Caroline Boissier Butini: Life
Caroline Butini (b. Geneva, 2 May 1786, d. Geneva, 17 March 1836) was the eldest child of Pierre Butini (1759-1838) and Jeanne-Pernette, née Bardin. Her father, a doctor with a Europe-wide reputation, was an enlightened amateur musician and probably the most important promoter of her music-making. No one else in her close family seems to have engaged in a musical activity that could explain Caroline’s vocation. Aged 20 she wrote in her diary: “I have devoted a third of my life to music.”
Caroline Butini’s origins placed her in the upper echelons of society. She therefore grew up in an environment that encouraged education, even for girls, and received a broad general education. When she was 22, a marriage was arranged to Auguste Boissier (1784-1856). At his side, she was able to develop into an independent (artistic) personality. It seems clear that Auguste, himself a passionate amateur violinist in the time left over from managing his estates, was unstintingly supportive of his wife’s activities as pianist and composer.
In 1810 Edmond was born to the couple; three years later Valérie. The family spent winters in Geneva, and summers at their country estate in Valeyres-sous-Rances, between Orbe and Yverdon. The two children received much attention and encouragement, which was later reflected in their life’s work. Edmond became a renowned botanist and Valérie – under her married name de Gasparin – became famous beyond Switzerland’s borders as a writer and as the founder of the first secular school for nursing, “La Source” in Lausanne. Like her mother, she would become an excellent pianist, studying the piano with Franz Liszt and composition with Anton Reicha in the winter of 1831-1832 in Paris.
According to current research – and here there are great gaps – Caroline Boissier-Butini was one of the most multifaceted Swiss composers of her generation. She must have enjoyed an excellent training both as a pianist and as a composer. The only name she mentions in her writings is Mansui; but whether this refers to Mansui senior (Claude-Charles, dates unknown) or junior (François-Charles) is unknown. Bernard Scherer (1747-1821), organist of the Cathedral in Geneva, and himself a composer, may also have been one of her teachers. The many indications of independent learning by Boissier-Butini, who was by now over 30, also suggest that her education was largely autodidactic. What her parents intended by allowing their daughter to acquire such a depth of musical skill, thus enabling her to play at the highest level and to compose in the spirit of her times, is also unknown. Her social standing meant that practising a profession of whatever kind was out of the question. Her extensive diary entries from the period before her marriage (1808) show her own ideas of a good wife, and what Geneva society expected of a woman of her class. We can conclude from this that there was theoretically no room for creative activity in the daily routine of a female Genevois citizen, and definitely not for a lasting pursuit of music, at that time quite a disreputable art form. It therefore appears all the most extraordinary that for years after marrying she composed much and often.
In spring 1818 Caroline Boissier-Butini measured her musical ability against the best pianists in Paris and London. She played to Marie Bigot, Ferdinand Paer, Friedrich Kalkbrenner and Johann Baptist Cramer, and garnered unfettered praise, both for her own pieces and for her interpretations. It has been shown that she wanted to publish her works through Ignaz Pleyel in Paris, although this was unsuccessful; she did, however, sign a contract with the publisher Leduc. In Geneva, where middle-class musical life developed only haltingly in the early 19th century, she played several times in 1825 and 1826 in the concerts of the Société de musique, sometimes performing her own works.
The great number of purely instrumental works in her surviving oeuvre is notable. Her early engagement with folk music from her own environment is also worth noting. In a letter of 1811, Caroline Boissier describes how in Valeyres she transcribed folksongs that a woman from the village sang to her. We may assume that some of them also found their way into the 6th piano concerto, Suisse.
During her lifetime, Caroline Boissier-Butini was a musical household name throughout Switzerland. After her death, her family carefully preserved her musical works and personal writings (diaries, letters, further documents). In 1923 her descendents brought her a certain fame by publishing her record of the piano lessons that her daughter Valérie took from Franz Liszt in Paris 1831, under the title Liszt pédagogue and with the author given as “Madame Auguste Boissier” (Reprint Champion, Paris 1993; numerous translations).
Caroline Boissier-Butini’s compositions and the circumstances of her musical practice give a glimpse of the early 19th century in Geneva and in Switzerland, the age of great political, social and cultural upheavals, which has barely been researched from a musical point of view.
Caroline Boissier-Butini and the piano
“I am better than the keyboard players of Paris.”
With this conclusion, fully aware of her worth, Caroline Boissier-Butini became part of the circle of pianists whom she had heard during her stay in Paris in the spring of 1818. But how could a representative of the grande bourgeoisie of Geneva feel the need to compare her piano playing with that of the professionals, when her social status should have prevented her practising an art at an elite level?
In that year, Auguste and Caroline Boissier-Butini undertook their first long journey together without their children. In her travel diary, Caroline Boissier wrote that she had four clear objectives for her journey: she wanted to compare herself to the pianists of Paris, to hear well-played music and to publish her works; she also wanted to buy a grand piano for herself and a pianoforte for her father. By pursuing an active role as a musician, and setting very precise criteria for the instruments that she had obviously not found in Geneva, she was clearly going well beyond the usual Parisian excursion of a Genevan society lady.
In summer 1811 or 1812, the couple had travelled through the western part of Switzerland and had sought out the renowned piano and organ builder Alois Mooser (1770-1839) in Fribourg; interestingly, in letters to her parents at the time, Caroline Boissier-Butini does not mention buying an instrument, although she spent an afternoon enthusiastically playing Mooser’s pianos, especially his famous orchestra instrument (the “panharmonium”). The reason why she rejected Mooser’s pianos her is unknown. In Paris a few years later, the search for a suitable instrument was, alongside concerts and theatre performances and invitations to numerous salons, Caroline Boissier-Butini’s main activity.
In March and April 1818 she tried out an estimated 120 instruments at six named piano manufacturers and more than a dozen dealers. Only three days after her arrival the piano maker Ignaz Pleyel delivered a piano to her hotel, on loan and free of charg , but she wrote home in disappointment saying that she would definitely not buy such “an old joanna”. Her continuing search is documented precisely in her diary entries and letters to her parents. Her systematic procedure and her precise analysis of the characteristics of the instruments she tried out gives a unique insight into the world of Parisian piano making. After twelve weeks of searching she chose for her father a Pianoforte from Lemme, a former employee of Pleyel: “It is a piano with five octaves and five pedals, ‘pédale sèche’, sustaining pedal, moderator, bassoon pedal and Janissary pedal. The keyboard is completely even from top to bottom, the sound develops in perfect proportion, and thus the basses are less strong than Freudenthal’s but better adapted to the high notes. The high notes are sonorous, do not suffer from a wooden sound, and have a beautiful colour. The pedals function well and the effects are well differentiated. Finally, the touch is very light, pearly, clear, brilliant. All the keys respond well, and they stand up to different demands including the tricky runs that are often let down because of the repeated playing of individual notes.”
But, none of the instruments she tried out in Paris satisfied her requirements for a good grand piano. The new Broadwood which she played several times in the salon of Marie Bigot came closest. But even here she complained of the uneven sound, and the sluggish keys which hindered fast runs. Undaunted, Caroline and Auguste Boissier set off for London, in the hope of finding a better instrument there. The day after her arrival in London, Caroline Boissier-Butini was in the workshops of piano makers Broadwood, Kirkman and Tomkinson. Within three days she was weighing up a “6 octave grand pianoforte” from Broadwood. The piano itself has been lost, but we now get a picture of how it sounded because it was constructed just like the 1816 Broadwood grand piano on which these recordings were made. This also enables us to get closer to the sound aesthetics of the compositions. Caroline Boissier’s instrument must also have resembled the one given by Broadwood to Ludwig van Beethoven in 1817 (now in the Budapest History Museum), as during this period Broadwood built only two models of grand piano. The instrument used for the present recording is an example of the larger model, with a range of C-c4 (six octaves).
A further high point of this excursion was meeting the pianists Johann Baptist Cramer and Friedrich Kalkbrenner, whom Caroline Boissier visited in their own homes; she played to them, and they played to her. These two meetings were also described in her writing, giving us a unique comparison of the technique of the two masters – as they took place on the same day and under the same conditions.
The compositional repertoire of Caroline Boissier-Butini
A typology of the surviving compositions by Caroline Boissier-Butini points up a number of pieces full of effects: the seven piano concertos, nine virtuoso pieces (“romances”, “thèmes/airs variés”) on folksongs from different countries for piano, and nine pieces of chamber music for three to five instruments. Another highlight is the three piano sonatas, which clearly belong in the category of serious music, as well as the “Sonatine 1ere dédiée à Mlle Valérie Boissier”, a didactic piece for her daughter, and an organ piece. There are no known compositions without a keyboard instrument; it may be assumed that all of Caroline Boissier-Butini’s pieces were written for her own use, since at the time composition and interpretation were still understood as a single unit.
The existing manuscripts – no prints are known, despite contracts concluded in Paris – are probably incomplete versions not intended for publication. Tempo and phrasing are mostly inconsistent and incompletely notated. Almost throughout, the composer also leaves out the complete notation of accidentals in all octaves, often also in subsequent bars, although the chamber music parts are more carefully notated overall than the piano part. This suggests that the piano parts were primarily intended as a reminder of the composer’s ideas. The present recordings of the two sonatas are based on the 2010 edition (Müller und Schade), while the other pieces have been played from unedited transcriptions of the manuscripts. Any interpretation of this music requires highly specialised knowledge of the notation conventions of the time.
Caroline Butini’s origins placed her in the upper echelons of society. She therefore grew up in an environment that encouraged education, even for girls, and received a broad general education. When she was 22, a marriage was arranged to Auguste Boissier (1784-1856). At his side, she was able to develop into an independent (artistic) personality. It seems clear that Auguste, himself a passionate amateur violinist in the time left over from managing his estates, was unstintingly supportive of his wife’s activities as pianist and composer.
In 1810 Edmond was born to the couple; three years later Valérie. The family spent winters in Geneva, and summers at their country estate in Valeyres-sous-Rances, between Orbe and Yverdon. The two children received much attention and encouragement, which was later reflected in their life’s work. Edmond became a renowned botanist and Valérie – under her married name de Gasparin – became famous beyond Switzerland’s borders as a writer and as the founder of the first secular school for nursing, “La Source” in Lausanne. Like her mother, she would become an excellent pianist, studying the piano with Franz Liszt and composition with Anton Reicha in the winter of 1831-1832 in Paris.
According to current research – and here there are great gaps – Caroline Boissier-Butini was one of the most multifaceted Swiss composers of her generation. She must have enjoyed an excellent training both as a pianist and as a composer. The only name she mentions in her writings is Mansui; but whether this refers to Mansui senior (Claude-Charles, dates unknown) or junior (François-Charles) is unknown. Bernard Scherer (1747-1821), organist of the Cathedral in Geneva, and himself a composer, may also have been one of her teachers. The many indications of independent learning by Boissier-Butini, who was by now over 30, also suggest that her education was largely autodidactic. What her parents intended by allowing their daughter to acquire such a depth of musical skill, thus enabling her to play at the highest level and to compose in the spirit of her times, is also unknown. Her social standing meant that practising a profession of whatever kind was out of the question. Her extensive diary entries from the period before her marriage (1808) show her own ideas of a good wife, and what Geneva society expected of a woman of her class. We can conclude from this that there was theoretically no room for creative activity in the daily routine of a female Genevois citizen, and definitely not for a lasting pursuit of music, at that time quite a disreputable art form. It therefore appears all the most extraordinary that for years after marrying she composed much and often.
In spring 1818 Caroline Boissier-Butini measured her musical ability against the best pianists in Paris and London. She played to Marie Bigot, Ferdinand Paer, Friedrich Kalkbrenner and Johann Baptist Cramer, and garnered unfettered praise, both for her own pieces and for her interpretations. It has been shown that she wanted to publish her works through Ignaz Pleyel in Paris, although this was unsuccessful; she did, however, sign a contract with the publisher Leduc. In Geneva, where middle-class musical life developed only haltingly in the early 19th century, she played several times in 1825 and 1826 in the concerts of the Société de musique, sometimes performing her own works.
The great number of purely instrumental works in her surviving oeuvre is notable. Her early engagement with folk music from her own environment is also worth noting. In a letter of 1811, Caroline Boissier describes how in Valeyres she transcribed folksongs that a woman from the village sang to her. We may assume that some of them also found their way into the 6th piano concerto, Suisse.
During her lifetime, Caroline Boissier-Butini was a musical household name throughout Switzerland. After her death, her family carefully preserved her musical works and personal writings (diaries, letters, further documents). In 1923 her descendents brought her a certain fame by publishing her record of the piano lessons that her daughter Valérie took from Franz Liszt in Paris 1831, under the title Liszt pédagogue and with the author given as “Madame Auguste Boissier” (Reprint Champion, Paris 1993; numerous translations).
Caroline Boissier-Butini’s compositions and the circumstances of her musical practice give a glimpse of the early 19th century in Geneva and in Switzerland, the age of great political, social and cultural upheavals, which has barely been researched from a musical point of view.
Caroline Boissier-Butini and the piano
“I am better than the keyboard players of Paris.”
With this conclusion, fully aware of her worth, Caroline Boissier-Butini became part of the circle of pianists whom she had heard during her stay in Paris in the spring of 1818. But how could a representative of the grande bourgeoisie of Geneva feel the need to compare her piano playing with that of the professionals, when her social status should have prevented her practising an art at an elite level?
In that year, Auguste and Caroline Boissier-Butini undertook their first long journey together without their children. In her travel diary, Caroline Boissier wrote that she had four clear objectives for her journey: she wanted to compare herself to the pianists of Paris, to hear well-played music and to publish her works; she also wanted to buy a grand piano for herself and a pianoforte for her father. By pursuing an active role as a musician, and setting very precise criteria for the instruments that she had obviously not found in Geneva, she was clearly going well beyond the usual Parisian excursion of a Genevan society lady.
In summer 1811 or 1812, the couple had travelled through the western part of Switzerland and had sought out the renowned piano and organ builder Alois Mooser (1770-1839) in Fribourg; interestingly, in letters to her parents at the time, Caroline Boissier-Butini does not mention buying an instrument, although she spent an afternoon enthusiastically playing Mooser’s pianos, especially his famous orchestra instrument (the “panharmonium”). The reason why she rejected Mooser’s pianos her is unknown. In Paris a few years later, the search for a suitable instrument was, alongside concerts and theatre performances and invitations to numerous salons, Caroline Boissier-Butini’s main activity.
In March and April 1818 she tried out an estimated 120 instruments at six named piano manufacturers and more than a dozen dealers. Only three days after her arrival the piano maker Ignaz Pleyel delivered a piano to her hotel, on loan and free of charg , but she wrote home in disappointment saying that she would definitely not buy such “an old joanna”. Her continuing search is documented precisely in her diary entries and letters to her parents. Her systematic procedure and her precise analysis of the characteristics of the instruments she tried out gives a unique insight into the world of Parisian piano making. After twelve weeks of searching she chose for her father a Pianoforte from Lemme, a former employee of Pleyel: “It is a piano with five octaves and five pedals, ‘pédale sèche’, sustaining pedal, moderator, bassoon pedal and Janissary pedal. The keyboard is completely even from top to bottom, the sound develops in perfect proportion, and thus the basses are less strong than Freudenthal’s but better adapted to the high notes. The high notes are sonorous, do not suffer from a wooden sound, and have a beautiful colour. The pedals function well and the effects are well differentiated. Finally, the touch is very light, pearly, clear, brilliant. All the keys respond well, and they stand up to different demands including the tricky runs that are often let down because of the repeated playing of individual notes.”
But, none of the instruments she tried out in Paris satisfied her requirements for a good grand piano. The new Broadwood which she played several times in the salon of Marie Bigot came closest. But even here she complained of the uneven sound, and the sluggish keys which hindered fast runs. Undaunted, Caroline and Auguste Boissier set off for London, in the hope of finding a better instrument there. The day after her arrival in London, Caroline Boissier-Butini was in the workshops of piano makers Broadwood, Kirkman and Tomkinson. Within three days she was weighing up a “6 octave grand pianoforte” from Broadwood. The piano itself has been lost, but we now get a picture of how it sounded because it was constructed just like the 1816 Broadwood grand piano on which these recordings were made. This also enables us to get closer to the sound aesthetics of the compositions. Caroline Boissier’s instrument must also have resembled the one given by Broadwood to Ludwig van Beethoven in 1817 (now in the Budapest History Museum), as during this period Broadwood built only two models of grand piano. The instrument used for the present recording is an example of the larger model, with a range of C-c4 (six octaves).
A further high point of this excursion was meeting the pianists Johann Baptist Cramer and Friedrich Kalkbrenner, whom Caroline Boissier visited in their own homes; she played to them, and they played to her. These two meetings were also described in her writing, giving us a unique comparison of the technique of the two masters – as they took place on the same day and under the same conditions.
The compositional repertoire of Caroline Boissier-Butini
A typology of the surviving compositions by Caroline Boissier-Butini points up a number of pieces full of effects: the seven piano concertos, nine virtuoso pieces (“romances”, “thèmes/airs variés”) on folksongs from different countries for piano, and nine pieces of chamber music for three to five instruments. Another highlight is the three piano sonatas, which clearly belong in the category of serious music, as well as the “Sonatine 1ere dédiée à Mlle Valérie Boissier”, a didactic piece for her daughter, and an organ piece. There are no known compositions without a keyboard instrument; it may be assumed that all of Caroline Boissier-Butini’s pieces were written for her own use, since at the time composition and interpretation were still understood as a single unit.
The existing manuscripts – no prints are known, despite contracts concluded in Paris – are probably incomplete versions not intended for publication. Tempo and phrasing are mostly inconsistent and incompletely notated. Almost throughout, the composer also leaves out the complete notation of accidentals in all octaves, often also in subsequent bars, although the chamber music parts are more carefully notated overall than the piano part. This suggests that the piano parts were primarily intended as a reminder of the composer’s ideas. The present recordings of the two sonatas are based on the 2010 edition (Müller und Schade), while the other pieces have been played from unedited transcriptions of the manuscripts. Any interpretation of this music requires highly specialised knowledge of the notation conventions of the time.
Association Caroline Boissier-Butini
Case postale
1200 Genève
Case postale
1200 Genève
