Cécile Chaminade, "Automme"

French pianist and composer Cécile Chaminade was born in Paris in 1857 to a wealthy arts-loving middle-class family. Her mother sang and played the piano, and naturally, Cécile received the first lessons from her. At an early age she showed her talent and could have entered the Paris Conservatory, but her father, although he was also a music fan, opposed such an adventure for considering it unseemly.

A prolific author
But as the family economic situation allowed it, Cécile took private classes with renowned teachers from the Paris of the time. The girl did not miss the opportunity and at 8 years old she was writing religious music. Ten years later, she would give her first concert, and at twenty she gave recitals performing her own pieces. Throughout her life, Cécile would produce nearly 400 works, including chamber music, piano pieces, an opera, and a ballet. Famous are her melodies, vocal works with piano accompaniment that would be all the rage in the Parisian salons of the time.

Cécile Chaminade (1857 - 1944)

In the U.S.A.
It will be these pieces that will give her the greatest satisfaction. With them, she became known throughout France, England and later in the United States, where she traveled in 1908 reaping overwhelming success and popularity, to the point that a firm whose activity consisted in the manufacture of soaps began to produce them packaged in glamorous boxes that carried her signature. But it is also around this time that the composer who had won Vincent d'Indy's admiration for her Orchestral Suite from 1881 began to waver and her music to be considered vulgar parlor entertainment.


It is alleged that, after her father died, Cécile should have played the role of family provider and, since her greatest successes came from parlor music, she is forced by her publishers to write music that could be sold easily and in "large volumes". Cécile began to write, then, for the consumers' taste.

The turn of the century
On the other hand, it is also true that the author failed to understand the turn of the century. At the beginning of the new century, Cécile continued composing as if romanticism was brimming with health and strength. Forty years after d'Indy's compliments, the songwriter had barely changed her style. And far from trying to adapt to the new century, she confesses to a friend in 1920:

"... I can no longer adapt to modern music, just as I cannot adapt to modern painting, architecture, literature, mentality or morality."

The rebirth of her music
The outbreak and consequences of the First World War had ended up burying Cécile's career as a concert player since her music reflected another time, a kinder one. During her last years, Cécile and her music were forgotten, although from 1994, after the fiftieth anniversary of her death, the composer has enjoyed a rebirth, by the hand of several pianists and chamber groups.

In Rina Cellini's rendition, we listen to the concerto studio "Automme", composed in 1886, performed by the Italian pianist in the privacy of her home.