Hélène de Montgeroult – A forgotten musician ahead of her time: virtuoso pianist, composer and pedagogue.
 
Watch videos of Étude 26, Étude 36 and Étude 111
 
To celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8 2024, Fullscore Publishing publishes another free, downloadable pdf edition. This set of three Études is taken from Hélène de Montgeroult’s Cours complet for pianists, a major contribution to the French piano repertoire between the Classical and Romantic periods.
 
French composer and pianist de Montgeroult, born in 1764 in Lyon, plays a key pianistic link between Mozart (1756-1791), Clementi (1752-1832) and Chopin (1810-1849), adapting to the rapid development during her lifetime of the fortepiano. She was raised in Paris, where she took piano lessons from several masters and married Marquis André Marie Gautier de Montgeroult in 1784 (she was 20, he 48). She played with virtuosity in the celebrated Parisian salons of wealthy music lovers and social élite in the 1780s, before the French Revolution. The story of how she avoided the guillotine during the Reign of Terror (1789-1799) by performing improvisations of La Marseillaise on the fortepiano may perhaps be apocryphal, but the Marquise managed to avoid that dreadful fate, despite her noble status.
 
Appointed in 1795 as the first ever woman teacher at the new Conservatoire de Paris, she gained a salary equal to that of her male counterparts. Her first composition for keyboard was published in 1795, aged 35; her Cours complet pour l’enseignement du fortepiano comprenant 114 études (written in the early 1810s - her last published work, in 1820) is said to be ‘ostensibly didactic’ but also to have had ‘a significant impact on great names among musicians of the next generation’. ‘Madame de Montgeroult’s Mondays’ were a time to share her art with friends and musicians in her private Salon.
 
Her first husband was murdered in 1793, aged 57. She later married a Count who was 19 years her junior in 1820, but widowed again in 1826. Her health started to decline and she settled with her son in Italy, dying there in 1836. She has been described as a ‘precursor of Romanticism’; Mendelssohn, Schubert, Chopin and Schumann may not have known her Cours complet but elements in their piano music ‘show evidence of their originality’ in Montgeroult’s fine 972 exercises and 114 études for pianists included in its three volumes.
 
Hélène de Montgeroult was a liberated, audacious woman with a strong personality and influential talent in a time when women were reduced to a secondary role in life. Once forgotten and committed to ‘the guillotine of oblivion’, her rediscovery (boosted by a biography written by Jérome Dorival in 2006) was long overdue and sheds light on the evolution of the French piano repertoire and the French romanticism that emerged in the history of music at the turn of the 18th century.
 
Étude No. 26 - watch Clare Hammond play it live (2021): 
12th Étude for the right hand: to express properly the tune in a triple time signature
- Also available in printed edition (6 euros + p&p) from Éditions Modulation.
 
Étude No.36 - watch Clare Hammond play it live (2m 20s)
14th Étude for two hands: to learn how to let the tune sing (à lier le chant)
The perfect technique for playing the piano includes a balanced touch; this goal should be constantly pointed out to the student, as it is essential to attain pianistic talent. Without a balanced touch we can neither make the instrument ‘sing’ well nor properly execute most of its most characteristic traits. Making piano voicings ‘sing’ (such an essential part of music) cannot be overlooked; it is the most difficult skill to acquire on an instrument that is unable to support sounds in the same way that the human voice is able to do.   
(Introduction to Étude no. 36 by H de Montgeroult, trans. Nigel Edmund-Jones)
- Not available in printed edition from Éditions Modulation
- Watch Étude No. 36 with a moving score.
- If you're studying Mozart's 8th Sonata in A minor (K310) then this study may well help you with the Presto movement. Compare the score (3rd movement) on IMSLP here.

Étude No.111 - watch François-Frédéric Guy play it (2m 04s)
55th Étude for both hands: to combine expression with speed.
- Available in printed edition (8 euros + p&p) from Éditions Modulation 
 
From the Préface to Hélène de Montgeroult: La Marquise et la Marseillaise definitive biography (French language) by Jérome Dorival: 
De Montgeroult felt that ‘playing the piano was not a question of displaying one’s prowess, but rather of delving into one's musical emotions, exploring perceptions and novel sensations in terms of touch and musical ideas. She succeeded in reconciling two elements that are generally considered mutually exclusive: instructing the young pianist progressively, rigorously and logically, while at the same time providing him or her with beautiful musical compositions to learn from. In 1816 (the probably date of the first publication of Cours complet), this exploit had rarely been accomplished; other piano tutors included in the best cases only a few pieces, or were devoid of commentary. [Source]
 
Spotify CD streaming: 29 ‘Études’ recorded by Clare Hammond (2022) - includes all three études in this Fullscore Publishing edition.
 
- Excellent short film about de Montgeroult by Stapleford Granary featuring pianist Ian Buckle: youtube.com/watch?v=8eo1EB5glWQ
- BBC Sounds, Radio 3, Composer of the Week 
- Definitive biography by Jérome Dorival: Hélène de Montgeroult – La marquise et la Marseillaise (2006).
- Wikipedia biography: click here.
- Sheet music cover image by Louis-Philippe-Joseph Girod de Vienney from Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours.