A Performance Guide to Cécile Chaminade's "Concertstück for Piano and Orchestra," Op. 40 Page: 7

                                
CHAPTER 3
MUSICAL BACKGROUND OF THE CONCERTSTUCK AND AN INTRODUCTION TO
CHAMINADE'S OTHER PIANO COMPOSITIONS
Of Chaminade's approximately four hundred compositions, nearly half are for piano,
and most of those are character pieces. In the smaller-scale pieces, she thoroughly presents
her elegant and charming side. The character pieces are generally written in the salon music
style, also accessible for amateurs. In comparison with her slightly younger contemporaries,
such as Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), Chaminade's
compositional style is conservative from the perspective of formal structure and harmony, yet
it remains diverse and often surprising.
Chaminade herself considered that there is no other instrument which can express the
emotions better than the piano: "The orchestra, also, could give more majestic expression....
yet the artist has in himself the means of producing with the piano alone the most intense
emotions which he experiences.... by itself alone it can create for us such joys.... In a word,
it is the piano which is harmony."19 Most of Chaminade's character pieces present her
significant melodic writing gift within the French style, which emphasizes lightness,
tenderness and elegance, but generally avoids extreme outward emotional intensity.
One of Chaminade's best-known character pieces is Scarf Dance, Op. 37, which
clearly represents her delicate side. This little piece derives from a set of piano transcriptions
from her own one-act ballet, Callirhoi (1887). In fact, many of her character pieces are
influenced by ballet, such as Pierrette, Op. 41, which she herself recorded. The first two

19 Cecile Chaminade, "The Scarf Dance and Autumn," The Etude 48 (December 1930): 908.

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