Victorine Farrenc
Born: 23 February 1826
Died: 3 January 1859
BIOGRAPHY MUSIC SOURCES
Pianist and composer, Victorine Louise Farrenc, was born into a musical family. Her mother, Louise, was a well-known composer, pianist, and teacher, and her father, Aristide, was a flutist, musicologist, and music publisher. Farrenc showed an early musical talent and began her music studies at age 5. She studied piano at the Paris Conservatory as a teenager with her mother as her teacher. In her second year there she won First Prize for piano.
Farrenc began to concertize and compose mélodie, romance, and chansonette. She suffered from a serious nerve illness for a number of years that cut her performing career short and eventually led to her death at age 32. Her compositional output would have been greater had she lived longer.