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Augusta Mary Anne Holmès (16 December 1847 – 28 January 1903) was a French composer of Irish descent (her father was from Youghal, Co. Cork). In 1871, Holmès became a French citizen and added the accent to her last name.[1] She wrote the texts to almost all of her vocal music herself, including songs, oratorios, the libretto of her opera La Montagne noire and the programmatic poems for her symphonic poems including Irlande and Andromède.

Augusta Mary Anne Holmès
Augusta Mary Anne Holmès

Biography


Holmès was born in Paris, the only child of Irishman Charles William Scott Dalkeith Holmes (17 July 1797 - 19 December 1869) and to Tryphina Anna Constance Augusta Shearer (1811–1858).[2][3] The poet Alfred de Vigny, who was her godfather, was rumored to be her natural father.[4]

Despite showing talent at the piano, she was not allowed to study at the Paris Conservatoire, but took lessons privately. She developed her piano playing under the tutelage of local pianist Mademoiselle Peyronnet, Versailles' cathedral organist Henri Lambert, and Hyacinthe Klosé. Also, she showed some of her earlier compositions to Franz Liszt. Around 1876, she became a pupil of César Franck, whom she considered her real master.[3] (She led the group of Franck's students who in 1891 commissioned for Franck's tomb a bronze medallion from Auguste Rodin.[5])

Camille Saint-Saëns wrote of Holmès in the journal Harmonie et Mélodie: "Like children, women have no idea of obstacles, and their willpower breaks all barriers. Mademoiselle Holmès is a woman, an extremist." Like other female composers from the nineteenth century including Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, Holmès published some of her earlier works under a male pseudonym ("Hermann Zenta") because women in European society at that time were not taken seriously as artists and were discouraged from publishing.

For the 1889 celebration of the centennial of the French Revolution, Holmès was commissioned to write the Ode triomphale for the Exposition Universelle, a work requiring about 1,200 musicians. She gained a reputation of being a composer of programme music with political meaning, such as her symphonic poems Irlande and Pologne.


Musical style


Holmès’ oeuvre is made up of cantatas, symphonic poems, operas, a few works for solo piano and over 100 songs.

First hearing Wagner’s work at the age of 13, Holmès was influenced by Wagner all her life and advocated to have his works performed in the Concerts Populaires, a formidable concert series in Paris.[6] Many parallels can be found in the music of Holmès and Wagner. One of the most direct examples of stylistic likeness can be heard in Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre (1856) and Holmès’ Roland furieux (1876). Both works make use of chromaticism and use similar orchestral colour, with dominant brass sections, announcing strong, rhythmically catching, melodic motives, while the strings drive the music forward with rapid, galloping patterns underneath the melody.

Holmès wrote four operas, largely inspired by Wagner, however, La Montagne Noire, staged in 1895, was the only one to be performed. It was one of the few operas written by a woman to be produced at the Paris Opéra in the nineteenth century, but it was poorly received, possibly due to its outdated Wagnerian influences.[6]

The gender rhetoric of the nineteenth century, which prescribed that female composers should limit themselves to smaller, feminine genres, had an impact on the reception towards the music of Holmès. Although praised for her creative gifts, she, like many other female composers of her time, was criticised for crossing the boundary into styles which were thought of as masculine territory.[7] Saint-Saëns, in a review of Holmès’ symphonic poem, Les Argonautes, remarked on her "excessive virility – a frequent fault with women composers – and flamboyant orchestration in which the brass explodes like fireworks...” [1]


Personal life


A portrait of Holmès' daughters, Huguette, Claudine, and Helyonne, by Auguste Renoir, 1888, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
A portrait of Holmès' daughters, Huguette, Claudine, and Helyonne, by Auguste Renoir, 1888, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Holmès never married, but she cohabited with the poet Catulle Mendès; the couple had five children, including:[8]

Holmès bequeathed most of her musical manuscripts to the Paris Conservatoire.


Selected compositions


Maurice Renaud & Lucienne Bréval in Augusta Holmès' opera, La Montagne noire.
Maurice Renaud & Lucienne Bréval in Augusta Holmès' opera, La Montagne noire.

Operas



Cantatas



Orchestral works



Chamber music



Piano music



Songs, song collections


(selective list)


References


  1. Rollo Myers: "Augusta Holmès: A Meteoric Career", in The Musical Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 3 (July 1967), p. 365: "Her surname was Gallicized by the addition of a grave accent on its last syllable."
  2. Une musicienne versaillaise: Augusta Holmès, archive.org
  3. Arthur Elson: Woman's Work in Music (Boston: The Page Company, 1903), digitized by Google.
  4. Holmes, Augusta Mary Anne Dictionary Of Irish Biography
  5. Daniele Gutmann: "Rodin et la Musique", in: Revue Internationale de Musique Française, February 1982, p. 105.
  6. Citron, Marcia (1991). Karin Pendle (ed.). Women and Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 125–126.
  7. Citron, Marcia (1988). Cécile Chaminade: A Bio-Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press. p. 23.
  8. "Auguste Renoir | The Daughters of Catulle Mendès, Huguette (1871–1964), Claudine (1876–1937), and Helyonne (1879–1955) | The Met". metmuseum.org. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 13 February 2017.

Bibliography





На других языках

[de] Augusta Holmès

Augusta Mary Anne Holmès (* 16. Dezember 1847 in Paris; † 28. Januar 1903 ebenda) war eine französische Komponistin irischer Abstammung. Sie publizierte zunächst unter dem Pseudonym Hermann Zenta. 1871 wurde Holmès französische Staatsbürgerin und nahm deswegen einen accent grave in ihren Namen auf[1]. Sie schrieb selbst die Texte für fast alle ihre Lieder und Oratorien sowie das Libretto ihrer Oper La Montagne Noire.
- [en] Augusta Holmès

[es] Augusta Holmès

Augusta Mary Anne Holmès (París, 16 de diciembre de 1847 – ibídem, 28 de enero de 1903) fue una pianista y compositora francesa.[1][2][3]

[ru] Ольмес, Августа

Августа Ольме́с (фр. Augusta Holmès), урождённая Августа Мэри Энн Холмс (née Augusta Mary Anne Holmes, 16 декабря 1847, Париж — 28 января 1903, там же) — французский композитор ирландского происхождения. Натурализовалась во Франции в 1871 году и стала писать свою фамилию с французским диакритическим знаком. Ранние работы публиковала под псевдонимом Hermann Zenta[1].


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