1857–1944 · France · 20th century
Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944) was a French pianist and composer. Her father would not let her enrol at the Conservatoire, so she trained privately, and later performed only her own works at her concerts. She wrote above all piano pieces and songs set to French poems — a good place to start exploring her music.
Cécile Louise Stéphanie Chaminade was born on 8 August 1857 in Paris. She grew up in a musical household: her mother, a fine pianist with a lovely voice, noticed early on that her daughter had a sharp ear and real musical sensitivity, and gave her her first piano lessons.
Around the age of ten, Félix Le Couppey, a teacher at the Conservatoire, heard her play and offered her a place in his class. Her father thought music-making unsuitable for a girl of their social standing and would not enrol her there, but he did allow private lessons with Conservatoire teachers: Le Couppey for piano, Marsick for violin, and Savard and Godard for composition. Camille Saint-Saëns, Emmanuel Chabrier and Georges Bizet were among those who noticed her gift and encouraged her.
Even as a girl, Cécile wrote short pieces for her pets — cats and dogs — and for her dolls. In 1869 she played some of her own music to Georges Bizet, who came away impressed by her talent.
In 1877, at one of the soirées given by Marsick's string quartet at the Salle Pleyel, she appeared in public for the first time, taking the piano part in trios by Beethoven and Widor. Then in 1878, under Le Couppey's patronage, she gave a concert made up entirely of her own compositions: that performance launched her career, and from then on she played only her own music in public.
Real fame came with the scores of 1888, when she presented the public with three major works at once: the ballet Callirhoë, a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra, and the dramatic choral symphony Les Amazones. Later came an orchestral suite, the comic opera La Sévillane, and Piano Trio No. 2.
From 1875 Chaminade performed often as a pianist, chiefly in France. In the 1870s and 1880s her works were programmed by the Société nationale de musique; she also played in Switzerland, Belgium and Holland.
In 1892 she made a successful debut in England. Through the 1890s she went back there almost every June, unveiling new songs and piano pieces alongside the singers Blanche Marchesi and Pol Plançon; Isidor Philipp, who ran the piano department at the Paris Conservatoire, thought highly of her work. A further visit came in 1907, with concerts in London's Aeolian Hall and in the city of Bath. Fond of her music, Queen Victoria would invite Chaminade to Windsor each time she crossed the Channel.
In 1908 Chaminade toured Canada and then the United States. During the 1907–1908 concert season she gave around twenty-five concerts to full houses. On 7 November 1908 in Philadelphia she performed her Konzertstück for piano and orchestra with the Philadelphia Orchestra. During that tour she was also invited to lunch with Theodore Roosevelt.
She played in twelve American cities, and audiences there took to her music: the piano pieces "Scarf Dance" and "Ballet No. 1" turned up in the sheet-music collections of many piano lovers of the time. Her songs were popular too, among them "The Silver Ring" and "Ritournelle".
In 1901 Chaminade married Louis-Mathieu Carbonel, a music publisher from Marseille. It was rumoured to be a marriage of convenience: her husband was considerably older, the couple lived apart — he in Marseille, she near Paris — and, on Chaminade's terms, the marriage remained platonic. Carbonel died of a lung ailment in 1907; Chaminade never remarried.
Her sister Henriette was married to the Polish-German composer and pianist Moritz Moszkowski, himself a well-known musician of the time.
In 1897 Queen Victoria awarded Chaminade her Jubilee Medal. The Athens Conservatory gave her a laurel wreath, and Sultan Abdul Hamid II awarded her the Ottoman Order of the Chefakat. In 1913 Chaminade became a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, the first woman composer to receive it; by then she already held the rank of officier d'académie.
In 1878 Ambroise Thomas praised her work, remarking that what he saw was not merely a talented young woman but a real composer, whatever her sex.
When the First World War broke out, Chaminade, then 57, took charge of a London hospital and set music aside completely for its duration. After the war she no longer performed in public, though she still composed from time to time.
In 1919 a Moscow studio led by K. Ya. Goleizovsky staged the ballet «Арлекинада» («Карнавал», i.e. "Carnival") to her music.
In London in November 1901 Chaminade recorded seven of her pieces for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company; collectors prize these recordings highly today, and they have been reissued on CD. Before and after the First World War she also made piano-roll recordings.
As she grew older Chaminade composed less and less, her health declined, and in 1936 she had a foot amputated. She spent her last years in seclusion in Monte Carlo, where she died on 13 April 1944. She was buried there at first, and her remains were later moved to Passy Cemetery in Paris.
For much of the twentieth century her music went largely unheard, and only the Concertino for flute, Op. 107, remains her most popular piece today.
Chaminade's output consists above all of numerous piano pieces and songs set to poems by French poets: Ronsard, Hugo, Musset, Gautier, Jules Verne, Richepin, Sully Prudhomme and others. Critics described her music as tuneful and easy on the ear, with mild chromatic touches; Chaminade herself felt fully rooted in the Romantic tradition, with a particular kinship for Saint-Saëns and Gounod among her contemporaries.
Besides piano pieces and songs, she also wrote larger works: the ballet Callirhoë, a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra, the dramatic choral symphony Les Amazones, the comic opera La Sévillane, as well as Piano Trio No. 2. The Concertino for flute, written in 1902 on commission from the Paris Conservatoire, is today considered perhaps her most frequently performed piece.
Critics in her lifetime praised her piano pieces most readily, while her larger and more serious works met a cooler reception. Even so, most of what she wrote was published during her lifetime and sold well. Some critics linked the cooler reception of her larger scores, perhaps, to the fact that their author was a woman.
In all, Chaminade wrote more than 400 works, of which around 200 are piano pieces and roughly 150 are songs in the salon style.
Among her piano pieces are the Sonata in C minor, Op. 21, the Étude Symphonique, Op. 28, a set of six concert études, Op. 35, the piece "Les Sylvains", Op. 60, and the Arabesque, Op. 61, as well as the Six Romances sans paroles, Op. 76. She also wrote for more than one player at the keyboard: the Duo Symphonique for two pianos, Op. 117, and the Six Pièces Romantiques for piano duet, Op. 55.
Available here are her songs for voice and piano — "Amertume", "Madrigal", "Rosemonde" and "Souhait", at Late intermediate level, a good place to start exploring her music. The more demanding "Chanson espagnole", at Advanced level, suits players once the first four are under their fingers.