An Exploration of Performance Versions and Points of Chaminade’s Piano Works: Poèmes provençaux, Op. 127, and 6 Romances sans paroles, Op. 76

Cécile Louise Stéphanie Chaminade was a nineteenth-century French composer and pianist. She composed many works in different genres throughout her life, and most of them were published during her lifetime. While most musicians have heard of her, she is not considered a representative romantic composer. Many historians and critics hold that although her piano works have beautiful melodies and various romantic sonic effects, these works do not have depth.

I argue that Chaminade’s piano works contain diverse music content and require sophisticated performance skills. I analyse two sets of piano works, namely Poèmes provençaux, Op. 127, and 6 Romances sans paroles, Op. 76, in order to reveal her unique charm as rooted in aspects of Romantic traditions of her time.

Firstly, I briefly introduce Chaminade’s life, career and the basic information of the works to be analysed. Secondly, I discuss the creative elements of other composers in Chaminade’s works and analysed the musical characteristics of her works.

Thirdly, I analyse the performance recordings of different pianists in order to obtain velocity-intensity curves. These diagrams provide a visual representation of the tempo, intensity and rhythm employed by different pianists. Through these diagrams, I explore different understandings, interpretations and approaches to Chaminade’s works by different pianists, and find commonalities between them.

Finally, drawing on my own performance practice, I analyse the performance points in these works and explore how to solve them during performance, so as to show the variety and richness of the performance points in Chaminade’s works and perform these works with technical and expressive clarity.