This morning on Radio 3 I heard a hauntingly beautiful piece for violin and piano which stopped me in my tracks. It turned out to be the slow movement of a violin sonata by Hélène de Montgeroult, a composer I'd heard of, but knew nothing about. Consulting Professor Wiki, I discovered that this was a woman who had a most remarkable life, being captured and imprisoned by Austrians in Piedmont in 1793, narrowly escaping the guillotine during the Reign of Terror in Paris, and going on to become the first woman professor of music at the Paris Conservatoire. She was a prodigious pianist, improviser and pedagogue, and a composer (at a time when women composers were something of a rarity) who, when she died in 1836, left behind a large body of work, mostly for piano, which is only now being rediscovered and recorded. Read more about her here...
And here is the piece I heard this morning.
Friday, 15 November 2024
Hélène de Montgeroult
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No surprise that you were held up this morning. Listening blind I thought of Robert Schumann, but a bit more digging around dated this opus 2 fragment to around 1800, a decade before Schumann was born - or his almost exact contemporary Chopin. And, as it sounds in the extract you posted, more of a piano sonata with violin obbligato, this would mesh with what we know of this lady, who wrote mainly for the pianoforte, being something of a virtuoso. I can understand how your forward progress was arrested. The Romantic Era started a bit earlier than we thought, no?
ReplyDeleteYes, so it would seem... Madame de M certainly deserves to be better known, doesn't she, and to take her place in music history. I think the version I heard on the radio had the violin rather more prominent. I'll be listening out for more of her work now.
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