Louise Farrenc

Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) enjoyed a considerable reputation during her own lifetime, as a composer, a performer and a teacher. She began piano studies at an early age with Cecile Soria, a former student of Muzio Clementi. When it became clear she had the ability to become a professional pianist she was given lessons by such masters as Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and, given the talent she showed as a composer, her parents decided to let her, in 1819 at the age of fifteen, study composition with Anton Reicha, the composition teacher at the Conservatoire, although it is unclear if the young Louise Dumont followed his classes there, since at that time the composition class was open only to men. In 1821 she married Aristide Farrenc, a flute student ten years her senior, who performed at some of the concerts regularly given at the artists' colony of the Sorbonne, where Louise's family lived. Following her marriage, she interrupted her studies to give concerts throughout France with her husband. He, however, soon grew tired of the concert life and, with her help, opened a publishing house in Paris, which, as Éditions Farrenc, became one of France's leading music publishers for nearly 40 years.

In Paris, Farrenc returned to her studies with Reicha, after which she reembarked on a concert career, briefly interrupted in 1826 when she gave birth to a daughter, Victorine, who also became a concert pianist but who died in 1859 aged thirty-three. In the 1830s Farrenc gained considerable fame as a performer and her reputation was such that in 1842 she was appointed to the permanent position of Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatory, a position she held for thirty years and one which was among the most prestigious in Europe. Accounts of the time record that she was an excellent instructor with many of her students graduating with Premier Prix and becoming professional musicians. Despite this, Farrenc was paid less than her male counterparts for nearly a decade. Only after the triumphant premiere of her nonet, at which the famous violinist Joseph Joachim took part, did she demand and ultimately receive equal pay. Besides her teaching and performing career, she also produced and edited an influential book, Le Trésor des Pianistes, about early music performance style, and was twice awarded the Prix Chartier of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, in 1861 and 1869.

Farrenc died in Paris. For several decades after her death, her reputation as a performer survived and her name continued to appear in such books as Antoine François Marmontel’s Pianistes célèbres. Her nonet had achieved around 1850 some popularity, as did her two piano quintets and her trios. But, despite some new editions of her chamber music after her death, her works were largely forgotten until, in the late 20th century, an interest in women composers led to the rediscovery – and thence to the performance and recording – of many her works. In December 2013, Farrenc was the subject of the long-running BBC Radio Three programme Composer of the Week.

— Wikipedia

Mélanie Bonis

Mélanie Bonis, born in a modest Parisian lower middle-class family,was a lively child, strong willed and very much inspired by her religious education. Nothing predisposed her to a musical destiny. She taught herself the piano, in a rather hostile family context, until the age of twelve, when her parents, influenced by one of their friends, Monsieur Maury, cornet professor at the prestigious Conservatoire, resigned themselves to give her a musical education.

She started to compose. At the age of 16, she was introduced by Maury to the famous composer César Franck who gave her piano lessons and showed a great interest in her first compositions. A year later, he brought her to the Conservatoire (at that time situated in the Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs, Rue Bergère, in Montmartre). She attended the accompaniment, harmony and composition classes, sharing the benches with Debussy and Pierné. At the time, it was clear that musical composition could in no way be a profession for a woman, that a woman could not compose anything of value. Mélanie gave herself the pseudonym Mel Bonis to avoid any feminine connotation in her name.

In the singing class, she met Amédée Landély Hettich, a singing student with a strong personality, poet, journalist and musical critic with some influence already at the age of 22. She set his poems to music. Their passion met with the opposition of Mélanie's parents who refused this marriage into a "dangerous artistic world." They forced their daughter to leave the Conservatoire, to the great disappointment of her teachers, Ernest Guiraud and César Franck, and of the director, Ambroise Thomas. With a second prize in accompaniment and a first prize in harmony, already a promising composition student, Mélanie is forced to resign.

In 1883, a marriage was arranged by her family: against her will she married Albert Domange, an energetic businessman, twice widowed, father of five boys and 25 years her senior. He was a likeable fellow, jovial and materialistic. He did not share Mélanie's spiritual ideals. He did not like music. During nearly ten years, the young woman led a bourgeois life, apparently entirely devoted to her family duties. She shared her time between a private mansion in the rue de Monceau in one of the most elegant districts of Paris, a property in Sarcelles and a house in Étretat, a fashionable holiday resort in Normandy. She managed a large family and a staff of twelve people. She travelled, she went out and entertained. She gave her husband three children. She played the role of "Madame Domange" to perfection.

As her family circle took no interest in her music, external encouragements were needed to revive Mélanie's interest in composing. A few years after her marriage, she met up with Hettich again. He had also married. He encouraged her to compose, brought her closer to the musical milieu and introduced her to Alphonse Leduc, her future publisher. Her work started to get known: scores were sold and played in the parlours. Hettich and Mel Bonis worked together. She was the mainspring of his "Anthology of classical songs," she showed him her compositions for piano, accompanied his singing students and set his new poems to music, in particular "Elève-toi, mon âme," which expresses the passionate feeling that united them. Still in love with this man who wooed her passionately, in a courtship mixing desire, spirituality and symbiosis through music, Mel Bonis suffered a painful struggle between her feelings and her religious convictions. She resisted Hettich a long time. It was a great combat, a sense of shame which sharpened her sensibility and led her into temptation. Finally, having travelled to Switzerland for an alleged health cure, she secretly gave birth to a fourth child, little Madeleine whom she would never be able to recognize legally. She tried to sublimate these ordeals by prayers and musical creation.

She attempted to repudiate her femininity. She only corresponded with Hettich to obtain news of the child, that had been put in the care of one of her former chambermaids. She could only see the child grow up from afar. Her thoughts very often brought her back to Hettich. She could not get used to being separated from Madeleine. At home, she showed all the signs of a depression. And nevertheless...

She was a prolific and inspired composer. She composed about three hundred works: piano pieces, ranging from pieces for children to concert pieces, for two hands, four hands and two pianos; beautiful compositions for the voice, either profane, with songs for one or two voices (among them those set to texts by Hettich, her lover), or religious, with at least twenty-five works, most of them for choir a cappella or accompanied by organ or harp; about thirty pieces for organ or harmonium; about twenty chamber music works, including three sonatas, two piano quartets, a septet, etc...; and finally, eleven orchestral pieces. The most striking thing is the discrepancy between the moral rigidity of "Madame Domange", obsessed by her social duties and steeped in piety, and the extraordinarily bold sensuality which emerges from the musical works that she produced under her pseudonym.

— Christine Géliot
English translation by Florence Launay and Michael Cook

MMF Celebrates Women Composers (part 3)