“Not Just a Woman Who Composes…”

the-three-musketeers-herbert-renard  “…but a composer who is a woman.”

Ambroise Thomas once said this of Cecile Chaminade. I uncovered his comment while researching middle and late 19th century musicians for my current historical novel, The Gilded Cage. It seemed the perfect connection for my female protagonist as she entered a discussion with one of Thomas’ friends, composer Jacques Offenbach. So deeper and deeper I went, digging into the life and works of Cecile Chaminade, even if she was never going to make an appearance herself; and what did I find? That much as I admired her determination to compose and publish her work in the 1800s, to say nothing of her struggle to get the musical education in the first place at a time when it was not considered appropriate for young girls, I don’t like her compositions much. My expectations for something unique and almost divine emanating from a distinctive and singular courage were not met.

The disappointment surprised me so much that I spent longer listening to Mlle. Chaminade’s music than the reference to her in my novel would suggest necessary. I vaguely remembered repeating the same journey with Fanny Mendelssohn’s compositions for the prequel, Certain Liberties,  just as I keep trying new products from the “Newman’s Own” food company. All of these quests have been launched in search of expected stellar results, and none of them were satisfied. I’ve certainly learned throughout life that negative expectations tend to be 100% fulfilled. ‘Set up to fail’ is a phrase that comes to mind when the most pessimistic outlooks shade the horizon. But does my new revelation about positive expectations offer the mirror image? Are positive expectations destined to be 100% unfulfilled? The thought that it might be so upset my hopes for myself as well as my female protagonist, who needs all the help she can get.

One of the things I love most about doing research for a historical novel is the way these tributaries take one for rides in different directions. So often they suggest twists to the plot that never would have been noticed without the new material. Sometimes they turn out to be dead-ends, but always the sights along the way affect the final outcome unexpectedly.  The revelation I got researching Cecile Chaminade’s life and work made me realize I was focusing on the wrong thing entirely; and so was my protagonist and her artistic friends who brought Chaminade to her attention at a dinner party salon. Surely the focus of attention has to be on the music (or the food, in the case of ‘Newman’s Own’). It seems we all err on the side of complexity, often clouding the issues with layers of discrimination and personal bias (both meant in their most positive connotations), only to find the crux of the matter is so much simpler. What’s the truth about the way something affects us in its own right without the added baggage of expectations, be they good or bad?

One of the tributaries I rowed up before I met Cecile took me to the collaboration between 19th century super-star writer Alexandre Dumas (follow the link in his quote) and composer Ambroise Thomas (Cecile’s champion). Dumas, who wrote The Three Musketeers while researching a historical novel of his own,  wrote the libretto for Thomas’ first opera, ‘Hamlet’, which has had a varied acceptance over the years. At the opening night, when Dumas was questioned by the press as to his reaction and whether his expectations had been met, he replied that he’d gotten what he wanted; a production that grabbed him with its realism and made him forget he was in the theater. His measure for a satisfying theatrical production had been filled, even if it wasn’t yet what the public had in mind.

I do hope my protagonist in The Gilded Cage can be as avant-garde and farsighted as Monsieur Dumas. It’s about her music and what she wants out of life, not the injustices and challenges leveled at her sex in the 1800s, after all. Still, it’s hard for someone who’s lived in a cage to fully appreciate the possibilities of freedom, to be not just a woman…

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