Malherbe was born in Paris, son of Pierre Joseph Malherbe (1819–1890)[1] and Zoé Caroline Mozin (1832–1921) the youngest daughter of French painter Charles Mozin (1806–1862). He studied law and was admitted to the bar, but instead decided on music as a profession. He studied music with Adolphe Danhauser, Jules Massenet and André Wormser, and served as Danhauser's secretary on a tour through Holland, Belgium and Switzerland to survey systems of music pedagogy in the public schools. He afterward settled in Paris, and became assistant to Charles Nuitter, the archivist-librarian of the Paris Opera Library in 1896, succeeding him in 1899. He edited the music periodical Le Ménestrel and also wrote for a number of other publications, including Le Guide musical, Progrès artistique, Revue internationale de musique and Le Monde artiste.[2][3]
Beginning in 1895, Malherbe annotated sixteen volumes of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Œuvres complètes ("Complete works") (1895–1913),[4] providing much information concerning performance practice and genre history, as well as Rameau himself. He initiated, in collaboration with Felix Weingartner, the first edition of Hector Berlioz's complete works (1900–1907).[5] Although replete with errors (and now superseded by Hector Berlioz: New Edition of the Complete Works, edited by Hugh Macdonald), it was indispensable at the time.[3]
Malherbe was a collector of documents, and acquired, besides thousands of autograph letters, a number of important manuscripts, including the largest extant collection of Beethoven sketches, the autograph scores of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, two Rameau cantatas, and several Bach cantatas.[3] He discovered the original orchestral score of Rossini's opera Guillaume Tell at a secondhand book seller's shop.[6] In 1901 he located previously uncatalogued works of Mozart, including a soprano aria from the opera Mitridate, re di Ponto, written at age 14 and an Elegy in F for two sopranos written at age 11.[7] He also owned a number of Liszt manuscripts.[8] With Albert Soubies, Malherbe published Précis de l'histoire de l'Opéra-Comique in 1887.[9]
