Born in Paris, Jeanne-Louise Dumont married the flutist and music publisher Aristide Farrenc in 1821. She began piano lessons at the age of six. She later studied with Anton Reicha, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Ignaz Moscheles. In 1842 she became the first woman professor of piano at the Paris Conservatory, a position she held for thirty years.

Farrenc’s first compositions, for solo piano, were issued by her husband’s company in the 1820s. She later shifted to chamber music: two piano quintets, a piano sextet, two piano trios, a nonet for winds and strings, two trios, and several instrumental sonatas. She wrote two concert overtures in 1834, which were performed in Paris, Brussels, and Copenhagen, and in 1841, she composed the first of three symphonies. Her music had many admirers, including Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, Fromental Halévy, Hector Berlioz and Robert Schumann. 

Her third Symphony was introduced at the Société des concerts du Conservatoire in 1849. Katy Hamilton detects the influence of Weber and Beethoven in it, especially in the first movement, and Mendelssohn and Schumann in the last movement. “The second movement,” she writes, “is a beautifully lyrical Andante; and this is followed by a dancing Scherzo, the music driven forward on insistent, bouncing eighth notes in the lower strings.”

~ Program Notes by Charley Samson, copyright 2019