Andrée Marie Clémence Bonhomme
(b. Maastricht, Dec 1, 1905; d. Brunssum, Mar 1, 1982)
Dutch composer and pianist. She studied the piano with Maria Gielen and composition with Henri Hermans. She travelled to Paris each summer from 1930 to 1937 to study with Milhaud. She made her début in 1928 with the Maastricht city orchestra both as a soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concert and as a composer with her Drie schetsen for chamber orchestra. She regularly performed with this orchestra, however during World War II she refused to sign a ‘non-Jewish declaration’, and consequently resigned from the Maastricht city orchestra. This led a declination in her career as the performances of her works was restricted to house concerts.
Works:
Bonhomme composed a huge amount of works for orchestra, chamber music and songs. From 1920-1925, she mainly focused on songs and pieces for piano. In 1925 she started to write also for string instrument and for orchestra. Dansons la gigue op. 76 was written for solo, choir and orchestra in 1932. Only a few female composers wrote music for ballet, Bonhomme wrote Xanthis (ballet) in 1938 and followed with Ballet Suite I (1940) and II (1941). She wrote some works for male choir and female choir from 1941-1956. Three pieces for organ were composed in 1956 and two of her last pieces were written for string quartets.
Further reading:
Andrée Bonhomme Foundation Musical Legacy Foundation was founded in 1996 by Andrée’s sister Annie Harmes – Bonhomme. Their objectives include managing the musical legacy, (letting) publishing and performing Andrée’s work, and getting to know Andrée’s compositions as widely as possible. The board is made up of some family members of Andrée and musicologist Hans van Dijk.