Mélanie Bonis
Born: January 21, 1858, Paris, France
Died: March 18, 1937, Sarcelles, France
BIOGRAPHY MUSIC RECORDINGS SOURCES
Mel Bonis (1858 - 1937) was born Mélanie Hélène Bonis in Paris, but used the pseudonym Mel Bonis in her professional life. She grew up in a strict, religious home where her talent at piano was recognized from a young age. She began studying with the famous César Franck and, a year later, was admitted to the Paris Conservatory in 1877, studying organ with Franck and harmony with Ernest Guiraud. Within 2 years she had won several prizes at the Conservatory in harmony and accompaniment. She met baritone Amedee Hettich at the Conservatory and they maintained an affair and wrote songs and choral works together. Hettich’s influence and connections to Parisian publishers helped define and progress Bonis’ career.
After several years, her family demanded she abandon music and her lover in order to find a proper husband and a “feminine job” like dressmaking. In 1883, she married Albert Domange who was 25 years her senior with five sons from previous marriages. She raised her family, which included their additional 3 children, with little time for composing as her family was not the slightest bit interested in music.
Beginning in the 1890s, Bonis garnered the support of publishers Alphonse Leduc, Max Eschig, and Maurice Senart, which led her to compose more regularly. She reconnected with her ex lover, Hettich, who had become a professor and author both of journals and poetry, and, while working together, they resumed their affair. They even had an illegitimate child, a daughter, who lived with a former chambermaid until her death, after which she lived with Bonis and her family.
Bonis worked to distribute her music to performers in France and Switzerland where it was played and sung in salons and at student auditions. She also belonged to the Society of Composers. Her music suffered neglect due to the wars and the struggles to revive the arts.
Bonis wrote over 300 compositions including 20 chamber works, 150 piano pieces, 25 organ pieces, 27 choral pieces, and 40 melodies. She wrote 28 of them for baritone or mezzo soprano, 7 for high voice, and 5 for female voice in styles from light, to romantic, to religious, enjoying a wide variety of poetry. Her compositional style was defined by its unique sense of harmony and rhythm which combined the colors of impressionism and orientalism. She was influenced by Franck, Faure, and Saint-Saëns.