HILDEGARD OF BINGEN
1098 - 1179
Hildegard of Bingen was a German abbess, monastic leader, mystic, author, and Medieval composer of music.
Today we think of Hildegard as one of the first identifiable composers in the history of Western music.
Hildegard of Bingen was born of noble parents and educated at the Benedictine cloister of Disibodenberg.
She began experiencing prophetic visions as a child, many of which were recorded and compiled together.
In 1147 Hildegard left Disibodenberg and founded a new convent at Rupertsberg.
Hildegard collected 77 of her lyric poems, each with a musical setting composed by her, in Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revelationum.
“We don’t know if the words come first, or if the words and the music grow together in an organic development. We don’t know how much hand in it her male helpers – male secretaries and priests – had. None of that is clear.”
She had one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers.
Hildegard's music is monophonic, meaning it consists of one melodic line.
Her style is characterized by soaring melodies that can push the boundaries of the more staid ranges of traditional Gregorian chant.
Her compositions are highly melismatic, and employ recurrent melodic units.
Her style is characterized by soaring melodies that can push the boundaries of the more staid ranges of traditional Gregorian chant.
Her compositions are highly melismatic, and employ recurrent melodic units.
As with all Medieval chant notation, Hildegard's music lacks indication of temp or rhythm.
The surviving manuscripts employ late German style notation.
The surviving manuscripts employ late German style notation.
The reverence for the Virgin Mary reflected in music shows how deeply influenced and inspired Hildegard of Bingen and her community were by the Virgin Mary and the saints.
BARBARA STROZZI
1619 - 1677
Strozzi was a Baroque Italian singer and composer.
During her lifetime, Strozzi published eight volumes of her own music, having more music in print than any other composer of the era with no support from the Church or consistent patronage.
She was said to be "the most prolific composer – man or woman – of printed secular vocal music in Venice in the middle of the 17th century.”
It is assumed that her biological father was Giulio Strozzi, a poet and librettist. He was a very influential figure in 17th-century Venice. He played an instrumental role in helping Strozzi advance her music career.
At the age of fifteen, Strozzi was described as “la virtuosissima cantratrice di Giulio Strozzi”, Giulio Strozzi’s virtuosic singer.
Around Strozzi's sixteenth birthday, Giulio actively started to publicise her musical talents, ensuring dedications of works for her.
By her late teens, Strozzi had started to gain a reputation for her singing.
By her late teens, Strozzi had started to gain a reputation for her singing.
"Being a woman I am concerned about publishing this work. Would that it lie safely under a golden oak tree and not be endangered by swords of slander which have already been drawn to battle against it."
Strozzi's output is unique in that it only contains secular vocal music, with the exception of one volume of sacred songs.
Strozzi was highly sensitive to the subliminal meaning in her texts, and they often carried underlying issues regarding gender and love.
She took tremendous care over the setting of the texts, creating an intimate relationship between the words and the music.
She took tremendous care over the setting of the texts, creating an intimate relationship between the words and the music.
Most of Strozzi's work is written for accompanied female voice. She was a capable lute player and developed a reputation as one of the best singers of the time for her performances at private concerts around the city.
ISABELLA LEONARDA
1620 - 1704
Isabella Leonarda was an Italian composer from Novara, Italy
At the age of 16, she entered the Collegio di Sant'Orsola, an Ursuline convent, where she stayed for the remainder of her life.
Leonarda is most renowned for the numerous compositions that she created during her time at the convent, making her one of the most productive woman composers of her time.
She wrote approximately 200 compositions during her lifetime.
Leonarda was the first woman in history to publish sonatas.
Her published compositions span a period of 60 years, beginning with the dialogues of 1640 and concluding with the Motetti a voce sola of 1700.
She is credited with writing nearly 200 compositions during her lifetime.
She is credited with writing nearly 200 compositions during her lifetime.
Leonarda's works include examples of nearly every sacred genre.
She wrote motets and sacred concertos for one to four voices, sacred Latin dialogues, psalm settings, responsories, Magnificats, litanies, masses, and sonata da chiesa.
She wrote music for solo and continuo, chorus, and strings, as well as a few sacred solo songs with vernacular texts.
She wrote motets and sacred concertos for one to four voices, sacred Latin dialogues, psalm settings, responsories, Magnificats, litanies, masses, and sonata da chiesa.
She wrote music for solo and continuo, chorus, and strings, as well as a few sacred solo songs with vernacular texts.
Sonate da chiesa refers to her Opus 16, which was historic in that it was the first published instrumental sonata by a woman.
Though Leonarda's predominant genre was the solo motet, most of her notable historical achievements came from her sonatas.
Though Leonarda's predominant genre was the solo motet, most of her notable historical achievements came from her sonatas.
Leonarda was educated in formal counterpoint and uses it in many of her pieces. Her sonatas, however, are unusual in their formal structure.
Almost all of Leonarda's works carry a double dedication – one to the Virgin Mary as well as one to a highly placed living person.
FANNY MENDELSSOHN
1805 – 1847
Fanny Mendelssohn was a Romantic German composer and pianist.
She composed over 460 pieces of music, but was severely limited in her career by prevailing attitudes of the time toward women
Fanny was the oldest of four children born in Hamburg, Germany. She showed prodigious musical ability as a child and began to write music.
Her music teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter, said of her, "She could give you something of Sebastian Bach. This child is really something special. She plays like a man."
Her father wrote to her in 1820 "Music will perhaps become your brother's profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament"
A number of Fanny's songs were originally published under her brother, Felix Mendelssohn's, name in his opus 8 and 9 collections.
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" (to words by Franz Grillparzer), which Mendelssohn confessed was written by Fanny.
In turn Fanny helped Felix by constructive criticism of pieces and projects, which he always considered very carefully.
Her piano works are often in the manner of songs, and many carry the name Lied ohne Worte (Song without Words). This style (and title) of piano music was most successfully developed by Felix Mendelssohn, though some modern scholars assert that Fanny may have preceded him in the genre.
CLARA SCHUMANN
1819 – 1896
Clara Schumann was a Romantic German pianist, composer and piano teacher.
She had a 61-year concert career, and helped change the format and repertoire of the piano recital from displays of virtuosity to programs of serious works.
Clara was also one of the first pianists to perform from memory, making it the standard for concerts.
Clara composed solo piano pieces, a piano concerto (her Op. 7), chamber music, choral pieces, and songs.
The daughter of a professional pianist and an accomplished singer, Clara was a child prodigy. She tarted receiving basic piano instruction from her mother at the age of four, and soon after she began taking daily one-hour lessons from her father. They included subjects such as piano, violin, singing, theory, harmony, composition, and counterpoint. She began touring at age eleven.
Said of her by an anonymous critic, “The appearance of this artist can be regarded as epoch-making... In her creative hands, the most ordinary passage, the most routine motive acquires a significant meaning, a colour, which only those with the most consummate artistry can give.”
In 1840, she married famous composer Robert Schumann, and the couple had eight children.
Together, they encouraged another important Romantic composer, Johannes Brahms, and maintained a close relationship with him. She premiered many works by her husband and by Brahms in public.
After Robert Schumann's early death, she continued her concert tours in Europe for decades.
Over 1,300 concert programs from her performances throughout Europe between 1831 through 1889 have been preserved.
"Composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound" - Clara Schumann
As she grew older, Clara 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?"
Her husband, Robert Schumann, wrote, “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.”
Clara was also instrumental in getting the works of Robert Schumann recognized, appreciated, and added to the repertoire. She promoted his works tirelessly throughout her life.
Although Schumann was not widely recognized as a composer for many years after her death, she made a lasting impression as a pianist. Trained by her father to play by ear and memorize, she gave public performances from memory as early as age thirteen, a fact noted as exceptional by her reviewers.
AMY BEACH
1867 – 1944
Amy Beach was a Romantic American composer and pianist. She was the first successsful American female composer of large-scale art music.
Her Gaelic Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman.
Beach was one of the first American composers to succeed without European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era.
As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.
Able to sing forty songs accurately by age one, Beach was capable of improvising counter-melody by age two, and she taught herself to read at age three.
At four, she composed three waltzes for piano during a summer at her grandfather's farm despite the absence of a piano.
She could easily play music by ear, including four-part hymns. She began formal piano lessons with her mother at age six.
At four, she composed three waltzes for piano during a summer at her grandfather's farm despite the absence of a piano.
She could easily play music by ear, including four-part hymns. She began formal piano lessons with her mother at age six.
Beach studied harmony and counterpoint at age fourteen, and once her formal compositional training stopped, "she collected every book she could find on theory, composition, and orchestration... she taught herself counterpoint, harmony, fugue."
Beach made her concert debut at age 16.
In 1885, she married Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach.
The marriage was conditioned upon her willingness "to live according to his status, that is, function as a society matron and patron of the arts. She agreed never to teach piano, and agreed to limit performances to two public recitals per year, with profits donated to charity, and to devote herself more to composition than to performance.
The marriage was conditioned upon her willingness "to live according to his status, that is, function as a society matron and patron of the arts. She agreed never to teach piano, and agreed to limit performances to two public recitals per year, with profits donated to charity, and to devote herself more to composition than to performance.
Beach used her status as the top female American composer to further the careers of young musicians.
She served as leader of some organizations focused on music education and women, including the Society of American Women Composers as its first president.
Her writing is mainly in a Romantic idiom. In her later works she began to experiment– moving away from tonality, employing whole tone scales and more exotic harmonies and techniques.
Most popular, however, for her songs, of which she wrote about 150.
In the early 1890s, Beach started to become interested in folk songs. She was one of the first to contribute to the nationalist movement in American music.
Her contributions included about thirty songs inspired by folk music, including Scottish, Irish, Balkan, African-American, and Native American origins.
Her contributions included about thirty songs inspired by folk music, including Scottish, Irish, Balkan, African-American, and Native American origins.
