Prayer (Prelude in C minor) Op 140

Mélanie Hélène Bonis, known as Mel Bonis (b. 4th ar Paris, 21 January 1858 – d. Sarcelles (Val-d'Oise), 18 March 1937)

Two more pieces by Bonis to honour International Women's Day. March 8th.

UPDATE; https://www.facebook.com/groups/melbonis/about

Prolific French postromantic composer, with more than 300 pieces,for piano solo and four hands, organ pieces, chamber music, choral music, a mass, and works for orchestra. Cesar Franck was a teacher.

Bonis was born to a Parisian lower-middle-class family. Of great talent and musical sensitivity, she taught herself 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. At the age of sixteen she began her studies at the prestigious Conservatoire, and attended harmony and composition classes, where she shared the benches with Claude Debussy and Gabriel Pierné and received tuition from César Franck. Due to the difficulties encountered by women who wished to compose, she adopted the more androgynous form of her first name "Mel".

At the Conservatoire she met and fell in love with Amédée Hettich, a poet setting some of his poems to music. Unfortunately, her parents disapproved of the match, and arranged for her to marry the businessman Albert Domange, 25 years her senior, after which for a period she disappeared into domesticity and had three children.

Some years later, she met Hettich again, who encouraged her to return to composition, after which her career took off. However she also began an affair with Hettich, which led to the birth of an illegitimate child, Madeleine. The child was put into the care of a former chambermaid, whilst Bonis devoted all her energies to composition, becoming a member of the Société des compositeurs de musique and a published composer with Éditions Leduc.

Her music in all forms is available here;
https://www.mel-bonis.com/Copie de oeumbpaypal.htm