Oscar Comettant

Oscar Comettant (18 April 1819 – 24 January 1898) was a 19th-century French composer, musicologist and traveller.

Commettant studied the piano and musical composition at the Conservatoire de Paris (1839–1843) and made a long tour in the United-States from 1852 to 1855 as a soloist.

He left Le Havre on 1 September 1852 and arrived in New York City on the 13th. He then visited the Niagara falls, Mammoth Cave, saw the Mississippi, Lake Superior, Cedar Creek etc.

His circuit began on a steamer on the River Hudson, the train then led him from Albany to Buffalo with stop at Niagara Falls. He went to Toronto, Kingston, Mille-Isles, Montréal, Quebec then Saratoga and returned to New York where he rested for two weeks.

Comettant later visited Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Richmond (Virginia) and Charleston, then spent a month in Mobile in a cotton plantation. On his way to New Orleans, he sailed on the Mississippi and went through Vicksburg, Memphis and Louisville where he took the opportunity to admire Mammoth Cave and ended his journey by Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.

Unlike many travelers, Comettant focused on American society and institutions; The great spaces of nature were indifferent to him. Although very detailed on political life, religions, education etc. and the American cod, his works, where he invented the character of the French painter Marcel Bonneau, were very fictional.

In 1855, on his return to France, he became a professor of music and while composing, worked as a music critic for Le Siècle and Le Ménestrel.

Comettant went again on a journey in 1864 and visited Denmark, then in July 1888, was appointed French juror at the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition (1888) where he arrived 6 September after he left Marseille 1 August.

He visited Lilydale where he met squatters and Indigenous Australians and, in October 1888, the mines of Ballarat and Sandhurst. He also traveled in the Great Western, where he admired the vines before going to Sydney to attend a banquet (Decembre).

After composing his "Salute to Melbourne" for piano, he returned to France on 28 December 1888.