Celeste de Longpré Heckscher

Celeste de Longpré Heckscher, née Massey, was an American composer associated with Philadelphia, the city where she was born in 1860 and died in 1928. She came from a family with an artistic inclination and began composing at the age of ten, although her parents did not look kindly on her musical training in piano and composition.

In 1883 she married Austin Stevens Heckscher, with whom she had two daughters and two sons. During the 1890s she studied composition with Henry Albert Lang and orchestration with Wasili Leps in Philadelfia. It is said that she may also have studied in Europe, although the details are not known with certainty, so this claim should be treated with caution.

Her works include the operas The Flight of Time and Rose of Destiny, the latter premiered in Philadelphia in 1918, as well as the orchestral suite Dances of the Pyrenees, which was also staged as a ballet in 1916. She also cultivated chamber music, piano works and song. In 1913 she gave a concert devoted exclusively to her compositions at the Aeolian Hall in New York, and for many years she presided over the Philadelphia Operatic Society.