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Clémence de Grandval was one of the most-performed women composers of Second-Empire Paris — operas staged at the Opéra-Comique, chamber and orchestral works played in the capital's major halls, and enough standing among her peers that Camille Saint-Saëns dedicated work to her. None of that stopped her from spending much of her career publishing under pseudonyms rather than her own name, a near-universal survival strategy for women composers of her generation. Her music went quiet after her death in 1907; the salon mélodie repertoire below has not been easy to find in playable form until now.
PracticeClef's source corpus contains 13 playable Grandval engravings, and all 13 are live today. “Complete” here means every piece in our source corpus that could be engraved is live — not necessarily everything she composed across her full catalog of operas, chamber works, and songs, much of which hasn't survived in a form we can engrave. Every piece below is a piano part transcribed from a voice-and-piano (or, in one case, voice-flute-and-piano) mélodie; the piano parts stand alone as self-contained accompaniment repertoire and are labeled as piano parts throughout. Keys, difficulty ratings, and lengths are pulled directly from each piece's own metadata. Difficulty is PracticeClef's published 1–9 scale, and duration figures are score-derived estimates, not measured performance times.
Two showpieces
Le bohémien — Clémence de Grandval
This piece is in E major, sits at level 8 of 9, and takes about 4 minutes to play.
The set's most demanding piece: a gypsy-idiom showpiece that opens in E minor and works its way to a parallel E major close. In our edition, that minor-to-major arc is the piece's whole argument — dense chording and fast harmonic rhythm throughout make it the hardest piece in the Grandval set.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Les lucioles — Clémence de Grandval
This piece is in F major, sits at level 7 of 9, and takes about 3 minutes to play.
“The fireflies” — a scherzando piece built on quick, light figuration meant to flicker rather than sing. It's the second-hardest piece in the set and a good target once the d3–d6 pieces below feel comfortable.
Open this score when you want to play it.
The salon mélodie set
Most of Grandval's output in our catalog sits between difficulty 3 and 6 — accompaniment writing built for the salon, not the concert stage, and well suited to steady practice.
Les clochettes — Clémence de Grandval
This piece is in Eb major, sits at level 6 of 9, and takes about 4 minutes to play.
“The little bells” earns its title: a high, ostinato figuration runs through the piece in imitation of bell chimes, and it's visually striking on the page as much as it is to play.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Villanelle — Clémence de Grandval
This piece is in G minor, sits at level 5 of 9, and takes about 4 minutes to play.
The one original in the set scored for voice, flute, and piano rather than voice and piano alone. Our engraving is the piano part only — it stands on its own as accompaniment writing, but the flute line is not included here.
Open this score when you want to play it.
La délaissée — Clémence de Grandval
This piece is in G minor, sits at level 6 of 9, and takes about 2 minutes to play.
“The abandoned woman” — a short, dense piece that packs a lot of harmonic movement into a compact span, making it a useful companion piece once Les clochettes is under your fingers.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Chanson de Barberine — Clémence de Grandval
This piece is in A minor, sits at level 3 of 9, and takes about 2 minutes to play.
One of the two easiest pieces in the set, alongside L'absence, and a reasonable entry point into Grandval's writing before moving up to the d4–d6 pieces.
Open this score when you want to play it.
The rest of the set rounds out the middle of the difficulty range: Si tu m'aimais! (G major, 4/9), Chanson (E minor, 4/9), Mignonne (F major, 5/9), Rappelle-toi! (F major, 4/9), Chrysa (Bb major, 5/9), L'absence (A minor, 3/9), and Sacrifice (G minor, 5/9).
Explore it
All 13 pieces sit alongside the rest of the full library, free to browse and play, and Grandval's own composer page lists the complete set together. Connect a digital piano for live note feedback. Turn on Wait mode when you want the cursor to advance after you play the written notes. See the docs for setup. No account is needed.
A note on the numbers. Every count in this post is checkable against the live catalog: piece counts, keys, and difficulty grades come from each piece's own metadata record, and “complete” means every playable engraving in our source corpus — not every piece a composer ever wrote. Duration figures are estimates derived from the score, not measured performances.