Great Women Composers: Melanie Helene Bonis

Melanie Helene Bonis, 1858-1937, Paris, France. Mel Bonis was a prolific French post romantic composer. She wrote more than 300 pieces, including works for piano solo and four hands, organ pieces, chamber music, melodies, choral music, a mass, and works for orchestra. She attended the Conservatoire of Paris, where her teachers included Cesar Franck, the composer Ernest Guiraud and the organist Auguste Bazille.
Bonis was born to a Parisian lower-middle-class family and was educated according to the strict norms of the Catholic morality of the time. 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 the accompaniment, 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".
From Wikipedia
Poster made from original paintings by artist Al Moretti.