FORGOTTEN FEMALES
(some less forgotten than others)
Unfortunately only a few of her songs survive and no record of musical notation either. However she had a great influence on many subsequent female musicians. ]
I got confused here so we need to be clear that we have jumped 1000 years to the medieval period.
The Hymn of Kassiani, sung Holy Tuesday evening during the Matins of Holy Wednesday. Tradition says that in his later years the Emperor Theophilus, still in love with Kassiani, wished to see her one more time before he died, so he rode to the monastery where she resided. Kassiani was alone in her cell, writing her Hymn when she realized that the commotion she heard was because the imperial retinue had arrived. She was still in love with him but was now devoted to God and hid away because she did not want to let her old passion overcome her monastic vow. She left the unfinished hymn on the table. Theophilus found her cell and entered it alone. He looked for her but she was not there; she was hiding in a closet, watching him. Theophilus felt very sad, cried, and regretted that for a moment of pride he rejected such a beautiful and intellectual woman; then he noticed the papers on the table and read them. When he was done reading, he sat and added one line to the hymn; then he left. The line attributed to the Emperor is the line "those very feet whose sound Eve heard at the dusk in Paradise and hid herself in fear". Kassiani emerged when the emperor was gone, read what he had written and finished the hymn.
The next female to consider is KASSIA also known as KASSIANI, born in Constantinople 810 ad and died in Kassos, Greece in 865AD. Kassia was a Byzantine abbess, poet, composer and hymn writer. She is also one of the first medieval composers whose scores are both extant and able to be interpreted by modern scholars and musicians. We are therefore fortunate to several recordings from which to choose. Of these I have picked the Hymn of Kassian ( with English subtitles.
https://youtu.be/3zY5x1kPlwE
We now move on three centuries to meet Hildegard von Bingen (1098---1179).
Hildegard was a German Benedictine Abbess, writer, composer, philosopher and Christian mystic visionary. A complete polymath. Most of her output, in a monophonic style , for which she wrote both words and music was of a religious nature, although it is alleged that she made a close association between music and the female body. The poetry and music of her Symphonia is concerned with the anatomy of female desire thus described as Saphonic connecting her to a history of female rhetoric rhetoricians.
I have included two examples;
An extract Symphonia ;
Harmoniae Celestium Revelationum (Ensemble San Felice)
and
Ave Generosa ( UCLA Early Music Ensemble)
From Hildegard the time machine takes us to the 17th Century to meet another strong minded female, Barbara Strozzi.(1619---1677) a contemporary of Henry Purcell, Claudio Monteverdi, Heinrich Schutz and Arcangelo Corelli.
Her parentage is doubtful although her father is always assumed to be Giulio Strozzi, a poet and librettist and member of the Incognito, one of the largest and most prestigious intellectual Academies in Europe, and a major political and social force in Venice. Her mother is thought to have been a servant of Giulio.
In her early life, although having a fine reputation for her singing Barbara had little success with her composition. Her first book of madrigals appeared in print in 1644 before she had the confidence of her later years. This is exemplified by her own preface in which she states " being a woman I am concerned publishing this work".
Barbara never married although she had four children with a Venetian nobleman Count Vidman, a patron of the Arts. She was obviously a very determined, independent woman in a predominantly Male society, who during her lifetime had more music in print than any other composer of the era. This without the support of the Church or consistent patronage of nobility. The role model of Sapho appears once again!.
Two examples of her songs are given here:
La Vendetta, an aria for Soprano, two violins and continuou.
( Roberto Invernizzi)
Che Si Puo Fare from Bizzarrie Armoniche
( Mariana Flores)
It is with much regret that I have decided to include neither Fanny Mendelssohn nor Clara Schumann. I was very tempted but made my decision to exclude them on the basis that these days they both have far more exposure than previously, making their compositions far more available as recordings and in the concert hall.
The next musician I would like to introduce is Dame Ethel Smyth (1858--1944).
Dame Ethel a long time resident of Woking and a prominent member of the Womens Suffrage Movement. Her compositions include songs,piano, chamber, orchestral, and choral works including operas You name it---she wrote it!!
Ethel tended to be marginalised as a "woman coposer" as though her work could not be accepted as mainstream.
She was born into a wealthy family and in 1887 entered the Leipzig conservatoire against her father's wishes. During this period she met many prominent composers of the day including Brahms, Dvorak, Clara Schumann and Tchaikovsky, the latter commenting very favourably on her work.
From 1911 to 1913 she was closely involved with the Suffragettes, being one of the hundred plus women who were arrested and imprisoned. There is a delightful anecdote by Thomas Beecham that when he visited her in Holloway he found her directing a performance of The March of The Women sung by fellow suffragettes. Dare I mention the influence of Sapho again.
Two examples are included:
On the Cliffs of Cornwall (the prelude to act two of the opera The Wreckers)
And, inevitably:
The March of the Women
(Glasgow University Choir )
We now have a French woman.
Lili Boulanger (1893--1918)
Lili, along with her elder sister Nadia was revered by many prominent twentieth century musicians. At nineteen years old Lili was the first female winner of the Pris de Rome composition prize. She suffered from illness all her life and tragically died of tuberculosis at the extremely young age of twenty four on 15th March 1918.
Of her compositions I have chose two:
D'un Matin au Printemps
Trio Estampe
Now well into the twentieth century there is another French woman to consider.
Germaine Tailleferre1892----1983)
was the only female member of the group of composers known as Les Six. The others being Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honneger, Georges Auric and Lois Durey, august company indeed!
She changed her original name of Taillefesse to Taillferre to spite her father who refused to support her musical studies. (A common theme with many a female composer)
During the 1920's encouraged by Maurice Ravel she wrote many of her important works including the first piano concerto, the harp concerto and a ballet La Nouvelle Cythere commissioned by Diaghilev.
Her prolific career continued throughout the 1930's but at the outset of war she was forced to leave most of her scores behind as she escaped to America via Spain and Portugal.
Returning to France in 1946 she continued composing prolifically until a few weeks before her death on 7th November 1973.
Two examples of her work:
Pastoral for flute and piano.
( Marjolein flute Jeiger Blanken piano)
Ouvrture.
To finish our journey through the ages accompanied by our female composers we are now among living musicians.
Judith Weir (11th May 1954) a graduate of King's College Cambridge was born into a Scottish family but grew up near London. An oboe player with the National Youth Orchestra she studied composition with John Tavener during her school holholidays. She was resident composer with the CBSO under Simon Rattle in the 1990's and succededsucceeded Peter Maxwell Davies as Master of the Queen's Music in 2014.
Two examples of her output:
My Guardian Angel
(Inter Alios Choir)
Stars Night Music and Light
(BBC Proms 2011)
Roxanna Panufnic is a British composer of Polish heritage.Born in London on 24th April 1968 she attended Bedaĺe's school and then studied at the Royal Academy
" Her music owes nothing to modish fads. Again and again she has the courage of simple integrity interweaving her very direct emotionalitg with elegant harmonies" so said the Weiner Zeitung.She has written a wide range of music-- opera ballet, music theatre, choral, chamber and music for film and television.
Three examples follow:
O Harken ( Mornington Singers of Ireland)
Four World Seasons(Tasmin Little with the strings of theBBC Symphony Orchestra)
The Kyrie from the Westminster Mass (Westminster Cathedral Choir)
The last woman we shall hear from is very special.
Hannah Kendall was born in Londonin1984. Originally from Guyana her mother is the head teacher in a primary school and her grandfather was a jazz musician.Hannah attended the University of Exeter where she majored in vocal studies and composition. Subsequently she obtained a Masters at the RCM and studied arts management at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
In 2017 the Chinike! Orchestra was founded by double bass player Chi-Chi Nwanoku OBEas the first BME Orchestra in Europe.
It was this year at the BBC Proms that the World's Premier performance of Hannah Kendall's The Spark Catchers was given A work commissioned by theBBC for this occassion.
We can hear this played by the Chinike! Orchestra followed by a work by Hannah for solo piano:
Processional (Regina Myers piano)
(some less forgotten than others)
- Have you added up the timings? The target length is 55mins, give or take 3 or 4.
- Try for a lighter conversational style rather than erudite quotes.
- Where you have put in two examples I may cut to one once I hear them. At the mo I am working on next week’s unusual insts.
- This opens like a history lesson. We need to pick out the musicality.
Unfortunately only a few of her songs survive and no record of musical notation either. However she had a great influence on many subsequent female musicians. ]
- Intro to Sappho from Kings College London: (if you’d like to know more…)
- He does not mention anything of musicality.
- However, you are slightly off the hook due to this finding: https://youtu.be/5sZMUReQqxs
- What we need is a more direct intro to this as our concert opener.
I got confused here so we need to be clear that we have jumped 1000 years to the medieval period.
The Hymn of Kassiani, sung Holy Tuesday evening during the Matins of Holy Wednesday. Tradition says that in his later years the Emperor Theophilus, still in love with Kassiani, wished to see her one more time before he died, so he rode to the monastery where she resided. Kassiani was alone in her cell, writing her Hymn when she realized that the commotion she heard was because the imperial retinue had arrived. She was still in love with him but was now devoted to God and hid away because she did not want to let her old passion overcome her monastic vow. She left the unfinished hymn on the table. Theophilus found her cell and entered it alone. He looked for her but she was not there; she was hiding in a closet, watching him. Theophilus felt very sad, cried, and regretted that for a moment of pride he rejected such a beautiful and intellectual woman; then he noticed the papers on the table and read them. When he was done reading, he sat and added one line to the hymn; then he left. The line attributed to the Emperor is the line "those very feet whose sound Eve heard at the dusk in Paradise and hid herself in fear". Kassiani emerged when the emperor was gone, read what he had written and finished the hymn.
The next female to consider is KASSIA also known as KASSIANI, born in Constantinople 810 ad and died in Kassos, Greece in 865AD. Kassia was a Byzantine abbess, poet, composer and hymn writer. She is also one of the first medieval composers whose scores are both extant and able to be interpreted by modern scholars and musicians. We are therefore fortunate to several recordings from which to choose. Of these I have picked the Hymn of Kassian ( with English subtitles.
https://youtu.be/3zY5x1kPlwE
We now move on three centuries to meet Hildegard von Bingen (1098---1179).
Hildegard was a German Benedictine Abbess, writer, composer, philosopher and Christian mystic visionary. A complete polymath. Most of her output, in a monophonic style , for which she wrote both words and music was of a religious nature, although it is alleged that she made a close association between music and the female body. The poetry and music of her Symphonia is concerned with the anatomy of female desire thus described as Saphonic connecting her to a history of female rhetoric rhetoricians.
I have included two examples;
An extract Symphonia ;
Harmoniae Celestium Revelationum (Ensemble San Felice)
and
Ave Generosa ( UCLA Early Music Ensemble)
From Hildegard the time machine takes us to the 17th Century to meet another strong minded female, Barbara Strozzi.(1619---1677) a contemporary of Henry Purcell, Claudio Monteverdi, Heinrich Schutz and Arcangelo Corelli.
- Again, lets avoid a history lesson:
Her parentage is doubtful although her father is always assumed to be Giulio Strozzi, a poet and librettist and member of the Incognito, one of the largest and most prestigious intellectual Academies in Europe, and a major political and social force in Venice. Her mother is thought to have been a servant of Giulio.
In her early life, although having a fine reputation for her singing Barbara had little success with her composition. Her first book of madrigals appeared in print in 1644 before she had the confidence of her later years. This is exemplified by her own preface in which she states " being a woman I am concerned publishing this work".
Barbara never married although she had four children with a Venetian nobleman Count Vidman, a patron of the Arts. She was obviously a very determined, independent woman in a predominantly Male society, who during her lifetime had more music in print than any other composer of the era. This without the support of the Church or consistent patronage of nobility. The role model of Sapho appears once again!.
Two examples of her songs are given here:
La Vendetta, an aria for Soprano, two violins and continuou.
( Roberto Invernizzi)
Che Si Puo Fare from Bizzarrie Armoniche
( Mariana Flores)
- Keep it positive! Consider whether a short piece by each might be more interesting than two of the above examples.
It is with much regret that I have decided to include neither Fanny Mendelssohn nor Clara Schumann. I was very tempted but made my decision to exclude them on the basis that these days they both have far more exposure than previously, making their compositions far more available as recordings and in the concert hall.
The next musician I would like to introduce is Dame Ethel Smyth (1858--1944).
Dame Ethel a long time resident of Woking and a prominent member of the Womens Suffrage Movement. Her compositions include songs,piano, chamber, orchestral, and choral works including operas You name it---she wrote it!!
Ethel tended to be marginalised as a "woman coposer" as though her work could not be accepted as mainstream.
She was born into a wealthy family and in 1887 entered the Leipzig conservatoire against her father's wishes. During this period she met many prominent composers of the day including Brahms, Dvorak, Clara Schumann and Tchaikovsky, the latter commenting very favourably on her work.
From 1911 to 1913 she was closely involved with the Suffragettes, being one of the hundred plus women who were arrested and imprisoned. There is a delightful anecdote by Thomas Beecham that when he visited her in Holloway he found her directing a performance of The March of The Women sung by fellow suffragettes. Dare I mention the influence of Sapho again.
Two examples are included:
On the Cliffs of Cornwall (the prelude to act two of the opera The Wreckers)
And, inevitably:
The March of the Women
(Glasgow University Choir )
We now have a French woman.
Lili Boulanger (1893--1918)
Lili, along with her elder sister Nadia was revered by many prominent twentieth century musicians. At nineteen years old Lili was the first female winner of the Pris de Rome composition prize. She suffered from illness all her life and tragically died of tuberculosis at the extremely young age of twenty four on 15th March 1918.
Of her compositions I have chose two:
D'un Matin au Printemps
Trio Estampe
Now well into the twentieth century there is another French woman to consider.
Germaine Tailleferre1892----1983)
was the only female member of the group of composers known as Les Six. The others being Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honneger, Georges Auric and Lois Durey, august company indeed!
She changed her original name of Taillefesse to Taillferre to spite her father who refused to support her musical studies. (A common theme with many a female composer)
During the 1920's encouraged by Maurice Ravel she wrote many of her important works including the first piano concerto, the harp concerto and a ballet La Nouvelle Cythere commissioned by Diaghilev.
Her prolific career continued throughout the 1930's but at the outset of war she was forced to leave most of her scores behind as she escaped to America via Spain and Portugal.
Returning to France in 1946 she continued composing prolifically until a few weeks before her death on 7th November 1973.
Two examples of her work:
Pastoral for flute and piano.
( Marjolein flute Jeiger Blanken piano)
Ouvrture.
To finish our journey through the ages accompanied by our female composers we are now among living musicians.
Judith Weir (11th May 1954) a graduate of King's College Cambridge was born into a Scottish family but grew up near London. An oboe player with the National Youth Orchestra she studied composition with John Tavener during her school holholidays. She was resident composer with the CBSO under Simon Rattle in the 1990's and succededsucceeded Peter Maxwell Davies as Master of the Queen's Music in 2014.
Two examples of her output:
My Guardian Angel
(Inter Alios Choir)
Stars Night Music and Light
(BBC Proms 2011)
Roxanna Panufnic is a British composer of Polish heritage.Born in London on 24th April 1968 she attended Bedaĺe's school and then studied at the Royal Academy
" Her music owes nothing to modish fads. Again and again she has the courage of simple integrity interweaving her very direct emotionalitg with elegant harmonies" so said the Weiner Zeitung.She has written a wide range of music-- opera ballet, music theatre, choral, chamber and music for film and television.
Three examples follow:
O Harken ( Mornington Singers of Ireland)
Four World Seasons(Tasmin Little with the strings of theBBC Symphony Orchestra)
The Kyrie from the Westminster Mass (Westminster Cathedral Choir)
The last woman we shall hear from is very special.
Hannah Kendall was born in Londonin1984. Originally from Guyana her mother is the head teacher in a primary school and her grandfather was a jazz musician.Hannah attended the University of Exeter where she majored in vocal studies and composition. Subsequently she obtained a Masters at the RCM and studied arts management at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
In 2017 the Chinike! Orchestra was founded by double bass player Chi-Chi Nwanoku OBEas the first BME Orchestra in Europe.
It was this year at the BBC Proms that the World's Premier performance of Hannah Kendall's The Spark Catchers was given A work commissioned by theBBC for this occassion.
We can hear this played by the Chinike! Orchestra followed by a work by Hannah for solo piano:
Processional (Regina Myers piano)
