Columbia Melodies (12 vols., Philadelphia, 1811–12; ed. by K. Kroeger in Recent Researches in American Music, XIII-XIV, 1984), consisting of piano arrangements of instrumental works, dances, and songs. His other works include the operas Edwin and Angelina, or The Banditti (N.Y., Dec. 19,1796) and Sterne’s Maria, or The Vintage (N.Y., Jan. 14, 1799), various pantomimes, most of them lost, incidental music, most notably to W. Dunlap’s The Voice of Nature (N.Y., 1803), a number of instrumental pieces, etc.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire