Notes for: July 14, 2026
Last November the Cornell University Department of Music presented a two-day symposium “commemorating the 150th anniversary of visionary 19th century composer, pianist, and pedagogue Louise Farrenc.” The symposium aimed to “affirm Farrenc’s place in history” – a richly deserved acknowledgment of a brilliant pianist, composer, and teacher who was admired during her lifetime, then largely forgotten during the century that followed.
Farrenc’s fight for recognition started early. A piano prodigy and a budding composer, at 15 Farrenc entered the Paris Conservatoire – but only as a piano student, because women were not allowed into the composition classes. Berlioz demonstrated the 19th-century’s bias when he declared one of her works “orchestrated with a talent rare among women.” A renowned teacher, she spent 30 years as a full professor at the Conservatoire – a singular achievement, although it took her years to convince the administration that she should be paid the same as her male colleagues (the popular success of the Nonet finally persuaded them).
Farrenc’s early fame came as a touring piano virtuoso, and her first compositions were widely admired works for piano: Her early 30 Etudes in all the major and minor keys became part of the required study for piano students at the Conservatoire. She was twice awarded a major prize from the Academie des Beaux Arts for her contributions to chamber music, lauded for works that “glow with the purist Classical style.”
Paris’s musical elite flocked to the 1850 premiere of the Nonet, a performance that starred the violinist Joseph Joachim. They were treated to a splendid work that showcases Farrenc’s gifts and her appeal. As a short, stately Adagio segues into a genial Allegro, what is immediately striking – in addition to the first movement’s melodic charm and harmonic adventurousness – is the deft interplay among the nine instruments. After a brief, Romantically tinged violin cadenza in the coda, the Nonet moves on to an inventive set of variations, with each variation focusing on a different instrument or set of instruments: oboe in the first, violin in the second, bassoon in the third, horn in the fourth. (You’ll hear Schubert do something similar in his variation movement in the Trout Quintet.) Among the many rich moments are the timbres created when the oboe plays against viola and cello in the first variation, the violin racing up and down in the second, the bassoon striding commandingly over scampering strings in the third, and the horn’s bouncy rhythm in the fourth. Then it’s on to a witty Scherzo that opens with syncopated pizzicatos in the strings, rises to a cheerful hunt-like melody, and is playful and rakish throughout. Farrenc wraps up the Nonet with a final movement that wonderfully plumbs the rich possibilities when instruments of widely varied timbres are placed together in unexpected combinations.