Composer Spotlight: Louise Farrenc

Louise Farrenc (nee Dumont)
b. Paris, France / 1804
d. Paris, France / 1875
Style: Romantic

In recent years, the music of Louise Farrenc (1804–1875) has been making a well-deserved return to concert halls and recordings. A French pianist, composer, and influential teacher, Farrenc spent her life breaking barriers in a world that often tried to limit women’s roles in music. Her story is one of persistence, artistry, and excellence across multiple musical spheres.

SYNOPSIS

• Louise Farrenc (1804–1875) was a French pianist, composer, and teacher who broke barriers in a male-dominated musical world.
• She became Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatoire in 1842, the only woman to do so in the 19^th century
• She held the position for 30 years and after 8 years, she successfully campaigned for equal pay to her male colleagues
• Her music blends Classical clarity with Romantic energy and is now enjoying a major revival after being forgotten for over a century.

Born Jeanne-Louise Dumont in 1804, Farrenc grew up surrounded by the arts. Her father, Jacques-Ednais Dumont, and her brother, Auguste, were both respected sculptors, giving her an upbringing rich in creativity.

She began piano lessons before the age of 10 with her godmother, Cécile Soria, a former student of the famous composer Muzio Clementi. Farrenc’s talent quickly became clear, and she went on to study with leading piano masters such as Johann Nepomuk Hummel (who had himself studied with Mozart, Salieri, and Haydn).

At 15, Farrenc entered the Paris Conservatoire to study piano, the most prestigious music school in France. Since women were not allowed to take composition classes, her parents paid for her to study composition privately. She soon began to make a name for herself both as a pianist and as a budding composer within Paris’s artistic circles.

It was at the Conservatoire that she met flute student Aristide Farrenc, ten years her senior. The two married in 1821 when Louise was just 17. For a short time, they toured as a piano-and-flute duo, but Aristide disliked the demands of travel and soon turned to publishing. Together they founded Éditions Farrenc, a company that would go on to publish important works of music.

Louise was often modest about her abilities as a composer, but her husband Aristide had unwavering faith in her talent. A younger colleague recalled that he practically insisted she publish her works, helping them reach a wider audience and ensuring their survival—something rare for women composers of the 19th century, whose music was often left unpublished and eventually lost. His support was strikingly uncommon for the time, when many women musicians, including Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn, faced strong societal and family pressures to limit or conceal their creative work.

Farrenc broke barriers in 1842 when she was appointed Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatoire, becoming only the second woman ever to hold a teaching post there in the 19th century. Her students—who, under Conservatoire rules, were all women—regularly won prizes and went on to professional careers. She remained in the role for three decades, retiring in 1873.

It was well known to Farrenc that her pay was less than her male colleagues, and for nearly ten years Farrenc pushed for equal pay. Her request was finally granted only after the triumphant premiere of her Nonet in E-flat major, featuring the celebrated violinist, Joseph Joachim.

Alongside her teaching, Farrenc worked with her husband Aristide to research music for keyboard instruments from the 17th and 18th centuries; an area that had barely been studied before. Together they published Le trésor des pianistes (The Pianists’ Treasure) a multi-volume collection of Renaissance and Baroque works for keyboard, complete with detailed notes on how the music was performed. Supplementing her works as editor and publisher, she and her pupils brought the music to audiences in a series of performances.

Farrenc’s output was both large and varied, reflecting her talents as a pianist, composer, and teacher. She wrote in nearly every major style of her time, though much of her work centered on chamber music and the keyboard. Her music was admired by contemporaries such as Robert Schumann and Hector Berlioz, though critics often framed their praise in gendered terms, remarking that she “composed like a man.”

Her compositional style blended the clarity and balance of the Classical tradition with the expressive energy of early Romanticism. Influenced by her teacher Anton Reicha and her study of Viennese masters like Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, Farrenc developed a voice marked by strong motivic development, clear structures, and polished orchestration. Her symphonies in particular stand out for their grandeur and craftsmanship, rivaling those of her German contemporaries while maintaining a distinctly French elegance.

As a virtuoso pianist, Farrenc wrote extensively for her instrument, producing études, variations, character pieces, and large-scale sonatas that combine brilliance with discipline. Her 30 Études, Op. 26, became especially significant: they were adopted into the Paris Conservatoire’s curriculum and valued both for their technical rigor and musicality.

She also composed three symphonies, all of which were performed multiple times during her lifetime. This was a remarkable achievement in 19th-century France, where audiences favored opera over symphonies and orchestral programming rarely featured such large-scale works. For a woman composer, securing these performances was especially groundbreaking.

Despite all she achieved, Farrenc’s name faded from view after her death in 1875. The 19th-century musical canon narrowed around a handful of mostly male composers, and her works were rarely performed. Her story is a reminder that music history is far richer than the “big names” we usually hear. Farrenc’s pieces are full of life, beauty, and character, and now is the perfect time to discover them for yourself.

Even in her own time, people understood her importance. In her obituary, the Revue et Gazette musicale wrote: “If the public is unaware of her name, it is the duty of the artists who know the worth of this eminent woman to pay her homage in the most useful way … by making the creations of this distinguished mind heard from time to time.”

You can hear Louise Farrenc’s Symphony No. 3 at French Masters on Thursday, November 13^th at 7:00pm.

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Russell Kunz (he/him) is the Education and Community Coordinator for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Born and raised in Winnipeg, he studied music and education at the University of Manitoba and is proud to be part of the WSO team.