1828–1907 · France · Romantic
Clémence de Grandval (1828–1907) was a French pianist, singer and composer who studied with Camille Saint-Saëns and published many of her works under pseudonyms. The oratorio La Fille de Jaïre brought her the Prix Rossini, and she also received the Prix Chartier for chamber music. The site holds her songs for voice and piano, from intermediate to advanced level.
Clémence de Grandval belonged to the Romantic era. Marie Félicie Clémence de Reiset was born on 21 January 1828 at the Château de la Cour du Bois, near the village of Saint-Rémy-des-Monts in the Sarthe department. She was the youngest of four children in a well-to-do family: her father was an army officer who played the piano reasonably well, and her mother wrote stories that were published. Composers and artists of the day were frequent guests of the family, among them Louis-Nicolas Cary, Paul Scudo, Jean-Baptiste-Philémon de Cuvillon and Auguste-Joseph Franchomme. Clémence de Grandval herself later became known as a pianist, singer and composer. She was also called the Vicomtesse de Grandval, or sometimes simply Marie Grandval.
From the age of six she studied music, and at twelve or thirteen she began studying composition under the guidance of Friedrich von Flotow, a friend of the family. Later she took piano lessons from Frédéric Chopin and studied singing with Laure Cynthie Damoreau. Thanks to her family's financial comfort, composing was never something she needed to do for money. In 1851 she married the Vicomte de Grandval, an officer fifteen years her senior; their daughter Thérèse was born in 1852 and survived her sister, Isabelle, who died.
After her marriage she continued studying composition with Camille Saint-Saëns for two more years. She had to overcome prejudice tied to being a woman composer, and because of her social position Grandval published many of her works under pseudonyms — Tesier, Valgrand, Jasper, Banger and others.
Her earliest works were devoted to sacred music. On 23 February 1870 her Stabat Mater was performed with success in Paris — it became the most popular work in her output, its score spreading to conservatories, choir schools and libraries and quickly taking hold in the repertoire of many concert societies and major churches in Paris and the provinces. Between 1850 and 1869 she wrote six operas and operettas. She then turned to operas, popular songs and instrumental music; in 1884, for instance, she wrote the chamber piece Deux Pièces for oboe, cello and piano.
In 1859 in Paris, under the pseudonym Caroline Blangy, her one-act operetta Le sou de Lise was staged. Her other operas include La Comtesse Eva, La Pénitente, Piccolino and Mazeppa. She often performed her own works herself.
In 1880 Grandval and her librettist Paul Collin were the first to receive the Prix Rossini, awarded for the oratorio La Fille de Jaïre. In 1890 the Paris Conservatoire gave her the Prix Chartier, awarded to French composers, for chamber works.
Through the 1870s Grandval took an active part in the Société Nationale de Musique, where her works were performed more often than any other composer's, and she supported the society with her own money. By the second half of the nineteenth century, she was a highly popular composer, widely admired by critics. Her contemporaries counted her among the outstanding composers of the age.
The Vicomte de Grandval died in 1886; despite this, Grandval is said to have devoted herself entirely to her art. Her last opera, Mazeppa — a five-act work on a Russian-Ukrainian subject, drawing on the legend and on poems by Victor Hugo and Byron, with a libretto by Charles Grandmougin and Georges Hartmann — was staged on 24 April 1892 at the Grand-Théâtre de Bordeaux; its success led the theatre to stage it again the following year.
In February 1894 Mazeppa was performed in Paris at the Salle Pleyel, where Grandval herself accompanied on the piano. After this she gradually withdrew from performing and composing. Clémence de Grandval died on 15 January 1907 in Paris, in its 8th arrondissement. The scores of some of her works were lost, and little has survived of a large part of her symphonic and operatic music. During her lifetime she was a figure of stature and a composer of some name, though she was later largely forgotten.
Grandval was a prolific composer. She has ten operas and operettas to her name; she also wrote three symphonies, two concertos and a concert overture, one ballet, and beyond that she composed for piano, for voice, for chamber groups and for full orchestra. Being a singer herself, she wrote around sixty mélodies. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she also wrote a good deal for the oboe.
The site holds all eleven of her songs for voice and piano — a small part of the roughly sixty she wrote over her lifetime: Si tu m'aimais!, Mignonne, Chanson, Rappelle-toi!, Chanson de Barberine, Chrysa, L'absence, Sacrifice, Les lucioles, Villanelle and La délaissée. One song is at intermediate level, seven at upper intermediate, and three at advanced level.
A good place to start is the intermediate-level Si tu m'aimais!, moving on to the upper-intermediate pieces before taking on an advanced-level song such as La délaissée.