Louise Héritte-Viardot was born in Paris in 1841, the eldest daughter of singer and composer Pauline Viardot-García and man of letters Louis Viardot. She took some piano instruction, in addition to classes in harmony under composer Auguste Barbereau, but was hostile to any form of instruction and had her parents agree to her studying music on her own by analysing partitions and reading Berlioz’s Grand traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes. She showed her works to Charles Gounod, who supported her. She became an excellent pianist and singer, which she leveraged to make her living after her very quick separation from her husband, diplomat Ernest Héritte, whom she had married in 1863. Based on her son Louis Héritte’s preface to the French version of her memoir, she composed over three hundred works across all genres. Only fifty or so survive, most of them mélodies. No traces currently remain of her pieces performed at the Société Nationale de Musique in 1876: a Dies Irae for choir, and Souvenir d’une nuit de Crimée for orchestra. Not a trace either of her Trio in C minor, performed in Paris in 1877 by her mother Pauline Viardot on piano, or of her symphonic piece with vocals, Caïn, or of Fête de Bacchus for soloists, choir, and orchestra, which she submitted in 1878 for the Grand prix de la Ville de Paris (and extracts of which she conducted in Stockholm in 1880). Surviving works include three quartets with piano (1878-1883), testaments to her eclectic style, her opéra-comique Lindoro, performed in Weimar in 1879, her cantata Le Feu du Ciel (1882) in its version for piano and voice, a sonata for cello and piano (date unknown), mélodies adapting French and English poems, and lieder. The latter, particularly those adapting poems by Anna Ritter, are in the upper echelon of the lied repertoire of the late 19th century.

– Florence Launay –

[Traduction en anglais : Raphaël Meyer]