About this Piece

As a pianist, educator, and composer, Louise Farrenc was one of the most prominent musicians in mid-19th-century France. She was the only woman of her time to serve as professor at the Paris Conservatory, a position she held for 30 years. She was twice awarded the prestigious Chartier Prize for her contributions to French chamber music. And with her husband, Aristide, she founded Éditions Farrenc, which became one of France’s leading music publishers.

Yet today, Farrenc’s life and music are largely unknown. How could such achievements and a large catalog of work—encompassing music for solo piano, chamber ensembles, choir, and orchestra—have been consigned to the shelves of history for 150 years?

The primary culprit, of course, is the systemic sexism long upheld by the classical music establishment—including her alma mater, the Paris Conservatory, which didn’t allow women to study composition until 1870. Even after the school appointed Farrenc professor of piano, she could accept only female students into her studio, was barred from teaching composition, and received a lesser salary than her male colleagues.

But when it came to her orchestral music, gender wasn’t Farrenc’s only obstacle.

French audiences simply didn’t care for abstract orchestral scores, preferring instead the spectacle of opera and vaudeville. Those hungry to hear symphonies were interested only in those of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Robert Schumann. And the one Parisian ensemble performing new symphonies, the Conservatory Concert Society, always programmed premieres alongside a Beethoven symphony, inviting direct comparisons with the German colossus.

Farrenc was wise to these obstacles—and savvy enough to use them to her advantage. To stand any chance of having her orchestral music performed, she would have to stick to the established Austro-German tradition. And that’s exactly what she did with her first work for orchestra: Overture No. 1, penned in 1834.

Here she adopts the style of Haydn and Mozart, from the slow, stately introduction—in which bombastic fanfares alternate with wistful woodwind interjections—to the stormy string writing and driving, dramatic sweep. But despite having to color within these conservative lines, Farrenc projected a progressive voice through her gift for melodic invention, her knack for building musical momentum, and her dazzling approach to orchestral color.

—Michael Cirigliano II