On February 20, 1805, Haydn wrote on the score of one of his sonatas, "this day Joseph Haydn was happy." He had just heard a performance from a young pianist from Paris that was as if, he said, she had composed it herself.
Marie Bigot, virtuoso pianist and composer, was born in the Alsace in 1786. She studied with the best in Paris, moving to Vienna when she married her husband who was the librarian for the music-loving Count Razumovsky. And this brought her into the circles of Haydn and Beethoven who much admired her playing and with whom she became a close friend. There’s a famous letter from him apologizing for any impropriety in asking her and her baby daughter out for a drive.
She became a famous Beethoven interpreter, introducing his music to Paris when they moved back there in 1809: and all through this time composing, a sonata dedicated to the queen and variations and a set of études – and there was more, a lot more. But what she called her "feminine modesty” prevented her from publishing it, alas.
And then her husband, then in Russia, was arrested by Napoleon and languished for years in a Lithuanian jail. She turned to teaching to support herself and her two children – she taught the young Mendelssohns – working tirelessly for his release which finally happened in 1817. But the upturn in their fortunes was not to last. She died of TB a few years later at the age of 34.
Her legacy rests in the admiration of the great composers. She was the first to play the Appassionata sonata, in front of Beethoven, who gave her the autograph manuscript and declared:
“"That is not exactly the character I wanted to give this piece; but go right on. If it is not wholly mine, it is something better”
Marie Bigot, 1786 – 1820
MUSIC: Suite d'études No.2
Betty Ann Miller, piano
Presented by Anna Clyne
Written and produced by Charlotte Wilson for WMHT
(P.S.
Surely this is the story of Fidelio)
