“Historical Anthology of Music by Women”
Louise Dumont Farrenc was an unusual figure in the musical life of France during the nineteenth century: an accomplished pianist, composer of distinction, professor at the Conservatoire, and editor of early music. The quality and diversity of this achievement are best understood and evaluated when viewed not as isolated phenomena but in relation to the milieu in which she lived and worked.
In many important ways, Farrenc functioned outside the cultural mainstream of mid-century Paris, her native city and lifelong home. It was the age of the virtuoso, with superficial display pieces providing the main concert fare,- she preferred to investigate and perform the little-known late sonatas of Beethoven. La vie mondaine revolved around the Opéra; her own predilection was for the instrumental genres. French musical aesthetics traditionally focused on the pictorial aspects of music; her creative bent favored the abstract forms of the sonata and the symphony. French women of musical ability typically sought fame and fortune on the opera stage or as composers of sentimental romances; Louise Farrenc quietly pursued her career as an effective teacher, composer of (mainly) chamber music, and—in the end—as a performer, editor, and champion of the largely unexplored harpsichord repertoire.
A descendant of a long line of royal artists (including several women painters) and a sister of the laureate sculptor Auguste Dumont, Louise showed artistic and musical talent of a high order at an early age. By mid-adolescence she had developed into a pianist of professional calibre as well as an exceptional theory student and a promising composer. Her studies in composition and orchestration with Anton Reicha were interrupted for a few years following her marriage in 1821 to Aristide Farrenc, a flutist and music publisher. With the resumption of work with Reicha in the mid- 1820s, Louise Farrenc began to publish her compositions for piano, most notable of which are the Air russe varié, Opus 17 (1835), which was favorably reviewed by Schumann in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik a year after publication, and the Thirty Etudes in all the major and minor keys (1839 or 1840).
Farrenc’s orchestral works comprise two overtures (1834) and three symphonies (completed in the 1840s). None are published, although each had more than one Paris performance, and some were heard in other major European capitals as well. Her outstanding contribution is the body of chamber music she produced between 1840 and 1860: two quintets, four trios, two violin sonatas, a cello sonata, and two unpublished pieces—a sextet and a nonet. All these works were performed many times over, and most of them were published within a few years of completion. The Institut de France twice honored Louise Farrenc for her chamber music compositions, awarding her the Prix Chartier in 1861 and 1869.
In 1842 Auber, the director of the Conservatoire, appointed Farrenc professor of piano, a post she retained until her retirement in 1873. The only woman musician at the Conservatoire in the nineteenth century to hold a permanent chair of this rank and importance, she distinguished herself by the excellence of her teaching, which has been demonstrated by the high proportion of her pupils who won competitions and went on to professional careers.
Perhaps most memorable among Louise Farrenc’s musical achievements is her contribution to the 23-volume collection of early keyboard music, Le trésor des pianistes (1861-75). Sharing her husband’s ideal of reviving the harpsichord and virginal repertory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Louise Farrenc collaborated with him (and continued alone, after his death in 1865) in preparing modern editions of old manuscripts and prints collected from France, England, Italy, and Germany. Supplementing her work as editor and publisher, she brought the music alive in a series of séances historiques, in which she and her pupils performed selections from Le trésor des pianistes. Her own compositions continued to be heard in Paris up to the time of her death in 1875—the last performance during her lifetime, appropriately enough, being the Adagio cantabile of her Third Symphony conducted by Edouard Colonne at the Concert du Chatelet, February 14, 1875.
The Trio, Opus 45, composed in 1857 and published in 1862, is the last of Louise Farrenc’s compositions for three instruments. Scored for flute (or violin), cello, and piano, it is an engaging, carefully constructed piece reminiscent of Mendelssohn’s Classical form and Romantic aura. The first movement, reprinted here, is illustrative of Farrenc’s skill: within a traditional sonata form the composer incorporates some unexpected modulations and ingenious bits of development, producing a delightful work that “still offers performers as well as audiences an exciting experience” (so says Miriam Gideon in the Introduction to the Da Capo edition of the Trio).
Recordings
Trio in E minor, Opus 45. Katherine Hoover, flute; Carter Brey, cello; Barbara Weintraub, piano. Leonarda 104, 1979.
Trio No. 2 in D minor, Opus 34; Five Etudes for Piano, from Opus 26; Air russe varié, Opus 17. The New York Lyric Arts Trio; Gina Raps, piano. Musical Heritage Society, 3766L.
Further Reading
Farrenc, Aristide and Louise. Le trésor des pianistes. 23 vols. Paris, 1861-75. Reprint New York: Da Capo, 1978, with a Foreword by Bea Friedland.
Friedland, Bea. Louise Farrenc, 1804-1875: Composer, Performer, Scholar. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1980.
Louise Farrenc
Reprinted from Louise Farrenc, Trio. Women Composers Series, Da Capo Press, 1979. By permission.
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