In 2020, at the terrible height of the COVID-19 pandemic, eight current and former Peabody Institute voice students collaborated via Soundtrap to record Scott Ordway’s “North Woods.”
Ordway composed “North Woods” as an octet for treble voice in 2014, commissioned by the Lorelei Ensemble. Through texts by Roman historian Tacitus, “North Woods” explores the physical and psychological concept of the “North,” a frontier that mysteriously beckons us, remaining vast and ever elusive.
Check out our final recording of this atmospheric chamber work on Soundcloud and my projects.
In January 2024, I had a fantastic time creating a new set of aria recordings. Our session took place at St Malachy in Manhattan, and I was lucky to work with pianist Eric Sedgwick and recording engineer Nathan Siler.
I also shared the recording session with wonderful soprano (and longtime friend) Elizabeth Van Os.
We recorded selections from Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Kurt Weill’s One Touch of Venus, Jacques Offenbach’s Le fifre enchanté, and Leoš Janáček’s Příhody lišky Bystroušky (The Cunning Little Vixen). Check out the videos on YouTubeand my media.
For this two-part series, I turned my attention to a song from long ago, “A chantar m’er de so q’ieu no volria” (I must sing of what I’d rather not) by medieval trobairitz Comtessa de Dia (c. 1140-1212).
“A chantar” is unique in the history of Western classical music; it is the sole surviving melody by a woman composer from medieval Occitania. By performing this more than eight-hundred-year-old song about heartbreak, I encountered a tangle of musical and personal lessons. I learned to sing a medieval song in Old Occitan for the first time (more on that in Part II). I considered how the weight of expertise, even in the pursuit of musical excellence and historical “authenticity,” is sometimes an exclusionary force. I also found that, although we live(d) in very different worlds, Comtessa de Dia and I share many things.
For a complete list of the works, composers, and performers, click on the “YouTube” icon to access the video’s description.
For a deep dive into the sound and visual world of the medieval era, I invite you to explore this musical compilation as you read. This collection includes sacred and secular works from the 11th to 15th Centuries, including works by Raimon de Miraval (c.1135/60-1220), Thomas of Celano (1185-1265), Alfonso X of Castile (1221-1284), and Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377).
I’m not an expert though… (she says, under her breath)
I love early music, but I’m not an early music expert.
And by early music, I mean something both enormous and quite specific – classical music repertoire from before 1750. By early music expert, I mean someone who has focused most of their musical and scholarly efforts on the interpretation, analysis, and performance of music from this particular time period.
In January 2023, my introduction to medieval music came in the form of “A chantar m’er de so q’ieu no volria” (I must sing of what I’d rather not), a medieval song by Comtessa de Dia (c. 1140-1212), a noblewoman and trobairitz from southern France.
After performing “A chantar” at Peabody Institute, I received an email from a professor of Classics, who had attended the concert. This professor expressed an interest in performing medieval music and was curious about my musical preparations – where did I find my sources, and how did I interpret them?
In responding to their email, I felt slightly anxious as I outlined my process. I had only sung one medieval song, once. I began my response with the ultimate apologetic qualifier, writing,
“Firstly, I should mention that [“A chantar”] marks my first foray into medieval monody, and I am by no means an expert in this era of vocal repertoire.”
I’ve heard other singers sheepishly admit to a lack of early music expertise. With hushed voices, they would share as an aside, “I’m not an expert though,” as if being labelled an “expert” was the permission you needed to assert any relationship at all to early music.
As I reread my email response over a year later, I cringed at my earnest attempt to appear transparent, as I blatantly undermined my own accomplishments. I see now that I wasn’t suffering solely from a case of impostor syndrome. Rather, I was expressing a very real anxiety, one that permeates classical music and readily evokes the specter of the “early music police.”
Of course, to argue even modestly against the orthodoxy of classical music expertise is an uncomfortable position to find yourself in. What you’re told from a young age in lessons, workshops, summer programs, and conservatory classes, is that expertise is – the whole point. We’re not “dabblers” or “amateurs.” It’s worth mentioning that these labels were used to police the professional achievements of 19th-century women musicians and have unsurprisingly retained their potency as insults for all in our modern times.
No, we’re expert practitioners with a honed set of skills, buoyed by the ability to position ourselves within a musical tradition where we can claim that we know enough about how music sounded in the past, to therefore know how it should (or could) sound in the present.
All of this I understand, and I value. For example, it’s clear to me that She Is Song represents my own attempt to articulate an area of personal expertise. It’s important to acknowledge, however, that any quest for an expert and historically “authentic” perspective creates blind spots, no matter the musical era.
Welcome to Medieval Occitania: The Land of the Trobairitz
Trobairitz, a feminized form of the word “troubadour,” were women composer-poets of the 12th to 13th Centuries, who resided in Occitania, a region roughly comprised of lands in modern-day southern France, the Val d’Aran in Catalonia, Monaco, and the Occitan Valleys of Italy. Active between 1170 and 1260, trobairitz wrote and sang in Old Occitan, or the langue d’oc.
A hand-colored woodcut depicting medieval country life from a 1517 French edition of Virgil Alamy Photo
Six modern variants of Occitan, a Romance language whose closest linguistic cousin is Catalan, are still in use throughout this region, although all are considered “endangered” by UNESCO due to their dwindling populations of younger speakers.[1] It is fascinating to consider that a not-so distant version of the language that Comtessa de Dia sang over eight hundred years ago in “A chantar” still exists today.
Cité de Carcassonne, an extant medieval fortress in Occitania and UNESCO World Heritage Site, illustrates the type of community where Comtessa de Dia could have lived. I was lucky enough to visit Carcassonne with my family in 2008; it was a magical experience to wander the streets of a medieval fortress city that remained completely intact over the centuries. Alamy Photo
In the annals of music history, the troubadour and the trobairitz are credited as the first composer-poets of a non-Latin, secular song repertoire in Western continental Europe.[2] This musical practice flourished throughout the High Middle Ages, a period that lasted from the late 11th Century until the devastating advent of the bubonic plague in the mid-14th Century. After the dissolution of the Frankish Empire, Occitania fractured into distinct principalities, ruled by a cadre of noblemen and bishops who jockeyed for power over the region.
William IX, Count of Poitiers and Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony (1071-1126) was such a man: he successfully captured the neighboring principality of Toulouse, was excommunicated twice, served as an unsuccessful military commander in the Crusade of 1101, and, in his greatest (and most lasting) achievement, wrote lyric poetry and set it to music.[3]
Eleven of William IX’s songs survive, representing the earliest extant troubadour repertoire. Nicknamed “The Troubadour,” he wrote primarily about love, sex, political machinations, and military conquests.
13th-century manuscript image of William IX Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 12473 Wikimedia Commons
14th-century manuscript image of a 1st Crusade siege (1095-1099) Bibliothèque nationale de France, Roman de Godefroy de Bouillon Alamy Photo
Listen to a wonderful English recitation of “Farai un vers de dreit nien” or “The Song of Nothing” by William IX, Count of Poitiers and Duke of Aquitaine, performed by singer, actor, and composer Martin Best with the Martin Best Mediaeval Ensemble.
In contemporary popular culture, troubadours are often depicted as lower-class, wandering musicians, who sang their songs from court to court. In Chantal Phan’s essay “The Comtessa de Dia and the Trobairitz,” the author observes that, like William IX, troubadours were primarily aristocrats, and their main concerns were often political and military in nature, rather than artistic.[4]
Although troubadours performed their own compositions, it was jongleurs, a class of itinerant performer travelling throughout the courts of Europe, who disseminated the troubadour and trobairitz repertoire beyond the borders of Occitania.
11th-century manuscript image of a jongleur and an acrobat or juggler Alamy Photo
The Many Songs of the Trobairitz
Trobairitz and troubadours created a variety of song genres, each defined by their poetic structure and literary themes. Examples include the canso (love song), sirventes (a political poem or satire), tenso (a rhetorical debate between two poets), maldit (a song bemoaning a lady’s perceived character flaws and misbehaviors), and planh (a eulogy, or lament on the death of a famous person).
Listen here to “Chanson do’ill mot son plan e prim” or “Songs whose words are sweet and easy” by troubadour Arnaut Daniel (fl. 1180-1200), performed by singer Barbara Thornton and the medieval ensemble Sequentia. This is an example of a canso, or love song, in which the singer both celebrates and bemoans an unrequited love. To read the Old Occitan poem and its English translation, click here.
In medieval chansonniers (songbooks), 2,500 texts have been attributed to more than four hundred male authors, or troubadours.[5] Sadly, a much smaller corpus has survived for the trobairitz. Approximately 23 to 49 texts are attributed to roughly twenty women authors, although this tally remains speculative due to the inclusion of anonymous poems that may have been written by trobairitz.[6]
Notably, only one trobairitz melody has survived, “A chantar m’er de so q’ieu no volria” (I must sing of what I’d rather not) by Comtessa de Dia. The text for “A chantar” appears in fourteen manuscripts, while the Comtessa’s melody is preserved only once in Chansonnier du Roi, a manuscript of more than six hundred medieval songs, collected between 1255 and 1260 for Charles of Anjou (1226-1285).
I drew my score for “A chantar” from this 13th-century chansonnier, housed at the Bibliothèque national de France in Paris. The melody for “A chantar” begins at the bottom right of the first page, marked by a gold “A.” It continues onto the top left corner of the following page.
The existence of a single trobairitz melody places scholars and performers in a difficult, yet fascinating bind. To “hear” the songs of these medieval female musicians, we must draw heavily from their literary practices. In Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner’s introduction to Songs of the Women Troubadours, the author writes, “The trobairitz give precious testimony of the ways aristocratic women in Southern France were able to participate fully in the game and life of poetry, not only as patrons and objects of song but as poets singing and reshaping the art of the troubadours.”[7]
Illustration from a manuscript by Rudolf von Ems (1200-1254) Alamy Photo
Like their male counterparts, trobairitz typically belonged to the aristocracy. However, the trobairitz corpus of songs remains a unique outgrowth of Occitan culture, seemingly unreplicated in other parts of Europe. Although Occitan society was feudalistic, and by no means feminist or remotely egalitarian, the songs of the trobairitz may illustrate the expanded rights that noblewomen attained in medieval southern France, particularly between 1180 and 1230.
Scholars, such as Meg Bogin, argue that a variety of socio-cultural factors may have contributed to the elevated status of Occitan noblewomen, including laws that allowed women to inherit property, the exodus of men to fight in the Crusades leaving women to manage estates, and a cultural emphasis in Occitania on economic stability and pleasure-seeking activities.[8]
An illustration of women picking roses to make rosewater from their petals; excerpted from the Tacuinum Sanitatis, a 14th-century medieval handbook on health, translated into Latin from the original 11th-century Arabic medical treatise by ibn Butlan of Baghdad Alamy Photo
The Early Music Police & Me
For several years, I intended to program medieval repertoire on recitals, but had repeatedly balked at the inclusion of songs by a medieval woman composer. From my undergrad days studying with countertenor Drew Minter, who exposed me to the music of Claudio Monteverdi, Henry Purcell, G.F. Handel, and J.S. Bach, I had always loved Baroque repertoire, an era that spanned roughly 1600 to 1750.
As I continued with my graduate studies in music and later entered the professional realm, I searched for opportunities to improve my Baroque skills. I attended workshops, participated in a Young Artist Program, performed Baroque repertoire in concert, and programmed it on my own recitals. As I became more and more interested in the contributions of women creators in classical music, I transferred that curiosity to the Baroque era, researching composers like Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677) and Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729).
Since I’ve always been drawn to a variety of classical genres and eras, I never specialized. I never attempted to become an expert in any type of early music.
Still, even with a decade of experience performing Baroque repertoire, the act of singing a song composed more than five hundred years prior to J.S. Bach’s death in 1750, intimidated me. The distance of “ancient” music from contemporary life seemed to shroud it in a haze of ineffable mystery.
I had fallen into a trap, one which I had experienced many times as I trudged through the field of classical music. I allowed myself to believe that, unless the title of “expert” had been bestowed upon me, unless I had read every treatise available or had participated in a variety of sanctioned workshops, I lacked the authority to engage with certain types of music on the concert stage.
I was, in fact, afraid of the early music police.
On a sheet of tips and advice handed to the participants of the Vancouver Early Music Festival Vocal Program, which I attended in 2013, “THERE ARE NO EARLY MUSIC POLICE” was typed in capital letters. As the two-week session concluded, our workshop facilitators organized a conversation around aspects of pursuing a vocal career in early music. From thoughts on auditions to vocal health, what stood out to me the most at the time (and what I remember clearly more than eleven years later) was a discussion about this final statement on the page – “There are no early music police.”
The program’s director explained that the “early music police” were gatekeepers, a word that was entirely new to my 2013 self. He revealed that they’re everywhere in the field of classical music, where notions of a “traditional” past problematically endure. He reminded us that it was an experimental spirit and an open mind that drove the adherents of the so-called early music revival of the mid- to late 20th Century in western Europe. These musicians and scholars saw beyond a Western cultural obsession with 18th- and 19th-century classical repertoire to rediscover Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque musical practice for future generations.
However, as the revivalists challenged entrenched notions of cultural “value,” they formed a new canon, now of early music. This canon was more inclusive than its 19th-century counterpart in some respects, but still defined by 20th-century musicians with their own set of standards, assumptions, and judgments. In terms of gender prejudice and underrepresentation, I would later learn that this expanded canon was a lot of the same, but now with older music.
Our director left us with a final imperative, which again, I’ve never forgotten. Never allow a quest for historical “authenticity,” no matter how well-intentioned, to bar you from entry.
Who was Comtessa de Dia?
While she retains her name in the historical archive, scant details exist about the identity of Comtessa de Dia. Most of what is known about the lives of trobairitz come from vidas, or short prose biographies in chansonniers. In these medieval song and poetry manuscripts, vidas often precede a collection of works by a particular author.
These life stories are unfortunately unreliable as biographical sources; they often draw information directly from an author’s poetry, reading more like a work of fiction. Many of them were also written over a century after the death of their subjects.[9]
13th-century manuscript image of Comtessa de Dia Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS cod. fr. 12473 Wikimedia Commons
Only five vidas of individual trobairitz appear in the chansonniers. Comtessa de Dia’s vida appears in four different 13th-century song manuscripts, which may be a testament to her renown as a trobairitz.[10] The Comtessa’s vida describes an attractive and kind noblewoman, married to Guillem de Poitiers, yet in love with another. Her unrequited passion for this lover, Raimbault d’Orange, inspires her many popular chansons (songs).
The countess of Dia was the wife of En Guillem de Poitiers, a lady beautiful and good. And she fell in love with En Raimbault d’Orange, and wrote many good chansons in his honor.[11]
In Maryann Corbett’s article “The Countess of Dia and the Women Troubadours,” the author identifies an existential problem with the melodramatic narrative of the Comtessa’s vida – despite exhaustive research, no woman has materialized in the medieval archive who fits its description.[12]
What scholars have posited is that Comtessa de Dia may have been the daughter of Count Isoard II of Diá, a town on the Drôme River in the marquisate of Provence. Her first name may have been Beatriz or Isoarda, but no medieval source specifies. As for the partners mentioned in the Comtessa’s vida, she could have been the wife of Guilhelm de Poitiers, Count of Viennois, but this marriage would have made her too young to be the lover of Raimbault d’Orange (1146-1173).[13] Raimbault d’Orange was also a respected troubadour; around forty of his poems survive in chansonniers.
Illustration of Comtessa de Dia from a 13th-century chansonnier Wikimedia CommonsIllustration of Raimbault d’Orange from a 13th-century chansonnier Wikimedia Commons
The Canso & Courtly Love
While the Comtessa’s biography lacks verifiable details, we can concretely consider her poetry and music. She composed one surviving tenso (debate poem) and four cansos (love songs) with “A chantar” being the only song to retain its music.
As the dominant troubadour song genre until the second half of the 13th Century, cansos were love songs, usually from the perspective of a male protagonist to their unattainable female lover, or domna(lady). These songs conveyed the drama of ‘fin’ amors (courtly love), a potent socio-cultural ideology amongst the nobility of the later Middle Ages.
Courtly scene from the Codex Vindobonensis Alamy Photo
‘Fin’ amors valued gentilesse (refinement) as an elemental aspect of love. Courtiers refined themselves as nobles by idealizing and remaining faithful to an unrequited love. Since medieval marriage was often arranged and the product of military and/or financial negotiations, ‘fin’ amors was an expression of romantic love outside the confines of a contractual relationship. In this way, medieval canso celebrated love as a wellspring of joi(joy), while also portraying it as a depressing and isolating force due to the lover’s unattainability.[14]
“A chantar m’er de so q’ieu no volria”
Illustration of an “Allegory of Music” in Echecs amoureux by Robinet Testard (fl. 1471-1531) Bibliothèque nationale de France, Français 143, fol. 65v Wikimedia Commons
In “A chantar,” Comtessa de Dia constructs an intimate portrait of an angry and heartbroken woman, who has been abandoned by her unspecified lover for another. From stanza to stanza, she employs a series of often-contradictory rhetorical tactics, such as disbelief, arrogance, frustration, acceptance, and seduction, to prove her righteous case against him, yet possibly win back his affections.
Listen to my performance of “A chantar” with harpist Alix Evans at Peabody Institute in January 2023. Our collaboration was part of Sauvez-moi de ‘amour, a chamber music program, which you can read more about here. Also, check out the second installment in this series, Comtessa de Dia, The Early Music Police & Me: Part II, to learn more about how to actually sing a medieval song in Old Occitan (and my final musings on the early music police).
A chantar m’er de so q’ieu no volria
A chantar m’er de so q’ieu no volria, tant me rancur de lui cui sui amia, car eu l’am mais que nuilla ren que sia; vas lui no.m val merces ni cortesia ni ma beltatz ni mos pretz ni mos sens, c’atressi.m sui enganada e trahia com degr’esser s’ieu fos desavinens.
D’aisso.m conort car anc non fis faillenssa, amics, vas vos per nuilla captenenssa, anz vos am mais non fetz Seguis Valenssa, e platz mi mout que eu d’amar vos venssa, lo mieus amics, car etz lo plus valens; mi faitz orgoil en digz et en parvenssa e si etz francs vas totas autras gens.
Meraveill me cum vostre cors s’orgoilla, amics, vas me per q’ai razon qe.m doilla; non es ies dreitz c’autr’amors vos mi toilla per nuilla ren qe.us diga ni.us acoilla, e member vos cals fo.l comenssamens de nostr’amor, ia Dompnedieus non vuoilla q’en ma colpa sia.l departimens.
Proessa grans q’el vostre cors s’aizina e lo rics pretz q’avetz m’en ataina, e’una non sai loindana ni vezina si vol amar vas vos no si aclina; mas vos, amics, ez ben tant conoissens que ben devetz conoisser la plus fina, e membre vos de nostres covinens.
Valer mi deu mos pretz e mos paratges e ma beutatz e plus mos fins coratges, per q’ieu vos man lai on es vostre estatges esta chansson que me sia messatges, e voill saber, lo mieus bels amics gens, per que m’etz vos tant fers ni tant salvatges, no sai si s’es orgoills ni mals talens.
Mas aitan plus vuoill li digas, messatges, q’en trop orgoill ant gran dan maintas gens.
I must sing of what I’d rather not
I must sing of what I’d rather not, I’m so angry about him whose friend I am, for I love him more than anything; mercy and courtliness don’t help me with him, nor does my beauty, or my rank, or my mind; for I am every bit as betrayed and wronged as I’d deserve to be if I were ugly.
It comforts me that I have done no wrong to you, my friend, through any action, indeed, I love you more than Seguis loved Valenssa, and it pleases me to outdo you in loving, friend, for you are the most valiant; you offer prideful words and looks to me, but are gracious to every other person.
It amazes me how prideful your heart is towards me, friend, for which I’m right to grieve; it isn’t fair that another love takes you away because of any word or welcome I might give you. And remember how it was at the beginning of our love; may the Lord God not allow our parting to be any fault of mine.
The great valor that dwells in your person and the high rank you have, these trouble me, for I don’t know a woman, far or near, who, if she wished to love, would not turn to you; but you, friend, are so knowing that you surely ought to know the truest one, and remember what our agreement was.
My rank and lineage should be of help to me, and my beauty and, still more, my true heart, this song, let it be my messenger, therefore, I send it to you, out on your estate, and I would like to know, my fine, fair friend, why you are so fierce and cruel to me, I can’t tell if it’s from pride or malice.
I especially want you, messenger, to tell him that too much pride brings harm to many persons.
Text from Songs of the Women Troubadours (1995); Edited and translated by Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Laurie Shepard, and Sarah White
Ultimately, the Countess demands to know the cause of her lover’s fickleness – why have his feelings abruptly changed towards her? She cannot fathom why; she believes herself to be irresistible and has no embarrassment in citing her beauty, intelligence, fidelity, rank, and noble birth. For our protagonist, it is unclear whether her ex-lover’s hurtful behavior is a result of his overwhelming arrogance or a blatant desire to wound her. Regardless, she hopes that the words of “A chantar” reach his ears, forcing him to confront his shameful actions.
It is unclear whether the Comtessa publicly performed “A chantar” as herself with its subsequent autobiographical implications (perhaps referring to her unrequited love for troubadour Raimbault d’Orange), or as the fictional character of a rejected “Countess.” Regardless, her words fly off the page, ever relatable to a contemporary audience. Many of us have behaved like the Comtessa and her fickle lover – we have humbled ourselves to sudden heartbreak, while pridefully touting our own exceptional qualities in the face of brutal rejection.
“The Lute Player and the Harpist” (c. 1495-1503) Alamy Photos
In this way, it is fascinating to experience “A chantar” as an illustration of how trobairitz engaged with the complex poetic and musical forms of the troubadour repertoire. Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner writes, “In [their songs] we can see most vividly how the trobairitz are able to renew the poetic system from within by combining in a variety of ways the different personae of women generally separated and fragmented by the male poets… Through the kaleidoscope of her songs, the trobairitz becomes at once woman, lady, and poet.”[15]
The Lingering Ghosts of the Early Music Police
15th-century illustration of women musicians playing the shawm, lute, cornet, portative, psaltery, recorder, and tabor from Martin Le Franc’s Le Champion des Dames (1440 or 1442) which relates the noble deeds of women throughout history Alamy Photos
Over the past eleven years since our workshop discussion in Vancouver, I’ve met the early music police, although they’re hardly unique to early music. Indeed, gatekeepers are everywhere; they’re a confusing mixture of real individuals and organizations, cultural abstractions, systemic biases, and frankly, the ghosts I create from my own self-doubt.
I’ve found that they’re the ones who use their knowledge, their expertise as it were, to keep you out, not to invite you in. Whether through an offhand remark, a bullying posture, or an expression that simply screams “you’re really going to sing it like that?,” the result is often the same – a nagging fear that, even if you’ve worked your hardest to achieve all the trappings of professionalism, your voice will never quite belong.
What ultimately humbled me about my personal sojourn to sing the only surviving song by a noblewoman from medieval Occitania was that – I didn’t need to necessarily gird myself against an outside force, waiting to undermine my confidence. Sadly, I was expert at doing that on my own. This time, I had become my own version of the early music police.
And so, in the spirit of Comtessa de Dia and her trobairitz compatriots, who refashioned the lyrical and musical framework of troubadour song from the inside-out, rejecting preconceived notions is sometimes best accomplished in the doing.
When I finally committed to “A chantar” in concert, something unexpected, yet wonderful occurred. The early music police (although still very much with us all) were nowhere to be seen. Instead, a group of talented individuals appeared, who, if we were members of an improv troupe, said “yes, and” at every turn and invited me in.
This blog will be published in two installments. Coming soon – Comtessa de Dia, The Early Music Police & Me: Part II…
Notes
[1] “Endangered Languages: The Full List,” The Guardian, April 15, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/apr/15/language-extinct-endangered. [2] Chantal Phan, “Comtessa de Dia and the Trobairitz,” in Women Composers: Music Through the Ages, eds. Martha Furman Schleifer and Sylvia Glickman (New York: G.K. Hall, 1996), vol 1: 61. [3] Ibid. [4] Ibid. [5] Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Laurie Shepard, and Sarah White, Songs of the Women Troubadours (New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995), xxxix. [6] Songs of the Women Troubadours, xi. [7] Ibid. [8] Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner. “Fictions of the Female Voice: The Women Troubadours.” Speculum 67, no. 4 (1992): 4, https://doi.org/10.2307/2863471. [9] Maryann Corbett, “The Countess of Dia and the Women Troubadours,” The Mezzo Cammin, accessed on April 1-29, 2024, https://www.mezzocammin.com/timeline/timeline.php?vol=timeline&iss=1100&cat=50&page=dia. [10] Corbett, “The Countess of Dia and the Women Troubadours.” [11] Meg Bogin, The Women Troubadours (New York: W.W. Norton, 1980), 163. [12] Corbett, “The Countess of Dia and the Women Troubadours.” [13] Elizabeth Aubrey, “Comtessa de Dia” in Grove Music Online, 2001, https://doi-org.proxy.alumni.jhu.edu/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.02423. [14] Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia, “courtly love,” Encyclopedia Britannica, January 8, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/art/courtly-love. [15] Songs of the Women Troubadours, xivi.
Sources
1. Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Laurie Shepard, and Sarah White, Songs of the Women Troubadours (New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995), xi-9.
2. Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner. “Fictions of the Female Voice: The Women Troubadours.” Speculum 67, no. 4 (1992): 865–91. https://doi.org/10.2307/2863471.
2. Timothy J. McGee, A.G. Rigg, and David N. Klausner, eds., Singing Early Music: The Pronunciation of European Languages in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), 103-112.
3. Henrik van der Werf, The Extant Troubadour Melodies: Transcriptions and Essays for Performers and Scholars (self-pub., 1984), 3-83.
4. Meg Bogin, The Women Troubadours (New York: W.W. Norton, 1980).
5. Maryann Corbett, “The Countess of Dia and the Women Troubadours,” The Mezzo Cammin, accessed on April 1-29, 2024, https://www.mezzocammin.com/timeline/timeline.php?vol=timeline&iss=1100&cat=50&page=dia.
6. Chantal Phan, “Comtessa de Dia and the Trobairitz,” in Women Composers: Music Through the Ages, eds. Martha Furman Schleifer and Sylvia Glickman (New York: G.K. Hall, 1996), vol 1: 61-68.
7. “Endangered Languages: The Full List,” The Guardian, April 15, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/apr/15/language-extinct-endangered.
8. Elizabeth Aubrey, “Comtessa de Dia” in Grove Music Online, 2001, https://doi-org.proxy.alumni.jhu.edu/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.02423.
9. Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia, “courtly love,” Encyclopedia Britannica, January 8, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/art/courtly-love.
10. Sue Carole DeVale, Bo Lawergren, Joan Rimmer, Robert Evans, William Taylor, Cristina Bordas, Cheryl Ann Fulton, John M. Schechter, Nancy Thym-Hochrein, Hannelore Devaere and Mary McMaster, “Harp” in Grove Music Online, 2001, https://doi-org.proxy.alumni.jhu.edu/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.45738.
The Violin Case (1923) by Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris | Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
Music, this divine language, translates all beauty, all truth, all ardor. The object of our eternal wishes takes a form; music holds out its arms to us and yet, it is far, very far away and we will not reach it. It is like the threshold of a garden of delights where everything is illuminated and perfumed, a place of rest where we know we will not enter.[1]
FROM SOUVENIRS ET RÉFLEXIONS (1974); ADAPTED FROM MEL BONIS’ NOTEBOOKS
As I considered repertoire for my Doctoral chamber music recital, I settled on the theme of love, partly because it was impossible to avoid. I can’t describe the countless songs I’ve sung in various languages, either extolling the sweet overtures of first love or the bitter pain of rejection. For this project, I found myself drawn to a specific aspect of love: the eternal conflict between idealizing the object of our affections and the messier realities of loving another human being.
Little did I know how deeply this tension would inform the life and mélodies (songs) of French composer Mel Bonis (1858-1937).
I encountered Bonis’ song repertoire by chance on L’Heure Rose: Musique des Femmes, a fantastic 2014 album with soprano Hélène Guilmette and pianist Martin Dubé. To listen to L’Heure Rose, featuring mélodies by late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century women composers including Mel Bonis, Augusta Holmès, Pauline Viardot, Amy Beach, Cécile Chaminade, and Lili Boulanger, click below.
Note: To access the album’s complete playlist, click on the triple bar icon in the top right corner of the video.
As I listened to L’Heure Rose, Bonis’ Trois Mélodies, op. 91 stood apart with the lyric contour of their melodies and their surprising harmonic progressions. I found myself drawn to a romantic sensibility deeply embedded within Bonis’ music.
It is often mentioned that the act of mapping biographical events onto a composer’s creative choices can be a superficial exercise. However, in the case of Mel Bonis, as I learned more about her biography, her song compositions seemed inextricably intertwined with the ever-unfolding elements of her life.
These elements – a forbidden romance, a secret daughter, the struggle to balance her role as a wealthy bourgeois mother with her musical career, and the gendered prejudice that distorted her professional life…
I wondered how the composer truly felt as she set Maurice Bouchor’s poetry in Trois Mélodies, texts which outline the poet’s desire for an unattainable beloved.
Portrait of Mel Bonis at nineteen years of age Charles-Auguste Corbineau (1835-1901) | Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
In turn, I wondered if Trois Mélodies could be considered as an entry in Bonis’ diary. By examining these songs in greater detail, we could perhaps reveal some aspect of the emotional life of the composer herself, whose music has long been overlooked.
Mélanie Bonis (1858-1937)
Color lithograph of the Boulevard de la Madeleine in Paris, France (1852) Paul Lancel | Alamy
Mélanie Bonis was born into a Parisian lower middle-class family. Her father, Pierre-François Bonis (1826-1900), was a foreman in a luxury watchmaking factory, and her mother, Marie Anne Clémence Mangin (1836-1918), worked as a textile trimmer from the family home.[2]
With her sister Eugénie-Caroline, Bonis was raised in a strict Catholic household, a religion she would devoutly practice for the rest of her life. Her parents had little interest in music and actively discouraged her musical education. Bonis’ musical aptitude, though, was apparent as a child, and she taught herself to play the piano.
In Souvenirs et Réflexions, a posthumous memoir assembled by Bonis’ daughter Jeanne Brochot from her mother’s notebooks, the composer recalls her fraught and ecstatic relationship to music, which she cultivated from a young age.
I would like to be able to describe the state of mind that is at once so distressing, torturous, and delicious into which music plunges me – the music that I love. I should be able to do it, I experienced this sharp sensation to the point of pain so much, even as a child (I could say, especially as a child). It was then like an agony of aspirations towards happiness, a tension, of every sensitive, cordial being, towards a thing which smiles upon us and slips away at the same time.[3]
At twelve years old, Bonis’ parents allowed their daughter music theory and piano lessons at home. After a family friend’s introduction, Bonis took private lessons with eminent composer César Franck (1822-1890), who was impressed by her musical abilities. Bonis’ parents finally consented in 1877 to her enrollment at the famed Paris Conservatoire; she was eighteen years old.
At the Conservatoire, Bonis would study piano accompaniment, harmony, and counterpoint with Ernest Guiraud (1837-1892) and August Bazille (1828-1891). Her classmates included composers Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and Gabriel Pierné (1863-1937), although instruction was often separated by gender.[4] Bonis excelled in her musical pursuits, securing second prize in harmony and accompaniment in 1879 and first prize in harmony in 1880.[5]
While Bonis was part of a generation of French women with growing access to public life, she faced considerable setbacks in her pursuit of a professional career, particularly with limited networking opportunities and blatantly gender-biased assessments of her musical abilities. We can imagine the learning environment for women musicians at the Conservatoire from this 1895 photo: a stately room, filled with musical scores and centuries of knowledge, guarded in perpetuity by busts of the so-called “great men.”
Unlike her male counterparts, Bonis could not submit compositions for the illustrious Prix de Rome, which was barred to women applicants until 1903.[6] Pianist Christine Géliot, great-granddaughter of Mel Bonis and founder of the Association Mel Bonis, recounts a biting remark, passed down through oral history. After hearing Mel Bonis’ string quartet in 1905, composer Camille Saint-Saëns observed to painter Jean Gounod, “I didn’t know a woman could write that. She knows all the ins and outs of a being a composer!”[7]
During her time at the Conservatoire, it is no wonder that Mélanie Bonis adopted the compositional alias of Mel Bonis. By removing feminine connotations from her name, Bonis attempted to ward off this gendered prejudice, as she sought the publication and public performance of her musical works.[8]
Watch and listen to pianist Diana Sahakyan’s beautiful interpretation of “Desdémona” from Femmes de Légende in her eponymous 2022 album.
Femmes de Légende, a collection of Bonis’ piano portraits composed over fifteen years, was published by Furore in 2003. Bonis’ seven solo piano works were inspired by female figures from ancient mythology, legends, or plays, including Desdemona, Ophelia, Mélisande, and Salome.
While accompanying voice lessons at the Conservatoire, Bonis met fellow student Amédée Landély Hettich (1856-1937), who was a singer, poet, and critic at the music journal L’art musical. Their relationship deepened over a shared love of music and poetry, and they collaborated on mélodies, set to Hettich’s poems.[9] Géliot writes, “[Hettich] was to become an influential and decisive figure in the life of Mel Bonis and in her relationship to the world of voice.”[10] In 1884, “Villanelle” and “Sur la plage,” mélodies with texts by Hettich, would be Bonis’ first published works.[11]
In 1881, Bonis’ parents rejected Hettich’s marriage proposal, and Bonis was forced to abandon her studies at the Conservatoire to sever their relationship. In 1883, at twenty-five years old, she wed industrialist Albert Domange (1836-1918), who was twenty-two years her senior with five children. It was an arranged marriage, one which raised the social standing of the Bonis family. Together, Bonis and Domange would have three children, and she assumed a new identity, that of “Madame Albert Domange,” managing her household in a mansion in Paris, now a wealthy bourgeois wife and mother of eight.[12]
Amédée Landély Hettich | Association Mel Bonis
Mel Bonis at twenty-five years old, newly married | Association Mel Bonis
Albert Domange | Association Mel Bonis
In Souvenirs et Refléxions, Bonis recounts her fascination with dreams. She believed dreams to be potential representations of truth, whether of our innate desires and worldly experiences, or as harbingers of future events. Here, Bonis relates a recurrent dream, which opaquely references the perceived incompatibilities between her “personas,” that of Bonis as a committed society wife and Bonis as an independent artist.
I saw my sister in a dream in the form of a statue (not completely inanimate, but immobile, placed on a pedestal, hung on the wall). She was much larger than life, her face very altered, her gaze fixed anxiously on a clock. I felt that she was in great pain and that time seemed terribly long to her. She uttered these words: ‘Mrs. Albert Domange’ … This dream had an enormous impression on me; I will not be deprived of the idea that it has a meaning. Where my sister is, she is not free; inert, she suffers her fate… Why ‘Mrs. Albert Domange’ rather than ‘Mélanie’???[13]
While Bonis’ dream portrays the lifeless statue as her sister, who also married a wealthy entrepreneur, I am reminded of Bonis herself and the cage-like comforts of her bourgeois life. Perhaps, this explains her sister’s stark warning to “Mrs. Albert Domange” and not “Mélanie,” that if Bonis allowed social convention to subsume her identity as an artist, she too could find herself frozen in time as an adornment on the wall.
Due to her husband’s lack of interest in her music and domestic obligations, Bonis composed little in the first decade of her marriage. However, she never abandoned her musical calling, and Bonis continued to revise compositions and communicate with her Conservatoire professors.[14] In 1891, Bonis submitted Les Gitanos, valse espagnole, op. 15 to a valse competition with the journal Piano Soleil. After winning first prize and having her score published in other journals, Bonis was inspired to resume her musical endeavors.[15]
Throughout her life, Bonis sought to develop her musical career by competing in competitions, maintaining close relationships with publishers, namely Leduc, Demets, and Eschig, and becoming a member of professional organizations to network with other musicians. In competitions organized by the Société des Compositeurs de Musique, Bonis won first prize in 1899 and honorable mention in 1904 for her harp compositions. She was a member of the Société des Compositeurs de Musique from 1899 to 1911, and in 1910, and Bonis served as the first woman secretary of the organization.[16]
With a newfound momentum, Bonis began to compose more and more, primarily from 1892 to 1914. She ultimately produced 300 compositions, including solo piano works, mélodies, organ works, choral works, chamber music, and orchestral pieces. Géliot writes, “The most striking thing is the discrepancy between the moral rigidity of ‘Madame Domange,’ obsessed by her social duties and steeped in piety, and the extraordinarily bold sensuality which emerges from the musical works that she produced under her pseudonym.”[17]
Cello Sonata in F major, op. 67 with cellist Tanya Tomkins and pianist Eric Zivian | Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (2021-2022)
In the 1890s, it was at the office of her publisher, Alphonse Leduc (1804-1868), where Bonis would encounter Hettich once more. He was now married and a professional singer and vocal pedagogue. Hettich still wrote for L’art musical, who owned the Leduc publishing house. Hettich encouraged Bonis to pursue her musical career, and they resumed their friendship with meetings at her publisher’s office. Hettich also supported Bonis with introductions at salon gatherings, where she performed her music and met potential artistic collaborators.
During this period, mélodies drew the two musicians together yet again. Hettich offered Bonis his newest poem, “Noël Pastoral,” and weeks later, she set it to music. “Noël Pastoral” was Bonis’ first mélodie published by Leduc.[18]
After resuming their friendship in the 1890s, Bonis and Hettich fell back in love once again. Their clandestine romance led to the 1899 secret birth of their daughter, Jeanne-Pauline-Madeleine Verger; Bonis was forty-two years old. To conceal her pregnancy, Bonis stayed alone at her estate in Sarcelles and later in Switzerland, telling family that she needed medical treatment for an ailment.[19]
The baby was placed in the home of Bonis’ former maid, who would later raise the child as a foster parent. Without admitting to the affair, Bonis would never be able to recognize her daughter legally.
After Madeleine’s birth, Bonis distanced herself from Hettich and the societal dishonor that their relationship would bring. She managed her daughter’s affairs from a distance, supporting Madeleine’s education at boarding school. After the death of his wife, Hettich was finally able to recognize Madeleine legally as his daughter; she was thirteen years old.
Due to her affair and Madeleine’s secret birth, Bonis became tormented by the shame of transgressing her Catholic beliefs. She began to suffer bouts of depression and exhaustion, which worsened in her later years. Bonis turned to composition to exorcise her demons, although the outbreak of World War I led to an eight-year hiatus in her musical activities.[20]
Upon her husband’s death in 1918, Bonis invited Madeleine on summer holidays with her children. Throughout Madeleine’s childhood, Bonis presented herself as a “godmother” figure, visiting the child at Hettich’s home when she returned on school breaks. Tragedy, however, loomed large. Bonis’ son, Édouard, now returned from the horrors of war, confessed his love for Madeleine, who unbeknownst to him was his half-sister. Ultimately, Bonis was forced to reveal Madeline’s true parentage, although the family kept the matter secret for several generations due to social stigma.
Madeleine and Édouard separated, later marrying other partners, and having families of their own. Madeleine maintained a life-long relationship with Bonis, but it remained forever altered by the revelation of her secret birth. Géliot posits that Bonis’ children, like the composer herself and Hettich, may never have truly healed from the trauma of their forbidden romance.[21]
From 1922 to 1937, the last fifteen years of Bonis’ life, she lived more and more in isolation, composing in her studio and spending time in prayer. Bonis’ retreat from society into spiritual contemplation was also reflected in her engagement with sacred music; she now composed primarily organ and choral works. Although Bonis attempted to promote her newest compositions with publishers, the composer found that her musical style was now considered unfashionable, even conservative. The compositions of her final years would not be published until the end of the twentieth century.[22]
It is important to note that, while Bonis lacked certain freedoms in her life, her artistry was not completely stymied. Instead, the composer found herself encased in gendered socio-cultural expectations to which she continually subordinated her creative desires. Bonis simultaneously labored under the weight of societal indifference and a lack of investment in her musical efforts, which, although she had access to education, wealth, and status, inevitably inhibited her career. This pernicious indifference manifested itself in Bonis’ life from childhood, from her parents, her husband, and later her publishers, and it persisted after her death.
The trajectory of Mel Bonis’ legacy is a story of neglect, preservation, and ultimately, advocacy. Like so many women composers of her era, Bonis’ music was “forgotten” after her death in 1937, a cultural forgetting that was precipitated by the devastations of World War II and shifting compositional styles throughout the twentieth century that made her music unpopular. In the aftermath of World War II, Bonis’ eldest children, Pierre Domange and Jeanne Brochot, collected her unpublished works, submitting her catalogue to the Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique. Publishers, however, showed little interest in publishing (or republishing) her compositions, and many of the copyright permissions were ultimately returned to the Bonis family.[23]
Christine Géliot recounts her moving experience of rediscovering her great-grandmother’s musical legacy through the tenacity of a stranger, German cellist Eberhard Mayer. In the 1990s, Mayer discovered one of Bonis’ string quartets, and he committed himself to finding out more about the composer. At that time, there was little to no publicly available information about Mel Bonis. In 1997, he was connected to Yvette Domange, Géliot’s aunt, who had preserved Bonis’ archive in her basement. Yvette Domange asked her niece for assistance in organizing materials for Mayer’s visit, and Géliot, a professor of piano, directly engaged with her great-grandmother’s legacy for the first time. She became a passionate advocate for Bonis’ music and founded the Association Mel Bonis, which is now responsible for publishing and advocating for the composer’s musical works. Géliot also has written the only comprehensive biography of the composer.[24]
To read more on the incredible work of Géliot and the Association Mel Bonis in championing Bonis and preserving her legacy, click here.
Bonis’ musical education was shaped by a resurgence of nationalist sentiment in France, caused by the 1871 defeat of Napoleon III in the year-long Franco-Prussian War. To reject Germanic cultural influences, composers sought to create a specifically “French” musical style. Ultimately, no one compositional style coalesced. Rather, a variety of compositional movements blossomed, informing one another, such as late Romanticism, Neoclassicism, and Impressionism.[25]
Géliot argues that Bonis was most influenced by post-Romantic French composers Franck, Saint-Saëns, and Gabriel Fauré and remained committed to tonality and Classical form. However, she still cultivated her own unique harmonic and rhythmic languages, particularly adhering in her mélodies to the rhetoric of her French texts.[26] Bonis’ music also incorporated Impressionist sensibilities by evoking mood and atmosphere through extended harmonies.
Bonis ultimately composed forty songs, and she selected poetry from several authors, including Amédée Landély Hettich, Maurice Bouchor, Edouard Guinand, Victor Hugo, Anne Osmont, Madeleine Pape-Carpantier, and Bonis herself under pen names. Throughout her song repertoire, Bonis engaged with multiple themes and styles, including light character sketches, love songs, and sacred meditations.[27]
While half of Bonis’ song output was published during her lifetime, by the late 1990s none of her mélodies remained in print. Between 1998 and 2012, the Association Mel Bonis partnered with French publisher Editions Fortin-Armiane to republish Bonis’ collected vocal repertoire.[16] To purchase all three volumes of Bonis’ collected mélodies from Editions Fortin-Armiane, please click here.
Viens! (Come!) by Mel Bonis with mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty and pianist Una Hunt Recorded at the Drogheda Arts Festival in 2022
Maurice Bouchor (1855-1929)
In Trois Mélodies, op. 91, composed in 1912 and published for the first time in 2001, Bonis chose contemporary poetry of French poet, playwright, and puppeteer Maurice Bouchor. Bonis’ set of three songs includes poems from Bouchor’s 1895 collection Les symboles, nouvelle série (The Symbols, New Series). Bonis was not alone in her fascination with Bouchor’s poetry; notable mélodie composer Ernest Chausson (1855-1899) set over thirty of Bouchor’s texts to music.
In an 1893 society editorial in The New York Times, an unknown author discusses Bouchor’s upcoming trip to New York City, offering unique insight into the poet’s character, appearance, and public persona.
[Bouchor] is thirty-eight, tall, and an evidence of the theory formulated by Delacroix that nature is a romanticist … Nature gave to him the graces of a beard long and soft as that of the antique Scamander River… He is studying Buddhism assiduously, is a vegetarian, and practices, with evident pleasure, a life of Carthusian austerity. If he were not a celebrated poet, he might be famous for the special charm of his personality.[28]
Maurice Bouchor (1855-1929) Unknown Author | Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
Born in Paris and educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Bouchor published his first poetry collection, Les Chansons Joyeuses (The Joyful Songs), at nineteen years of age. It was an instant success, and he continued to publish poetry in both prose and verse between 1874 and 1880.
Inspired by Catholicism and religious mysticism, Bouchor was influenced by the late nineteenth-century Symbolist literary movement in France. By rejecting aesthetics of naturalism, Symbolists endeavored to represent absolute truths figuratively via metaphorical language and images. With an emphasis on evoking symbolic imagery, rather than depicting a subject realistically, Symbolist adherents ultimately believed that symbols could reveal details of the poet’s psyche.
With the artist collective “Les Vivants” (The Living), Bouchor also designed puppets and wrote scripts for original marionette plays, which were performed at the Petit de la Galerie Vivienne in Paris. Although the theatre only survived from 1889 to 1892, it is considered one of the first theatrical venues of the Symbolist movement in France.[29]
Le Symboliste, a short-lived French newspaper created by Jean Moréas, Gustave Kahn, and Paul Adam to espouse the ideals of the Symbolist movement (1886) SartleVintage postcard of Vichy puppet theatre, late 19th- to early 20th-century Alamy
Trois Mélodies, op. 91
Bonis composed Trois Mélodies in 1912, years after her affair with Hettich had ended and several years prior to revealing to her daughter the facts of Madeleine’s birth. Musically, Trois Mélodies represent a composer in total command of her compositional aesthetic, as she deftly enlivens a series of dense, and often impenetrable metaphors about love. Since mélodies played such a pivotal and enduring role in Bonis’ relationship with Hettich, we can potentially imagine these songs as a reflection of Bonis’ own romantic journey with Hettich and their daughter.
In Trois Mélodies, Bonis excerpts three Bouchor texts that obsess over the glorious Viola, who both charms and haunts the poet. Viola may reference Shakespeare’s shipwrecked protagonist from Twelfth Night, who disguises herself as a male page, only to fall in love with the duke that she serves. Bouchor had a fascination with the works of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), and he translated several plays for performances at the marionette theater, as well as published Les Chansons de Shakespeare (The Songs of Shakespeare) in 1896.
Since Bouchor’s Shakespearean reference is oblique at best, I prefer to funnel the poetic and musical ideas of Trois Mélodies through the paintings of French artist Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), a founder of Impressionism in visual art and another often-overlooked woman artist of Bonis’ era.
In the opening song of Trois Mélodies, entitled “Viola” by Bonis, the protagonist acknowledges that they have hardly “glimpsed” at their beloved. Regardless, Viola soon dissolves into a series of metaphors: her eyes mirror the shining skies, her smile embodies tenderness and immortality. Such descriptions of Viola are nebulous, as if from a dream. In fact, they paint a more vivid portrait of the poet’s state of mind than of an actual living, breathing Viola. Still, as Bonis sets the text over swinging waltz-like phrases with indicated rubato (a tempo’s give-and-take), the poet’s unrequited affections seem to cause little pain. In fact, the protagonist appears ebullient, thoroughly enjoying their metaphorical Viola from a distance.
i. Viola
Viola, ton sourire et tes yeux caressants Où le ciel curieux et ravi se reflète; Ton sourire et tes yeux, ma fraîche violette, Chantent l’inaltérable amour que je pressens.
O toi que j’entrevis à peine, ton sourire Me parle de tendresse et d’immortalité; Je [veux]* t’aimer, je t’aime, et me voici hanté Par tes yeux où le ciel émerveillé se mire.
J’évoque en ce moment tes cheveux blonds et fins, Tes yeux, ta joue en fleur que je n’ai point baisée, Ton sourire et, dans la lumière irisée, J’abandonne mon âme à des songes divins.
*[] denotes alteration to text by Bonis
i. Viola
Viola, your smile and your gentle eyes Are mirrored in the intriguing and rapturous sky; Your smile and your eyes, my sweet little violet, Sing of the steadfast love that I foresee.
Oh you, whom I barely glimpse at, your smile Speaks to me of tenderness and of immortality; I want to love you, I love you, and I have been haunted By your eyes, in which the sky, enthralled, gazes at itself.
I recall in this moment your blonde, fine hair, Your eyes, your flushed cheek that I did not kiss, Your smile and, in the iridescent light, I abandon my soul to divine dreams.
Translation by Noelle McMurtry
ii. Sauvez-moi de l’amour (Save me from the love)
The Thicket (1894) | Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) Public Domain via Gallerix
In “Sauvez-moi de l’amour” (Save me from love), the second song of Bonis’ set, the poet’s mindset has drastically altered. They are now trapped, lost within a “thicket” of unrequited love. Thorns, brambles, and bushes cut at their skin, drawing blood. The poet, however, thinks little of this pain in comparison to what Love has forced upon them. They have been “seized” by Cupid, who causes “pointless suffering” as the poet wanders through the wilderness of their own tangled emotions. Bonis’ piano accompaniment employs fluid arpeggiations to create drama in the musical line, and she uses shifting meter and tempos to reflect the poet’s unstable mental state. “Sauvez-moi de l’amour” is also an excellent example of Bonis’ text-setting capabilities, and she chooses dotted rhythms and sixteenth notes to articulate the subtle inflection and flow of her French text.
ii. Sauvez-moi de l’amour
Sauvez-moi de l’amour, taillis où je m’enfonce, Églantiers épineux qui déchirez mes doigts, Baisers sauvages de la ronce, Insectes altérés et cruels de [nos]* bois!
Plus de vains rêves, plus de saintes fiançailles! Je me suis trop créé de stériles douleurs; Dans les ténèbres des broussailles J’oublierai l’île vierge et ses plaines de fleurs.
Ah! comment croire encore au songe magnifique? Car le brutal Enfant vient de me ressaisir, Et la vision séraphique S’évanouit au souffle ardent de mon désir.
N’espère pas tromper la puissante nature Si tu nourris en toi le plus timide amour Tu seras bientôt sa pâture Où le coeur a frémi Eros aura son tour.
Dan les buissons aigus je me fraie un passage Arbustes emmêlés qu’ignore le soleil Frappez moi, cinglez mon visage, Et faites ruisseler à flots mon sang vermeil.
*[] denotes alteration to text by Bonis
ii. Save me from love
Save me from love, this thicket where I am stuck, Thorny wild roses that prick my fingers, Fierce kisses from the blackberry bush, Distorted and cruel insects of [our] woods!
More than vain dreams, more than saintly betrothals! I am too defined by pointless suffering; In the darkness of the undergrowth I will forget the virgin island and its meadows of flowers.
Ah! How do I still believe in this magnificent dream? Because cruel Cupid comes to seize me, And this angelic apparition Vanishes in the ardent breath of my desire.
Do not dare to deceive Love’s powerful nature If you nourish the feeblest affection by it You will soon be its lifeblood Where, with your trembling heart, Cupid will have his turn.
In the sharp bushes, I make my way Tangled shrubs, ignored by the sun Hit me, slap my face, And let my vermilion blood flow freely.
Translation by Noelle McMurtry
iii. Vers le pur amour (Towards pure love)
Girl in a Boat with Geese (c. 1889) | Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) Public Domain via National Gallery of Art
“Vers le pur amour” (Towards pure love) concludes Trois Mélodies with a return to radical acceptance. The poet, now floating on a metaphorical boat towards a “happy island of mystery,” has reconciled the turbulence of their prior emotions. Now, they sail on the waves of their dreams. The poet calls out to Viola one last time, hoping to meet her on this island, although sadly in dreams, nothing is assured. Notably, Bonis employs a modified strophic form, in which groups of two stanzas are set to identical music. After the through composed, shifting gestures of the first two songs in op. 91, this repetitive musical framework creates a sense of closure to the poet’s journey. Bonis has deftly crafted a musical arc that portrays the unrelenting, stormy, and ecstatic nature of love itself, from first glance to final farewell.
iii. Vers le pur amour
Guidé par de beaux yeux candides Dans ma barque féerique aux reflets d’argent fin Vers l’Amour je voudrais faire voile sans fin Sur des rêves bleus et splendides.
Vers l’Amour dont le souffle frais Berce des champs de fleurs dans une île enchantée, Et qui, pour apaiser mon âme tourmentée, M’ouvrira de saintes forêts.
[Et plus tard quand], loin de la terre, O Viola! Guéris des brûlantes langueurs, Nous irons caresser les songes de nos coeurs Dans l’île heureuse du mystère?
Dans le libre ciel des Esprits Quand nous aurons [quitté]* la nature [mortelle], Ne goûterons-nous pas une paix éternelle? Rêveusement tu me souris.
*[] denotes alteration to text by Bonis
iii. Towards pure love
Guided by beautiful, innocent eyes, In my magical boat with flashes of fine silver Towards Love, I would like to sail time and time again On blue and splendid dreams.
Towards Love, whose fresh breath Cradles the fields of flowers on an enchanted island, And who, to appease my tormented soul, Reveals to me its holy forests.
[And later when], far from the earth, Oh Viola! Healed by blazing languor, Will we caress the dreams of our hearts On the happy island of mystery?
In the liberated heaven of the Spirits, When we abandon our mortal form, Will we not enjoy an eternal peace? Dreamily, you smile at me.
Translation by Noelle McMurtry
Watch and listen below to our January 2023 performance of Trois Mélodies with pianist Hui-Chuan Chen at Peabody Institute.
In the final stanza of “Vers le pur amour,” Bonis sets the text:
In the liberated heaven of the Spirits,
When we abandon our mortal form,
Will we not enjoy an eternal peace?
Dreamily, you smile at me.
If we consider Trois Mélodies as an entry in Bonis’ diary, these final words signify her belief in an afterlife, a realm in which Bonis could finally seek forgiveness and be reunited with those she loved so fiercely.
Trois Mélodies, however, also reveal the emotions of a woman and composer who very much lived; hers was a passionate, full, and multi-faceted life, despite the dictates of French society’s gendered prejudice. Bonis’ mélodies endure as powerful indicators of this spirit, endowed with her creativity and unique compositional voice.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Christine Géliot and the Association Mel Bonis for their feedback on this article, as well as granting their permission to include photographs from the collection in this post.
Notes
Mel Bonis, Souvenirs et Réflexions, translated by Noelle McMurtry, 35.
Anne-Marie Polomé, “Portrait de compositrice: Mélanie-Hélène Bonis dite Mel Bonis.”
Bonis, Souvenirs et Réflexions, translated by Noelle McMurtry, 34.
Polomé, “Portrait de compositrice.”
Judy Tsou, “Bonis, Mélanie (Hélène).”
Polomé, “Portrait de compositrice.”
Christine Géliot, “Compositions for voice by Mel Bonis, French woman composer, 1858-1937,” 50.
Polomé, “Portrait de compositrice.”
Padilla, “The Flute Chamber Works of Mel Bonis,” 12.
Géliot, “Compositions for voice,” 47.
Padilla, “The Flute Chamber Works of Mel Bonis,” 16.
Géliot, “Mel Bonis, Composer: Biography.”
Bonis, Souvenirs et Réflexions, translated by Noelle McMurtry, 14.
Géliot, “Mel Bonis, Composer: Biography.”
Padilla, “The Flute Chamber Works of Mel Bonis,” 15.
Ibid., 16.
Ibid., 18.
Ibid., 16.
Ibid., 18.
Géliot, “Mel Bonis, Composer: Biography.
Padilla, “The Flute Chamber Works of Mel Bonis,” 20.
Ibid., 4.
Géliot, “Compositions for voice,” 48.
Padilla, “The Flute Chamber Works of Mel Bonis,” 3.
Géliot, “Compositions for voice,” 52.
Ibid., 50.
Ibid., 53.
“A Visit from a French Poet,” The New York Times, 1893.
Padilla, Geraldine Margaret. “A Study on the Compositional Style of the Flute Chamber Works of Mel Bonis.” PhD dissertation., University of Southern Mississippi, 2018.
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