Holmès, Augusta (Mary Anne) (1847-1903)

Irish naturalized French pianist and composer. Although her parents were against her taking up music, she played the piano and sang as a child prodigy and began to compose under the name of Hermann Zenta. Later she studied with César Franck.

Works Opera Héro et Léandre, La Montagne noire (1895), Astarté, Lancelot du Lac.

Choral Les Argonautes (on Homer's The Iliad, 1881), psalm ‘In exitu’, odes Ludus pro patria and Ode triomphale.

Orchestral symphony on Ariosto's Orlando furioso, Lutèce, and Pologne, symphonic poem Irlande (1882).

Other song-cycle Les Sept Ivresses.