Henriëtte Bosmans in 1917,
Photo: Jacob Merkelbach
Concert halls, in which no music by female composers is heard, are no longer imaginable, though still not a given, for inertia forces in classical music are not to be underestimated. Many believe that music history has miraculously and automatically made, unbiased, a purely qualitative selection in terms of what dominates concert programmes worldwide. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms – they were simply the best, and if no woman has managed to produce similarly great art, that fact cannot be altered. In comparison, a different insight is finally gaining ground: If music by female composers has often fallen below the so-called threshold of perception, this situation says nothing about the music itself, but only the more about the (often male) designers of this so-called perception threshold.
How about an example? The Sonata for Violoncello and Piano by Dutch composer and pianist Henriëtte Bosmans (1895–1952), is now being published for the first time as an Urtext edition, hot off the press, by our Henle publishing house: HN 1667. This sonata is a musical force of nature, a lyrical work of magic, a virtuoso challenge for the solo part, an opulent display of full-fisted piano writing, a masterpiece straddling the border between late romanticism and modernism – and yet it has remained largely unknown until now. Bosmans was only 23 years old when she wrote this cello sonata in 1919, performed it with the Belgian cellist Marix Loevensohn, then principal cellist of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and published it with the Broekmans & Van Poppel publishing house.
The lavish musical notation presented me, as editor, with quite a few challenges. When she composed it, Bosmans was neither particularly experienced in accurately writing down such complex music, nor did the publisher at the time apparently devote any especially careful attention to detail when printing this newcomer’s work. For example, the piano part in the first edition is notated in many places with downright abstruse ottava notation, making its range on the keyboard hardly discernible and greatly complicating orientation when playing it.
A historical full-score copy by an unidentified hand, preserved together with the autograph of the cello part, is full of serious errors, accidentally, perhaps, pointing in the right direction in some cases of editorial doubt, but misleading much more often than not. Coming to grips with the sonata philologically, based on these sources, was an enthralling task.
Musically, Bosmans’ cello sonata is a fascinating contemporary document of an era when tonal thinking and its transcendence were in competition. On top of that, the sonata stands as a historical, biographical document and snapshot of the proficiency of an aspiring young composer who, though still undergoing professional training, had already begun to develop her own personal style. And despite all this, the sonata is in its compositional characteristics timelessly brilliant music, never losing its suspensive tension for a second throughout its entire 25-minute performance, whilst filled to bursting with expressive power. Discretion is not inherent in this work. That is certainly true of the first movement, with its highly expressive main theme on the cello layered over the piano’s large chords and lowest possible bass, but also for the impressionistic second movement, characterised by a playful dialogue between the instruments, the lyrically fragile third movement, and the rhythmically energetic fourth movement in 5/4-time – before the opening theme returns one last time at the very end with even greater force (Fortissimo, Maestoso), providing both a final climax and musical closure.
Return of the main theme at the end of the 4th movement. The piano part – Fortissimo, Maestoso – extends over keyboard’s seven octaves, Henle-Urtext
The final movement’s rhythmically powerful gesture, notated in 5/4-time, Henle-Urtext
Heard in this youthful, compositional tour de force, still hinting at Bosmans’ role models, may be echoes of Fauré, Grieg or Brahms. One might also think of Richard Strauss’s cello sonata, composed at a similar age, not exactly characterised in both versions by compositional restraint. Above all, however, Bosmans’ sonata is an expression of a strong and independent artistic personality.
The Bosmans researcher Helen H. Metzelaar has traced the composer’s fascinating biography for our edition’s preface. Bosmans was one of the outstanding pianists of her time, refining her compositional language over many years and writing instrumental music for small and large ensembles – often with a preference for the cello and her own instrument, the piano. In the 1920s, she was intermittently in a relationship with the cellist Frieda Belinfante, living a modern life with her. She later had to cope with the early death from cancer of her fiancé, the violinist Francis Koene. As the daughter of a Jewish mother, she braved the professional harassment and physical dangers of Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands – and returning to music after the war, she concentrated primarily on lied composition and discovered writing about music as a new field of activity.
Julian Riem and Raphaela Gromes,
Photo: Gregor Hohenberg
Such an artist and her art deserve the spotlight. Since their chart-topping CD ‘Femmes’ (Sony Classical, 2023), cellist Raphaela Gromes and pianist Julian Riem have been a celebrated investigative duo for rediscovering the works of female composers. Not only did they originally come up with the idea of an Urtext edition of the Bosmans sonata, but as advisors they also supported my editorial work with their practical musical expertise, enriching the edition with their individual fingerings and solo-part markings. They recorded the sonata for their latest CD, “Fortissima” (Sony Classical, 2025); Raphaela Gromes also turned her attention to Henriëtte Bosmans in her book also titled Fortissima! (Goldmann Verlag) about female composers, written in collaboration with Susanne Wosnitzka. This resulted in a wonderful collaboration that, it is to be hoped, will contribute to the further emancipation of such female composers’ works as this magnificent cello sonata. This is a win-win situation for everyone. For when concerns are occasionally expressed that the paths of classical music have become rather well-trodden, this applies only to the masculine side of music history. The feminine side has so far often only been told in isolated short stories, whilst a treasure trove of wonderful music lying dormant in the archives is only beginning to be accessible to the general public.
