Physical Release: 28 March 2024
Digital Release: 11 April 2024
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| Composer(s) | Aristide Farrenc, Augusta Holmès, Cécile Chaminade, Clémence de Grandval, Lili Boulanger, Louise Bertin, Louise Farrenc, Mel Bonis |
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Among the many curiosities of classical music, several of which are rooted in, and justified by, the history of music, there is the “gendered” nature of some musical instruments. Most instruments are played today, and/or were played in the past, indifferently by men and women (although the actual possibilities of becoming professional players of that instrument were obviously different for men and women). Others are, or were, typically played by males or females, with a few instruments undergoing a “shift” in gender connotations through the ages. For an example of an instrument which was traditionally played by men only, and that even today is played overwhelmingly by men, the tuba is typical. In this case, there are also objective reasons for such a phenomenon, since the tuba is heavy to carry, and requires extra powerful lungs to be played; generally, therefore, the physical conformation of men makes them more “fit” to play such a physically demanding instrument. In other cases, an instrument was played in the past by both men and women, but today is more typically played by ladies – the harp is paradigmatic under this viewpoint. In the nineteenth century, for another example, amateur piano players were mostly female, although professional concert players were gentlemen or ladies indifferently. In still other cases, there are no physical reasons for a particular preference; rather, the higher percentage of male or female players for a specific instrument is due more to aesthetical reasons. A certain instrument is seen as more apt to symbolize the qualities traditionally associated with femininity or masculinity. And this is not without effects in the creation of new repertoire; there is in fact a hermeneutical circle by virtue of which the alleged gendered qualities of an instrument tend to be expressed in the music for that instrument, thus causing in turn a particular affinity between male or female players and that repertoire.
The flute, which is the coprotagonist – along with the piano – of this Da Vinci Classics album, is an instrument which is considered as having a certain “femininity”; although, obviously, there are excellent flutists of both sexes, this instrument still seems to attract a special attention from ladies, and so it was in the past. This album encompasses works for flute and piano written by female composers who lived in France between nineteenth and twentieth century. Their biographies, although very different under some aspects, have however some points in common which will be presently pointed out.
As concerns their birth dates, Louise Farrenc was born in 1804; Louise-Angélique Bertin in 1805; Clémence de Grandval in 1828; Augusta Holmès in 1847; Cécile Chaminade in 1857; Mel Bonis in 1858; and Lili Boulanger in 1893, thus encompassing the entire nineteenth century. Chaminade died at 86, in 1944; Grandval and Bonis both died at age 79; Bertin at 72; Farrenc at 71; Holmès at 56; whilst the youngest of this selection, Lili Boulanger, died at barely 25, outlived by a quarter of century by Chaminade; however, in spite of her extremely short life, Boulanger left a deep mark in the history of music.
As concerns their families, several of them came from musicians’ families. Boulanger was the sister of another very famed female musician, Nadia; their parents were a composer (Ernest, who won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1835) and a Russian singer. Chaminade also came from a musical family, receiving her first piano education by her mother. Grandval’s father was a gifted pianist, but he was not a professional. In fact, like other musicians represented here, Grandval came from a wealthy or noble family; her father was an officer of the Légion d’honneur, and she was raised in a context where the intellectual life was highly prized, and members of the cultural elite were commonly invited to her family’s home. The same applies to Augusta Holmès, an Irish-born musician whose godfather was the famed author Alfred de Vigny; her own daughters would later be immortalized in a famous triple portrait by Auguste Renoir. Bertin’s father was active in the field of cultural journalism; Farrenc was the daughter of sculptor Jacques-Edme Dumont and the sister of another artist, Auguste. The only outsider, under this aspect, is Mel Bonis, who began her musical studies as a self-taught pianist at 12, thus demonstrating her exceptional talent. The relative homogeneity of the others’ family backgrounds is not casual, indeed, and can be found among the families of many other great female composers. In the past, women were less free than they are today to choose their own path in life; and, particularly if a lady wished to become a musician, she normally had to come either from a musicians’ family – where her talent would be discovered and appreciated – or from a wealthy background, where music would be a normal part of her education. Otherwise, there was little chance for her gift to come to light and be properly nourished.
Another trait which is shared by several of the musicians represented here, in fact, is their problematic relationship with the Conservatoire of Paris, which was – as still remains – the most important institution for musical education in France, and where all of them would have been fully qualified for pursuing their musical studies.
Boulanger studied privately harmony with Gabriel Fauré, counterpoint and fugue with Georges Caussade and composition with her sister Nadia. In her case, however, she was taught at home due to her very fragile health, and not for gender prejudices; in fact, she was later admitted to the Conservatoire (in 1909), where she completed her compositional studies with Paul Vidal.
Chaminade, auditioned by Félix Le Couppey at age 10, was encouraged by him to enroll at the Conservatoire, but her father was fiercely against this possibility, only allowing her to receive private tutoring by Le Couppey himself, by violinist Martin Pierre Marsick and by composers Marie-Gabriel-Augustin Savard and Benjamin Godard.
Bonis was supported by César Franck, who taught her piano and organ, and was admitted – exceptionally without an audition – to the Conservatoire upon a recommendation of the Director, Ambroise Thomas. Her teachers included Ernest Guiraud (who taught also Debussy), Albert Lavignac, Antoine Marmontel, and Jules Massenet.
As concerns Farrenc, she studied with Conservatory professors (including Anton Reicha), but it has not been ascertained whether she was actually a student at that institution, since at her time the composition class was not open to female students.
Bertin was a pupil of another major figure of her time’s France, i.e. François-Joseph Fétis; she shared with Boulanger the misfortune of having a serious health issue (she was partially paralyzed). Augusta Holmès could not attend the Conservatoire in spite of her obvious talent, and she studied privately with several teachers; the most important of them (both for his genius and for his influence on Holmès) was César Franck. Grandval studied composition with Friedrich Flotow and for a time with Frédéric Chopin; later, she was for two years a student of Camille Saint-Saëns, who dedicated one of his major sacred works to her.
In Grandval’s case, the responsibilities due to her social standing discouraged her from publishing her works under her real name, and therefore she adopted several pen names (Caroline Blangy, Clémence Valgrand, Maria Felicita de Reiset et Maria Reiset de Tesier, showing a penchant for wordplays and anagrams). Other musicians represented in this recording, instead, adopted pseudonyms for other reasons, primarily for the desire to be considered as “musicians” and “composers” rather than as “female” musicians or composers. For this reason, Augusta Holmès published her first works as Hermann Zenta, a distinctly male name. Mel Bonis, in turn, chose this abbreviated form of her first name, Mélanie, since “Mel” can be also a male name. And it is meaningful that Ambroise Thomas said of Cécile Chaminade: “This is not a woman who composes, but a composer who is a woman”, whilst Saint-Saëns said of Mel Bonis that he would not have imagined that a woman could compose that well.
The fates of these musicians were very different, instead: some enjoyed widespread acclaim during their lifetimes, others struggled to obtain recognition, others were rediscovered (long) after their death.
For instance, Grandval – also thanks to her social position – was a pre-eminent figure in the musical France of her time; she was awarded the Prix Rossini in 1881, and her works were often played at the Société Nationale de Musique (as were Chaminade’s). Holmès was commissioned a Triumphal Ode for the Exposition Universelle of 1889, and the size of the performing forces (some 1,200 people involved!) bears witness to the prestige of its composer. Louise Farrenc was an esteemed professor at the Conservatoire of Paris, and her Nonet was premiered by Joachim; she was twice awarded the Prix Chartier of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and her fame outlived her for years. Chaminade was honoured by the Académie Française and by Queen Victoria, and she was the first female composer to be awarded the National Order of the Légion d’Honneur. Lili Boulanger was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome at barely 20, the first female composer to win it. On the other hand, other composers were not so fortunate; Bertin’s last opera was ferociously thrashed by critics, and Mel Bonis’ outlived her own fame, before being rediscovered recently.
Together, these musicians bear witness to the fecundity of the female genius in the field of composition, and to how indeed the flute’s timbre seems to inspire female creativity. Their works, recorded here, in spite of their pronounced differences and marked distinctiveness, are all living testimonies to their composers’ genius, sensitivity, musical intelligence, and depth of inspiration and thought.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2025
Baldo-Corona duo
The Baldo-Corona duo was born from the collaboration of two curious artists who wanted to enrich the little known repertoire for flute and piano. Having taken their first steps on the common ground of academic studies, they have since then strengthened their collaboration by delving into pages with a feminine touch for this duo, a natural development of their individual musicological studies.
In this context, the rediscovery and publication of manuscript works by Louise Farrenc and Louise Bertin, preserved in the archives of the National Library of France, are worthy of note, and were subsequently premiered on the CD Pour flûte et piano, published by the Da Vinci label.
The duo regularly performs in concert seasons, mainly in Northern Italy: their participation in the "Non è il Destino" events in favour of and in appreciation of female characters is significant.
Chiara Corona is a musician and musicologist, actively involved in the research and rediscovery of little-known repertoires, with a particular focus on 19th century France and the role of women in music: as sources of inspiration, as performers, but above all as teachers and composers. She obtained her first degree at the A. Casella Conservatory under the guidance of A. Coen. Her thesis was an edition of J.L. Dussek's The Sufferings of the Queen of France and was published by UT Orpheus in 2018. She enriched her training at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague with D. Kuyken and continued her studies with C. Guaitoli at the Conservatorio G. Briccialdi. She graduated with an interdisciplinary thesis on musical ekphrasis in Debussy's Préludes and Hahn's Portraits des Peintres. Over the years she continued her studies with M. Ferrati, K. Bogino and the Avos Quartet, among others. In 2022 she graduated with honours in Musicology from the Sapienza University of Rome, under the supervision of Professors F. Piperno and A. Chegai, with a thesis on the rehabilitation of the French composer Hélène de Montgeroult. She edited the recording of two CDs dedicated to Telemann - Andrea Coen harpsichord - for the Brilliant Classic record company. She has performed mainly in chamber music ensembles at festivals and concert series in Italy and abroad, as guest at Teatro di Tor Bella Monaca in Rome, Teatro Comunale in Vicenza, Teatro Zandonai in Rovereto, Diamanttheater in The Hague and other venues. Since 2023 she has been accompanying the violin classes at Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome.
Davide Baldo
is the first male performer to be cast as the "Black Cat" in K.Stockhausen's Licht cycle (Holland Festival 2019, NL). Dedicated to contemporary music and member of the Lucerne Festival since 2021, he has collaborated with various ensembles including Lucerne Contemporary Festival Orchestra (LFCO), Noord Netherlands Orkest, "Luigi Cherubini" Youth Orchestra, Residentie Orkest, Asko Schönberg Ensamble, Nationaal Jungen Orkest, Trento Chamber Orchestra “Ensemble Zandonai”, Young Europeans Orchestra, NED ensemble, Agorart Ensemble, Kaolin Ensemble, Oerknal Ensemble, Motocontrario Ensemble, Piccola Orchestra Lumiere, Orchestra Calamani under the baton of conductors such as Gergiev, de Leeuw, Paszkowski, van Steen, Hermus and Fritzsch, Brönnimann, Holliger, Poppe, Wiegers, performing in halls such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Berlin Philharmonic and the KKL in Lucerne. Member of the SIMC, he is dedicatee of works by composers such as Colazzo, Serafini, Mannucci, Trocchia and Orlandi, and has also collaborated with composers such as Tadini, Sani and Agostini. After graduating with honours from the F.A. Bonporti Conservatory in Trento, he went on specializing at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag and at the National Academy of S. Cecilia in Rome, where he studied with flutists such as Andrea Oliva, Rien de Reede and Kathinka Pasveer. He edited the Italian edition of Rien de Reede's 'Mozart & Rock' flute method published by Riverberi Sonori, Vol. I and II. He regularly performs in duo with the harpist Flora Vedovelli (Salis Duo), with whom he has won numerous international prizes. He is currently a member of the Alpen Symphony Orchestra.
Aristide Farrenc
(b Marseilles, 9 April 1794; d Paris, 31 Jan 1865). Music publisher, flautist, bibliophile and scholar. Determined on a career in music despite his family’s tradition in commerce, he arrived in Paris in 1815; soon an appointment as second flautist at the Théâtre Italien propelled him directly into Parisian musical life. When the Conservatoire was reorganized in the following year, he undertook further studies on the flute and began to learn the oboe. By the early 1820s he had established himself as a teacher and begun to compose flute music, some of which – a book of sonatas and a concerto, among other works – he issued from his own newly formed publishing concern. In 1821 he married Louise Dumont (see §(2) below). He remained active as a publisher during the 1830s, specializing in editions of Hummel and Beethoven. His firm also brought out his wife’s first piano works.
Augusta Holmès
(b Paris, 16 Dec 1847; d Paris, 28 Jan 1903). French composer of Irish parentage. She became naturalized French after 1871, when she adopted the distinctive accent in her name. Some of her early works were written under the pseudonym Hermann Zenta. She was brought up in Versailles and showed an early talent for music, poetry and painting. She was encouraged by her godfather, the poet Alfred de Vigny, one of several artistic personalities with whom her parents were in contact at the time. According to a rumour that Holmès did little to dispel in later life, he was also her natural father. Another rumour has it that the composer’s mother forbade her interest in music and that, despairing, the young girl tried to kill herself. She trained in the subject nonetheless: with ‘Mlle Peyronnet’, a local pianist (about whom little is known); Henri Lambert, organist of Versailles cathedral; and Hyacinthe Klosé.
Cecile Chaminade: (b Paris, 8 Aug 1857; d Monte Carlo, 13 April 1944). French composer and pianist. While it is striking that nearly all of Chaminade’s approximately 400 compositions were published, even more striking is the sharp decline in her reputation as the 20th century progressed. This is partly attributable to modernism and a general disparagement of late Romantic French music, but it is also due to the socio-aesthetic conditions affecting women and their music.
The third of four surviving children, Chaminade received her earliest musical instruction from her mother, a pianist and singer; her first pieces date from the mid-1860s. Because of paternal opposition to her enrolling at the Paris Conservatoire, she studied privately with members of its faculty: Félix Le Couppey, A.-F. Marmontel, M.-G.-A. Savard and Benjamin Godard. In the early 1880s Chaminade began to compose in earnest, and works such as the first piano trio op.11 (1880) and the Suite d’orchestre op.20 (1881) were well received. She essayed an opéra comique, La Sévillane, which had a private performance (23 February 1882). Other major works of the decade were the ballet symphonique Callirhoë op.37, performed at Marseilles on 16 March 1888; the popular Concertstück op.40 for piano and orchestra, which was given its première at Antwerp on 18 April 1888; and Les amazones, a symphonie dramatique, given on the same day. After 1890, with the notable exception of the Concertino op.107, commissioned by the Conservatoire (1902), and her only Piano Sonata (op.21, 1895), Chaminade composed mainly character pieces and mélodies. Though the narrower focus may have been due to financial, aesthetic or discriminatory considerations, this music became very popular, especially in England and the USA; and Chaminade helped to promote sales through extensive concert tours. From 1892 she performed regularly in England and became a welcome guest of Queen Victoria and others.
Meanwhile, enthusiasm grew in the USA, largely through the many Chaminade clubs formed around 1900, and in autumn 1908 she finally agreed to make the arduous journey there. She appeared in 12 cities, from Boston to St Louis. With the exception of the concert at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music in early November, which featured the Concertstück, the programme consisted of piano pieces and mélodies. The tour was a financial success; critical evaluation, however, was mixed. Many reviews practised a form of sexual aesthetics that was common in Chaminade’s career and that of many women composers in the 19th and 20th centuries (see Citron, 1988). Pieces deemed sweet and charming, especially the lyrical character pieces and songs, were criticized for being too feminine, while works that emphasize thematic development, such as the Concertstück, were considered too virile or masculine and hence unsuited to the womanly nature of the composer. Based also on assumptions about the relative value of large and small works, complex and simple style, and public and domestic music-making, this critical framework was largely responsible for the decline in Chaminade’s compositional reputation in the 20th century.
Prestigious awards began to come her way, culminating in admission to the Légion d’Honneur in 1913 – the first time it was granted to a female composer. Nonetheless, the award was belated and ironic considering that she had been largely ignored in France for some 20 years. In August 1901 Chaminade married Louis-Mathieu Carbonel, an elderly Marseilles music publisher, in what may have been a platonic arrangement; he died in 1907 and she never remarried. While her compositional activity eventually subsided because of World War I and deteriorating health, Chaminade made several recordings, many of them piano rolls, between 1901 and 1914. Aeolian produced additional piano rolls of her works after the war, now with the improved technology of the Duo-Art system. In later years, by which time she was feeling obsolete, she was tended by her niece, Antoinette Lorel, who attempted to promote Chaminade’s music after her death in 1944.
Chaminade was well aware of the social and personal difficulties facing a woman composer, and she suggested that perseverance and special circumstances were needed to overcome them. Her output is noteworthy among women composers for its quantity, its high percentage of published works and for the fact that a large portion – notably piano works and mélodies – was apparently composed expressly for publication and its attendant sales (Enoch was the main publisher). Chaminade composed almost 200 piano works, most of them character pieces (e.g. Scarf Dance, 1888), and more than 125 mélodies (e.g. L’anneau d’argent, 1891); these two genres formed the basis of her popularity. Stylistically, her music is tuneful and accessible, with memorable melodies, clear textures and mildly chromatic harmonies. Its emphasis on wit and colour is typically French. Many works seem inspired by dance, for example Scarf Dance and La lisonjera. Of her larger works, the one-movement Concertstück recalls aspects of Wagner and Liszt, while the three-movement Piano Sonata shows the formal and expressive experimentation that was typical of the genre by the late 19th century (see Citron, 1993, for a feminist analysis of the first movement). The mélodies are idiomatic for the voice and well-suited expressively and poetically to the ambience of the salon or the recital hall, the likely sites for such works. The Concertino has remained a staple of the flute repertory; while it is a large-scale work and thus represents a relatively small part of her output, the piece still provides a sense of the elegance and attractiveness of Chaminade’s music.
Clémence de Grandval
(b St Rémy-des-Monts, Sarthe, 21 Jan 1828; d Paris, 15 Jan 1907). French composer. Born into a well-to-do family, Marie de Reiset started her musical studies at the age of six. Her earliest compositions were completed in her early teens under the tuition of Friedrich Flotow, a family friend; he left Paris, however, before her musical education was complete. After her marriage to the Vicomte de Grandval, she studied with Saint-Saëns for two years. In 1859 her one-act operetta Le sou de Lise was given its première at the Bouffes-Parisiens, Paris, and was published the same year under the pseudonym Caroline Blangy. Other works appeared under various pen names, including Clémence Valgrand, Maria Felicita de Reiset and Maria Reiset de Tesier.
Lili Boulanger
(b Paris, 21 Aug 1893; d Mézy, 15 March 1918). French composer. She grew up in a musical household, with both parents (Raïssa Mischetzky and Ernest Boulanger) and her sister Nadia trained or active as composers and performers. Her immense talent was recognized at the age of two, and she received a musical education from early childhood on. In 1895 she fell ill with bronchial pneumonia, after which her immune system was severely weakened. For the rest of her life she was almost constantly ill, with either passing infections or outbreaks of the chronic condition of intestinal tuberculosis which led to her death in 1918. Her frail health conditioned her life, through the need of constant care, and her musical career, as she had to rely on private composition and instrumental tuition rather than a full musical education at the Conservatoire. In December 1909, after her sister gave up her attempts to win the Prix de Rome, she decided to compete for the prize (her father Ernest Boulanger had won it in 1835). She prepared for the competition studying privately with Georges Caussade and, from January 1912, with Paul Vidal when she entered his composition class at the Conservatoire. After an unsuccessful first attempt in the 1912 competition, she won the Prix de Rome in 1913 with the cantata Faust et Hélène. Her success made the international headlines, as she was the first woman to win the prize for music. As a result, she was able to sign a contract with Ricordi that offered her an annual income in return for the right of first refusal on publication of her compositions.
Louise Bertin
(b Les Roches, 15 Jan 1805; d Paris, 26 April 1877). French composer. She was the daughter of Louis Bertin and sister of Armand Bertin, successive proprietors and editors of the influential Journal des débats. She was brought up in an artistic and literary milieu, and her energies were channelled into painting and poetry as well as music. She had singing lessons from Fétis, who directed a private performance in 1825 of her first opera, Guy Mannering, following the current fashion for Scott’s novels, with a libretto written by herself. In 1827 Le loup-garou, to a libretto by Scribe, was produced at the Opéra-Comique. But this one-act opera of intrigue, with its Rossinian music, was less characteristic of her lofty aspirations than the two larger operas that followed: Fausto in 1831 for the Théâtre Italien, in which a marked originality of style was observed, and Esmeralda, produced at the Opéra in 1836, to a libretto by Victor Hugo based on his own Notre-Dame de Paris. Despite the prestige of Hugo and the Bertins, or more probably because of it, and falling very much under the shadow of the success of Les Huguenots, the opera was not a success. Berlioz, critic of the Débats, gave Louise Bertin much assistance in the preparation of the production, although this did not extend, as some maintained, to composing the music for her. He acknowledged only that he suggested an improved end to Quasimodo’s aria in Act 4. He held a high opinion of certain parts of the opera and criticized it for its extreme irregularity of phrasing and heavy orchestration, both evidence of the music’s boldness for contemporary ears. Her style had developed very quickly in a short period.
Louise Farrenc
(b Paris, 31 May 1804; d Paris, 15 Sept 1875). Composer, pianist, teacher and scholar, wife of (1) Aristide Farrenc. A descendant of a long line of royal artists (including several women painters) and a sister of the laureate sculptor Auguste Dumont, she showed artistic and musical talent of a high order at a very early age. By mid-adolescence she had developed into a pianist of professional calibre as well as an exceptional theory student and promising composer. At 15 she began training in composition and orchestration with Reicha at the Paris Conservatoire; her marriage in 1821 and subsequent travels interrupted her studies, but she resumed intensive work with Reicha a few years later.
Mel Bonis
(b Paris, 21 Jan 1858; d Sarcelles, Seine-et-Oise, 18 March 1937). French composer. She used the pseudonym Mel-Bonis. Born into a middle-class family, Bonis began piano lessons at an early age and made remarkable progress. A family friend, Professor Maury of the Paris Conservatoire, introduced her to César Franck in 1876. The following year she was admitted to the Conservatoire, where she studied harmony with Ernest Guiraud and the organ with Franck. She won second prize in harmony and accompaniment in 1879, and first prize in harmony a year later. Claude Debussy and Gabriel Pierné were also students during her years there.
Bonis married Albert Domange in 1883, and for about ten years devoted herself to raising a family. She began composing regularly in about 1894, writing more than 300 compositions, most of which were published. Among her works are 20 chamber pieces, 150 works for piano solo, 27 choral pieces, and organ music, songs and orchestral works. Her music was warmly praised by Camille Saint-Saëns, Célestin Joubert and Pierné. Already unwell, she suffered acutely the death in 1932 of her younger son; she died five years later. Her children assembled a memoir from her notebooks and published it as Souvenirs et réflexions (Paris, n.d.).
13.76€
Physical Release: 21 November 2025 Digital Release: 28 November 2025
Physical Release: 21 November 2025 Digital Release: 28 November 2025
Physical Release: 21 November 2025 Digital Release: 5 December 2025
