International women's day + music

[pjme]

https://www.internationalwomensday.com/

There must be a wealth of composers and performers we can celebrate today.

Here are a few works or performers I recently enjoyed (re)discovering:

Makiko Kinoshita, pianoconcerto: https://youtu.be/_InePQD1K1w
Milada Červenková - Passacaglia for large orchestra: https://youtu.be/rcFNO46U4Yg
Bozena Steinerova: Sergei Prokofiev - Piano Sonata No 6. in A, op. 82: https://youtu.be/kqHgnksRIpc
Soprano Lore Binon sings Bach: https://youtu.be/rYNsBOnF1T8
Germaine Tailleferre, Petite suite for orchestra: https://youtu.be/Z_w827ZX1k4
Betsy Jolas: string quartet nr 2 - with soprano solo: https://youtu.be/WKZGqv61ILE (Mady Mesplé )
Jeanne Loriod, ondes Martenot: "Kaleidoscope" by Jacques Bondon. https://youtu.be/vJR0fGv68y0

Who are your favorite "femme compositrices", "female composers" sopranos, organists, percussionists, harpist, altos, conductors, producers, inventors....? Is it Hildegard von Bingen, Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, Maria Malibran, Clara Schumann, Elisabeth Lutyens, Thérèse Brenet, Edith Lejet, Jeanne Demessieux, Anna Clyne, Dobrinka Tabakova....
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Renata Tebaldi, Edith Piaf, Victoria de Los Angeles, Evelyn Glennie....

Article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/08/footballers-fossil-hunters-and-warrior-queens-the-women-history-forgot

[DavidW]

Sofia Guibaidulena, Amy Beach, and Jennifer Higdon come to mind.

[Brahmsian]

Anna Thorvaldsdottir comes to mind.

[Brahmsian]

Sofia Guibaidulena

Yes indeed.

[Mirror Image]

Lili Boulanger is my favorite female composer, but I also think rather highly of Ruth Crawford Seeger.

[71 dB]

I think highly of Margaret Brouwer and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

[Symphonic Addict]

Grazyna Bacewicz is undoubtedly my favorite female composer.

Others whose music I greatly like/enjoy/admire:

Doreen Carwithen
Lili Boulanger
Louise Farrenc
Elizabeth Maconchy
Amy Beach

And lately Stacy Garrop and Onute Narbutaite.

[Mirror Image]

Grazyna Bacewicz is undoubtedly my favorite female composer.

Ah, man. I forgot about Bacewicz...yes, I, too, think highly of her music.

[bhodges]

My favorite women composers, at least today. This past week I've heard three engaging pieces by Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981), and Caroline Shaw (b. 1982) is rising fast on my list, too.

Grażyna Bacewicz
Lili Boulanger
Unsuk Chin
Sofia Gubaidulina
Missy Mazzoli
Olga Neuwirth
Pauline Oliveros
Kaija Saariaho
Rebecca Saunders
Ruth Crawford Seeger

--Bruce

[Daverz]

Recent listens of works by women composers were some chamber works of Geraldine Mucha, the Symphony No. 2 of Grace Williams, and the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Zara Levina.

Now listening to Louise Farrenc's Symphony No. 1.  Farrenc's symphonies are some of the best of the early Romantic Mendelssohnian variety.







(The Naxos Farrenc series is also very good.)

[amw]

Female composers currently make up only 4.3% of my music library; a large part of the culprit for that is very limited availability of their works on recordings. (Although this is true of most composers outside the 50 or so most famous men.) That said, I think at least the following are among the greatest composers of their style & place:

Alessandrini P
Avram A-M
Bacewicz G
Bailie J
Bång M
Barrett N
Block O
Boulanger L
Buckley L
Canat de Chizy É
Chaminade C
Chin U
Clarke R
Coates G
Crawford-Seeger R
Czernowin C
Dalberg N
Djordjević M
Farrenc L
Ferreyra B
Fox E
Fullman E
Fure A
Gedizlioğlu Z
Gosfield A
Gubaidulina S
Hensel F
St Hildegard
Hölszky A
Iannotta C
Ivičević M
Jacquet de la Guerre E
Jolas B
Kaprálová V
Keal M
Kulenty H
Lamb C
Lash H
Lee J
Lim L
Lockwood A
Lutyens E
Maconchy E
Marić L
Meyer-Ferrari B
Monk M
Mori I
Mundry I
Narbutaitė O
Neuwirth O
Oliveros P
Pade E M
Paredes H
Pritchard A
Radigue É
Rainier P
Ratkje M S K
Rossetto V
Saunders R
Schumann C
Shaw C
Sierra A
Sikora E
Smith L C
Smyth E
Soper K
Southam A
Strozzi B
Szlavnics C
Szymanowska M
Tally M
Tulve H
Ustvolskaya G
Wallen E
Walshe J
Wang L
Wennäkoski L
Westerkamp H
Williams G
Zubel A

Of this list I would particularly highlight Czernowin, Lim, Radigue, Ratkje, Saunders and Walshe as making up six or so of my top ten living composers.

[Mirror Image]

Female composers currently make up only 4.3% of my music library; a large part of the culprit for that is very limited availability of their works on recordings. (Although this is true of most composers outside the 50 or so most famous men.) That said, I think at least the following are among the greatest composers of their style & place:

Alessandrini P
Avram A-M
Bacewicz G
Bailie J
Bång M
Barrett N
Block O
Boulanger L
Buckley L
Canat de Chizy É
Chaminade C
Chin U
Clarke R
Coates G
Crawford-Seeger R
Czernowin C
Dalberg N
Djordjević M
Farrenc L
Ferreyra B
Fox E
Fullman E
Fure A
Gedizlioğlu Z
Gosfield A
Gubaidulina S
Hensel F
St Hildegard
Hölszky A
Iannotta C
Ivičević M
Jacquet de la Guerre E
Jolas B
Kaprálová V
Keal M
Kulenty H
Lamb C
Lash H
Lee J
Lim L
Lockwood A
Lutyens E
Maconchy E
Marić L
Meyer-Ferrari B
Monk M
Mori I
Mundry I
Narbutaitė O
Neuwirth O
Oliveros P
Pade E M
Paredes H
Pritchard A
Radigue É
Rainier P
Ratkje M S K
Rossetto V
Saunders R
Schumann C
Shaw C
Sierra A
Sikora E
Smith L C
Smyth E
Soper K
Southam A
Strozzi B
Szlavnics C
Szymanowska M
Tally M
Tulve H
Ustvolskaya G
Wallen E
Walshe J
Wang L
Wennäkoski L
Westerkamp H
Williams G
Zubel A

Of this list I would particularly highlight Czernowin, Lim, Radigue, Ratkje, Saunders and Walshe as making up six or so of my top ten living composers.

This looks like a typical list from you, which looks like nothing more than a 'think as many composers as you can and cram them into a list'. I mean not all of them can be considered 'great'.

[pjme]

Thanks guys, for your contributions. Let's see if next year you come up with still more  and even more exiting  musical discoveries by female composers and/ or performers.

I'll close International Women's Day 2021 with:

https://www.youtube.com/v/mvqSc43Agls
...because I love harpsichord.

https://www.youtube.com/v/xF9SltYJAT8
...because, I think, almost all GMG'ers , me included, seem to love this gem.

https://www.youtube.com/v/cE37vifSAr4
...thanks to Reinbert de Leeuw we get to know this unusual work.

[amw]

This looks like a typical list from you, which looks like nothing more than a 'think as many composers as you can and cram them into a list'. I mean not all of them can be considered 'great'.

No, this is a list created by going thru all of the female composers in my library (currently: 403 of them) and picking out the ones who either I think composed great music, or I might not think much of myself but are widely considered to have composed great music by others. This is obviously a non-exhaustive list as I have never heard anything by e.g. Milada Červenková or Margaret Brouwer or Jessie Montgomery (to name three more people who appeared in this thread) and therefore am potentially missing out on a lot more great music that simply doesn't get recorded or performed in a way I can access it.

All of the composers I named are very highly regarded within their own stylistic circles. (I think a similar case could be made for some composers that I left out because I don't have any music by them in my library: for example Laurie Anderson, Elena Firsova, Florence Price.) The fact that it's much more difficult to find recordings of music by Junghae Lee than Isang Yun (for example) when they are both about equally good as composers is probably because Yun studied in Paris and Berlin and made his name at the Darmstadt Ferienkürse, whereas Lee studied in Seoul and made her name at the Basel Musikakademie.

If you want to make a case that any of the composers who I think should be better-known are subpar on subjective musical grounds, you're free to.

[DavidW]

amw the size of your library must be off the charts if 4% of it represents the works of 400 composers!

[Florestan]

not all of them can be considered 'great'.

You're wrong. Canat de Chizy É, Paredes H and Tulve H mops the floor with Debussy, Ravel and Bartok any day. 

[Mirror Image]

You're wrong. Canat de Chizy É, Paredes H and Tulve H mops the floor with Debussy, Ravel and Bartok any day. 

Hah! You know you're right.

[T. D.]

The composers I'd have listed have all appeared, though Ustvolskaya took quite a while. 
I once (mid-late '90s) attended a concert featuring Azeri composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh and thought her music excellent, but little has been recorded and I haven't heard enough to rank her. One release on BIS, one Kronos Qt. (of whom I'm not the biggest fan) disc and a few selections in compilations.

[Brahmsian]

Southam A

Which works do you have for Ann Southam?

I only have one disc of her music, but it is a good one. It's called "Simple Lines Of Enquiry", for solo piano. Very atmospheric.

[Mirror Image]

amw the size of your library must be off the charts if 4% of it represents the works of 400 composers!

Having a large library like amw has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages would certainly be that she knows A LOT of composers and has heard a lot of music that many of us, otherwise, wouldn't either know about or perhaps even listen to. The main disadvantages is there is such a thing as too much and when one has so many composers represented in their collection, it begs the question whether they have devoted the kind of time it actually takes in understanding a composer's musical language while getting at the heart of the music in the process. For me, it can't be done and I'm happy to draw from say 50 composers and even with this number of composers, I find it quite overwhelming.