HÉLÈNE LIEBMANN - GERMANY
BORN 16 DECEMBER
Hélène Liebmann née Riese (16 December 1795 – 2 December 1869) was a German pianist and composer. She was born in Berlin and studied music with Franz Lauska and Ferdinand Ries. A child prodigy, she made her debut before age 13 and published her Piano Sonata when she was 15. She married around 1814 and may have moved with her husband to Vienna and then London. She was present at a Clara Wieck (Schumann) concert in 1835.
Liebmann's published works include two sets of songs, several sonatas, variations and miscellaneous piano works, two violin sonatas, two piano trios and one piano quartet - the piano is in all her works. They are mostly dedicated to teachers and family members; much of her music is available in library collections and in the archives of her principal publisher C. F. Peters. The Piano Sonatas Ops 1 and 2 received a lengthy review in an 1811 issue of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. The reviewer declared his dread in anticipation of finding "ladies" music, a weak imitation of that written by men, but immediately stated that the music warranted comparison with the early compositions of the great masters. He specially commended the nobility in the first movement of her Op 1, and the inventiveness and brilliance of its concluding Variations. The same review also lavished praise on the composer's Op 4 Kennst du das Land? - a setting from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung also later published favourable reviews of her Violin Sonata Op 9 and the two piano trios, recommending them as providing enjoyable entertainment for both performers and listeners. Her musical style owes much to Mozart and Haydn.
♫ LISTEN
Sonata for Cello and Piano by Hélène Liebmann
Sonata for Cello and Piano by Hélène Liebmann
AUGUSTA HOLMÈS - FRANCE
BORN 16 DECEMBER
Augusta (Mary Anne) Holmès (18 December 1847 – 28 January 1903) was a French composer of Irish descent (her father was from Youghal, Co. Cork). At first she published under the pseudonym Hermann Zenta. In 1871, Holmès became a French citizen and added the accent to her last name.She herself wrote the lyrics to almost all her songs and oratorios, as well as the libretto of her opera La Montagne Noire and the programmatic poems for her symphonic poems including Irlande and Andromède.
Holmès was born in Paris. Her godfather was Alfred de Vigny. Despite showing talent at the piano, she was not allowed to study at the Paris Conservatoire, but took lessons privately. She developed her piano playing under the tutelage of local pianist Mademoiselle Peyronnet, Versailles' cathedral organist Henri Lambert, and Hyacinthe Klosé. Also, she showed some of her earlier compositions to Franz Liszt. Around 1876, she became a pupil of César Franck, whom she considered her real master. (She led the group of Franck's students who in 1891 commissioned for Franck's tomb a bronze medallion from Auguste Rodin.)
Camille Saint-Saëns wrote of Holmès in the journal Harmonie et Mélodie: "Like children, women have no idea of obstacles, and their willpower breaks all barriers. Mademoiselle Holmès is a woman, an extremist." Like other female composers from the nineteenth century including Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, Holmès published some of her earlier works under a male pseudonym ("Hermann Zenta") because women in European society at that time were not taken seriously as artists and discouraged from publishing.
For the 1889 celebration of the centennial of the French Revolution, Holmès was commissioned to write the Ode triomphale for the Exposition Universelle, a work requiring about 1,200 musicians. She gained a reputation of being a composer of programme music with political meaning, such as her symphonic poems Irlande and Pologne.
♫ LISTEN
Allegro Forece by Augusta Holmès
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