Page 19 - The Plymouth Philharmonic Legends and Legacies 11-2-2024 digital program flipbook

One of her most successful students there was her own daughter Victorine, who was
admitted to the Conservatoire in 1843. She opened concerts in Brussels and Paris
by playing Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto alongside her mother’s Symphony No. 1.
Louise’s nephew, Louis-Étienne Rey (professionally known as Ernest Reyer), studied
composition with her throughout the 1840s by correspondence and after 1848, while
bunking with her family. She supervised the composition of his oratorio Le Sélam,
a symphonie orientale (1850). Reyer had lived in French Algeria near Camille Saint-
Saens from 1839-48, where both incorporated local folk and military music into their
compositions; Le Sélam included an Islamic pilgrimage, a Muslim call to prayer, and
choruses of North African soldiers. Farrenc wound down her performing and composing
careers after Victorine’s death in 1859, but she continued to teach at the Conservatoire
for thirty years.
Louise Farrenc was also unusual among Romantic composers in that she worked
almost exclusively in large-scale forms and won the Prix de Chartier twice, awarded
by the Beaux-Arts Academy of the Institut de France, which also supervised the Prix
de Rome competition). In addition, she and Aristide published the largest and most
scholarly collection of keyboard music of the time, Le Tresor de Pianistes (1863) in 23
volumes. She was able to acquire the publication rights to Hummel’s music, developing
a lucrative partnership and lifelong friendship with the pianist. Most of her music was
published by her husband, so she was able to establish a reputation as a symphonist,
chamber music composer, and devotee of abstract compositional forms rather than
operas and tone poems.
Her earliest overtures were complimented by Berlioz (1830s), and her quartets and
quintets follow the standard sonata forms, but they follow the French practice of
shorter developments than the models established by Beethoven. Her Symphony No.
2 (1845), is more experimental than classical, showcasing her familiarity with French
Algerian modes and melodies. After conducting the work in Philadelphia, Yannick
Nézet- Séguin remarked, “The Scherzo reminds me of the first symphonies of Bruckner,
with the same kind of covered angst; it’s fleeting, but it’s dark. There is a connection
with Mendelssohn in the last movement, in the counterpoint, but she takes it to
another level. It’s used as a dramatic construction.” This energetic music, emphasizing
textural variety over motivic development, modulates frequently. Farrenc pays homage
to Beethoven (her favorite composer), but employs quicker harmonic motion, giving us
a taste of freedom from expected constraints.

Bea Friedland’s biography is the first published book about Farrenc in Englishand it
has already inspired a BBC radio series by Donald Macleod. Christin Heitmann has
assembled a thematic catalogue of her works and David Allen wrote an appraisal of
her work in The New York Times to accompany performances of her works in Boston
and New York in 2021. Farrenc’s music has even begun to inspire whole academic
dissertations and theses.
— Laura Stanfield Prichard

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