Cecile Chaminade

(1857–1944)

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Cecile Louise Stephanie Chaminade was born in Paris in 1857 to an upper middle-class, arts-loving family. She took piano lessons from her mother, who, like her father, was an amateur musician. Although Cecile showed early talent, and although their home was often the setting for popular musical salons, Monsieur Chaminade held a rigid view of proper female decorum and refused to allow his daughter to study at the Paris Conservatory. In spite of his doubts, Monsieur Chaminade eventually did permit her to study piano, theory, and composition privately with the esteemed musician, Felix Le Couppey, as well as with several other musical luminaries.

Coming of age at the beginning of La Belle Époque, Cecile gave her first piano concert at the age of 18.

Soon, she became a frequent performer in chamber music ensembles. By her early twenties, she was giving recitals of her own piano works and accompaniments for original songs. In the course of her long life, Cecile Chaminade produced more than 400 works, including a comic opera, a ballet, a choral symphony entitled Les Amazones, chamber and orchestral music, a flute concertino, and about a hundred songs.


But it was her lyric piano pieces that made her mark.

Known for their elegance and tunefulness, many of these delightful pieces brought her considerable commercial success and fame in France, Britain and the United States. In 1908, she undertook the long journey to the States, where her popularity had led to the formation of “Chaminade Clubs”. She made her American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra and gave concerts in twelve cities. In both Europe and the United States, this wide exposure created a demand for sheet music, and she became one of the most-published women composers.

During this prolific time of her life, Cecile Chaminade received many awards, including the Jubilee Medal from Queen Victoria in 1897 and the Chefekat from the Sultan of Turkey in 1901. In 1913, she was admitted to the prestigious Legion of Honor, the first female composer to be so honored.

In spite of her great success and fame, Cecile chose to lead a quiet personal life. She married Louis-Mathieu Carbonal, a Marseilles music publisher in 1901. Some twenty years her senior, the marriage was rumored to be one of convenience, and after he died in 1907, Cecile did not remarry. With the outbreak of WWI, Cecile’s concert career came to an end. Her music, particularly her piano works and her songs, reflected the culture of another, gentler time. Once that period had passed, she and her music faded into obscurity, her piano works relegated to being merely “charming salon pieces,” her musical talents no longer appreciated.

After being bedridden with a bone disease for over ten years, Cecile Chaminade died in Monte Carlo in 1944, a frail, white-haired 87-year-old. An obituary in Time Magazine in May 1944, observed that, “The Era that her fragile little piano pieces represented had long since closed.” Happily, today’s pianists, vocalists, and chamber music ensembles are uncovering and recording some of these compositions, re-introducing Cecile Chaminade to new audiences.

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