Farrenc: Symphony No. 2 — Spartanburg Philharmonic

On September 25, 1875, readers of the New York Times opened their papers to find, in the “foreign notes” section, that “Mme. Jeanne Louise Farrenc, a musician and composer of considerable distinction… died at Paris yesterday, in her seventy-second year. She was born in Paris May 31, 1804, and gave early indication of rare musical talent… Her early promises of excellence in the musical profession were richly fulfilled… She frequently appeared at concerts, and in 1842 became the teacher of the piano at the Conservatory….” The obituary concluded with details of her publications and career – and then Farrenc disappeared from the pages of the ‘paper of record’ just as she largely did from the world’s stages for over a century.

The music world’s neglect of Louise Farrenc’s music is surprising inasmuch as her music itself is, to our ears, absolutely first-rate, inspired and accomplished. But it’s unsurprising inasmuch as the music world held a bias against female composers that was virulent, virtually unanimous – and, to 21st Century eyes, utterly inexplicable. The assumption that only a male mind could possibly be a composer went almost publicly unchallenged even by most women.

“A woman must not desire to compose - there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?” asked Clara Schumann in her diary. And it was an open secret that some of the music published by Felix Mendelssohn was actually written by his sister, Fanny (to the point that, when Queen Victoria complimented Felix on her very favorite among “his” pieces, he was forced to confess abashedly that the piece in question had in fact been composed by his sister.

Which makes the success Farrenc did attain in her lifetime all the more remarkable. The only daughter of the Dumonts, a family luminous in Paris’ artistic and intellectual salons, Louise studied piano and composition with Anton Reicha, a friend of Beethoven’s who also taught Liszt and Berlioz, among others. In 1821 she married Aristide Farrenc, a flutist and music publisher, and for decades the two of them maintained a domestic life that at the time was almost unique: they shared interests and child-raising duties, and each supported the other in building successful careers in related fields (a marriage that, in 2021, sounds somewhere between “ideal” and “normal”). By 1842 she had reached such a level of eminence that the Paris Conservatoire, which had refused to consider her application as a student because of her sex, welcomed her to its faculty, and by 1850 she had even successfully demanded pay equal to that of her male counterparts.

The appearance of an English-language biography in 1980 stimulated some interest in Farrenc’s music among performers and scholars, and the conscious effort made by many musicians in recent years to look beyond the Usual Suspects when programming concerts has birthed a vigorous Farrenc revival. This symphony, the second of Farrenc’s three, was composed in 1845, and listeners will note parallels to the music Felix (and Fanny!) Mendelssohn were writing around the same time. Farrenc, like both Mendelssohns, has assimilated the influences of Mozart and Beethoven into a rich and powerfully Romantic musical language that is all her own. So it might have taken 150 years or so, but American audiences are finally getting to hear some pretty great music that is finally getting the attention it deserves.

Chris Vaneman is the Dean of the School of the Arts and Associate Professor of Flute at Converse University. Chris frequently leads the Spartanburg Philharmonic pre-concert lecture series “Classical Conversations,” and occasionally performs as a substitute flutist in the orchestra.