Portraits of Women: Music for Piano Four Hands

Composer(s)

Amy Marcy Beach [née Cheney], [Mrs H.H.A. Beach]
(b Henniker, NH, 5 Sept 1867; d New York, 27 Dec 1944). American composer and pianist. She was the first American woman to succeed as a composer of large-scale art music and was celebrated during her lifetime as the foremost woman composer of the USA. A descendant of a distinguished New England family, she was the only child of Charles Abbott Cheney, a paper manufacturer and importer, and Clara Imogene (Marcy) Cheney, a talented amateur singer and pianist. At the age of one she could sing 40 tunes accurately and always in the same key; before the age of two she improvised alto lines against her mother's soprano melodies; at three she taught herself to read; and at four she mentally composed her first piano pieces and later played them, and could play by ear whatever music she heard, including hymns in four-part harmony. The Cheneys moved to Chelsea, Massachusetts, about 1871. Amy's mother agreed to teach her the piano when she was six, and at seven she gave her first public recitals, playing works by Handel, Beethoven and Chopin, and her own pieces. In 1875 the family moved to Boston, where her parents were advised that she could enter a European conservatory; but they decided on local training, engaging Ernst Perabo and later Carl Baermann as piano teachers. Her development as a pianist was monitored by a circle including Louis C. Elson, Percy Goetschius, H.W. Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Mason and Henry Harris Aubrey Beach (1843–1910), a physician who lectured on anatomy at Harvard and was an amateur singer; she was to marry him in 1885.

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.

Christine Donkin's compositions have been performed by (among others) Symphony New Brunswick, Symphony Nova Scotia, The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Canadian Guitar Quartet, the DaCapo Chamber Choir, Cantus (the Norwegian choir featured in the soundtrack of Frozen), the Meeks Duo, and esteemed Canadian pianist Dr. Elaine Keillor; and at (among others) the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival; Music & Beyond (Ottawa); The Village Trip Festival (New York City); Podium (Canada); the American Choral Directors' Association Convention; and The Big Sing (New Zealand). She has initiated various collaborations, commissioning poets (George Elliott Clarke, Lozan Yamolky, and Connie Braun) and fellow composers (Chan Ka Nin, Hussein Janmohamed, Marie-Claire Saindon, Clark Winslow Ross, Sherryl Sewapagaham, and Airat Ichmouratov), and working with Peterborough-based Indigenous vocal-percussion ensemble Unity in two projects commissioned by the Peterborough Symphony Orchestra. Christine owes a debt of gratitude to the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the SOCAN Foundation for the funding to make these projects possible.

Germaine Tailleferre: (b Parc-St-Maur, nr Paris, 19 April 1892; d Paris, 7 Nov 1983). French composer. Despite her father’s opposition and her equal skills in art she entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1904, her formative studies being undertaken with Eva Sautereau-Meyer. As a pianist prodigy with an amazing memory she won numerous prizes, and in 1913 she met Auric, Honegger and Milhaud in Georges Caussade’s counterpoint class. In 1917 Satie was so impressed with her two-piano piece Jeux de plein air that he christened her his ‘musical daughter’, and it was he who first brought her to prominence as one of his group of Nouveaux Jeunes. She then went on to become the only female member of Les Six when it was formed in 1919–20. Her career was also assisted by the Princesse Edmond de Polignac, who liked her ballet Le marchand d’oiseaux (1923) enough to commission a Piano Concerto (1923–4), which proved similarly successful and demonstrated her natural affinities with the 18th-century clavecinistes. Tailleferre’s talents fitted in perfectly with the prevailing spirit of Stravinskian neo-classicism, though she was also influenced by Fauré and Ravel, remaining in close contact with the latter throughout the 1920s.

Unfortunately, Tailleferre never regained the acclaim she had enjoyed through her early associations with Les Six. Two unhappy marriages (to the caricaturist Ralph Barton in 1926 and to the lawyer Jean Lageat in 1931) proved a considerable drain on her creative energies, and her continual financial problems led her to compose mostly to commission, resulting in many uneven and quickly written works. Also, her natural modesty and unjustified sense of artistic insecurity prevented her from promoting herself properly, and she regarded herself primarily as an artisan who wrote optimistic, accessible music as ‘a release’ from the difficulties of her private life. However, her concertos of the 1930s enjoyed a measure of success, as did her impassioned Cantate du Narcisse (1938, words by Paul Valéry), and she was much in demand as a skilful composer of film music. After a fallow period in the USA (1942–6) she produced the superb Second Violin Sonata (1947–8) and turned her attention towards opera – her lighthearted approach being epitomized in the four short comic pastiches written with Denise Centore in 1955 (‘Du style galant au style méchant’). She also gave successful concert tours with the baritone Bernard Lefort, for whom she wrote the Concerto des vaines paroles (1954), and in 1957 she experimented briefly with serial techniques in her Clarinet Sonata. Although she continued to compose prolifically and teach until the end of her life, she resorted increasingly to self-borrowing and familiar formulae (like the perpetuum mobile), and the circularity of her career can be seen in the stylistic ease with which she was able to complete her 1916–17 Piano Trio in 1978. Meeting the conductor Désiré Dondeyne in 1969 led to a new interest in composing for wind band and she also remained devoted to children and their music, a link which helps explain the spontaneity, freshness and charm that characterize her best compositions.

Helen Hopekirk
(b Edinburgh, 20 May 1856; d Cambridge, MA, 19 Nov 1945). American pianist, composer and teacher of Scottish origin. Following early studies in piano and composition in Edinburgh, she attended the Leipzig Conservatory from 1876 until 1878. There she studied with Carl Reinecke, Salomon Jadassohn (composition), Louis Maas (piano) and E.F. Richter (counterpoint), and formed lifelong friendships with fellow students Carl Muck and George Chadwick. Following successful débuts with the Leipzig Gewandhaus (28 Nov 1878) and at the Crystal Palace (15 March 1879), London, she toured England and Scotland. She married the music critic, painter and businessman William A. Wilson in 1882, and, with her husband as manager, made her American début on 7 December 1883 with the Boston SO. Following three highly successful years touring the USA, she felt the need for further development; in Vienna she studied the piano with Theodor Leschetizky and composition with Karel Navrátil. In 1892 they moved to Paris to enable further composition study with Richard Mandl. After her husband's severe injury in a traffic accident, Hopekirk accepted Chadwick's offer of a teaching post at the New England Conservatory in 1897. She became involved at every level of music-making in Boston, and promoted Edward MacDowell's piano works as well as introducing works by Fauré, Debussy and d'Indy. In 1901 she left the Conservatory to teach privately. She continued to perform, making her last appearance in April 1939 playing only her own compositions. Her music is characterized by Gaelic folk music, neoclassical tendencies and strong formal organization.

Jane Savage
(b ?London, 1752/3; d Camberwell, London, 9 Nov 1824). English composer, singer and virtuoso keyboard player, daughter of William Savage. She probably received her musical training alongside her father's pupils: R.J.S. Stevens recalls trying out an early vocal trio of his with ‘Miss Savage’ and her father. She became an accomplished composer of keyboard and vocal music in the galant style typical of the late 18th century. Her music was probably written for the Savage family home, and she seems to have performed only in private. Her cantata Strephan and Flavia takes its text from a collection of poems published by her mother in 1777, and shows careful attention to details of word-painting. Savage published her music at her own expense, shortly before the death of her parents. She was her father's sole heir, her elder brother having already inherited an estate in Yorkshire from their mother. In 1793 she married Robert Rolleston at St George's, Bloomsbury, by which time she seems to have stopped composing.

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.).