Louise Farrenc (1804-1875); FRA

Louise Farrenc (1804–1875), born Jeanne-Louise Dumont in Paris, was a French composer, pianist, teacher, and musical scholar. Raised in a family of artists, she studied piano with leading musicians including Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Ignaz Moscheles and composition privately with Anton Reicha. In 1821 she married the flutist and music publisher Aristide Farrenc, with whom she later established an important Paris publishing house. Farrenc earned a formidable reputation as a pianist and in 1842 was appointed professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire, a post she held for thirty years. Although initially paid less than her male colleagues, she successfully pressed for equal remuneration after the acclaim surrounding her chamber music. With her husband she also undertook the important historical anthology Le Trésor des pianistes, devoted to keyboard music of earlier centuries.

Farrenc’s music combines Classical structural discipline with the harmonic breadth and expressive energy of early Romanticism. Her output includes substantial piano music, three symphonies, overtures, and an especially distinguished body of chamber works. The Nonet in E-flat major, Op. 38, whose 1850 performance included the young Joseph Joachim, became one of her most celebrated compositions; her two piano quintets, piano trios, violin sonatas, and Sextet for Piano and Winds, Op. 40 likewise reveal an assured command of instrumental color and large-scale form. Her Symphony No. 3 in G minor, Op. 36 is now particularly admired. Long neglected after her death, Farrenc has undergone a substantial revival, restoring her place among the significant French composers of the nineteenth century.