Mel Bonis

Mélanie Hélène “Mel” Bonis (21 January 1858 – 18 March 1937) was a prolific French late-Romantic composer. She wrote more than 300 pieces, including works for piano solo and four hands, organ pieces, chamber music, mélodies, choral music, a mass, and works for orchestra. She attended the Paris Conservatoire, where her teachers included César Franck, Ernest Guiraud, and Auguste Bazille. Life Bonis was born to a Parisian lower-middle-class family and was educated according to the strict norms of Catholic morality. Endowed with great talent and musical sensitivity, she taught herself to play the piano. Initially, her parents did not encourage her music, but when she was twelve they were persuaded by a professor at the Conservatoire to allow her to receive formal music lessons. In 1874, at the age of sixteen, she began her studies at the Conservatoire, and attended classes in accompaniment, harmony, and composition, where she shared the benches with Claude Debussy and Gabriel Pierné and received tuition from César Franck. At the Conservatoire, she met and fell in love with Amédée Landély Hettich (5 February 1856 – 5 April 1937), a student, poet, and singer, setting some of his poems to