Today, Cécile Chaminade’s flute concertino is a de rigueur composition for flautists everywhere, and generations of young pianists have played her little piano piece, Scarf Dance. Unfortunately, time is often cruel to artists, and many fine composers are remembered—if at all—for only one or two compositions. And so it is with Chaminade. Ironically, almost all of her some 400 compositions were published in her time, and her popularity, widespread in her native France, was sufficient in this country to account for the establishment of numerous “Chaminade Clubs” around 1900. She was awarded the Légion d’Honneur and other prestigious honors, so she certainly did not labor in obscurity. By her mid-thirties she began to focus her compositional efforts in the smaller genres, notably lyrical character pieces for piano solo and songs—that for which she is most known today. However, earlier in her career she composed a series of works for large ensembles, including several orchestral works and an opera comique. The last of these, her evergreen Concertino for solo flute stems from 1902.
It was commissioned by the Paris Conservatoire and its esteemed virtuoso and professor of flute, Paul Taffanel. It reasonably could have also been intended as an examination piece for the Conservatoire’s students of flute. Originally written for flute and piano accompaniment, only later did she arrange it for flute and orchestra. Her orchestra employs a rather full instrumentation to accompany the relatively light voice of the flute, eschewing trumpets, but including three trombones, tuba, and timpani, by example. As a concertino (“little concerto”), not a concerto, the form is telescoped into single movement, not the usual three. Moreover, Chaminade’s work is straightforward and simple in form: three successive contrasting sections, followed by a repeat of the first. A piece such as this, in that time and place, and for this instrument, would not be complete without a formidable cadenza, and we certainly hear a dazzling one, just before the return of the winsome and memorable opening theme at the end. Chaminade’s Concertino is a delightful example of her quintessential style, with elegance, rich melodious inventiveness, and limpid textures. All of the traditional (perhaps clichéd) tenants of Gallic art! She lived on until 1944, but by then the world and its musical tastes had changed seismically. Knowledge and appreciation of her oeuvre is spare now, but the Concertino and many of her short works for solo piano are revered by those in the know.
–Wm. E. Runyan
©2021 William E. Runyan