12 Forgotten Women Composers Born In the Early Romantic Era

 by Emily E. Hogstad  April 18th, 2026

The early Romantic Era, which roughly corresponds to the first half of the nineteenth century, brought an explosion of emotional depth and individuality to classical music. 

The stories we usually hear about the composers of the time focus almost entirely on men: figures like Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt.

In reality, dozens of women composers were also writing symphonies, operas, piano works, and chamber music that matched their male contemporaries in imagination and skill…and sometimes exceeded them.

The surviving works of rediscovered women composers remind us that the true spirit of the Romantic movement was never confined to men alone.

Here are twelve forgotten women composers who were born in the early Romantic Era.

Louise Bertin (1805–1877)

Louise Bertin

Born into an intellectual Parisian family, Louise Bertin was the daughter of the editor of the Journal des débats: a relationship that granted her access to Paris’s artistic elite.

She was a musical child and studied composition with François-Joseph Fétis, who taught a number of famous French composers of the day.

She was one of the few women of her time to compose large-scale operas.

Her Fausto (1831) and La Esmeralda (1836) – the latter with a libretto by her friend Victor Hugo, based on his recent novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame – showed extraordinary dramatic instinct…but also provoked controversy, with critics claiming she’d only gotten it produced because of her family’s influence.

After La Esmeralda’s failure, Bertin turned away from opera and toward chamber music and poetry.

Leopoldine Blahetka (1809–1885)  

Leopoldine Blahetka was born just outside of Vienna in 1809 to two teachers. Her father was friends with Beethoven.

As a child, she studied with Joseph Czerny (Carl Czerny’s father), Friedrich Kalkbrenner, and Ignaz Moscheles.

Leopoldine Blahetka

She made her debut when she was nine, and by eleven, she was including her own works on her recital programs.

As an adult, she toured Europe as a piano soloist for around twenty years.

Her contemporaries Chopin and Schumann both thought highly of her.

Josephine Lang (1815–1880)   

Josephine Lang was born in 1815 in Munich to the Munich Kapellmeister and his opera singer wife.

Although her health had been poor since childhood, she was a brilliant prodigy. She made her debut at eleven and started composing around the same time. (Felix Mendelssohn was one of her teachers.)

Josephine Lang

After a performance for the king and queen of Bavaria, the queen noticed her poor health and sent her to the mountain spa town of Wildbad Kreuth to improve her health.

While she was there, she met her future husband, lawyer Christian Köstlin. They married in 1842 and had six children together.

After his death from cancer, she sought refuge in music. She is especially renowned today for her lieder.

Kate Loder (1825–1904)   

Kate Loder was born in 1825 in Bath, England, to a flutist and his piano teacher wife.

She studied at the Royal Academy of Music and performed Mendelssohn’s first piano concerto in London in 1843, when she was seventeen.

At eighteen, she became the first woman harmony professor at the Royal Academy.

Kate Loder

She married a surgeon in 1851 and had three children with him.

She stopped playing piano in public, but continued composing and teaching.

Teresa Milanollo (1827–1904)   

Teresa Milanollo was born in Savigliano to a luthier.

At four, after seeing a violin played at church, she insisted upon being taught, despite the fact that top-level women violin soloists were unheard of.

She was a child prodigy, and her family toured Europe during her childhood.

Teresa Milanollo

In time, she joined forces with her sister Maria, who also took up the violin and was five years her junior. Teresa was Maria’s only violin teacher.

The sisters became two of the most successful classical musicians in mid-century Europe, on par with Liszt and Paganini.

Maria died of tuberculosis in 1848 as a teenager. Teresa was devastated. But after a period of time away from the public eye, she returned to the concert stage.

She married a military engineer and amateur musician in 1857 at the age of 29. As was customary, she gave up her career to support her husband.

Laura Netzel (1839–1927)   

Laura Netzel was born in Rantasalmi, Finland, in 1839, the youngest of six children. Her father brought the family to Stockholm when she was a year old.

She was a musically gifted child and studied piano, voice, and composition in Stockholm. She made her debut there at eighteen, playing the Moscheles piano concerto in G-minor.

Laura Netzel

She also nurtured a talent for composition that she kept quiet for a long time. At 35, she submitted a piece to a Stockholm women’s chorus under the pseudonym “Lago.” Lago became an increasingly popular composer, but she kept her identity secret until the 1890s.

In 1866, she married a gynecology professor named Wilhelm Netzel. She became famous for the charitable work she undertook, with a special emphasis on supporting women and working people.

Alice Mary Smith (1839–1884)   

Alice Mary Smith was born in 1839 to a wealthy family in London.

She was a musical child and took lessons from William Sterndale Bennett and George Alexander Macfarren.

She published her first song in 1857, when she was still in her teens.

Alice Mary Smith

Her first symphony was written when she was 24 and performed that same year. She also wrote an operetta, cantatas, overtures, two symphonies, chamber music, a massive amount of choral music, and more.

In 1867, she married a lawyer, but she didn’t give up composing.

Ingeborg Starck Bronsart von Schellendorf (1840–1913)  

Ingeborg Starck was born in St. Petersburg in 1840, the daughter of a saddle-maker and his wife, both amateur musicians.

Their daughter Ingeborg began playing the piano as a little girl and composing a year later. By fourteen, her music was appearing in print.

Ingeborg Starck

In 1858, she traveled to Weimar to study under Liszt. Three years later, she married fellow Liszt student and piano virtuoso Hans von Bronsart. They had a daughter in 1864 and a son in 1868.

In 1867, her husband was appointed Intendant at the court theater in Hanover. Wives of court officials were forbidden from making money, so she was forced to quit her career as a soloist and ended up turning to composing during the second half of her life.

She gravitated toward large forms and wrote four operas.

Elfrida Andrée (1841–1929)   Play

Elfrida Andrée was born in 1841 in Visby, Sweden, to a liberal doctor and his wife.

The family embraced the women’s movement, and Elfrida was encouraged to study music and compose. She even became one of the first officially appointed female organists in Scandinavia.

Elfrida Andrée

In 1897, she became the conductor of the Gothenburg Workers Institute Concerts, which made her the first woman to conduct an orchestra in Sweden.

She wrote an opera, two symphonies, a wide variety of tuneful chamber music, and a number of other works.

Louise Héritte-Viardot (1841–1918)   

Louise Héritte-Viardot was born in December 1841 to Louis Viardot and Pauline Garcia-Viardot, the most popular mezzo-soprano of her age. (It’s worth noting that Pauline was also a talented pianist and composer.)

Louise was largely self-taught, musically speaking.

In 1863, she married a diplomat named Ernest Héritte and had a son with him, but they separated.

Louise Héritte-Viardot

To support herself, she taught voice in St. Petersburg, London, Frankfurt, and Berlin.

Many of her compositions have been lost, but the ones that survive suggest a truly delightful talent.

Marie Jaëll (1846–1925)  

Marie Jaëll was born in 1846 in Alsace. She began studying piano at the age of six, and quickly developed into a child prodigy.

In 1862, the year she turned sixteen, she entered the Paris Conservatory. After just four months of study, she won the first prize in piano.

Marie Jaëll

She married her colleague, virtuoso pianist Alfred Jaëll, in 1866. She was almost twenty; he was 34. The couple often worked together.

After her marriage, she began taking lessons from César Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns, determined to become a good composer.

Her husband died in 1882. She devoted the rest of her life to studying music, the physicality of playing piano, composition, learning new repertoire, teaching, and more. Her appetite for music was voracious.

Josephine Amann-Weinlich (1848–1887)  

Josephine Weinlich was born in 1848 in a small town in present-day Slovakia.

Her father was a formerly wealthy ribbon manufacturer who lost a fortune during the Slovak Uprising of 1848-49. For his second act, he applied for a license to found a family folk music ensemble in Vienna.

We don’t know much about Josephine’s training, only that she played violin with her family band until 1865, when she started her own dance band.

Josephine Weinlich with her orchestra in 1874

In 1867, she went a step further and started a ladies’ string quartet. The string quartet grew into one of the world’s first women’s orchestras.

Under Josephine’s leadership, the orchestra toured internationally and helped to get audiences used to the idea of women playing in orchestras.

During all of this, she composed, including irresistible dance music like the piece above (Freie Gedanken, or Free Thoughts).

Conclusion

The women who composed during the early Romantic era wrote fabulous music, even as they navigated the restrictions their society placed upon them.

Whether they were leading orchestras like Elfrida Andrée, composing operas like Louise Bertin and Ingeborg Bronsart von Schellendorf, or performing for Europe’s elite like Teresa Milanollo, they all carved out professional lives in a world that never made it easy for them to do so.

Their stories reveal a forgotten chapter of the long story of music history: one that is filled with persistence, resilience, and tons of great music.

Who’s your favorite woman composer from the early Romantic Era?

Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 'Organ Symphony'

Camille Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, better known as the "Organ Symphony," is one of the most significant pieces of the composer's career. Completed in 1886 for the Royal Philharmonic Society in London, it marked the composer's return to the symphonic form after years focused on other genres. In this video, the symphony is performed by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marek Janowski. The organ is played by Iveta Apkalna. The concert took place on January 22, 2013, at the Berliner Philharmonie to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Élysée Treaty between France and Germany. (00:00) I. Adagio – Allegro moderato – Poco adagio (19:08) II. Allegro moderato – Presto – Maestoso – Allegro In 1857 Camille Saint-Saëns was hired as the main organist at Paris's most fashionable church, Église de la Madeleine. While the who's who of French high society met there each Sunday to worship, the composer was less interested in social status than he was in the church's magnificent organ built in 1845 by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. Indeed, the composer is said to have called to the two decades he spent at the organ's keys as the greatest years of his life. Europe's classical music elite, meanwhile, were equally impressed. The likes of German pianist and composer Clara Schumann and Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate came to listen to his dazzling improvisations, while Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt called him "the greatest organist in the world." Yet, despite his popularity as an organist, Saint-Saëns rarely composed for the instrument. One of the exceptions is the Symphony No. 3 in C minor, the so-called "Organ Symphony." Yet even this nickname can be a bit misleading if one expects to hear the organ consistently front and center. The pipe organ enters in the latter halves of the two large sections. Yet when it does, its sound instantly reshapes the piece's sonic landscape. It's used as a foundation for the orchestra’s climactic moments, adding a weight and depth that emphasizes the final passages of the piece. This approach reflects both his mastery of orchestral color and his connection to tradition, even as he pushes the symphony forward. With this piece, considered one of the most enduring works of the French repertoire, Camille Saint-Saëns also reshapes the traditional symphonic structure. Instead of the usual four separate movements, he created two large blocks of music where themes evolve and reappear, giving the piece a sense of unity. This unified structure echoes that of Franz Liszt's oft-analyzed Piano Sonata in B minor, which comprises a single movement that covertly holds within it four distinct movements (allegro, adagio, scherzo and finale). Saint-Saëns also employs Liszt's concept of thematic transformation, whereby different themes, aka "leitmotifs," are transformed through inversion, modulation, fragmentation and other means — and then reappear throughout the piece. Perhaps it comes as little surprise that Saint-Saëns dedicated his organ symphony to Liszt. Based in the German capital, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra ("Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin") is the country's second-oldest radio symphony orchestra and was founded in 1923.

The Key Conductor: Pierre Monteux

by Maureen Buja 

French conductor Pierre Monteux (1875–1964) always seemed to be the right man at the right time. As a student of violin and viola at the Paris Conservatoire, his fellow students included George Enescu, Fritz Kreisler, and Alfred Cortot. Upon graduation, one of his first jobs was violist for the orchestra of the Folies Bergère (1889–1892), when the Folies had Toulouse-Lautrec doing their posters. He played in or conducted works by Camille Saint-SaënsSaint, including being a last-minute conductor for a performance of Saint-Saëns’s cantata La Lyre et la Harpe (the composer at the organ), earning Saint-Saëns’s undying gratitude.

Irwin D. Hoffmann: Pierre Monteux, 1959 (Boston Public Library)

In 1894, he was named both principal violist and assistant conductor of the Colonne Orchestra in Paris. The orchestra’s founder, Édouard Colonne, had known Berlioz and could work with Monteux on what the composer really wanted in a performance of his works. His next position was as chief conductor for the seasonal Dieppe Casino orchestra (while still maintaining his Colonne positions).

In 1910, the Colonne Orchestra played for the Ballets Russes season, and Monteux met Stravinsky for the first time. He played viola for the world premiere of The Firebird in 1910, and the next year led the rehearsals for the premiere of Petrushka. He ended up conducting the premiere as well, at the insistence of the composer.

Along with impressing Saint-Saëns and Stravinsky, he also caught the eye of Claude Debussy, particularly because of his ability to rehearse and present new music. When the Colonne Orchestra was giving the world premiere of Debussy’s Images pour orchestra, it was Monteux who led the orchestral rehearsals, and Debussy conducted the premiere (26 January 1913).

After the January premiere of Images, it was onto Debussy’s ballet Jeux and then, on 29 May 1913, the infamous premiere of The Rite of Spring and riot.

With the start of WWI, Monteux was conscripted into the French Army, but Diaghilev got him released to take the Ballets Russes on tour to North America. After the war, the Boston Symphony Orchestra approached Monteux to be their new chief conductor. He only lasted 5 years there, but changed the orchestra for the better, and handed it over to Serge Koussevitzky, who would be its music director for the next 25 years.

Pierre Monteux, 1924 (Pierre Monteux Memorial Foundation Archive)

Monteux, in the meantime, went to Amsterdam, where he became the first conductor at the Concertgebouw, serving under Willem Mengelberg, the chief conductor. The other major work on this new recording is Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, written in 1931 for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The influence of Bach on Stravinsky is palpable in the Symphony, particularly Bach’s St Matthew Passion, which had been widely played all over Europe during the work’s bicentenary in 1927.

Alfred Bendiner: Pierre Monteux (1947) (Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, Gift of Mrs. Alfred Bendiner)

Taking up his conducting career at the cusp of the 20th century, Monteux took part in some of the most exciting and controversial happenings in music, from premieres of works by Saint-Saëns to the Parisian riots over Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. He brought the Boston Symphony back to life and then went on to lead one of Europe’s great orchestras.

This 150th anniversary tribute to Pierre Monteux was recorded in 1961 as a live broadcast on the BBC Home Service. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, as led by Monteux, give us the best of his repertoire in performances of works that couldn’t be further apart in style: Debussy’s orchestral Images, and Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms.

Pierre Monteux: 150th Anniversary Tribute: Live Performances

BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
SOMM Recordings ARIADNE 5042

Official Website

When Simple is Necessary: Fauré’s Berceuse

by Maureen Buja

A berceuse is a piece to put you to sleep – particularly if you’re a small child in a cradle. It’s usually in triple meter with a very simple tonality – wild and chromatic is just out of the question if you want it to be a lullaby. French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) composed a Berceuse, op. 16, that continues to be a performer’s favourite.

John Singer Sargent: Gabriel Fauré, 1899 (Paris: Musée de la Musique)

Fauré made his name at two major French churches as an organist. First at the Église Saint-Sulpice, where he started as the choirmaster in 1871 under the organist Chares-Marie Widor before moving to the Église de la Madeleine in 1874, where he was deputy organist under Camille Saint-Saëns, taking over when the senior organist was on one of his frequent tours. Although he was recognised as a leading organist and played it professionally for some 40 years, he didn’t appreciate its size, with one commentator saying, ‘for a composer of such delicacy of nuance, and such sensuality, the organ was simply not subtle enough’.

In 1879, he wrote a little Berceuse that was quickly appreciated by violinists. Fauré himself didn’t quite see what the fuss was about, but the work went into the repertoire of many violinists in the late 19th century and was recorded by the great Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe.

The premiere of the work was given in February 1880 at the Société Nationale de Musique (which Fauré was a founding member) with the violinist Ovide Musin and the composer at the piano. The French publisher Julien Hamelle was at the performance and quickly put the work into print, where it sold over 700 copies in its first year alone.

It has been arranged for cello, violin and orchestra, and even as a vocalise for text-less voice and harp. 

This recording was made in 1935, with violinist Henry Merckel, under Piero Coppola leading the Orchestre des Concerts Pasdeloup.

Henry Merckel

Henry Merckel (1887–1969) was a classical violinist from Belgium who graduated from the Paris Conservatoire in 1912. He had his own string quartet and was concertmaster of the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra (now known as the Orchestra de Paris) from 1929 to 1934, and also served as concertmaster of the Paris Opera Orchestra from 1930 until 1960.

Piero Coppola

The Italian conductor Piero Coppola (1888–1971) studied piano and composition at the Milan Conservatory. He graduated in 1910 and, in 1911, was already conducting at La Scala. He is known for his recordings of Debussy and Ravel in the 1920s and 1930s, including the first recordings of Debussy’s La Mer and Ravel’s Boléro, with his Debussy recordings being praised as ‘close to Debussy’s thoughts’. From 1923 to 1934, he was the artistic director of the recording company La Voix de son Maître, the French branch of The Gramophone Company, under whose name this recording was made.

The Orchestre des Concerts Pasdeloup, founded in 1861 by Jules Pasdeloup, is the oldest symphony orchestra in France. They scheduled their concerts for Sundays to catch concert-goers who weren’t able to make evening concerts. It started out with the name of Concerts Populaires and ran until 1884. It was started up again in 1919 under Serge Sandberg as the Orchestre Pasdeloup.

Performed by

Henry Merckel
Piero Coppola
Orchestre des Concerts Pasdeloup

Recorded in 1935

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) An Anniversary Cello Tribute

by Georg Predota, Interlude

On 4 November 2024, we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Gabriel Fauré. He might well have been the greatest master of French songs, with his settings achieving a beautiful balance of prosody, melody, harmony, and polyphony. In his music, Fauré aimed to convey a prevailing atmosphere, and he developed an immediately identifiable style and a highly personal musical language.

Gabriel Fauré © Pianodao

Stylistic developments none withstanding, Fauré developed his individual voice from his handling of harmony and tonality. Drawing on rapid modulations, he never completely destroyed the sense of tonality, always aware of its limits, yet freeing himself from many of its restrictions.

Fauré’s harmonic richness is complemented by his melodic invention. As Jean-Michel Nectoux writes, “he was a consummate master of the art of unfolding a melody: from a harmonic and rhythmic cell he constructed chains of sequences that convey, despite their constant variety, inventiveness and unexpected turns an impression of inevitability.”

Concurrently with his songs, chamber music constitutes Fauré’s most important contribution to music. The elegance, refinement, and sensibility of his melodic writing easily transferred into the instrumental realm. On the 100th anniversary of his death, let us celebrate Fauré’s highly developed sense of sonorous beauty by exploring his magnificent and highly popular compositions for the cello. 

Let’s get started with one of the most beautiful and popular pieces by Gabriel Fauré, the Sicilienne, Op. 78. The work actually has an interesting history, as Camille Saint-Saëns was asked by the manager of the Grand Théâtre to compose incidental music for a production of Molière’s “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.” However, Saint-Saëns was rather busy, and he recommended his former student Gabriel Fauré for the task.

Portrait of Camille Saint-Saëns by Benjamin Constant

Fauré went to work, and the music was nearly complete when the theatre company went bankrupt in 1893. The production was abandoned, and the music, including the first version of the Sicilienne, remained unperformed. Five years later, Fauré was engaged to write incidental music for the first English production of Maurice Maeterlinck’s play, Pelléas et Mélisande. Fauré would eventually publish a suite derived from this incidental music, which included an updated and orchestrated version of the Sicilienne.

Concordantly, however, the Dutch cellist Joseph Hollman, who frequently appeared in concert with Camille Saint-Saëns, was looking for a short encore. As such, Fauré fashioned an arrangement for cello and piano and dedicated the piece to William Henry Squire, a British cellist and principal with several major London orchestras. This most famous and memorable melody builds from a delightful lyrical theme in the minor mode. It evokes a pastoral mood with its lilting rhythms, and it has since been arranged for countless combinations of instruments. 

The two sonatas for cello and piano by Gabriel Fauré belong to his final creative period. The first sonata was composed in Saint-Raphaël, where Fauré liked to seclude himself far away from the hustle and bustle of Paris. Written between May and October 1917, the work echoes the unsettling dark days of the First World War. To be sure, Fauré’s younger son Philippe was in the army, and the A-minor sonata seemingly reflects the composer’s anxiety and apprehension.

Fauré’s older son Emmanuel suggested that the uncharacteristically aggressive tone of the composition also represents his father’s anger at his worsening deafness. Like much of his chamber music from this period, Fauré was searching for harmonic and contrapuntal freedom, “and the rarefied and austere character is reinforced by concentrated writing for the instruments.”

Gabriel Fauré in 1907

The opening “Allegro deciso” launches into a violent theme from a discarded symphony and also from the music of his warlike opera Pénélope. The lyrical contrast is short-lived, and the fiery ending features new unsettling piano figuration. Essentially a restless nocturne, the central “Andante” was the first movement to be composed. The music offers echoes from his Requiem, and the search for tranquillity is continued in the concluding “Allegro comodo.” However, brief glimpses of optimism are subdued by strict contrapuntal severity. 

Gabriel Fauré had a complicated relationship with the publisher Julien Hamelle. Hamelle was a shifty character who frequently lost manuscripts, and as he was severely “forgetful,” he was not particularly reliable. Always looking for quick sales, Hamelle loved to add fanciful titles to Fauré’s compositions. Such was certainly the case for the French “Flight of the Bumblebee” he commissioned from Fauré. This virtuoso miniature was composed in 1884 but only published fourteen years later, in 1898.

Hamelle insisted on first calling the piece Libellules (Dragonflies), then Papillon (Butterfly). Fauré was never enamoured with fanciful titles, and he angrily wrote back, “Butterfly or Dung Fly, call it whatever you like.” Fauré did insist, however, that the words “Pièce pour violoncelle,” a title more suited to his aesthetic approach, should appear as a sub-title.

Scored in five sections, it is a piece of pure virtuosity in the outer framing pillars. The middle episodes, however, contain the most beautiful lyrical passages. This gorgeous symmetrical song, as a commentator writes, “finally takes wing over one of Fauré’s favourite descending bass lines.” In the end, Hamelle was correct in appending a fanciful title as Papillon became incredibly popular with cellists from around the world. 

Fauré’s Papillon was actually a commissioned pendant for his already highly popular Élégie. That particular gem emerged in 1880 after the composer had finished a violin sonata. Fauré had decided to write a counterpart for the cello, and habitually, he started with the slow movement. When he played it for his friend and mentor Camille Saint- Saëns, his teacher was overjoyed. Work on the sonata progressed no further, but the slow movement with the title “Élégie” was published in 1883.

Gabriel Fauré’s Élégie, Op. 24

For Patrick Castillo, “the compact frame, its brevity, intimate scoring…belies its expressive range. The work seems to honour grief as a multifaceted thing and depicts it as such. Herein lies Fauré’s mastery. He possesses the sensibility to probe, with economy and exquisite subtlety, the depth of human emotion, giving graceful voice to our innermost feelings.”

Scored in three sections, the C-minor opening is reminiscent of a funeral march supported by a solemn progression of chords on the piano. As the middle section modulates to the major key, the music becomes more lyrical and melancholic. A sudden tortured outcry returns us to the opening melody, now transformed and supported by a flurry of notes in the piano. 

The Berceuse, later to become part of the Dolly Suite, damaged Fauré’s reputation for a very long time. Let me explain. It actually dates from his student years and was composed in 1864. It was originally titled “La Chanson dans le jardin,” and written for Suzanne Garnier, the daughter of a friend. The initial scoring called for violin and piano, but once it was published, the title page provided the option “for violin or cello.” In the event, this tender little piece caused Fauré to be known as a “salon composer,” a reputation that proved incredibly difficult to shake.

When Fauré first met Emma Bardac, she had recently given birth to a daughter, Hélène, nicknamed Dolly. Emma was married to a banker and Gabriel to Marie, and their affair lasted the better part of four years. Emma was his intellectual equal; she was outgoing, amusing, articulate, and exuded great warmth from the mothering side of her personality. After their affair ended, Emma met Debussy, and after eloping to England, the two got married.

Emma Bardac-Debussy

In the 1890s, Fauré composed or revised small pieces, especially for Dolly. These pieces celebrated a birthday, a pet, or various friends of the little girl. Combining six of these miniatures, Fauré produced the “Dolly Suite” for piano duet. The Berceuse marked Dolly’s first birthday in 1893. This dreamy lullaby rocks the cradle with a swinging accompaniment, a music-box texture, and charming harmonic transparency.

Romance

During his time as organist at the Église de la Madeleine in Paris, Fauré composed a short piece for organ and cello simply titled “Andante.” For unknown reasons, the composer delayed publication until 1894, but eventually adapted the original organ part for the piano. He changed the tempo from “Andante” to “Andante quasi allegretto” and appended the title “Romance.”

Gabriel Fauré’s Romance, Op. 69

The sustained organ chords became arpeggios, but the solo part remained essentially unchanged. This wonderful miniature places great emphasis on lyricism as the music grows into a long and flexible phrase. The principle theme is not new, as Fauré had already used it in his incidental music for Shylock, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. And you might also recognise it from his song “Soir,” a setting of a poem by Albert Samain.

Sérénade

The last small piece for cello, chronologically, is the “Sérénade” Op. 98. Dedicated to the Catalan cellist Pablo Casals, the piece was a gift to celebrate Casal’s engagement to the Portuguese cellist Guilhermina Suggia. Never mind that the relationship never transformed into marriage. Casals was enthused about the music as he wrote to the composer, “The Serenade! It is delightful every time I play it; it seems new, so beautiful, is it.” For a variety of obvious personal reasons, Casals neither performed the piece in public nor recorded it during his long career.

The “Sérénade” unfolds as an uneasy conversation between the two instruments. The cello line presents a delightful melody akin to the best of Fauré’s songs. However, the piano part is more than just mere accompaniment, interweaving melodic lines and unsettled harmonies. It immediately interrupts the lyrical seductiveness of the melody with arpeggio figuration before taking it over completely. Despite its brevity, the “Sérénade” is surprisingly complex, painfully avoiding rhythmic and harmonic resolutions.

Cello Sonata No. 2

Fauré has almost completely lost his hearing when he started work on his 2nd Cello Sonata, Op. 117. Actually, he was commissioned by the French government to write a funeral march for a military band for a ceremony to be held on 5 May 1921. That particular date marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Napoleon. The sombre theme he composed for the occasion remained in his mind and, as he said, “turned itself into a sonata.”

Gabriel Fauré’s grave and funeral

The reworked funeral march takes its place as the central “Andante” in the Sonata, exuding a relaxed tranquillity reminiscent of the mood presented in his Elegy, Op. 24. This sense of nostalgia is prefaced by an essentially lyrical opening movement that features two contrasting themes intertwined in free counterpoint. Jean-Michel Nectoux regarded the joyful finale “as one of the great Fauréan scherzos,” which sounds like an ode to life, “a moving profession of faith from an old man who knows that the end was approaching.”

Vincent d’Indy expressed his admiration for his friend’s work: “I want to tell you that I’m still under the spell of your beautiful Cello Sonata… The Andante is a masterpiece of sensitivity and expression, and I love the finale, so perky and delightful… How lucky you are to stay young like that!” Fauré continued to search for the purpose of music and wrote, “And what music really is, and what exactly I am trying to convey. What feeling? What ideas? How can I explain something that I myself cannot fathom?”

Fauré died from pneumonia on 4 November 1924 in Paris at the age of 79. His last words questioned, “Have my works received justice? Have they not been too much admired or sometimes too severely criticized? What if my music will live? But then, that is of little importance.” Fauré would certainly be delighted to know that his compositions for the cello are still performed with great enthusiasm and regularity. They beautifully reflect Fauré’s final thoughts that “music exists to elevate us above everyday existence.”