Portrait de Ccile Chaminade by Ccile Tardif Review by: Marcia J. Citron Notes, Second Series, Vol. 51, No.

2 (Dec., 1994), pp. 608-609 Published by: Music Library Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/898890 . Accessed: 07/10/2013 18:19
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608 Strauss (then in Vienna) attends Offenbach's Paris funeral. As for misprints, conscious or not, we are really spoiled: "von Flatow" on page after page (amusing, at least), "Halery," "Brener" (for Breuer); when he cites three characters in Ba-TaClan, he manages to misspell them all; to balance this, he also mangles the names of many operettas (sometimes unwittingly poetically: de Carnaval des Reves [i.e., Revues]), and extends the same treatment to some of the cast members: Cara (Cora) Pearl, Anne (Anna) Judic. The most annoying feature of the book, based as it is exclusively on secondary sources, is the constant quotation of everyone, as if the author had been there with a tape recorder; the frequent statements by Offenbach are written in the most atrocious German gibberish (his dying words begin with "Che crois pien .. ."), thus making mere reading frequently hard going. The brief (24) list of works is riddled with errors, and the meager bibliography lists two works on the Second Empire by the writer, but not one of the important books mentioned above. Perhaps mercifully, there is, of course, no index. For a composer whose greatest hope was that the world would eventually consider him a serious musician, this is an unfortunate, though minor, setback. DE ALMEIDA ANTONIO Moscow SymphonyOrchestra Portrait de Cecile Chaminade. By Cecile Tardif. Montreal: Louise Courteau, 1993. [222 p. ISBN 2-89239163-6. (pbk.)] In the last decade, women composers have been receiving long overdue attention. The music of Frenchwoman Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944), once a favorite of aspiring pianists and singers, is enjoying renewed interest, with reprints, recordings, feminist analysis, and reference works (see my Gender and the Musical Canon [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993] and Cecile Chaminade: A Bio-bibliography [Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1988]). Chaminade is now the subject of a full-length biography that was obviously a labor of love for its author Cecile Tardif. Unfortunately, this is a volume whose

NOTES, December

1994

bright promise is unfulfilled. It is obvious that the author went to extraordinary lengths to ferret out obscure yet significant details on Chaminade's life, yet the end product is disappointing. In many respects it hardly does justice to the painstaking detective work, and on occasion seems geared to a young-adult audience. This is especially exasperating given the longstanding, debilitating tradition of romanticizing women and their lives. Organized chronologically, Portrait fills in important details of Chaminade's life, and draws heavily on the composer's correspondence, mostly unpublished and in private hands, and archival documents. For example, the state records of Yvelines disclose the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of the lots in Le V6sinet for what would become the nostalgic childhood home of the composer. The archives at Windsor Castle provide verification of Chaminade's several visits with Queen Victoria, in the 1890s. Tracking down such disparate events requires persistence and rigor, and Tardif is to be commended for her thoroughness. Yet the effectiveness of the study is seriously compromised by the uneven (sometimes poor) presentation of the material. The style is often chatty and familiar, and the language romanticized. Aphoristic sentences, many ending with exclamation point or three dots, occur all too often; short paragraphs of one to three sentences are common. As a result, points and arguments lose force through incompleteness or ambiguity. Annotation practices are also spotty, with insufficient documentation in the number and content of references. These lapses suggest a scholarly nafvete on the part of the author, and a mistreatment of previous work on Chaminade. On the plus side, Portraitclarifies several elusive biographical issues. For example, we learn more about her father's financial affairs and its impact upon her career, about the identity of the "mystery" fiance and the dedicatees of her pieces, and about the earlier life of Chaminade's husband and the reasons for her family's opposition to the marriage. While the establishment of the basic facts of a composer's life is critical, contemporary biography, and especially a biography of a woman, demands much more. At the very least, Chaminade's music calls for greater discussion, within multiple

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Book Reviews contexts: aesthetic, historical, and social. Furthermore, there are certain burning questions fundamental to a study of a woman. For Chaminade the following come to mind: What did it mean to be a female composer in late nineteenthcentury France? Who were the other female composers of the time and how did Chaminade relate to them? How did Chaminade feel being a composer who happened to be a woman? How did her gender affect the reception of her works and their gradual slide into near oblivion? The study sorely needs the theoretical and practical insights of interdisciplinary work on women and gender. Given Nancy Reich's splendid Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985) and the trio of sophisticated forthcoming monographs on women composers (Amy Beach, by Adrienne Fried Block; Ruth Crawford Seeger, by Judith Tick; and Ethel Smyth, by Elizabeth Wood), the genre of female biography now means-indeed requires-a multifaceted approach, with several lines of inquiry. Incidentally, it is striking that Portrait completely ignores the rich research into women and music that has taken place

609 since the early 1980s. Thus unwittingly, yet assuredly, the author has further isolated Chaminade. Physically, the volume offers many attractive illustrations, for example, the delightful "savon" wrapper of the Morny company, emblazoned with Chaminade's name. The back matter, of many sections, includes lists of works and dedicatees. Indicative of the volume's insular scope, the rather brief index is limited to names. The comparative time line, however, provides a useful summary of Chaminade's career in the context of general society. Overall, Tardif's biography is most useful for those who wish additional details on the facts of Chaminade's life, namely scholars working on women composers, and. those already interested in Chaminade. Otherwise, the volume is of limited value for Englishspeaking readers. For a French readership, the book obviously has wider appeal, although the curious mismatch between archival thoroughness and problematic presentation makes it difficult to identify a target audience. MARCIA J. CITRON Rice University

TWENTIETH CENTURY Charles Munch, un chef d'orchestre dans le siecle. Correspondance presentee par Genevieve Honegger. La Nu6e Bleue, 1992. Strasbourg: [383 p., 8 leaves of plates. ISBN 27165-0244-7. FF155.] In her biography of Charles Munch Genevieve Honegger has (1891-1968), chosen to present her subject in the mirror of his correspondence. Taking her cue from Philippe Olivier's CharlesMunch: Une biographiepar le disque (Paris: Pierre Belfond, 1987), Honegger has examined the extant letters to Munch (in the private collection of Nicole Hellriot and Jean-Jacques Schweitzer at Louveciennes, France) and attempted to locate Munch's own letters in private and public collections. These she has augmented with others from Munch's family and friends. Only a few, notably several by Francis Poulenc, have appeared in print elsewhere (see Helene de Wendel, Francis Poulenc: Correspondence 1915-1953, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1967). Letters originally written in English or German appear only in Marc Munch's French translations. The approximately two hundred letters transcribed by Honegger fall into three categories: (1) those written by Charles Munch, (2) those written to Munch, and (3) those written between third parties. Less than one-sixth of the letters are by Munch himself. Because so many appear here for the first time and the individuals involved are numerous, a brief inventory is presented below. By Munch to: Ernest Ansermet, Joseph Calvet (2), Alfred Cortot, Dag HammarArthur Honegger (2), Jacques Ibert, skj6old, Andre Jolivet, Bohuslav Martinu, AnneRose M6hu-Ebersolt (2), Celestine Munch (4), Fritz Munch (7), Isadore Philipp, Guy Ropartz (4), Albert Schweitzer, Nicole and Jean-Jacques Schweitzer, Emma Schweitzer (2), Walter Toscanini, and Henri Weill. To

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