Music, this divine language, translates all beauty, all truth, all ardor. The object of our eternal wishes takes a form; music holds out its arms to us and yet, it is far, very far away and we will not reach it.
It is like the threshold of a garden of delights where everything is illuminated and perfumed, a place of rest where we know we will not enter. As I considered repertoire for my Doctoral chamber music recital, I settled on the theme of love, partly because it was impossible to avoid. For this project, I found myself drawn to a specific aspect of love: the eternal conflict between idealizing the object of our affections and the messier realities of loving another human being.
However, in the case of Mel Bonis, as I learned more about her biography, her song compositions seemed inextricably intertwined with the ever-unfolding elements of her life. These elements — a forbidden romance, a secret daughter, the struggle to balance her role as a wealthy bourgeois mother with her musical career, and the gendered prejudice that distorted her professional life….
By examining these songs in greater detail, we could perhaps reveal some aspect of the emotional life of the composer herself, whose music has long been overlooked. Her parents had little interest in music and actively discouraged her musical education. I would like to be able to describe the state of mind that is at once so distressing, torturous, and delicious into which music plunges me — the music that I love.
I should be able to do it, I experienced this sharp sensation to the point of pain so much, even as a child I could say, especially as a child. It was then like an agony of aspirations towards happiness, a tension, of every sensitive, cordial being, towards a thing which smiles upon us and slips away at the same time.
