Caroline Boissier-Butiniaus classic

Caroline Boissier-Butini (* May 2, 1786 in Geneva; † March 9, 1836 in Pregny-Chambésy) was a Swiss pianist, composer, organist, singer and music promoter.

Life

Caroline Butini was the eldest child of Pierre Butini (1759-1838) and Jeanne-Pernette, née Bardin. Her father, a doctor of European renown and a great lover of music, seems to have been the most important patron of her music-making. At the age of twenty, she wrote in her diary: “J’ai consacré un tiers de ma vie à la musique” (I have dedicated a third of my life to music).

Due to her origins, Caroline Butini belonged to Geneva’s upper social class. She therefore grew up in an educational environment that was also conducive to girls and received a broad general education. At the age of 22, she was married to Auguste Boissier (1784-1856). At his side, she was able to develop into an independent (female artist) personality. Auguste, who owned and managed several agricultural estates, supported his wife in making music and composing; he himself was a passionate violinist.

In 1810, their son Edmond was born to the couple, followed three years later by their daughter Valérie. The family spent the winter in Geneva and the summer on the estate in Valeyres-sous-Rances, between Orbe and Yverdon. Both children received a great deal of attention and encouragement, which was reflected in their later life’s work. Edmond became a renowned botanist, and Valérie – under her married name de Gasparin – became famous beyond Switzerland as a writer and founder of the first secular nursing school, “La Source” in Lausanne. Like her mother, she became an excellent pianist; in the winter of 1831-1832 she took piano lessons from Franz Liszt and composition lessons from Anton Reicha.

The numerous references to independent learning, even by the over-thirty-year-old, could also point to a predominantly self-taught education. It is also unknown what intention Butini’s parents had in supporting their daughter in acquiring such a thorough musical education, which allowed her to play at the highest level and compose in the spirit of her time. Her social affiliation precluded her from practicing a profession. Detailed diary entries from the time before her marriage reveal Caroline Butini’s own image of a good wife and what Geneva society expected of a woman of her status. From this it can be concluded that there was theoretically no room in the daily routine of a Geneva citizen for creative, artistic activity and certainly not for a sustained occupation with the then rather disreputable art form of music. It therefore seems all the more extraordinary that she composed regularly and extensively for years after her marriage.

Her musical practice was reported in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of March 1, 1815. There, the correspondent described her “immense skill on the pianoforte”, particularly in a concerto written by her. In the spring of 1818, Caroline Boissier-Butini measured her musical skills against those of the best pianists in Paris and London. She played for Marie Bigot, Ferdinando Paër, Friedrich Kalkbrenner and Johann Baptist Cramer and received unreserved praise for both her works and her interpretations.

There is evidence that she wanted to publish her works with Ignaz Pleyel in Paris, but was unsuccessful with this intention; she did, however, conclude a contract with the publisher Leduc. In Geneva, she performed several times in 1825 and 1826 in the concerts of the local “Société de musique”, also with her own works.

The large number of instrumental works in her surviving oeuvre is striking. Her early involvement with the folk music of her own environment is also remarkable. In a letter from 1811, Caroline Boissier describes how she wrote down folk songs in Valeyres that a woman from the village sang to her. It is possible that some of them found their way into her 6th piano concerto La Suisse. Caroline Boissier-Butini was known throughout Switzerland as a musician during her lifetime. After her death, the family carefully preserved her musical works and personal writings (diaries, letters, other documents).

The works and the circumstances of Caroline Boissier-Butini’s musical practice provide an insight into the era of the great political, social and cultural upheavals at the beginning of the 19th century in Geneva and Switzerland, an era that has hardly been researched from a musical perspective to this day.

Source Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Boissier-Butini