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I. Prélude
mm. 5-11 |
Skills & Techniques: High Register, Phrasing. Soft Playing, Transposition
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Horn 1 (E)
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DC Concert Orchestra (2023)
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Orchestre national de Metz Grand Est (2023)
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Composer & Composition Information
Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944)
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Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944) was one of the most successful female professional musicians of the 19th century, specialising in piano and vocal works and amassing a fortune during her lifetime. Born in Paris, she had an initially prosperous background; her father, who played the violin, worked in insurance, and her mother was a competent pianist and singer who energetically supported her gifted daughter’s career. Although her father would not permit her to study at the Conservatoire, she had private instruction and began composing by the mid-1860s.
Chaminade made her professional debut in 1877 at the Salle Pleyel. She gave the first recital of her own works the following year, and successfully performed her own music for the rest of her life. During the 1880s she ventured into the large forms of opera, symphony and chamber music but her father’s death and the associated loss of family income pushed her towards the more marketable genres of vocal and keyboard music. Frank about the obstacles women musicians faced, she pragmatically built a dazzling career on these genres. Only her Concertino for flute and orchestra is regularly performed. The text is reprinted from Oxford International Song Festival where more information about the composer can be found. The image is reprinted from Piano Inspires. |
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Callirhoë
The music for the ballet Callirhoë was to have been composed by Benjamin Godard, but he was busy with another project and offered it to Chaminade, who completed the work in 1887. Based on a poem by Anacreon, the scenario was written by Elzéard Rougier. Replete with twenty-two numbers (twentyone in the piano-vocal reduction), the ballet was premiered on March 16, 1888, at the Grand Théâtre in Marseilles and received two hundred performances! Chaminade’s delightful music, from which she fashioned a four-movement suite, shows all the characteristic elements of her style: tuneful and memorable melodies, colorful evocations of nature scenes and “exotica,” lightly chromatic harmonies, and sparkling wit.
The text is written by & reprinted from Manhattan School of Music where more information about the composition can be found.
The text is written by & reprinted from Manhattan School of Music where more information about the composition can be found.
Notable Performances/Recordings:
DC Concert Orchestra (2023)
BBC Concert Orchestra (2017)
DC Concert Orchestra (2023)
BBC Concert Orchestra (2017)