Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944)

 TRANSCRIPTION

(Not available at this time)
 

Var 1
Villa Provençale² 

March 20, 1925³

 Dear Madam,

Your kind letter found me in my retirement house where I am spending
most of my time this year. Unfortunately, I do not go that often to Paris
anymore. This year I intended to return earlier [to Paris], but I was sick
this winter. I am afraid that I will not be able to leave the countryside until
the end of May. Thank you for your kind remarks concerning my compositions.
I appreciate your humble and sincere comments. It would be a great pleasure
to come visit you, but it will depend on my health.

You had questions about some of my titles and interpretations. I will be very
happy to provide them to you. I hope my editor sent you my works which will
be useful to you as a teacher. It is true that since the war ended, I worked on
my compositions a lot. So my dear, I am taking note of your project and would
like to be part of it, but it will all depend on my health, and also on other events going on.

Very sincerely,

C.C. Chaminade

NOTES:

1) Var is a region in the south of France; largest city Toulon

2) Villa Provençale could be the name of her "retirement house" or a village in Var.The only confirmation of this residence is by Laura Kerr: "She [Chaminade at age 60] tired easily, spending more and more time in the warmer climate of the Riviera where she had bought a small villa." (Source: Laura Kerr, Scarf Dance, (New York:1953) pp. 165-166).

3) March 20, 1925 was a Friday. Chaminade was 67 years old.

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

Cecile Chaminade (August 8, 1857- April 13, 1944). The following obituary appeared in Time Magazine, May 1, 1944, p. 54: "In Monte Carlo last week death came to the most famous woman composer who ever lived. Frail, white-haired, 86-year-old [actually 87] Cecil Louise Stéphanie Chaminade had been bedridden with a bone disease for well over a decade. Deprived of her royalties by the German occupation (her Jewish publishers in Paris had been liquidated), she died in comparative obscurity. The era that her fragile little piano pieces (most famed: The Scarf Dance) represented had long since closed. Hers had been the age of rubber plants, stereoscopic views and parlor trances over Ethelbert Nevin's The Rosary. Born in Paris, Chaminade started composing as a child, dedicating her first works (a group of nocturnes and "slumber songs") to her pet dogs and cat. She took lessons in composition from Benjamin Godard. Always a facile melodist, Chaminade soon rolled up a list over 550 compositions, which stand in the same relation to Frederic Chopin as strawberry soda to cognac. Many of them (The Flatterer, Pas des Amphores, La ZIngara, Valse Caprice, Air de Ballet, etc.) got an international reputation...Scarf Dance ended by selling over five million copies." (Source: Laura Kerr, Scarf Dance, (New York:1953)

REV: 3/22/2004

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