From Behind the Shadows of Great Musical Figures: Marie Mennessier-Nodier: A composer in Nineteenth-Century Microhistory

Abstract

Within the history of music, the scholarship on the great female figures from across all time periods—most notably composers, performers, patrons, and teachers—continues to grow. In addition to these notable individuals, however, there were numerous anonymous women, most often associated with musical teaching or private performances in the European salons, who achieved a prominent place in their society. In this work, I propose to address this with an approach to the case of the lesser-known composer and poet Marie Mennessier-Nodier (1811–1893). Following a review of the place of women musicians in current academic research, I delve into the life and the legacy of Marie Mennessier-Nodier, as well as her place in the musical context in which she lived: nineteenth-century French Romanticism. Ultimately, the research on Marie Mennessier-Nodier allows us to reflect on the women who, despite their exclusion from the ‘great history’, were nevertheless important in shaping new generations of musicians and the artistic life of their context.