Prominent women composers. Unknown foreign female composers of the 19th century Contemporary female composers

“It is more likely that a man will give birth to a child than a woman will write good music", once said German composer Johannes Brahms. A century and a half later, women composers collect the world's largest concert halls, write music for films and act with important social initiatives.

1. Cassia of Constantinople

The Greek nun Cassia was born into a wealthy Constantinopolitan family in 804 or 805. Today she is known not only as the founder convent in Constantinople, but also as one of the first women hymnographers and composers.

Cassia was very beautiful and, according to some sources, in 821 she even participated in a bride show for Emperor Theophilus. The girl was not destined to become the wife of the emperor, and soon Cassia took the veil as a nun in order to spend her whole life in the monastery she founded. There, Cassia composed church hymns and canons, and an analysis of her works, containing references to the writings of ancient authors, allows us to conclude that the girl had a good secular education.

Cassia of Constantinople is one of the first composers whose works can be performed by contemporary musicians.

2. Hildegard of Bingen

The German nun Hildegard of Bingen was an extraordinary person not only in terms of writing music - she also worked on works on natural science and medicine, wrote mystical books of visions, as well as spiritual poems.

Hildegard was born at the end of the 11th century and was the tenth child in a noble family. From the age of eight, the girl was raised by a nun, and at 14 she began to live in a monastery, where she studied art and liturgy.

The girl began to compose music on her own poems as a child, and already in adulthood she collected her works in a collection called "Harmonic Symphony of Heavenly Revelations". The collection includes chants, combined into several parts on liturgical themes.

3. Barbara Strozzi

The Italian composer Barbara Strozzi, who was later called "the most virtuoso", was illegitimate daughter poet Giulio Strozzi, who later adopted her. Barbara herself had four illegitimate children by different men. The girl was born in 1619 in Venice and studied with the composer Francesco Cavalli.

Strozzi wrote cantatas, ariettas, madrigals, and the texts for her daughter's works were written by her father Giulio. Barbara became the first composer to release her works not in collections, but one at a time. The music of Barbara Strozzi is performed and re-released today.

4. Clara Schumann

Born Clara Wieck in 1819 in Leipzig, the son of Friedrich Wieck, a well-known piano teacher in the city and country. WITH early age the girl learned to play the piano from her father, and at the age of 10 she began to successfully perform in public.

Together with her father, Clara went on tour in Germany, then gave several concerts in Paris. Around this time, young Clara began to write music - her first works were published in 1829. At the same time, the young Robert Schumann became a student of Friedrich Wieck, whose admiration for the talented daughter of the teacher grew into love.

In 1940, Clara and Robert got married. Since then, the girl began to perform music written by her husband, often she was the first to present to the public the new compositions of Robert Schumann. Also, the composer Johannes Brahms entrusted the debut performance of his works to Clara, close friend families.

Clara Schumann's own compositions were distinguished by their modernity and were considered one of the best examples romantic school. Robert Schumann also highly appreciated his wife's writings, who, however, insisted that his wife focus on family life and their eight children.
After the death of Robert Schumann, Clara continued to perform his works, and interest in her own creativity erupted with renewed vigor in 1970, when recordings of Clara's compositions first appeared

5. Amy Beach

American Amy Marcy Cheney Beach is the only woman in the so-called "Boston Six" of composers, which, in addition to her, included musicians John Knowles Payne, Arthur Foote, George Chadwick, Edward McDowell and Horatio Parker. The composers of the "six" are considered to have had a decisive influence on the formation of American academic music.

Amy was born on September 5, 1867 to a wealthy New Hampshire family. WITH early years the girl studied music under the guidance of her mother, and after the family moved to Boston, she began to study composition as well. First solo concert Amy Beach took place in 1883 and was a great success. Two years later, the girl got married and, at the insistence of her husband, practically stopped performing, concentrating on writing music.

With her own works, she later performed on tour in Europe and America, and today Amy Beach is considered the first woman who managed to make successful career in high music.

6. Valentina Serova

The first Russian female composer, nee Valentina Semyonovna Bergman was born in 1846 in Moscow. The girl did not manage to graduate from the St. Petersburg Conservatory due to a conflict with the director, after which Valentina began to take lessons from music critic and composer Alexander Serov.

In 1863, Valentina and Alexander got married, two years later the couple had a son, the future artist Valentin Serov. In 1867, the Serovs began to publish the magazine "Music and Theater". Spouses supported friendly relations with Ivan Turgenev and Pauline Viardot, Leo Tolstoy, Ilya Repin.

Valentina Serova was rather reverent about her husband's work, and after his death she published four volumes of articles about her husband, and also completed his opera The Enemy Force.

Serova is the author of the operas Uriel Acosta, Maria D'Orval, Miroed, Ilya Muromets. In addition to music, she also wrote articles about composing, published memoirs about meetings with Leo Tolstoy and memories of her husband and son.

7. Sofia Gubaidulina

Today, Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina lives and works in Germany, but her native Tatarstan hosts annual music competitions and festivals dedicated to the famous native of the republic.

Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol in 1931. As a girl, she graduated from Kazan musical gymnasium, and then entered the Kazan Conservatory, where she studied composition. Having moved to Moscow, Gubaidulina continued her studies at the Moscow Conservatory, and after graduation she received an important parting word from the composer Dmitry Shostakovich: “I wish you to go your own “wrong” way.”

Together with Alfred Schnittke and Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina was one of the trinity of Moscow avant-garde composers. Gubaidulina worked a lot for cinema and wrote music for such films as "Vertical", "Man and His Bird", "Mowgli", "Scarecrow".

In 1991, Sofia Gubaidulina received a German scholarship and has since lived in Germany, regularly visiting Russia with concerts, festivals and various social initiatives.

"IN Ancient Greece all harpists were men, and now it is a "female" instrument. Times are changing, and the words of Brahms that “it is more likely that a man will give birth to a child than a woman will write good music” sound frivolous, ”said Sofia Asgatovna in an interview.

In the era of the formation of operatic vocals for female singers, the conditions were not very favorable. However, this did not greatly slow down the global process and we know many names of real stars - opera divas I won't even list them. But here are the women who wrote music ... there were either no conditions at all, or there was not so much talent ... In any case, none of the names of women composers shone as brightly as, say, the names of Beethoven, or! Anyway, let's see what we have here? :)

• Hildegard of Bingen

Let female names and did not gain the same fame in the world of musical writing as men, but there is a very significant name in terms of the history of music. This is Hildegard of Bingen, one of the first medieval composers who left notes of her compositions. Well, it’s clear what works, because this is the 12th century! Probably, a modern listener needs to be a very big fan in order to enjoy listening to medieval church chants. However, these are my purely theoretical fabrications - I have not yet been able to listen to something from Hildegard. So far I have found only this on the Internet, but there you must first become a member of the club, and only then listen. The move has not yet reached this point, although there are plans :). But in this story, perhaps, something else is more important: the very personality of the nun, who was officially canonized by the Pope in 2012. And he wrote very penetratingly about her:

Her story seems even more remarkable when you start to think about what, probably, the difficulties that were associated at that time were not just the existence of a female composer - Lord, yes, this is not an easy task even now - but, what is there, the existence of a woman who WAS AT LEAST SOMETHING.

Let's take in one hand the portrait of Hildegard, and in the other - a goblet filled with wine, show ourselves close-up 1179 Let's make a toast to her not at all witchy, eccentric musicality.

• Barbara Strozzi

Maybe I, of course, will seem ignorant, but I didn’t listen to the music of this lady either and ... for some reason I think that this name left a trace more historical than musical. Namely: Barbara Strozzi was one of the first to publish her works not in collections, but, as they say, solo, and this is, you see, an application! She lived and worked in my favorite and favorite country - Italy. The nickname was “The Most Virtuoso”, but again, it seems that this assessment was more likely related to Strozzi, the singer. And as a composer - could she compete with the many brilliant authors who lived at that time? In any case, Monteverdi, Bach, Vivaldi, Purcell, Handel are world scale. But the name of Barbara Strozzi is not so often heard. However, stop being clever, now together with you for the first time I will listen to her composition:

Well, how do you like it? I listened, very nice!

• Clara Schumann

And in this case, one would like to say: yes, Clara was the wife of the composer Robert Schumann. That is, as it were, a derivative of the known male name. But in fact, it was rather Clara who “promoted” her husband, it was she who was the first performer of his works. Just like the music of Brahms, the public first heard performed by Clara. By the way, these are the key phrases - execution. Because Clara was a virtuoso pianist, in fact she was a child prodigy, her performances and tours began as a child. And Clara gave her last concert at the age of 71. That's how a pianist - yes, she was famous and successful. As a composer at that time, she was simply not taken seriously (this is not a woman's business!), And now the work of Clara Schumann is of interest, but her works are not performed too often.

WOMEN COMPOSERS

Do not look for female names in the table of contents of this book, you will not find them. For the reason that all the "most-most" Western composers are endowed by nature with at least one common property - the presence of a Y-chromosome.

The centuries-old tradition of keeping women out of musical education and public performance is to blame for this state of affairs. In the Middle Ages, women were forbidden to delight listeners by singing and playing the musical instruments, although in the quiet of the abbeys, the nuns created orchestras and even composed music. The ban on female public speaking was lifted only when the castrati could no longer satisfy the demand for high voices. (The castration of young singers was finally considered reprehensible at the end of the eighteenth century.) Women were able to become famous as opera singers- however, it is not easy to achieve a serious attitude towards yourself as an artist if everyone around you is holding you for a prostitute.

Except opera stage, other paths to music for women were cut off. Throughout the nineteenth century, women were excluded from musical educational establishments so they could only study at home. But even if a woman managed to get a solid training, putting her skills into practice meant defying conventions and running into a misunderstanding of others.

Only in the middle of the twentieth century did women appear in the leading orchestras. At the height of World War II, they took the place of men drafted into the army. Since then, there have been more and more women among musicians, but women conductors still have to prove their worth - even those who managed to break through, like Marin Alsop, who led the Baltimore symphony orchestra, brilliantly demonstrated that women are able to handle the conductor's baton as well as men.

As a result, and contrary to the spirit of the times, the art of composition is still dominated by men. It's not that female composers don't exist at all. For example, the Englishwoman Elizabeth Maconki (1907-1994) created wonderful music for poetry, including to famous poem Dylan Thomas "And death will lose its power." Makonki was considered the best student on the course at the Royal College of Music, but she did not receive the prestigious Mendelssohn scholarship, because, as the director of the college said: “You will marry and never write another note.” Not a single work written by a woman has taken root in the modern repertoire of concert halls or opera houses, although, judging by some signs, the situation is changing - women composers are more and more impressive.

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To date, domestic musical science little is known about the composers of music of the middle and late XIX century. For a long time it was believed that at that time there were no female composers. This misconception was due to the lack of biographical facts and specific documented examples: many works by women composers of the 19th century existed in the form of autographs and editions in one copy, so it is now very difficult to find and systematize them.

However, foreign music historians have done significant work in the study of female composer creativity of the 19th century, confirming the musical and creative activity of women authors, which makes it possible to fill the existing gap in literature in Russian.

Among the studies that served as sources of information for this article are Aaron Cohen's International Encyclopedia of Women Composers, works by Bea Friedland, Elsa Thalheimer, Eva Weisweiler, articles by Heinrich Adolf Köstlin, Marcia I. Citron, Christine Heitman. With the help of the facts presented in these sources, we can get acquainted with some details of the biographies of women creators of the 19th century, as well as partially recreate a picture of the social status of the writers of this historical period. Among the most significant female composers of the 19th century are the Germans Fanny Hansel, Josephine (Caroline) Lang, Joanna Kinkel, Louise Adolphe Le Baux, Emilia Mayer, as well as the French women Louise Farran and Augusta Marie-Anne Holmes.

Fanny Hansel

Talented composer Fanny Hansel, the elder sister of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, fully experienced all the difficulties of the composing path of a woman of the 19th century. Being a gifted musician and having received an excellent musical education, she, however, could not fully realize herself as a composer, since her whole family, including her musician brother, disapproved of musical career Fanny.

Fanny Hansel was born in 1805 into a culturally enlightened family, which allowed her to early childhood communicate prominent people of his time. Subsequently, she became a prominent figure in the flourishing Berlin salon. Hansel was an excellent pianist, but did not perform in public due to her family's prejudice. And even her marriage did not change the situation, despite the positive attitude of her husband, the Prussian court painter Wilhelm Hansel, towards his wife's musical activities. Important historical role Fanny Hansel lies in her influence on creative destiny brother Felix. M. I. Citron writes: “They inspired each other musically and intellectually, and each helped shape each other’s future works. For example, Felix's oratorio St. Paul, completed in 1837, benefited from Fanny's participation in the composition process. However, Felix opposed the publication of his sister's works, and out of about 400 of her works, only a few were published.

Most of her works were published after her death - between 1846 and 1850. Moreover, the first publications of Fanny Mendelssohn's music were made under the name of Felix Mendelssohn: 3 songs in his op. 8 (1827) and 3 songs in op. 9 (1830). The reasons for using the brother's name are unknown, especially since, according to Citron, the use creative pseudonyms was an atypical practice among 19th century female composers.

Only in 1837 did the first work of Hansel appear, signed by her own name, was a song published in one of the anthologies. Over the next decade, the composer's works were not published - with the exception of individual songs published in 1839. Shortly before the death of the composer, a collection of songs for voice accompanied by piano, op. 1, which "gave Hansel great satisfaction that she finally saw her writings published in full under her own name."

The first song op. 1 "Swan Song" was written to the verses of Heinrich Heine. Fanny had the opportunity to see the great poet, which led to the creation of this work.
Fanny Hansel's creative interests were concentrated in typically "feminine" genres associated with the tradition of home music making - mainly piano and vocal music. She left behind a rich song creativity and also experimented with large forms from sonata to oratorio. Many of her compositions - songs without words, sonatas, romances - were published under the name of Felix. Among her unpublished compositions are the vocal quartet "In the Grave", the cantata "My Soul is So Calm", the song cycle "Home Garden", the piano quartet Asdur, the piano trio.

She is also the author of an overture for orchestra, as well as a trio and string quartets. Despite the little fame of her work, many of the composer's works, including orchestral and chorales, were presented in Sunday music collections. Fanny Hansel died in 1847.

Joanna Kinkel

Josephine Lang

Louise Adolphe Le Baux

Louise Farrank

Emilia Mayer

Augusta Maria Anna Holmes

Composer's legacy Joanna Kinkel(1810 - 1858) compose the following compositions: a vocal cantata, a ballad for voice and piano "Don Ramiro", a church work for choir and orchestra "Hymnis in CoenaDomini", as well as a cycle of songs "Stormy wanderings of souls".

“It is more likely that a man will give birth to a child than a woman will write good music,” the German composer Johannes Brahms once said. A century and a half later, women composers gather the world's largest concert halls, write music for films and come up with important social initiatives. "April", together with the cosmetic brand NanoDerm, tells about women whose talent and work helped to refute the stereotype about the "male" profession of a composer.

1. Cassia of Constantinople

The Greek nun Cassia was born into a wealthy Constantinopolitan family in 804 or 805. Today she is known not only as the founder of a convent in Constantinople, but also as one of the first women hymnographers and composers.

Cassia was very beautiful and, according to some sources, in 821 she even participated in a bride show for Emperor Theophilus. The girl was not destined to become the wife of the emperor, and soon Cassia took the veil as a nun in order to spend her whole life in the monastery she founded. There, Cassia composed church hymns and canons, and an analysis of her works, containing references to the writings of ancient authors, allows us to conclude that the girl had a good secular education.

Cassia of Constantinople is one of the first composers whose works can be performed by contemporary musicians.

2. Hildegard of Bingen

The German nun Hildegard of Bingen was an extraordinary person not only in terms of writing music - she also worked on works on natural science and medicine, wrote mystical books of visions, as well as spiritual poems.

Hildegard was born at the end of the 11th century and was the tenth child in a noble family. From the age of eight, the girl was raised by a nun, and at 14 she began to live in a monastery, where she studied art and liturgy.

The girl began to compose music on her own poems as a child, and already in adulthood she collected her works in a collection called "Harmonic Symphony of Heavenly Revelations". The collection includes chants, combined into several parts on liturgical themes.

3. Barbara Strozzi

The Italian composer Barbara Strozzi, who was later called "the most virtuoso", was the illegitimate daughter of the poet Giulio Strozzi, who later adopted her. Barbara herself had four illegitimate children from different men. The girl was born in 1619 in Venice and studied with the composer Francesco Cavalli.

Strozzi wrote cantatas, ariettas, madrigals, and the texts for her daughter's works were written by her father Giulio. Barbara became the first composer to release her works not in collections, but one at a time. The music of Barbara Strozzi is performed and re-released today.

4. Clara Schumann

Born Clara Wieck in 1819 in Leipzig, the son of Friedrich Wieck, a well-known piano teacher in the city and country. From an early age, the girl learned to play the piano from her father, and at the age of 10 she began to successfully perform in public.

Together with her father, Clara went on tour in Germany, then gave several concerts in Paris. Around this time, young Clara began to write music - her first works were published in 1829. At the same time, the young Robert Schumann became a student of Friedrich Wieck, whose admiration for the talented daughter of the teacher grew into love.

In 1940, Clara and Robert got married. Since then, the girl began to perform music written by her husband, often she was the first to present to the public the new compositions of Robert Schumann. Also, the composer Johannes Brahms, a close friend of the family, entrusted the debut performance of his works to Clara.

Clara Schumann's own writings were distinguished by their modernity and were considered one of the best examples of the romantic school. Robert Schumann also highly appreciated the writings of his wife, who, however, insisted that his wife focus on family life and their eight children.
After the death of Robert Schumann, Clara continued to perform his works, and interest in her own work flared up with renewed vigor in 1970, when recordings of Clara's compositions first appeared.

5. Amy Beach

American Amy Marcy Cheney Beach is the only woman in the so-called "Boston Six" of composers, which, in addition to her, included musicians John Knowles Payne, Arthur Foote, George Chadwick, Edward McDowell and Horatio Parker. The composers of the "six" are considered to have had a decisive influence on the formation of American academic music.

Amy was born on September 5, 1867 to a wealthy New Hampshire family. From an early age, the girl studied music under the guidance of her mother, and after the family moved to Boston, she began to study composition as well. Amy Beach's first solo concert took place in 1883 and was a great success. Two years later, the girl got married and, at the insistence of her husband, practically stopped performing, concentrating on writing music.

With her own works, she later performed on tour in Europe and America, and today Amy Beach is considered the first woman who managed to make a successful career in high musical art.

6. Valentina Serova

The first Russian female composer, nee Valentina Semyonovna Bergman was born in 1846 in Moscow. The girl did not manage to graduate from the St. Petersburg Conservatory due to a conflict with the director, after which Valentina began to take lessons from music critic and composer Alexander Serov.

In 1863, Valentina and Alexander got married, two years later the couple had a son, the future artist Valentin Serov. In 1867, the Serovs began to publish the magazine "Music and Theater". The couple maintained friendly relations with Ivan Turgenev and Polina Viardot, Leo Tolstoy, Ilya Repin.

Valentina Serova was rather reverent about her husband's work, and after his death she published four volumes of articles about her husband, and also completed his opera The Enemy Force.

Serova is the author of the operas "Uriel Acosta", "Maria D" Orval", "Miroed", "Ilya Muromets". In addition to music, she also wrote articles about composing, published memoirs about meetings with Leo Tolstoy and memories of her husband and son.

7. Sofia Gubaidulina

Today, the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina lives and works in Germany, but her native Tatarstan annually hosts music competitions and festivals dedicated to the famous native of the republic.

Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol in 1931. As a girl, she graduated from the Kazan Musical Gymnasium, and then entered the Kazan Conservatory, where she studied composition. Having moved to Moscow, Gubaidulina continued her studies at the Moscow Conservatory, and after graduation she received an important parting word from the composer Dmitry Shostakovich: “I wish you to go your own “wrong” way.”

Together with Alfred Schnittke and Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina was one of the trinity of Moscow avant-garde composers. Gubaidulina worked a lot for cinema and wrote music for such films as "Vertical", "Man and His Bird", "Mowgli", "Scarecrow".

In 1991, Sofia Gubaidulina received a German scholarship and has since lived in Germany, regularly visiting Russia with concerts, festivals and various social initiatives.

“In ancient Greece, all harpists were men, and now it is a “female” instrument. Times are changing, and the words of Brahms that “it is more likely that a man will give birth to a child than a woman will write good music” sound frivolous, ”said Sofia Asgatovna in an interview.