“Object Lesson: Mel Bonis’s Hand” explores the legacy of French composer Mélanie Hélène Bonis through four specific artifacts: her autograph score of the piano piece Mélisande, the 1887 cast of her hand, a pincushion, and a folding fan. Proposing a “hermeneutics of the hand,” the article treats the hand as an organ of embodied knowledge bridging historical subjects and modern performers. The analysis of the hand cast alongside the score reveals a somatic bond created through the proprioceptive acuity of Bonis’s pianism. Domestic objects like the pincushion and fan further serve as traces of the gendered social constraints Bonis navigated in the Third Republic. Ultimately, these haptic artifacts illuminate a shared physical and musical connection between the composer and her illegitimate daughter, Madeleine.
Berthold Hoeckner (Thu,) studied this question.