{"id":22264,"date":"2022-11-28T14:41:32","date_gmt":"2022-11-28T13:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/?p=176371"},"modified":"2022-11-28T15:40:14","modified_gmt":"2022-11-28T14:40:14","slug":"who-was-helene-de-montgeroult-how-the-piano-saved-the-french-composers-life-in-revolutionary-france","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/who-was-helene-de-montgeroult-how-the-piano-saved-the-french-composers-life-in-revolutionary-france\/","title":{"rendered":"Who was H\u00e9l\u00e8ne de Montgeroult? How the piano saved the French composer\u2019s life in revolutionary France"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Rebecca Franks\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Monday, 28 November 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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T<\/span><\/strong>he year is 1794. The Reign of Terror is in full swing in Revolutionary France, with thousands being executed at the guillotine. The latest imprisoned aristocrat, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne de Montgeroult, appears before the Committee of Public Safety who will decide her fate.<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

H\u00e9l\u00e8ne de Montgeroult is not alone. As well as the police guard, this 30-year-old woman is accompanied by an item more typically found in a Parisian salon than a courtroom \u2013 a piano. She is reputed to be one of the country\u2019s finest musicians, and if she\u2019s good, as the delegation of musicians advocating for her have promised, then she could be of use, first for \u2018patriotic events\u2019, later at the capital\u2019s new conservatoire. She is invited to take her seat at the keyboard, to play for her very life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Almost inevitably, she is asked to perform La Marseillaise<\/i><\/a><\/strong>, a 1792 rallying cry that would soon become the national anthem of the new French republic. What the pianist does with it is unexpected: after playing the tune, she begins to improvise variations on it, the music gradually building to a great climax, the melody billowing out over arpeggios. The men listening are moved to tears. She walks free.<\/span><\/p>\n

Who was H\u00e9l\u00e8ne de Montgeroult?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Though incredible, this story appears to be far more truth than myth. Yet the woman who pulled off this miraculous save has been all but forgotten. Her name was H\u00e9l\u00e8ne de Montgeroult, born H\u00e9l\u00e8ne de Nervo into a noble family in Lyon, 1764. A prodigy pianist taught by the finest in Paris, she did indeed go on to work at the Paris Conservatoire, becoming its first female professor of music in 1795. <\/span><\/p>\n

She also, remarkably, both composed at a time when it was rarely acceptable for a woman to do so and also had her work published. By her death, in Florence in 1836, she had written nine piano sonatas and, between 1788 and 1812, her magnum opus: 114 Etudes, which appeared in the hefty Cours complet pour l\u2019enseignement du forte-piano <\/i>of 1816 alongside a selection of fantasies, nocturnes for voice and piano and other short pieces. Yet her legacy has remained side-lined \u2013\u00a0until now.<\/span><\/p>\n