Here Comes Treble: Tribute To An Amazing Woman
“I do not believe that the few women who have achieved greatness in creative work are the exception, but I think that life has been hard on women; it has not given them opportunity. Women … have been handicapped, and only the few, through force of circumstances or inherent strength, have been able to get the better of that handicap.''
So said Cécile Louise Stéphanie Chaminade, a French musician and composer.
Isabel Bradley pays tribute to a remarkable woman who composed wonderful music.
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On 9 August each year, South Africa commemorates the day in 1956 when twenty-thousand women from around the country marched to the Union Buildings to protest against the introduction of the Urban Areas Act, a particularly repressive law and precursor to the Apartheid Act.
Thankfully, the dark days of apartheid are long past. Today, women in South Africa and across the world, enjoy far more freedom than they ever have.
To celebrate Women’s Day in 2008, the Rand Symphony Orchestra presented a programme which included the Concertino for Flute and Orchestra by Cécile Chaminade.
Her full names were Cécile Louise Stéphanie Chaminade and she was born in Paris on 8 August, 1857.
As a successful woman, she is quoted as saying, “I do not believe that the few women who have achieved greatness in creative work are the exception, but I think that life has been hard on women; it has not given them opportunity. Women … have been handicapped, and only the few, through force of circumstances or inherent strength, have been able to get the better of that handicap.” (From Steel Moegle’s article, ‘Cécile Chaminade (1857 – 1944): the context of her music.’)
Cécile experienced the difficulties of a woman’s life, the prejudice against their education and their ability to follow a career. When she was a child, her father forbade her to study music, saying that women should be ‘wives and mothers’. Eventually, when she was eight, the popular opera composer, Georges Bizet, persuaded Monsieur Chaminade that his daughter was talented and should be permitted to study music. Several private teachers were employed to teach her singing, piano and composition. It was inconceivable that she would attend the Conservatoire de Musique de Paris, at that time, they had never admitted a female. The best-known of Cécile’s teachers was Benjamin Godard, who taught her composition.
Her first public performance was given when she was eighteen, and it included some of her own works. As she toured France, her compositions becoming increasingly popular. She first performed in England in 1892, where she was apparently a ‘welcome guest’ of Queen Victoria and became much admired.
After her father’s death in 1887, the family was impoverished; to keep herself and her ageing mother, Cécile was forced to earn money by writing and publishing her music as well as performing as a pianist.
It was speculated that her marriage, in 1901, to a music publisher from Marseilles, was one of ‘convenience’. He was Louis-Mathieu Carbonel, and was much older than she. She became a widow in 1907 and did not marry again.
A year after the death of her husband, Cécile went to the United States of America, where she was enthusiastically received. Women formed musical ‘Chaminade Clubs’ in her honour. As a successful, feminine musician, Cécile Chaminade became, in a sense, their role model.
In his article, ‘Cécile Chaminade (1857 – 1944): the Context of her Music’, Steel Moegle says, “… she wrote for the entertainment of women who spent their days as homemakers. Thus her music filled a void and served a different purpose than the classical music of her day. … It spoke to the feminine in women. … Chaminade’s music could have been a comforting escape from … (household) duties.”
As one of the world’s most published female composers, Cécile Chaminade, again according to Steel Moegle, “was successful despite societal conventions and pressures.”
She died in France on 13 April 1944 at the age of eighty-seven. In all ways, she was one of the women she spoke of who, through both ‘force of circumstances’ and ‘inherent strength’ succeeded in a field usually dominated by men in the times during which she lived.
On Women’s Day, South Africa, 2008, The Rand Symphony Orchestra saluted Cécile Louise Stéphanie Chaminade as a composer of wonderful music, who was also a woman. She remains a shining example to every woman of ambition.
Until next time… ‘here comes Treble!’
To read Steel Moegle’s article in full, see the following website:
http://mmc.edu.mk/IRAM/Conferences/StrugaIII/pdf/17Steel.pdf
Other informative on-line sites about Chaminade are:
http://www.ambache.co.uk/wChaminade.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9cile_Chaminade
http://www.morrisonfoundation.org/cecile_chaminade.htm
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By Isabel Bradley
