Augusta Holmèsaus romantic

Augusta Mary Anne Holmès (* 18 December 1847 in Paris; † 28 January 1903 ibid.) was a French composer of Irish descent. She first published under the pseudonym Hermann Zenta. In 1871 Holmès became a French citizen and therefore added an accent grave to her name. She wrote the texts for almost all her songs and oratorios herself, as well as the libretto of her opera La Montagne Noire.

Life

Holmès was born in Paris and grew up in Versailles. Although her talent at playing the piano was obvious, as a woman she was not allowed to study at the Conservatoire de Paris, but had to take private lessons. She received lessons from Mademoiselle Peyronnet, the cathedral organist Henri Lambert in Versailles and Hyacinthe Klosé. She showed some of her early compositions to Franz Liszt. Around 1876 she became a student of César Franck, whom she called her master. She took a leading role in the group of Franck’s students who commissioned a bronze medallion by Auguste Rodin for Franck’s tombstone in 1891.

Camille Saint-Saëns wrote of Holmès in the magazine Harmonie et Mélodie: “Like children, women have no conception of obstacles and their willpower tears down all walls. Mademoiselle Holmès is a woman, an extremist.”

Holmès remained unmarried. She lived with the poet Catulle Mendès, and the couple had five children.

For the centenary of the French Revolution in 1889, Holmès was commissioned to compose an Ode Triomphale, a work for some 300 orchestral musicians and 900 choristers. Her greatest success came with the opera La Montagne noire, the first opera by a female composer at the Palais Garnier in Paris since Louise Bertin. Some of her compositions are considered politically tinged, such as her symphonic poems Irlande and Pologne.

Holmès bequeathed most of her manuscripts to the Conservatoire de Paris.
Source Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta_Holmès