I’ve posted a lot of classical music diaries, but one that always gets huger and huger is the one I post around this time paying homage to women composers. Often discouraged from expressing their talent, many times silenced, some of the greatest composers in history have been women. Because I don’t want to use up all the bandwith on DK5, I will only post music from a few of the great plethora of women composers.
Let’s begin at the beginning, with one of the greatest women to ever have lived: St. Hildegard von Bingen. The term Polymath is usually used to describe the great men of the Renaissance--Leonardo Da Vinci, for instance. However, over four hundred years before the Renaissance, St. Hildegard was universally recognized as such. Here are a few of her labels: Composer, Poet, Visionary, Theologian, Healer, Scientist, Philosopher, Mystic, Abbess, Preacher, Writer, Linguist, and finally Doctor of the Church, joining such luminaries as St. Augustine, the Venerable Bede, and Pope Gregory I.
The title of Doctor of the Church is bestowed upon a saint whose writings are deemed to be of universal importance to the Church. The Pope must also declare the individual to be of “eminent learning” and “great sanctity.” Among other things, the Pope (Benedict XVI) called her "perennially relevant" and "an authentic teacher of theology and a profound scholar of natural science and music."
Here are two pieces by St. Hidegard: O Jerusalem, and O Rubor Sanguinis
Now let’s hear from two women, contemporaries, whose composing paths diverged. Fanny Mendelssohn, the elder, was by many accounts, a better composer than her brother Felix. In fact, Felix often consulted her on his compositions, and she offered constructive advice. About her piano playing, one critic offered this “high” compliment: “She plays like a man”. From Wikipedia:
However, Fanny was limited by prevailing attitudes of the time toward women, attitudes apparently shared by her father, who was tolerant, rather than supportive, of her activities as a composer. Her father wrote to her in 1820 "Music will perhaps become his [i.e. Felix's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament".[5] Although Felix was privately broadly supportive of her as a composer and a performer, he was cautious (professedly for family reasons) of her publishing her works under her own name. He wrote:
'From my knowledge of Fanny I should say that she has neither inclination nor vocation for authorship. She is too much all that a woman ought to be for this. She regulates her house, and neither thinks of the public nor of the musical world, nor even of music at all, until her first duties are fulfilled. Publishing would only disturb her in these, and I cannot say that I approve of it'.[6]
The siblings shared a great passion for music. Felix did arrange with Fanny for some of her songs to be published under his name,[7] three in his Op. 8 collection,[8] and three more in his Op. 9.[9] In 1842 this resulted in an embarrassing moment when Queen Victoria, receiving Felix at Buckingham Palace, expressed her intention of singing the composer her favourite of his songs, "Italien", which Mendelssohn confessed was by Fanny.
Here is an overture composed by Fanny:
Clara Schumann, on the other hand, was encouraged to compose. One of the finest pianists of the Nineteenth Century, she had a 61-year performance career, virtually revolutionizing concert performance practices. One revolution was the memorization of music.
One of her first great performances was premiering her own piano concerto, with Felix Mendelssohn conducting the orchestra. However,
As she grew older, however, she became more preoccupied with other responsibilities in life and found it hard to compose regularly, writing, "I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?" Robert also expressed concern about the effect on Clara's composing output:
Clara has composed a series of small pieces, which show a musical and tender ingenuity such as she has never attained before. But to have children, and a husband who is always living in the realm of imagination, does not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost because she cannot work them out.
— Robert Schumann
In fact, Clara's compositional output decreased notably after she reached the age of thirty-six. The only compositions that exist from later in her life are cadenzas written to two concertos – one by Mozart and the other by Beethoven – and some sketches for a piece that never reached completion.[47] Today her compositions are increasingly performed and recorded. Her works include songs, piano pieces, a piano concerto, a piano trio, choral pieces, and three Romances for violin and piano.
Portrayed in film numerous times, here is an interesting little tidbit I found:
Additionally, the BBC show 'Doctor Who' loosely based the character Clara Oswald (from seasons 8-9) on Clara Schumann. The idea of time unwinding in Schumann's music overlaps with both the idea of time travel and the final message of the season: "Memories become stories when we forget them. Maybe some of them become songs."
Here is the Piano Concerto by Clara Schumann
Amy Beach can best be described as the first American woman to write large scale symphonic works. A member of the “Second New England School”, Amy Beach is the only woman to have her name on the granite wall on Boston’s Hatch Shell, where the Boston Pops performs summer concerts.
Her most famous pieces are her “Gaelic” Symphony in E minor and her piano concerto. However, she also wrote a Mass, and many other orchestral and choral works. Here are two—the Gloria from the Grand Mass in E Flat, and Canticle of the Sun:
Perhaps no woman composer has had her creativity stymied like Alma Mahler. One of the great beauties of the day, she had flirtations with some of the great artists of the day. She began composing around the age of nine, mostly writing lieder. However, her composing stopped after her engagement to Gustav Mahler, who famously proclaimed “There shall only be one composer in this family”. After Mahler’s death, she began publishing some of her work. Here is her collected lieder. As you can hear, her lieder are as good if not better than her husband’s lieder. Who knows what she could have accomplished:
Nadia and Lili Boulanger’s careers are the example of “what might have been”. Both musical prodigies, both attending the same music schools, both attempting the prestigious Prix de Rome, with Nadia failing four attempts, and Lili winning on her second, after collapsing during her first attempt.
Here is the first major difference. Lili was clearly the greater composer. However, Lili was also a sickly child, and died in 1918 at the age of 24. Nadia stopped composing after her sister died, partly to support her mother, and partly out of grief. She instead turned to teaching. In 1921, she joined the American School at Fontainebleau where her first student was Aaron Copland. Her estimated hundreds of students (with over 600 Americans) include such names as:
Burt Bacharach
Phillip Glass
Quincy Jones
Astor Piazzolla
Virgil Thomson
When not teaching, Nadia was also an accomplished conductor, and in fact was the first woman to conduct several of the world's leading orchestras.
Here is Nadia, first lecturing on teaching:
Now we have Nadia the composer:
Finally, we have Nadia the conductor. Here she is conducting the music of her sister Lili:
And here is another work by Lili, one of the last she completed. In the year after the war, she finished many of her manuscripts. In many ways, her last year was her most productive.
If being a successful woman composer was hard enough, imagine being an African American woman. Yet Florence Price was just that. Pretending to be Mexican to avoid stigma at the New England Conservatory, she was the first African American woman to have music premiered by a major symphony orchestra. Her First Symphony won the Wannamaker Prize and was premiered in 1933 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Here is her “Mississippi River Suite” performed by the Women’s Philharmonic
Only one more to go. This time I’m saluting a living composer. Chen Yi, born in 1953. She was the first Chinese woman to receive a Master of Arts (M.A.) in music composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Yi was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Si Ji (Four Seasons). Her husband is the composer Zhou Long. As of 2006, both Chen and Zhou are professors of composition at the University of Missouri Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance.
Here is the first movement of Dragon Rhyme for concert band