Cécile Chaminade

Cécile Louise Stéphanie Chaminade ( born August 8, 1857 in Paris, † April 13, 1944 in Monte Carlo ) was a French composer and pianist.

Life and work

Cécile Chaminade was born at the foot of Montmartre and came from a family of officers and sailors. Among her ancestors there is also a French priest William Joseph Chaminade, the 1817 founded the Congregation of the Marianists. Cécile Chaminade was initially from her mother taught ( an excellent pianist ), then by Félix Le Couppey ( Piano), Augustin Savart, Martin Pierre Joseph Marsick and Benjamin Godard, but only unofficially, for her father - director of an insurance company - disapproved of her musical education.

Your first attempts at composition date already from very early times, and at the age of 8 years she played Georges Bizet, the composer of Carmen, his own works, which was very impressed by her talent. At the age of 18 she gave her first concert, and from that time became her work as a composer increasing popularity. She wrote mostly character pieces for piano and parlor songs, almost all were also published. 1882 their one-act comic opera La Sévillane op 10 was premiered.

In the earlier years, Chaminade undertook several concert tours through France, Switzerland, Belgium and Holland. In 1892 she made her debut in England, which they subsequently toured several times. Her work was very popular there. Queen Victoria invited her to spend some time at Windsor Castle.

Chaminade married in 1901 a twenty- year-older music publisher from Marseilles, Louis -Mathieu Carbonel; because of his advanced age was rumored that it was purely a marriage of convenience. He died in 1907, and Chaminade not remarried.

Further concert tours have taken her to Greece, Turkey, Canada and 1908 in the U.S., where her numerous admirers prepared a warm welcome. Her compositions have been extremely successful in the American audience, and pieces like the scarf dance or ballet No. 1 were an integral part of the central library of all cultured lovers of piano music. She composed a Concerto, Op 40 for piano and orchestra, a ballet music to Callirhoé and other orchestral works, including the large-scale symphony lyrique Les Amazones for choir and orchestra. Her songs, such as The Silver Ring and Ritournelle were also popular. Ambroise Thomas, the famous French composer and writer, said of Chaminade: "This is not composing a woman, but a composer who is a woman. "

In 1913 she was the first female composer member of the Legion of Honour. In 1914 she traveled again to England, where they again celebrated triumphs. After the beginning of World War I, at the age of 57 years, she took over the management of a hospital. Before and after World War II Chaminade recorded numerous piano rolls. With increasing age was due to illness - you had a foot amputated - the creative power back. In 1936 they located in Monte Carlo, where she died in 1944.

Chaminade came with her ​​piano pieces and songs in the second half of the 20th century, largely forgotten, only her Concertino for Flute and Orchestra, Op 107, which was in 1902 at the Paris Conservatory contest piece is played to date regularly. Their fair for soprano, alto and organ is still occasionally heard. In the last two decades, but has become clear what value their compositions, and a veritable Chaminade - Renaissance began.