Mel Bonis Essentials

On the manuscript of her Opus 1, an Impromptu, the 18-year-old Mélanie Bonis signed her name “Mel Bonis”. In that same year, 1876, she was introduced to celebrated composer César Franck, and by the following year had enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire, becoming his organ pupil. Meanwhile, her instinctive talent for harmony won her prizes. But with marriage in 1883, Bonis placed composition to one side until 1894, when she resumed with a vengeance, eventually writing some 300 works. You can hear the influence of Franck as well as something of Fauré’s harmonic quirkiness in her early Flute Sonata of 1904. Further evidence of her admiration for the latter composer can be heard both in her Fauré-style Soir-Matin for piano trio, and in her solo piano arrangement of Fauré’s song “Clair de Lune”. But with “La route petite s’endort”, taken from her 1928 piano suite Miocheries, you can hear a more intriguingly individual voice in its use of hauntingly resonant harmonies. Just as arresting is Bonis’ Violin Sonata of 1923, from which you can hear the “Thème popular grec” third movement. Bonis wrote for a wide variety of genres, including tone poems such as the sensual and imaginatively orchestrated Le Rêve de Cléopâtre, and songs such as the highly expressive “Ave Maria”. She particularly excelled in chamber music, however—besides the Violin Sonata, try the irresistible Suite dans le style ancien, or the Piano Quartet Op. 69 which impressed Saint-Saëns when it was performed in 1901.