Clare Hammond on performing without performance tradition

Visionary French composer Hélène de Montgeroult has been described as ‘the missing link between Mozart and Chopin’, she wrote in a style that was decades ahead of its time foreshadowing the music of Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann and Brahms. Her études, of which there are 114, exhibit a prescient Romanticism that forces us to reconsider where the boundaries between classical and romantic music lie. Why, then, is she still virtually unknown? The absence of her music from the canon is disconcerting.

Over the years, I have spent many hours rifling through archives, researching the music of lesser-known composers. As a student, I used to daydream of accidentally discovering a lost score by a major composer and giving the premiere. I never contemplated coming across a body of work of such astonishing quality and stylistic significance as Montgeroult’s études, and the thrill of getting to grips with her music has been intense.

I cannot, unfortunately, claim to have discovered Montgeroult’s music. Musicologist Jérôme Dorival has been promoting it assiduously for the past twenty years or so and there are now a few discs of her music. Yet when I met Dorival in 2019, the name Montgeroult was entirely unknown to me. On reading the scores he gave me, I was struck by the high quality of this music, and on checking the date they were written, I was astounded. How is it possible that this woman, writing in near isolation with very few public performances of her work, could create music of such vision? So much of it sounds like Mendelssohn or Schumann, while études no. 107 and no. 110 could easily be prototypes for Chopin’s Revolutionary Étude or a Nocturne. Yet these were written no later than 1812, when Chopin was no more than a toddler.

I set about preparing some études for performance and dived in with enthusiasm. The series displays enormous emotional range from the extravagant virtuosity and drama of no. 74 to the intimate pathos of no. 38. There was plenty to keep me occupied and I enjoyed the first few performances but I later sensed that my approach was not working. Although I realised that I was starting from scratch with Montgeroult, it took me some time to appreciate the full extent of my ignorance.

Many moments in the études are reminiscent of later composers and so I had initially used their music as my starting point, transferring the touch I would employ for Mendelssohn or Chopin to Montgeroult. This worked to some extent, but it began to feel like a coarse approximation of her style. I made some progress when I began experimenting with period instruments and grew to understand the timbres that a more delicate and unpredictable instrument might produce. Yet my interpretations still felt incomplete.

After more than a year of working with her music, I realised what the problem was. It is very rare to find a composer of such significance and insight, with so much to say, who is still so entirely unknown. I had taken for granted the importance of general familiarity with a composer’s style, a knowledge of their historical context, and, most crucially, the existence of a performance tradition. When learning new repertoire, musicians employ shortcuts, often unconsciously. With a Chopin Scherzo, for example, I am already familiar with figurations and harmonic patterns from his études. I can listen to other pianists perform the piece and have often already heard it live in performance. This familiarity accelerates the learning process and also offers a way into the composer’s distinctive voice. Montgeroult stood apart from the crowd, both in her personal situation and in the astonishingly advanced style of her music. With her, the effect of a lack of context is all the more pronounced.

While a few people do currently perform Montgeroult, this does not yet constitute a ‘performance tradition’. Recording a disc of her études was the first time that I had grappled with such a large body of new work with such unfamiliar historical context. It required far more time than I could have anticipated to unpick the subtleties of this music and, crucially, to uncover the composer’s unique voice. In doing so, I gained even more respect for these works. I had dismissed some of the simpler études as little more than a succession of tonic and dominant chords, lightly ornamented. Yet with time, and by performing them to a live audience, I began to appreciate the skill and sensitivity with which Montgeroult weaves the emotional course of her music.

This time is necessary, not just as a performer, but also as a listener. We navigate the world by preconception, using what we already know as a crutch, and it is natural to listen to Montgeroult’s music through the lens of later composers. To be aware that she was writing decades before Mendelssohn and Chopin, in 18th-century France, does much to dispel this. Her work affords us a radically new perspective on the transition from a classical to a romantic style and is testament to her vibrant musical sensibility. To be able to revive that voice in live concert and on disc, in all its unique freshness and vitality, has been a remarkable experience and one that I hope to share as widely as possible.

Clare Hammond’s SACD release of Hélène de Montgeroult: Études is out on 4 November on BIS Records, you can find out more here.