Ex. 14-15: Allons prier!

"Allons prier!" (Let Us Pray) is a song by the French composer Mel Bonis (1858–1937) — a hymn to the Virgin Mary, published in 1906. She was born Mélanie Bonis, but published as "Mel" so that her music would not be taken less seriously for being by a woman.

As a young woman she studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where César Franck taught her and Claude Debussy was a fellow student. But her family was against her having a musical career. They took her out of the Conservatoire and, in 1883, married her to a wealthy businessman twenty-five years older who disliked music. For years she wrote almost nothing, before slowly returning to composing. The man she had loved at the Conservatoire was a poet and singer named Amédée Hettich. Years later they met again, and he encouraged her back to composing. They also had a daughter together, whom she kept secret for many years.

As evening falls, the song gently invites the listener to pray to Mary, asking her for peace and hope. Its words are credited to "the abbé Léon Rimbault" — a priest — but no such priest can be traced, and "Léon Rimbault" is a pen name Bonis is known to have used for her own poems. So the words are very likely her own. She invented several such names over the years, even a comic one, "Fricoto Pusslink," for her humorous songs.

In the same year, 1905, she wrote another song to Mary, an "Ave Maria," dedicated "to my little Édouard" — her young son. The composer Camille Saint-Saëns admired her music.

From the album Contes Mystiques by Enguerrand de Hys and Paul Beynet (2024)
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