1858–1937 · France · 20th century
Mel Bonis was the pen name of the French composer Mélanie Hélène Bonis (1858–1937). She studied with César Franck at the Paris Conservatoire in the same years as Debussy and Pierné, and wrote music for piano, organ, chamber groups, orchestra and voice. The site offers two of her songs with piano accompaniment: “Allons prier!” and “Le chat sur le toit”.
Mélanie Hélène Bonis was born in Paris in January 1858. Her father, Pierre-François Bonis, came from a family of a weaver and a laundress and worked as a foreman in watchmaking; in 1878 he was described as an electrical watchmaker, in 1883 as a merchant, and by the time he died in Sarcelles in 1900 he was living on private means. Her mother, Marie-Anne-Clémence Mangin, also grew up in a working-class home, worked as a passementière and ran the household. Mélanie’s maternal grandfather, Pierre Mangin, was a prominent figure of the 1848 Revolution and founded an association of file-makers.
Mélanie had two sisters. Eugénie-Caroline was born in February 1860 and Clémence-Louise in June 1862; the younger girl died in May 1864 at the age of two. Eugénie-Caroline grew up and married Georges Aboilard, an engineer who made a fortune in telecommunications.
The girl was brought up strictly in the Catholic faith. Her mother read the book L’Imitation pour les tout petits to both daughters and taught them the basics of religion from early childhood. At school Mélanie found lessons easy and enjoyed studying, although she found it hard to sit still. Very early she showed deep piety and faith, which stayed with her all her life.
Mélanie began learning music on her own, and at first her parents did not support her studies. When she turned twelve, one of the Conservatoire teachers persuaded them to let their daughter take proper lessons, and from that age she studied piano and solfège. Until 1876 she worked on her technique and had no trouble sight-reading and playing; she was also sensitive and refined and could improvise with a very rich imagination.
The girl’s talent was noticed, and Hippolyte Maury, a teacher of the cornet à pistons, introduced her to César Franck. Franck first taught her piano in private lessons and then encouraged her to sit the Conservatoire entrance examinations.
At the Paris Conservatoire, Mélanie was placed in the class of musical writing, which brought together harmony, piano accompaniment, organ, counterpoint and fugue. The decision to admit her without appearing before a jury was made by the director, Ambroise Thomas. Ernest Guiraud taught her harmony and accompaniment, and César Franck taught the organ; when the harmony and accompaniment classes were separated, she came under Auguste Bazille. Guiraud later became professor of counterpoint and fugue, and she again studied with him. Among those she crossed paths with at the Conservatoire as teachers are Napoléon Alkan, Albert Lavignac, Antoine Marmontel, Adolphe Danhauser and Jules Massenet.
Claude Debussy and Gabriel Pierné were studying at the Conservatoire in the same years. Mélanie was one of Guiraud’s first pupils, along with Debussy. She did well and was singled out for her harmony and accompaniment. In 1878 the Conservatoire opened two harmony classes for women for the first time, and Mélanie won prizes in that class: a second prize in harmony in 1879 and a first prize in 1880. In 1879 she was also awarded a second prize in the piano accompaniment class.
She was one of the first women to enter the composition classes. In January 1881 Bazille said of her that she was the strongest in the class but that fear paralysed her.
At the Conservatoire Mélanie met Amédée Hettich, a singer and music critic, and wanted to marry him. She set his poems to music. Her first piece was an Impromptu for piano, which she signed Mel Bonis, a pseudonym she chose so that nobody would recognise a woman as the author. She then wrote two songs with Hettich on his poems: “Villanelle” and “Sur la plage”.
Her parents opposed the marriage and made Mélanie leave the Conservatoire in order to stop the couple meeting. In November 1881 she considered entering the competition for the Prix de Rome, although the idea caused controversy: women were admitted to the competition only in 1903. She did not enter, and she suddenly gave up her studies for family reasons.
In 1883, at her parents’ insistence, Mélanie married the industrialist Albert Domange, a twice-widowed father of five. He worked in industrial leather and owned the firm Scellos, which became Domange et Cie in 1883. The couple settled in a town house near Parc Monceau and spent their free time at the estate in Sarcelles and at a villa in Étretat. They had three children: Pierre (1884–1969), Jeanne (1888–1987) and Édouard (1893–1932). After her marriage Mélanie stopped composing.
A few years later, in the 1890s, Mélanie met Hettich again; by then he was well regarded as a singing teacher and an author on musical subjects. Under his influence she returned to composing. She contributed to his well-known collection Les airs classiques, writing songs and choruses to his texts, while he helped her get her music noticed and introduced her to the big Paris publishers. After that her career as a composer began to rise.
In the 1900s Mélanie composed more than ever and concentrated on sacred music; the Cantique de Jean Racine belongs to these works. Her piano quartet was played in 1901, and Saint-Saëns reacted by saying he could not have believed a woman might compose like that. On 22 April 1905 she was given an honourable mention for the Suite pour harpe chromatique et deux instruments à vent, a work that is now lost. The Sonata for cello and piano was first heard at a concert of the Société des compositeurs de musique on 14 February 1906.
Mélanie served on the Société des compositeurs de musique’s committee from 1907, and in 1910–1914 she was its secretary. Éditions Alphonse Leduc brought out several of her pieces.
Mélanie and Hettich were still in love, and for Mélanie a difficult period of inner struggle began between this feeling and her religious convictions. In 1899 her fourth child was born, an illegitimate daughter, Madeleine, whom she was never able to acknowledge officially. The girl was raised by a former maid of Mélanie’s. Madeleine inherited her parents’ musical talent.
In 1912, as a widower, Hettich acknowledged Madeleine as his daughter. Mélanie’s husband died on 31 March 1918. The woman who had raised Madeleine also died, and Mélanie took the girl into her home, presenting her as a goddaughter and an orphan. After returning from the First World War, Édouard fell in love with Madeleine, and Mélanie was forced to tell them both the truth about her origins. Apart from the three of them, nobody knew.
It was a deep shock to all three of them, and Mélanie never fully recovered from it. Even so, it brought her closer to her daughter. In 1923 Madeleine married Pierre Quinet and later became the mother of three children.
Despite the difficult circumstances, these years were extremely productive for Mélanie as a composer. The largest French music publishers printed her works; she performed often herself and handed her pieces to well-known musicians in France and Switzerland to play.
Without support in her family and living with a constant inner conflict, she gradually withdrew from composing and lived in seclusion, finding comfort in religion. Arthritis confined her to bed. She died on 18 March 1937 in Sarcelles, and Hettich died a month later. She is buried in Montmartre Cemetery in Paris.
In 1974 Mélanie’s daughter Jeanne Brochot, née Domange, published a short autobiographical book of her personal reflections, Souvenirs et Réflexions. The German musicologists Eberhard and Ingrid Mayer searched for her scores in the libraries of Europe, and in 1986 they found in the Bibliothèque nationale de France the music of the Piano Quartet no. 1, the Flute Sonata and the Cello Sonata. In the 1990s she was rediscovered by these musicologists. The composer’s great-granddaughter Christine Géliot, together with the Ensemble Mel Bonis, continues to revive her legacy.
Mel Bonis’s output is varied in genre and style, and her music shows traces of post-Romanticism. She wrote about 60 piano pieces, along with a number of duets, works for two pianos and teaching pieces, about 30 organ pieces and about twenty chamber works. The chamber music includes sonatas, two quartets for piano and strings, a Suite in the old style for seven wind instruments and a septet for piano, two flutes and string quartet. She also wrote eleven orchestral pieces.
Her piano works include the Pièces pittoresques et poétiques (1895–1905), pieces for four hands, a Scherzo, Op. 40, and Variations, Op. 85, for two pianos. Her children’s music includes the Album pour les tout petits, Op. 103 (1913). Among the chamber works listed are the Suite en trio, Op. 59 (1903), the Piano Quartet in B-flat, Op. 69 (1905), and a second quartet, Op. 124 (1927), the Flute Sonata, Op. 64 (1904), and the Violin Sonata, Op. 112 (1914). Among orchestral pieces, Les Gitanos, Op. 15 No. 3, was orchestrated in 1891.
For voice Mel Bonis wrote about thirty-five mélodies, among them Le chat sur le toit, Berceuse, Chanson de printemps, Noël pastoral and La mer. She took the texts of her songs from literary works by people in her circle. She also wrote sacred music: Regina Cœli, Op. 45, the Cantique de Jean Racine, the Messe à la Sérénité and a number of motets.
The site has two works for voice and piano: Allons prier! (level Intermediate+) and Le chat sur le toit, Op. 93 (level Advanced). It is best to start with the first. Mel Bonis also worked as a teacher, in particular with children.