Playing for her life
BBC Music Magazine|December 2022
Hélène de Montgeroult risked the guillotine during the French Revolution – but there’s far more to this talented composer than her remarkable survival, as pianist Clare Hammond tells Rebecca Franks
Rebecca Franks
Playing for her life

The year is 1794. The Reign of Terror is in full swing in Revolutionary France, with thousands being executed at the guillotine. The latest imprisoned aristocrat appears before the Committee of Public Safety who will decide her fate. She is not alone. As well as the police guard, this 30-year-old woman is accompanied by an item more typically found in a Parisian salon than a courtroom – a piano. She is reputed to be one of the country’s finest musicians, and if she’s good, as the delegation of musicians advocating for her have promised, then she could be of use, first for ‘patriotic events’, later at the capital’s new conservatoire. She is invited to take her seat at the keyboard, to play for her very life.

Almost inevitably, she is asked to perform La Marseillaise, a 1792 rallying cry that would soon become the national anthem of the new French republic. What the pianist does with it is unexpected: after playing the tune, she begins to improvise variations on it, the music gradually building to a great climax, the melody billowing out over arpeggios. The men listening are moved to tears. She walks free.

Denne historien er fra December 2022-utgaven av BBC Music Magazine.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

Denne historien er fra December 2022-utgaven av BBC Music Magazine.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

FLERE HISTORIER FRA BBC MUSIC MAGAZINESe alt
Discovering Donizetti - Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day
BBC Music Magazine

Discovering Donizetti - Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day

Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day. For most people, undertaking a lockdown project meant learning to bake sourdough bread, getting fit with Joe Wicks, or taking up a language. But Professor Roger Parker, the eminent historian of Italian opera and emeritus professor at King's College London, had something far more ambitious in mind. He set about unearthing songs by Gaetano Donizetti - many of which had been lost since the composer's lifetime - and the enterprise turned into a two-year labour of love.

time-read
6 mins  |
August 2024
Composer of the month - Bohuslav Martinů - Though the Czech absorbed many influences from his exile abroad, his colourful music was always distinctively his own
BBC Music Magazine

Composer of the month - Bohuslav Martinů - Though the Czech absorbed many influences from his exile abroad, his colourful music was always distinctively his own

The youngest of six, Bohuslav was a sickly child, and his father or older sister often had to carry him the 193 steps up to the tower. He was shy at school, too, though showed an early talent for the violin and gave his first concert at 14. By the following year, the future composer was off to the Prague Conservatoire to take the first, if faltering, steps towards a career in music.

time-read
6 mins  |
August 2024
Symphonies Beside the Sea- Before cinema, the wireless and coach trips cast them adrift, seaside orchestras were once a major holiday attraction
BBC Music Magazine

Symphonies Beside the Sea- Before cinema, the wireless and coach trips cast them adrift, seaside orchestras were once a major holiday attraction

Before cinema, the wireless and coach trips cast them adrift, seaside orchestras were once a major holiday attraction. It's a dimension of music-making that once was integral to many a British holiday experience, yet now has all but vanished. The tide went out, you might say, on the professional seaside (or pier, or spa) orchestra many decades ago. In their glory days, though - perhaps a quarter-century on either side of 1900-these ensembles were everywhere, from Bridlington to Eastbourne, New Brighton to Worthing, Blackpool to Bexhill-on-Sea, Cleethorpes to Brighton... the list is astonishing.

time-read
6 mins  |
August 2024
Richard Morrison- Do Classical Works About Mortality Reveal More To Us As We Get Older? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise?
BBC Music Magazine

Richard Morrison- Do Classical Works About Mortality Reveal More To Us As We Get Older? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise?

As we get older do we respond differently to that vast canon of music dealing with mortality? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise? Or do human beings possess such a flexible sense of empathy that we can relate to virtually any state of mind if it is evoked convincingly enough by a composer?

time-read
3 mins  |
August 2024
Do Notes Win Votes? - There are multi-dimensional ways that music is used by political campaigners and their supporters today.
BBC Music Magazine

Do Notes Win Votes? - There are multi-dimensional ways that music is used by political campaigners and their supporters today.

It was a little bit of history repeating when Rishi Sunak announced the UK General Election to the heckling of his political opponents blasting out D:Ream's 'Things Can Only Get Better'.

time-read
2 mins  |
August 2024
Västra Karup Sweden
BBC Music Magazine

Västra Karup Sweden

The spirit of soprano Birgit Nilsson is alive and well in the town of her birth, home to a festival dedicated to her memory

time-read
3 mins  |
August 2024
Federico Colli
BBC Music Magazine

Federico Colli

\"At this moment in time we don't need more virtuosi. We need musicians to engage with the philosophy of music

time-read
6 mins  |
August 2024
Harmonic Progression
BBC Music Magazine

Harmonic Progression

What happens when classical music-style levels of ambition, invention and sheer length are brought to pop? The answer, as Meurig Bowen explains, is Prog Rock

time-read
6 mins  |
August 2024
Golden years
BBC Music Magazine

Golden years

Young musicians may be physically fit, but with age come the advantages of wisdom and experience

time-read
6 mins  |
August 2024
Sweet Sixteen
BBC Music Magazine

Sweet Sixteen

As The Sixteen celebrates its 45th birthday, founder Harry Christophers speaks to Andrew Stewart about directing a choral powerhouse

time-read
8 mins  |
August 2024