Augusta Holmès' Andromède


This March, the Daily Classical Music Post will introduce you to some of the most wonderful music ever composed—and, yes, it will all be by women composers!

https://youtu.be/HzfWfYBEbrU

 

The French composer Augusta Holmès (1847–1903) was actually of Irish descent, although she was born in Paris; in 1871, she became a French citizen and added the accent to her last name.

She wrote many songs and oratorios, usually to lyrics that she wrote herself. She also wrote the libretto to her opera La Montagne Noire. Because she was a woman, she could not study at the Paris Conservatoire, but she did take composition lessons privately with Franck. Apparently, Franck had some romantic feelings for Holmès, which he incorporated into his Piano Quintet.

Holmès first published under the pseudonym Hermann Zenta. Once she began publishing her works under her own name, she achieved fame and was recognised in her lifetime as a fresh voice in the French musical world. She wrote instrumental as well as vocal works. One composition of hers that I would love to hear is her Ode Triomphale, a piece that she wrote in 1899 for a chorus of 900 and an orchestra of 300, which was performed four times during the Paris Exhibition that year.

The French composer Camille Saint-Saëns said of Holmès: "Like children, women have no idea of obstacles; and their will-power breaks all barriers. Mademoiselle Holmès is a woman, an extremist." Among Holmès's many friends and supporters were Liszt, Wagner, and d'Indy, and Saint-Saëns asked her to marry him many times. She never married, but she was the lover of the French poet Catulle Catulle Mendès, with whom she had four children. I'm not sure who the father was of her fifth child.

My classical music post for today is Augusta Holmès' Andromède.

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