Louise Farrenc was a celebrated pianist and composer.
Writing pieces from symphonies to piano solos to choral works. She worked with her husband to publish key piano anthologies and influenced a generation of pianists through her role as Professor of piano at the Conservatoire de Paris.
She died on 15th September 1875.
On the 150th anniversary of her death, we celebrate her life and work.
Louise Farrenc
Louise Farrenc was born Jeanne-Louise Dumont on 31st May 1804 in Paris. Through her father, Jacques-Edme Dumont, she came from a dynasty of sculptors from her great-great-grandfather Pierre Dumont to father, Jacques-Edme Dumont and brother Auguste Dumont and so grew up surrounded by Artists. Her family were part of a bohemian set in Paris that was open to allowing women to explore their artistic abilities which was rare in 19th Century France but led to Farrenc being encouraged to develop her musical talents.
Farrenc began her musical life with piano lessons from Cécile Soria who was a former pupil of Muzio Clementi, the Italian British composer, pianist, teacher, music publisher and piano manufacturer. When Farrenc’s talent as a pianist was identified, she studied with Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Nepouk Hummel. When she also showed promise as a composer, unable to enrol in the composition classes at the Conservatoire de Paris as a woman, her parents allowed her to study privately with Anton Reicha, who taught composition at the Conservatoire. Reicha, although not a well-known composer today, taught Berlioz, Liszt, Gounod and Pauline Viardot.
In 1821, aged 17, she married Aristide Farrenc, a flute student at the Conservatoire who was ten years older than her. After their marriage, the couple toured France as a flute and piano duo. When her husband grew tired of touring, they returned to Paris, Farrenc continued her studies with Reicha and Aristide set up the publishing company Éditions Farrenc.
Farrenc also continued her career as a concert pianist, with a break in 1826 due to the birth of her daughter Victorine.
Throughout the 1830, Farrenc’s reputation as a performer and composer developed. She wrote many piano pieces including sets of variations on themes by Rossini, Weber, Meyerbeer, Donizetti and Aristide.
Aristide encouraged her to publish her works and in 1838, they published her ‘Trente études dans tous les tons majeurs et mineurs’, Op. 26, the first of her several substantial sets of piano studies.
Image: Louise Farrenc
Farrenc the Teacher
In 1842, Farrenc was appointed Professor of Piano at the Conservatoire de Paris, a role she fulfilled for nearly three decades, with many of her students graduating with the coveted Premier Prix including her daughter Victorine. During this period, Jessica Duchen comments:
“The French school of pianism became celebrated for its technical wizardry, precision and jeu perlé (light, staccato playing), all offset by a subtle poetry. It is reasonable – especially when exploring her études – to suspect that she helped to establish that approach.”
Despite her success as a teacher, Farrenc was paid less than her male colleagues for nearly a decade. It was only after Joseph Joachim, the celebrated violinist, took part in the premiere of her ‘Nonet’, that she was able to demand and then receive equal pay.
Farrenc the Composer
Despite her success at the Conservatoire, Farrenc struggled to gain recognition as a composer, particularly for her larger scale works for orchestra. Francois Joseph Fetis, a 19th Century music biographer and critic commented:
“Unfortunately, the genre of large scale instrumental music to which Madame Farrenc, by nature and formation, felt herself called involves performance resources which a composer can acquire for herself or himself only with enormous effort...This is the reason why her oeuvre has fallen into oblivion today, when at any other epoch her works would have brought her great esteem."
An example of one of these larger scale works is her ‘Deuxieme Overture’, Op 24 written in 1834. It was never published in her lifetime and is still rarely performed. It was written when the concept of the “concert overture” was new and still developing. Overtures by Berlioz and Mendelssohn had been performed in Paris by this time, but it was not a common musical form. The work demonstrates her understanding of orchestration, a skill that Berlioz, considered by some one of the greatest orchestrators in history, recognised in her compositions commenting that the Deuxieme Overture was "orchestrated with a talent rare among women."
Berlioz was not the only musician to appreciate Farrenc’s talent. Robert Schumann praised her ‘Variations on a Russian Theme for piano’ and was regretful that “it is hardly likely she will ever hear of these encouraging lines.”
In a 1847 review in Revue et Gazette Musicale, a weekly French publication dedicated to classical music, Maurice Bourges commented that Farrenc’s symphonies “the highest symphonic talent among woman”, adding Farrenc was “not only the first of her sex to approach the genre but one whose symphonies a great many male composers would be proud to have written.”
Sadly, in January 1859, Farrenc's daughter Victorine died. This loss devasted Farrenc and she composed no more music.
Recognition did not end here, however, and Farrenc received recognition for her chamber music, winning the Chartier Prize in both 1861 and 1869, presented by the Academie des Beaux-Arts.
Farrenc the Publisher
Besides performing, teaching and composing, Farrenc collaborated with her husband to edit a book about early musical performance styles entitled ‘Le trésor des pianistes’ (The Pianist’s Treasury), over 20-volumes of an anthology of keyboard music from the past 300 years, covering Couperin to Chopin. Sadly, Aristide died before the work was completed, but Farrenc finished the work and had it published.
Louise Farrenc died at the age of 71 on 15th September 1875 in Paris.
Find a full list of Farrenc’s works here.
Further Reading / Listening
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