Desdémona, Op. 101

• This piano work was first published by Alphonse Leduc in Paris in 1913.¹
• Desdémona was dedicated to Paul Locard,² a music critic and author of books including Le piano (1948). 
• The score is headed by an epigraph: a quotation from Desdemona’s “Willow Song,” from French poet Maurice Bouchor’s Les chansons de Shakespeare mises en vers français, a (beautifully illustrated) French poetic translations of songs from Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1896. 

La pauvre âme s’assit au pied d’un sycomore  
Chantez le doux saule et le saule encore 

From “Chanson de Desdémone,” Bouchor’s Chansons de Shakespeare, p. 77 

The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, 
Sing all a green willow. 

From “The Willow Song,” Othello IV.iii. 

This piece was republished in 2003 in Femmes de légende, the first volume of Furore’s complete edition of Bonis’s piano works. 

1. “Catalogue: Piano seul,” Mel Bonis: Composer, Association Mel Bonis (2020), accessed June 3, 2021, https://www.mel-bonis.com/EN/Catalogue/. 
2. Ibid.