PAS DES CYMBALES, OP. 36, NO. 2
Cécile Chaminade (b. Born in Paris, France, August 8, 1857; d. Monte Carlo, Monaco, April 13, 1944)
Composed c1888; 6 minutes
The Chaminade Music Club in Yonkers, NY is one of three survivors from the early 20th century, when over 100 – in some accounts closer to 200 – ‘Chaminade Clubs’ sprang up across the United States, devoted to performing and enjoying the music of French composer-pianist Cécile Chaminade. Bizet, a close neighbor, famously called the young Chaminade his ‘little Mozart’ and helped her secure a solid musical education. Her mother, an amateur pianist, encouraged her ambitions. Her father, an insurance executive, believed marriage and motherhood should be her destiny. Nevertheless, her career unfolded in full view of the French musical establishment – and often in resistance to it.
Before she was 30, Chaminade had already produced a well-received Piano Trio, Op. 11, an Orchestral Suite, Op. 20, and the highly successful Concertstück for piano and orchestra, Op. 40 – premièred in Antwerp alongside her Symphonie dramatique Les Amazones. Two later works – the Piano Sonata, Op. 21 (1895), and the Concertino, Op. 107 (1902) – stand as landmarks within an output of some 400 pieces, largely piano music and songs. “I ask of music first of all that it be sincere and melodious,” she said – a credo that set her apart as European music edged toward harmonic experiment and abstraction.
Chaminade promoted her music tirelessly through concert tours. England, and its royal court, proved especially welcoming; the United States, with its flourishing Chaminade clubs, followed close behind. In 1913, she became the first female composer admitted to the Légion d’Honneur. Her ballet Callirhoë premièred in Marseilles in 1888 and enjoyed more than 200 performances, many at the Metropolitan Opera. Pas des Cymbales is the finale from its orchestral and the subsequent two-piano Ballet Suite. It is music by a performer who knew the keyboard intimately – brilliant, direct, and designed to delight, without apology.