Women Composers since 1750

Three 20th-century women composers whose names I kept coming across in the 1960s were the English-born Elisabeth Lutyens (1906–1983), the Irish-born Elizabeth Maconchy (1907–1994) and the South African-born Priaulx Rainier (1903–1986). In my foolish teenage years, I wouldn't have anything to do with classical music of any era that didn't come from mainland Europe -- it simply didn't count. So the music of these three ladies, with the possible exception of Elisabeth Lutyens, passed me by entirely.

To make some kind of amends, I've linked one brief excerpt from each of them. That by Ms Lutyens is a pair of brittle pieces for solo piano, nos. 1 and 3 of her Five Bagatelles (1962), whose performer is as yet unidentified (someone suggested John Ogden):



Ms Maconchy is represented by a far more accessible work. Her overture Proud Thames was written for the coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. It is played here by the LPO under Vernon Handley:



Priaulx (pronounced "pree-oww") Rainier was a friend of the artist and sculptor Barbara Hepworth (whose studio and sculpture garden we visited while holidaying at St. Ives in Cornwall) and even dedicated a major work to her. Her typically uncompromising Viola Sonata dates from the mid 1940s:

Last November, JH and I were discussing composers whose names began with a B. You know, as in "The Three B's": Bach, Beethoven and Brahms (who took over from the original third B, Berlioz). All the other names we thought of after that were those of men. So I suggested Lili Boulanger (a later candidate for this topic), to which JH responded (with noticeable pride): "Amy Beach!" 

Until then, the American composer and pianist Amy Beach (1867–1944) had been just a name to me. Now, looking around YouTube, I discovered her wonderful symphony, the first to be composed and published by an American woman. According to an article by William Robin in The New York Times of 1 September 2017:

"When her 'Gaelic' Symphony was given its acclaimed premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra [in 1896], Beach became a national symbol of women's creative power, and was known as the dean of American women composers. Yet Sept. 5, her 150th birthday, will not be widely celebrated with performances of that pioneering symphony. No major American orchestras have programmed her works this season. Indeed, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the last time the Boston Symphony performed one of her orchestral works in full." 
[Source]

For a more upbeat perspective, you are referred to the essay Eugene Gates wrote seven years earlier for The Kapralova Society Journal (here), which ends thus:

"Now that she has been rediscovered, is Amy Beach about to take her rightful place as a major figure in the history of American music? Time alone will tell, but at least -- aided by feminism and the rebirth of interest in late Romantic music -- she is finally being given her chance."



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Beach

Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944; rhymes with Forsyth) may be the best-known woman composer in the UK on the strength of just one work, her opera The Wreckers, which was given its UK premiere in June 1909 under Thomas Beecham after several messy attempts to get it performed in translation on the continent. Virginia Woolf, who was in the audience that night, later found herself the embarrassed object of Ms Smyth's affections (ES was an open lesbian). In Woolf’s unfeeling description, "An old woman of seventy-one has fallen in love with me. … It is like being caught by a giant crab." [Source]

Here is the overture to that opera, played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Sir Alexander Gibson. Please excuse my predilection for choosing music-score videos. Even for those unable to follow them, I should imagine they are more restful visually (and make more sense) than the often weird succession of utterly subjective images you might get otherwise.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethel_Smyth

It would be amiss not to mention two great 20th-century Russian women composers, Sofia Gubaidulina (more on her later) and Galina Ustvolskaya (1919–2006). Although Mme Ustvolskaya wrote all her music during the Soviet period, there is not the remotest connection between it and Communism -- indeed, between it and any other music ever written. Galina Ustvolskaya is one of the great originals. Shostakovich, whose composition class she attended, held her in the highest regard, as a composer and as a person.

Much of what follows has been lifted from the hugely informative YouTube blurb accompanying the linked performance of her Symphony No. 4, subtitled "Prayer":

Composed between 1985 and 1987 and scored for contralto, trumpet, piano and tam-tam, it has a duration of a little under eight minutes. A symphony of a single movement reduced to its minimum expression, it premiered on 24 June 1988 in Heidelberg. Two years later it was performed in Hamburg, as part of a festival of women composers. Galina rejected the invitation to personally attend the concert, conducted by the Women's Composer Institute of Heidelberg, with the following response:

"With regard to the 'Women's Composer Music Festival', I would like to say the following: Can a distinction between music written by men and music written by women really be made? If we now have 'Music Festivals of women composers', would not it be right to have 'Music Festivals of male composers'? I am of the opinion that such a division should not be allowed to persist. We should only play music that is genuine and strong. If we are honest in that, an interpretation in a concert of women composers is a humiliation for music. I sincerely hope that my comments do not offend anyone, what I say comes from my innermost being."

The text is by the Benedictine monk and scholar Hermann of Reichenau (1013–1054). It is identical to that of her previous symphony: "Almighty God, true God, Father of eternal life, creator of the world, Jesus Messiah, save us." The composer has stressed the ritualistic nature of the music, even requesting that the singer should not wear jewellery.

It is performed here by members of The Barton Workshop: Lucia Meeuwsen (mezzo-soprano), Willem van Vliet (trumpet), Frank Denyer (piano) and Wim Konink (tam-tam).

The striking video image is Hermannus Contractus [Hermann of Reichenau] with the Mother of God and the Baby Jesus by Josef Zodel (1852–1905), a wood carving in the Marienkapelle in Altshausen.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galina_Ustvolskaya

Some years ago, I attended a concert in our local cathedral. Before it started, the concert's organizer was standing right behind my chair discussing music in general with a lady, who at one point mentioned she was working on an orchestral version of something called Dancing to an Orange Drummer. Back home, I googled this and discovered it had been the New York-born composer Vanessa Lann.

From 2004, this is her Is a bell... a bell? for two toy pianos played by a single performer, in this case Anne Veinberg:





The picture of Ms Lann comes from the archive of an extraordinary website devoted to music by women composers:

www.radiomonalisa.nl/archief.html

www.vanessalann.com

I've always had a soft spot for the viola. Long one of the middle voices of the string ensemble with a lot of hard work to do and not much to show for it, its otherworldly timbre is endlessly fascinating, to say nothing of that additional fifth below the violin's G-string.

After the Priaulx Rainier sonata, the viola makes a welcome reappearance in this thread in Lamenting with Ariadne (1999) by the Scottish composer Thea Musgrave (born 1928), another name from my UK past. It was the image that clinched the choice of music -- the early work of Giorgio de Chirico was my way in to the world of modern art, particularly surrealism and symbolism. His Ariadne dates from 1913.

Here the viola is played by Daniel Panner, accompanied by the New York ensemble Sequitur directed by Harold Meltzer.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thea_Musgrave

Hello LS. Yes, I'm afraid you do!  Seriously, it's wonderful to get some feedback. It makes it all worthwhile (I may have said this before).

And goodness me, here's the next in the series! 

Henriëtte Bosmans (1895–1952) like Tera de Marez Oyens is another largely unsung Dutch woman composer, although you are more likely to hear her music on the radio, as it is more accessible to the public at large. This is "En Espagne", the third of her Impressions for cello and piano (1926), no doubt inspired by her relationship with the cellist Frieda Belinfante, and here performed by Doris Hochscheid (cello) and Frans van Ruth (piano):



Late in life Ms Bosmans formed a liaison with the French mezzo-soprano Noëmie Perugia, who was the inspiration for her Fifteen Songs on French Texts. Here is the third, "La chanson du chiffonnier" (1950), sung by Julia Bronkhorst, soprano, with Maarten Hillenius at the piano:



For more information about Ms Bosmans please read the excellent YouTube blurb accompanying both the above videos.

Lastly (and please forgive the recording quality) here is her Piano Concertino (1928) with the composer at the piano, accompanied by the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Eduard van Beinum from a live performance given at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in 1948:

This is probably my last contribution to this thread. (If it has given some pleasure to just one person, it will have been worthwhile.) Sofia Gubaidulina (born 1931) is Russia's greatest living woman composer, a status she shared with Galina Ustvolskaya until the latter's death in 2006. These two quotes by Ms Gubaidulina make a splendid introduction to her 2007 concerto for violin and orchestra entitled In Tempus Praesens ("for the present time"):

I am a religious person...and by "religion" I mean re-ligio, the re-tying of a bond...restoring the legato of life. Life divides man into many pieces...There is no weightier occupation than the recomposition of spiritual integrity through the composition of music.

Just like many 20th-century creators, the problem of time concerns me to the greatest extent possible. I am concerned with how time changes in connection with the changing psychological conditions of man, how it elapses in nature, in the world, in society, in dreams, in art.
Art is always situated between sleep and reality, between wisdom and folly, between the statics and dynamics of everything that exists.
In ordinary life we never have present time, only the perpetual transition from the past to the future.
And only in sleep, in the religious experience and in art are we able to experience lasting present time.
I think that musical form serves this very function: during its course it undergoes many events. A few of these turn out to be most important. (I call these architectonic nodes of form.) And they can make a kind of generalized shape, the shape of a pyramid, for example. (The episode of ritual sacrifice stands at the pinnacle of the pyramid of "In tempus praesens.") The integral experiencing of this pyramidal form produces lasting present time.

It's a huge step indeed from Maddalena Sirmen's violin concerto in the previous post to In Tempus Praesens, performed here by its dedicatee, Anne-Sophie Mutter, accompanied by the LSO under Valery Gergiev:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Gubaidulina

As a postscript to the above, here is a rare description of Claire Delbos's Paraphrase pour orgue. Bar a couple of brief YouTube talks, there is next to nothing available online (and probably offline too) about Ms Delbos and her music:

"Perhaps one of the most obscure personalities in tonight’s program is Claire Delbos, the first wife of Olivier Messiaen. The violinist and composer was, nevertheless, an importance influence in Messiaen's formation, serving as the dedicatee of his Thème et variations (1932) for violin and piano as well as his song cycle Poèmes pour Mi (1936). ['Mi' was Messiaen's affectionate nickname for Claire.] Suffering from a tragic mental deterioration following an operation, much of Delbos's biography is still shrouded in mystery; Messiaen never mentioned her in his public interviews, and her compositions are not known in the classical canon. Near the end of her short life, Messiaen was unable to care for Claire himself, and she remained in an institution until her death in 1959.

"Paraphrase pour orgue was premiered by Messiaen in an organ concert at La Trinité on March 14, 1939. One particular audience member, the American composer and critic Virgil Thomson, was fascinated by the work. In his article 'More and More from Paris,' he deems it 'full of interesting chaos,' and rightly so. The suite musically depicts the End Times as described in the Book of Revelation, although one cannot help but hear it as an expression of her tortured inner life. With its low clusters, harsh dissonances, and eerie sound colors, the first movement evokes the calamities that precede Christ’s Second Coming. A rising ostinato (the resurrection of the dead) builds to an arresting climax, after which one hears a free paraphrase on the Agnus Dei from the Gregorian Mass for Easter Day, Missa Lux et Origo. This apocalyptic vision gives way to hopeful expectation; in the second movement, the faithful pray for the intercession of the Virgin Mary. The following movement (a four-measure interlude) paraphrases the Alleluia chant from the Solemnity of All Saints, while the finale incorporates both the Sanctus from Missa de Angelis and the Magnificat on the Sixth Tone. Delbos concludes the work with a toccata that proclaims Christ’s triumphant return.

[Source]

I'm on my own now, as the one ally I had on my two "women composers" threads has abandoned ship. A little lost for words right now...

To quote her entire wiki page, "Marie-Louise Girod-Parrot (12 October 1915 – 29 August 2014) was a French organist and composer. Girod studied organ at the Paris Conservatory with Henriette Puig-Roget and Marcel Dupré."



To this can be added the following (adapted from a more informative site). Born in Paris, she studied at the National Conservatory of Music where she was awarded many first prizes (organ, improvisation, music history, counterpoint and fugue). Professor Girod made her name through her concerts all over Europe, her contributions to many radio programmes and her importance as a teacher.

President of the Saint-Dié Organ Academy, member of the Superior Commission of Historical Monuments, president of the organ section of the Protestant Federation of France and soloist on French radio (O.R.T.F.), Mme GIROD was for many years the organist at the Oratoire du Louvre in Paris.

A brillant improviser, knowing how to weld together talent and technique with strength and sensitivity, Marie-Louise Girod expressed through her organ-playing, not without a dash of humour, a way of thinking that is ever alert. Aside from her musical activities, she joined her husband, the archaeologist André Parrot, on many important expeditions as official photographer.

[Source]

Her Trilogue à la mémoire de Marcel Dupré (2006) is played here by Jean-Dominique Pasquet on the organ she herself used to play at the Oratoire du Louvre:

Rolande Falcinelli (1920–2006) was another Prix de Rome winner, in 1942. A very prolific composer, much of her work is for her own instrument, the organ. This quote from Wikipedia gives an idea of just how musical she was (my italics): "In 1948, at Salle Pleyel in Paris, Rolande Falcinelli performed from memory the (then) complete organ works of Marcel Dupré, whose music was in the center of her interests throughout her career as a performer and teacher."

Her Le Mystère de la Sainte-Messe for two organs, op. 59 (1976-82, unpublished) is little short of thrilling. The first of its three parts, here played by Yves Castagnet and Virgile Monin, consists of "Introïtus", "Kyrie eleison", "Gloria" and "Evangelio":





en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolande_Falcinelli