Louise Farrenc
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Louise Farrenc (May 31, 1804 - September 15, 1875) French composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher.
Born Jean-Louise Dumont in Paris, she is the daughter of Jacques-Edme Dumont and a sister to Auguste Dumont.
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[edit] Biography
Louise Farrenc enjoyed a considerable reputation during her own lifetime as both a performer and a teacher. She hailed from a long line of royal artists. Her father was a successful sculptor. She began piano studies at an early age with a Senora Soria, a Clementi student, but when it became clear she had the talent of a professional pianist, she was also given lessons by such masters as Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Because she also showed great promise as a composer, her parents decided to enroll her when she turned 15, at the Paris Conservatory where she studied composition with Anton Reicha. It was at the Conservatory that she met Aristide Farrenc, a flute student ten years her senior. She married him in 1821. She then interrupted her studies to concertize throughout France with her husband. He soon grew tired of the concert life and decided to open a publishing house in Paris, which as Editions Farrenc, was one of France’s leading music publishers for nearly 40 years.
Farrenc returned to her studies with Reicha at the Paris Conservatory. After completing her studies, she reembarked on a concert career and gained considerable fame as a performer, primarily in France, during the 1830’s. By the early 1840’s, 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. (No woman in the 19th century held a comparable post.) Despite this, Farrenc was paid considerably 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 receive equal pay. Beside her teaching and performing career, she also produced and edited an influential book about early music performance style. For several decades after her death, Farrenc’s reputation as a performer survived and her name continued to appear in such books as Marmontel’s Pianistes célèbres. But beyond a brief burst of popularity which the nonet achieved around 1850, her other compositions were virtually ignored.
[edit] Music
At first, during the 1820’s and 1830’s, she composed exclusively for the piano. Several of these pieces drew high praise from critics abroad including Schumann. In the 1840’s, she finally tried her hand at larger compositions for both chamber ensemble and orchestra. It was during this decade that much of her chamber music was written. While the great bulk of Farrenc’s compositions were for the piano alone, her chamber music is generally regarded as her best work. The claim can be made that Farrenc’s chamber music works are, if not the most deserving of notice, then at least as deserving as any woman composer writing in the 19th century, and on a par with most of her well-known male contemporaries.
Throughout her life, chamber music remained of great interest. She wrote works for various combinations of winds and or strings and piano These include a string quartet without opus number, two piano quintets Opp.30 & 31, a sextet for piano and winds Op.40, which later appeared in an arrangement for piano quintet, two piano trios Opp.33 & 34, a nonet for winds and strings Op.38, a trio for clarinet (or violin), cello and piano Op.44, a trio for flute (or violin), cello and piano Op.45, and several instrumental sonatas.
In addition to chamber music and works for solo piano, she wrote a few overtures and three symphonies. The one area which is conspicuously missing from her output is opera, an important lacuna, which in no small part resulted in the fact that she was not known as a composer to the Parisian (i.e. French) musical public either during her lifetime or thereafter.
[edit] Why Did Farrenc Remain Unknown as a Composer?
The answer to this question is almost exactly the same as it was for George Onslow, another important 19th century French composer, primarily of chamber music. In a word, the answer is, opera. For nearly the entire 19th century, French musical opinion was completely dominated by opera, be it lyrique, comique or grand opera. A French composer could not gain any reputation without having first had a success at the opera. Indeed, commenting on this sorry state of affairs, Saint Saëns lamented, “The composer who was bold enough to venture out into the field of instrumental music had only one forum for the performance of his works: a concert which he had to organize himself and to which he invited his friends and the press. One could not even think of attracting the public, the general public; the very mention of the name of a French composer on a placard—especially that of a living French composer—was enough to send everyone running.” Saint Saëns found himself forced to create an organization whose sole purpose was to remedy this problem, but it was not until the 20th century that the general public began to frequent the concerts of the Société Nationale de Musique in any number.
Fetis, perhaps France’s greatest 19th century music biographer and critic, wrote in his new edition of the Biographie universelle des musiciens of Louise Farrenc, only three years after her death, as follows: "Unfortunately, the genre of large scale instrumental music to which Madame Farrenc, by nature and formation, felt herself called involves performance resources which a composer can acquire for herself or himself only with enormous effort. Another factor here is the public, as a rule not a very knowledgeable one, whose only standard for measuring the quality of a work is the name of its author. If the composer is unknown, the audience remains unreceptive, and the publishers, especially in France, close their ears anyway when someone offers them a halfway decent work...Such were the obtacles that Madame Farrenc met along the way and which caused her to despair. This is the reason why her oeuvre has fallen into oblivion today, when at any other epoch her works would have brought her great esteem."
Her works were recognized by the savants and connoisseurs of the time as first rate, but this was not enough to gain her any lasting fame as a composer. Unlike Onslow, Farrenc never tried her hand at opera. This sealed her fate. If one looks at those French composers who were known during most of the 19th century, they are all opera composers to a man.
[edit] References
- The Chamber Music of Louise Farrenc, R.H.R. Silvertrust,The Chamber Music Journal Vol.XIV No.3, 2003, Riverwoods, Illinois ISSN 1535 1726. Note: The copyright holders (the author & The Chamber Music Journal) have granted permission to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of GFDL and the GNU Free Documentation License.
