eight women

Some thoughts on

Sounds and sweet airs: the forgotten women of classical music
Anna Beer
One World 2017

In recent years I have been learning about some amazing composers who had fallen into oblivion because they happened to be women and didn't fit the composer cliche modelled on the male genius. In my orchestral adventures, I've enjoyed playing Louise Farrenc's third symphony and Emilie Mayer's overture, as well as Amy Beach's Maria Stuart. I'm hoping to learn chamber music pieces by Rebecca Clarke and by Rita Strohl one day. And have read about the life of Clara Schumann (Dieter Kühn's slightly novelised biography), as well as about those of Rebeccs Clarke, Ethel Smyth, Dorothy Howell, Doreen Carwithen in Leah Broad's recent book Quartet. Come to think of it, I even have a youtube playlist with works by some of these.

Adding to that, I now learned about a few composers I wasn't aware of from Anna Beer's book, namely
Francesca Caccini (born 1587),
Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677),
Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729),
Marianna Martines (1744-1812),
Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994)
who are featured along with the more widely known (at least to me)
Fanny Hensel (Mendelssohn) (1805-1847),
Clara Schumann (1819-1896) and
Lili Boulanger (1893-1918).

The book is a chronological array of the eight short biographies, each around 40 pages long. I love the way these eight lives cover the four centuries from 1587 to 1994 almost seamlessly - there is only a small gap between 1729 and 1744. (A graphic timeline would be a helpful addition to the book, which doesn't even list the birth and death years, I had to look them up and have now scribbled them into the table of contents with a pencil.) It is fascinating how the challenges that female composers faced over the centuries mutated and evolved over the centuries. Notably, in the early parts of the book, things seem to be getting worse for women from the Renaissance to the Classical period, as 19th century notions of gender roles came up with additional barriers that didn't exist before.

In most cases, the chapters are based on existing full-length biographies, so people who have read those may not learn anything new except perhaps the chance to find out about contradicting claims from competing biographers, which exist in the cases of some of the more colourful lives, where a fair number of unresolved paternity cases are up for debate.

While I appreciate the book for the considerable additions to my musical knowledge I have gained, I would advise readers to mistrust all quotes translated from German or French - they often appear to be subtly wrong. The consistent misspelling of the name of Friedrich Wieck (Clara Schumann's father) is a further warning that some things may have been lost in translation here.

Looking up the book online I see it has been stickered as a "companion to the Classic FM series" which makes sense in terms of the format of the eight chapters - I expect they must each have been made into a one hour or so radio piece.

I've now added some of my new discoveries to my youtube playlist:

• Caccini: Altri gelati
• Jacquet de La Guerre, Violin sonata n.1 d moll,
• Martines - Overture ("Sinfonia") in C Major - sounds lovely and very Viennese.
• Maconchy, string quartet No. 1 - probably too hard for amateurs?
• Maconchy, The sofa (opening scene of her erotic opera)

PS Shoutout also to the tumblr blog Lesser Known Composers, which features quite a few women as well (I'm no longer on tumblr, but the blog appears to be freely visible without a login.) Just yesterday, it presented the works of Vitezslava Kapralova (1915-1940) such as the Piano Concerto in D Minor, Op. 7.

Update 29.5.2025: From the always interesting Zeitzeichen podcast of the German radio station WDR, I discovered Pauline Viardot. She wrote no symphonies or quartets, sadly, but quite a few operas.

Update 26.11.2025 Just discovered Dora Pejačević thanks to a Mastodon post that was tagged with #cello. Loving her cello sonata in E minor (sadly Youtube doesn't allow me to add this video to my cello playlist as it is "made for kids" so I had to bookmark it here).

Update 29.6.2026 New video from Sarah (Team Recorder) introducing some female composers from the Renaissance and Baroque, including Strozzi and Caccini.

finding Rita Strohl

After bringing up a young cellist and spending quite some time obsessing with cello music myself, it was a bit of a shock to discover a couple of truly amazing cello pieces from a composer I never heard of before.

The composer is Rita Strohl (1865-1941)

source

As was the case with many other female composers, her music was played during her lifetime, but forgotten after her death as there was nobody willing to champion it. Some of her works have been rediscovered, published and recorded in recent years.

The pieces are

Grande Sonate Dramatique "Titus et Bérénice" (1898) played by Hermine Horiot & Hélène Fouquart, Youtube

It does have a story to tell, based on the eponymous tragedy by Racine, but on the first couple of hearings I was so blown away by the music I didn't pay any attention to texts between the movements. By the day I first watched this, the video had only around 5860 which is just scandalous.

Solitude for cello (or violin) and piano played by Hermine Horiot, cello & Hélène Fouquart, piano, Youtube

Sheet music for this one is available on IMSLP and it does sound as if it might be playable for mere mortals (unlike the sonata which is pushing the limits of cello technique). On closer inspection, the cello part reaches a couple of quite high notes that I don't use very often (up to the F just over 2/3 up the A string), but the violin version of the solo part fits the instrument range more easily, and it is also very handy for the flute without any alterations. Actually great fun to play on the flute alongside with the cello video.

Here's cellist Sandra Lied Haga raving about Strohl's work in Strad magazine, April 2023. She has released a recording of Titus et Bérénice together with César Franck's sonata in A.

Oh and I've added the two videos to my youtube playlist with female composers.

Thanks to lesser-known-composers on tumblr.

an asynchronous quartet

some thoughts on

Quartet: How four women changed the musical world

Leah Broad

Faber & Faber 2023

I’ve been a huge fan of Rebecca Clarke’s sonata for viola ever since I first heard a student playing part of it at the Oxford Music Festival quite a few years ago. Which is why I pounced at the opportunity to hear this and more music by her at the Jacqueline DuPre Music building on International Women’s Day this year, performed by Rosalind Ventris (viola), Laura van der Heijden (cello) and Libby Burgess (piano).

There was a pre-concert talk held by Leah Broad, who was there to promote her brand-new book, a group biography of four female English composers, including Clarke. It was all really lovely and inspiring so I bought a copy of her book on the spot and started looking for further female composers to add to Cowley Orchestra's music library. When I got the chance, I started reading Quartet at chapter 3, where Rebecca Clarke comes into the story. The four composers are different generations, and Clarke is the second to make her appearance. One could object to the title giving the misleading impression of four musicians performing simultaneously.

To give a brief overview, we’re talking about

• Ethel Smyth (1858-1944): known for her operas in her lifetime
• Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979): best known for her chamber music
• Dorothy Howell (1898-1982): piano and sacred music
• Doreen Carwithen (1922-2003): prolific film composer

I was a bit sceptical of the whole concept of a group biography where the lives concerned span very different times, but I came around to acknowledging that it kind of works in this case, seeing that as rare “woman composers” in the fairly limited scene of English classical music, they were all handled as curiosities, and their works were sometimes billed together in concerts or radio broadcasts. And they faced similar dangers of being forgotten as soon as they were no longer able or willing to fight for their music to get airtime. So in the end, I returned to reading the bits I missed at the beginning, and learned a lot about the other composers too, of whose work I had been entirely unaware.

In a way, it was interesting to see Rebecca Clarke’s life woven into the lives of other women who have faced similar challenges before and after her, and I’m a sucker for everything about the Bloomsbury set, to which Ethel Smyth was connected through Virginia Woolf, and I was pleased to learn that Doreen Carwithen played a cello called Perky. However, at the end of the day, I’m sticking with the Rebecca fandom and would like to see her autobiography published (and/or a full-scale biography). I should really learn some of her cello work, and perhaps also the viola sonata (of which the composer also prepared a cello adaptation).

Blackwells

Update 8.3.2025: There are another eight woman composers in the book "Sounds and sweet airs" by Anna Beer (2016), which I discovered recently and haven't read yet. Watch this space.

female composers wanted

After hearing an excellent concert with chamber pieces of Rebecca Clarke on Women's day, I realised we probably don't have any female composers in the otherwise excellent music library of Cowley Orchestra with around 400 pieces (there is a small risk I may have overlooked one hiding behind an initial or an ambiguous name). This embarrassing situation is easily explained by the fact that most sets date from the 1950s or earlier, but I think we should do something about it. So the search for orchestral music from female composers starts here. Ideally not too difficult and available as PDF to print for free or in affordable editions.

I'll list whatever I find here, in case other ensembles want to play these as well:

Chaminade, Cecile (1857-1944)

Suite Challirhoe Op 37 IMSLP YouTube

Farrenc, Louise (1804-1875)

Overture No.1 in E minor YouTube

Overture No. 2 in Eb major YouTube

Hensel (Mendelssohn), Fanny:

Overture in C major, H265 (1832) Parts from HenselPushers (We played this in March 2026. It's her only orchestral work, unfortunately)

Mayer, Emilie (1812-1883)

Symphony No.1 in C minor IMSLP YouTube

Symphony No.2 in E minor IMSLP YouTube

Symphony No.3 in C major IMSLP YouTube

Ouverture No. 2 in D major IMSLP YouTube UPDATE 27.4.2023: we've now played this one and added it to the music library. We do need some brass players to make the most of it though.

I've also started a YouTube playlist with works of these composers (also including eg chamber music and concertos).

Rebecca Clarke. I do love her chamber music, but I'm afraid she hasn't left us any symphonies or orchestral suites. (There is an orchestration of her famous viola sonata, but that of course would require a soloist.) She is also one of the four composers starring in the joint biography "Quartet" by Leah Broad, who gave an introduction to the concert I mentioned above. See my review here.

Added 21.8.2026, but also not much use for our orchestra:

Jaëll, Marie (1846-1925)

Cello concerto IMSLP YouTube

String quartet in G

Johann Benjamin Groß

browsing through the cello tag on tumblr, I was surprised to discover a cellist and composer who shares my last name (although unlikely to be related, as it's a name that originated in many places independently): Johann Benjamin Groß (1809-1848). His Wikipedia entry only exists in German, French and Russian so far, so I'll compile the basic info in English here(may expand on this later):

12.9.1809 Born in Elbing (West Prussia, today Elblag, Poland, a coastal city with some 120,000 inhabitants). Parents: Georg Groß, bell-ringer (was that a full-time job?) and Dorothea van Bergen (watch this space - there are genealogy records for families with both these names in nearby places so I might be able to find his grandparents etc.)

studies cello at Berlin with Ferdinand Hansmann, a pupil of Jean-Pierre Duport (that's the older Duport, not the one of Napoleon/Stradivarius fame).

1824 Cellist at the theatre of Königstadt near Berlin

1830 First solo cello at the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Leipzig.

1833 short stint at the orchestra of the Magdeburg theatre

1834 played in a quartet at Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia)

1835 moved to St. Petersburg to become first cellist at the Imperial Court orchestra.
marries Catharina von Witte from Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia). They had three daughters.

There he composed more than 40 works, including several concertos and many chamber works for the cello.

1.9.1848 died in St. Petersburg of cholera.

2004 After a period of oblivion, his work is performed again at the Schumann Festival at Düsseldorf. First recordings are released from 2009 onwards. On YouTube I found one of his cello concertos , and a lovely serenade for cello and piano.

Guillaume Paque

Continuing the theme of obscure composers, the young cellist recently played Souvenir de Curis, a piece for four cellos by the Belgian cellist and composer Guillaume Paque.

Here are four blokes playing it (but if you prefer to see four girls playing it give me a shout and I'll send the private link):

The information I could find about him reads, in its entirety (and the years / ages don't add up):

"GUILLAUME PAQUE must be mentioned, born at Brussels on July 24, 1825. At ten years of age he became a pupil of the Conservatoire, where, during a course of six years, he received his entire artistic training. Dismissed from the institution with the first prize, he entered the orchestra of the Royal Theatre in his native town. After he had belonged to it for some years, he took up his abode in Paris, with the intention of permanently settling there. But an offer which he received in 1840, of entering, as solo cellist, the Italian Opera at Barcelona, induced him to leave the French capital. Scarcely had he arrived at Barcelona, when the Professorship of the Musical School was committed to him. In 1849 he played before the Queen of Spain in Madrid, and in 1850 he travelled in the South of France giving concerts. In the same year he fixed his residence in London, where he gained popularity as a chamber music player. He found his particular sphere of work as solo cellist at the Royal Italian Opera, as well as teacher at the London Academy of Music, until his death on March 3, 1876. Amongst his compositions he published several "Fantasias," Variations, and Drawing- room pieces."

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obscure composers

The young cellist in my family is currently playing pieces by two composers I had never heard of before, so I did a little research and found that neither of them has a Wikipedia entry - even though their music is in print, and obviously being played today. They are the New Zealander Arnold Trowell, and the Frenchman Benoit Guillemant.

Trowell, at least has a minor role in the wikipedia entry on Katherine Mansfield:

She became enamoured with a cellist, Arnold Trowell (Mansfield herself was an accomplished cellist, having received lessons from Trowell's father),[2] in 1902, although the feelings were largely unreciprocated.[4]
...
Back in London in 1908, Mansfield quickly fell into the bohemian way of life lived by many artists and writers of that era (although she only published one story and one poem during her first 15 months there).[3] Mansfield sought out the Trowell family for companionship, and whilst Arnold was involved with another woman, Mansfield embarked on a passionate affair with his brother, Garnet.[4] By early 1909, she had become impregnated with his child, though Trowell's parents disapproved of the relationship, and the two broke up. She hastily entered into a marriage, with a singing teacher 11 years her elder,[6] George Bowden, on March 2, but left him the same evening, having failed to consummate the marriage.[4] After a brief reunion with Garnet, Mansfield's mother, Annie Beauchamp, arrived in 1909. She blamed the breakdown of the marriage on a lesbian relationship between Mansfield and Ida Baker, and she quickly had her daughter despatched to a spa town, Bad Wörishofen, in Bavaria, Germany. Mansfield had miscarried the child after attempting to lift a suitcase on top of a cupboard, although it is not known whether her mother knew of this miscarriage when she left shortly after arriving in Germany (Mansfield was subsequently cut out of her mother's will).[4]

More about his career as a composer is here

About Guillemant, we only know that he worked as a flautist and composer in Paris, 1746-57. Nothing is known about his life before or after this period. That's quite remarkable - I have ancestors in the 18th century about whom we know more ...

Still, someone should have a heart and compose Wikipedia entries for obscure composers like these ...

jean-baptiste loeillet

who the f***, you may be thinking, and so was I at first. The story is that I got myself the book & CD with grade 5 exam pieces for flute from the ABRSM. Not that I'm planning to do the exams, but now that the young flautist in my family prefers to practice on her own, I need to get my act together to make sure I actually move forwards, rather than playing the same pieces for the rest of my life.

So I got the book and listened to the CD and fell in love with the first piece, which is a sonata by jean baptiste loeillet. In fact all of the A list pieces on the CD are quite lovely, but the loeillet is something special.

A week later, I can kind of bluff my way through the piece (leaving out the optional ornamentation, and breathing in all the wrong places!) And it is beginning to sound like music ...