Hélène de Montgeroult that’s the Marquise de Montgeroult, one of the great early fortepianists who’s been described as the missing link between Mozart and Chopin and famously saved herself from the guillotine.
Born Hélène Antoinette Marie de Nervo in 1764 into a newly landed family in Lyon, she grew up in Paris just at the time that the fortepiano was coming into vogue and by the time she married the Marquis, when she was 20, she was performing in all the most celebrated salons in Paris. The violin virtuosos Viotti and Kreutzer sought her out as a duo partner, John Cramer asked her to teach him long before he met Beethoven, Elisabeth Vigée le Brun became a close friend.
She began composing, as well as improvising, creating salons of her own around whatever house they happened to be at. The grand apartment in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, their several houses in the country, the family château of Montgeroult.
And then came The Terror. The story is legion, the marquis already having died, as they tried to escape first to England, then to Naples, and she was in Italy with the baby when she was arrested. Dragged back to Paris, and set before the Revolutionary Tribunal. They say that the only thing that saved her from the guillotine was that she asked for a piano, and launched into La Marseillaise – and simply kept improvising, until they asked her to stop.
It’s hard to verify that. But it is in the historical record that she was dragged before the tribunal, that her house was searched, that her letters were intercepted, and finally that she was discharged as “Citizen Gaultier-Montgeroult, artist, permitted to use her talent for patriotic celebrations". Which she did.
And not only that. Having lost her fortune, she made another one independently, performing in England on tour. She married again, she became famous for "Madame de Montgeroult's Mondays”, she poured out cycles upon cycles of piano pieces including hundreds of études and a “cours complet” on how to teach. And then, in year four of the Nouvelle régime, she became the first woman to teach at the Paris conservatoire, as first class teacher of the men’s piano class. On equal pay with all the men
Hélène de Montgeroult, Marquise (1764 – 1836)
MUSIC: Piano Sonata No. 9 (1.Allegro spiritoso)
Sarah Cahill, piano
Presented by Anna Clyne
Written and produced by Charlotte Wilson for WMHT
