Augusta Holmès

Augusta Mary Anne Holmès (16 December 1847 – 28 January 1903) was a French composer of Irish descent. In 1871, while living with the poet Catulle Mendès, Holmès became a French national and added the accent to her last name. She also published music under the name Hermann Zenta. She wrote the texts to almost all of her vocal music herself, including songs, oratorios, the libretto of her opera La Montagne noire and the programmatic poems for her symphonic poems including Irlande and Andromède. Biography Holmès was born in Paris, the only child of Charles William Scott Dalkeith Holmes (17 July 1797 - 19 December 1869), originally from Youghal, Ireland, and Tryphina Anna Constance Augusta Shearer (1811–1858). Camille Saint-Saëns was among the many artists - musicians, poets, painters - who became enamoured of her and fell in love with her, eventually proposing marriage, but he was turned down. Later, he wrote of Holmès in the journal Harmonie et Mélodie: “Like children, women have no idea of obstacles, and their willpower breaks all barriers. Mademoiselle Holmès is a woman, an extremist.” Like other female composers from the nineteenth century including Fanny Mendelssohn, Holmès publi