Prince Edmond de Polignac
Prince Edmond Melchior Jean Marie de Polignac (19 April 18348 August 1901) was a French aristocrat and composer. Ancestry Edmond was a member of the Polignac family, one of the more illustrious families of France. His grandmother, the duchesse de Polignac, had been the close friend of Queen Marie Antoinette. His father, Jules de Polignac, prince de Polignac (1780–1847), was the Minister of State in the Restoration government of King Charles X and the author of the July Ordinances in 1830, which revoked the Constitution, suspended freedom of the press, and gave the king extraordinary powers, including absolute power in the name of "insuring the safety of the state". The document resulted in the development of an insurgency and resulted in the "July Revolution" that ended the reign of the Bourbons. The king and his family went into exile, and his cabinet members were tried. Jules de Polignac was captured, tried, convicted and condemned in December 1830 to la mort civile: life imprisonment and a complete loss of civil rights. He was incarcerated in the Château de Ham. Early life By the time of his imprisonment Edmond's father Jules de Polignac had two sons by his second wife, Mary Charlotte Parkyns (1792–1864), and a daughter was born as he began his sentence. Despite the harsh sentence, visitation was allowed, and two more sons were born to Jules while he was imprisoned. Edmond was his last child, born in Paris on 19 April 1834. As his father was legally non-existent, Edmond was listed on his birth certificate as the son of 'the Prince called Marquis de Chalançon, presently on a trip'. In 1836, King Louis-Philippe granted a petition for the release of the imprisoned cabinet members on the grounds of their declining physical condition. Jules was released from jail but had to leave Paris permanently. The family moved to Bavaria, near Landau, where Jules was granted a second princely title by King Ludwig I of Bavaria, and built a château named "Wildthurn". Edmond received a classical education there, including instruction in Greek, Latin, modern languages, dancing and horseback riding. English, French and German were all spoken regularly in the household. Early on, Edmond demonstrated an inclination toward performance and the creative arts, writing plays and comedies for the children's theatre built by his father. His elder brothers mocked him for his frailness and his lack of athleticism; as a sort of recompense, his parents permitted him to take lessons in piano and music theory. In November 1845, the family returned to France, moving to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Two years later, on 30 March 1847, Jules de Polignac died. The remaining family moved to Paris in the rue de Berri, and Edmond continued his education with a preceptor in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Edmond by now had determined that he would be a composer, though this dismayed his mother, who felt music was an acceptable hobby for an aristocrat, but not an acceptable profession. Musical education Alphonse Thys was engaged to teach Edmond counterpoint, composition,