Pleyel, Marie-Félicité-Denise

▪ French musician

née  Marie-Félicité-Denise Moke 

born September 4, 1811, Paris, France

died March 30, 1875, St.-Josse-ten-Noode, near Brussels, Belgium

      French pianist and teacher, one of the most celebrated virtuosos of the 19th century.

      She studied with Henri Herz (Herz, Henri), Friedrich Kalkbrenner (Kalkbrenner, Friedrich), and Ignaz Moscheles (Moscheles, Ignaz), and by the age of 15 she was known in Belgium, Austria, Germany, and Russia as an accomplished virtuoso. She was engaged to Hector Berlioz (Berlioz, Hector) in 1830, but after three months, while Berlioz was in Italy, she broke the engagement to marry Camille Pleyel (1788–1855), scion of the piano-manufacturing family. After their separation in 1835 (her many love affairs were notorious), her concert career flourished. She received praise from Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, and François-Joseph Fétis. From 1848 to 1872 she was professor of piano at the Brussels Conservatory, where she established a school of piano playing in Belgium. Her few compositions for piano are of minor importance.

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