A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Viard-Louis, Jenny

VIARD-LOUIS, Jenny, née Martin, born September 29, 1831, at Carcassonne. She learned the piano first at the Conservatoire, Paris, where she obtained the first prize, and afterwards from Madame Pleyel. In 1853 she married Nicolas Louis, composer, and after his death in 1857 devoted herself to a complete study of the great masters. In 1859 she married M. Viard, a merchant of Paris, and in 1864–65 undertook a tour through Austria and Germany, where her performance of Beethoven's works obtained the approval of various good judges, contemporaries of the great composer. On returning to Paris she gave concerts, at which the chamber music of Brahms and Raff was first introduced to French audiences. In 1874 a reverse of fortune obliged her to come to London for the purpose of teaching, and on March 4, 1876, she made her first appearance, at the Alexandra Palace, in Beethoven's Choral Fantasia. In the spring of 1878 she gave orchestral concerts at St. James's Hall, in which she played various pieces, classical and modern, including for the first time in public a MS. Fantasia of Cherubim's. She was compelled to abandon this enterprise, and devote herself solely to teaching; but since 1883 she has given various concerts devoted to the chamber music of Beethoven for piano solo, or piano and other instruments. These are still in progress. Mme. Viard-Louis has recently published a work entitled 'Music and the Piano' (London, Griflfith and Farran, 1884).

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