The last years of the nineteenth century saw many high-profile performances in Britain, Europe, and the USA of complex, large-scale musical works composed by women. In 1890, for example, a distinctive four-movement orchestral Serenade by the British composer Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) was performed at the Crystal Palace in London. In 1895 La Montagne, a drame lyrique in four acts and five tableaux by the French composer Augusta Holmès (1847–1903), her fourth opera, was premiered at the Paris Opéra while the ‘Gaelic’ Symphony by the American composer Amy Beach (1867–1944) was first heard in Boston’s Music Hall the following year, 1896. The ‘Gaelic’ Symphony went on to be widely performed in Europe and the United States, and was critically well received, with one reviewer of the premiere praising it as ‘high-reaching, dignified and virile’.1
Orchestral music, especially the symphony, and opera were two of the most prestigious genres of Western classical music at this time. London’s Crystal Palace, the Opéra in Paris, and Boston’s Music Hall were important high-profile venues. Smyth, Holmès, and Beach all achieved notable success as composers who were taking on and engaging with the mainstream classical music worlds of their respective countries. They were also regarded as breaking new ground as women creating work in genres that had previously been considered the exclusive preserve of men, and beyond the capabilities of women. For Smyth’s early performances in England the composer was given ambiguously as ‘E. M. Smyth’. The Crystal Palace performance of Smyth’s Serenade elicited the following reaction in the English musical press: ‘But surprise rose to absolute wonder when the composer, called to the platform, turned out to be a member of the fair sex.’2 Two years later, in a frequently quoted review, George Bernard Shaw, as music critic for The World, wrote of another of Smyth’s orchestral works: ‘When E. M. Smyth’s heroically brassy overture to Antony and Cleopatra was finished, and the composer called to the platform, it was observed with stupefaction that all that tremendous noise had been made by a lady.’3
Among other significant musical works created by women that appeared in the 1890s, in 1892 an Album of English Songs by Maude Valérie White (1855–1938), comprising settings of texts by Robert Browning, Robert Burns, Robert Herrick, and others, was published by Stanley Lucas, Weber & Co. A few years previously, André de Ternant had discussed some of these, writing: ‘All these songs are in themselves little masterpieces, and if ever the time shall come to regenerate the once honoured English ballad, the name of Maude Valérie White will certainly be remembered as one of those who did their best to prepare the way.’4
In 1893 the American publisher Gustav Schirmer had brought out a new edition of ‘Automne’, a piano piece by Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944), originally published as the second of her Six études de concert, op. 35, in 1886. In 1896 the song cycle for four voices and piano by Liza Lehmann (1862–1918), In a Persian Garden (‘The words selected from the Rubaiyát of Omar Khayam (Fitzgerald’s translation)’), a work that deftly captured some of the cultural concerns of the fin-de-siècle, was published by Metzler.
Despite falling out of favour as the twentieth century progressed, White, Lehmann, and Chaminade were all critically respected composers at the turn of the twentieth century, and also extremely successful and popular with the general public. Lehmann’s In a Persian Garden was heard throughout Britain and the United States well into the twentieth century, as were individual songs from the cycle. In 1903, the critic Edwin Evans wrote of the work’s ‘phenomenal success’.5 Admiration for Chaminade and her music was considerable, as seen in the large number of Chaminade Music Clubs that sprang up in the United States in the early years of the twentieth century.6 White, Chaminade, and Lehmann also fulfilled contemporary expectations of a woman composing music, in terms both of genre (songs and piano pieces), and of the spaces in which their works tended to be most frequently heard – the more private space of the home or musical salon.7
These six women all achieved undoubted success, personal and critical, in lives devoted to creating music. Were they, and others like them, professional composers? What did the term professional mean for a composer, male or female, in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries? Did the late nineteenth century see a shift in attitudes towards women as creators of music, and were the women who followed this richly creative generation of women composers able to consolidate and build on this success? Was it easier for a woman working in the mid-twentieth century to build a career as a composer than it had been some sixty years previously? Was there progress for women as composers?
It is fascinating to explore the shifting definitions of professionalism in regard to musical composition. It has always been a slippery concept, and numerous late twentieth-century scholars have simply used the term regarding the women’s lives and music they have studied, to denote a degree of acceptance and success for those women who are their subjects. Other scholars have been more concerned to unpick the concept as applied to women, and to interrogate it as to whether it is anything more than a marker of approval. Among these, Marcia Citron, whose 1993 monograph Gender and the Musical Canon remains one of the richest and most thought-provoking exploration of the issues facing women composers in the Western classical tradition in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, devoted a chapter to ‘Professionalism’, noting that it ‘has generally been considered a goal of a nurtured and practicing creativity in music’.8 Citron explores issues affecting women, such as societal expectations, publication, and the Foucauldian ‘author-concept’, and ends her chapter calling for an understanding of professionalism that ‘will be capable of multiple models’. She adds: ‘As a result of this diversity women composers may well find themselves swimming in new mainstreams that re-define what being a serious composer in Western art music is all about.’9
In the last half of the nineteenth century, women throughout Europe, Britain, and the USA, particularly those from the middle and upper classes, were moving beyond their expected roles as nothing more than wives and mothers. They started to take on the professional and public lives and careers that had previously be seen as degrading or unseemly, embracing a spirit of growing freedom, self-determination, and opportunity. In this age of the independent and disruptive ‘new woman’, femme nouvelle, and neue Frau, growing numbers of women were choosing to lead independent lives, networking with other women, demanding equal rights in education and employment, and challenging the idea that woman was inferior to man.10 As one social historian has described it: ‘[This was] a period of continuous and quite seminal, if partly invisible, change in the perception of women’s roles and in the realignment of male-female relationships. Such changes can be detected in many spheres: political, legal, economic, intellectual, personal, and psychological.’11
Women’s battles for access to a variety of professions, particularly the medical and legal professions, have been well documented.12 Key to their success were resolve and grit, together with determination for their career ambitions to be taken seriously. The situation for women creating music for themselves and others to perform, reaching the ears and imaginations of contemporary audiences, was more complex than that of women aiming to become doctors or barristers. The profession of being ‘a composer’ was less straightforward than fulfilling the requirements to enter the legal profession, for example, which required access to a particular training and accreditation that in most countries was simply not available to women until they fought through the excluding barriers. Education and training are always important in developing any skill, including learning ways to express any kind of creativity. Some countries, indeed, had systemic barriers for women who wanted the musical training that would enable them to produce works to be heard by others. In the nineteenth century, such training was one of the options offered to students at conservatoires, alongside training in musical performance on a range of instruments or voices. But many German conservatoires, for example, simply did not allow women to attend composition classes. The American composer Mabel Wheeler Daniels (1878–1971), who studied at the Royal Conservatory of Munich in the early years of the twentieth century, explained in letters home that she was the first woman to be admitted to the principal’s score-reading class, and that it was not until the late 1890s that women had been allowed to study counterpoint at the Conservatory.13 (Both score reading and study of counterpoint were seen as essential aspects of compositional training.)
For other women, the issue with musical training in composition was that their families did not consider it appropriate for women of their class to study at an institution that was seen as preparing them for a public career, and that was so closely associated with the disreputable world of the theatre. Both Smyth and White wrote in their memoirs of the parental objections they had to overcome before attending the Leipzig Conservatorium (Smyth) and London’s Royal Academy of Music (White).14 It is not surprising that numerous composers, including Chaminade, Holmès, and the German composer Luise Adolpha Le Beau (1850–1927), studied privately.15 When a woman did finally manage to attend a music conservatoire, she was not always treated the same way or offered the same opportunities as her male contemporaries, reflecting assumptions that, as a woman, she was less capable or less serious in her career ambitions. Daniels wrote of her first score-reading class at the Munich Conservatory: ‘Just before I took my seat at the keyboard … I heard one of the men smother a laugh.’16
The question of when a composer, whether female or male, should be considered a professional was much debated in the press at the turn of the century. Financial considerations were less relevant in defining a professional status for composers than for performers. Then, as now, it was difficult to make a living from composing alone. In the late nineteenth century, there were successful songwriters, including women such as White or Lehmann, who earned large amounts of money through sheet music sales; but most composers, if they needed to earn a living, had to supplement earnings from composition with money from other sources. Many well-known composers had no need to earn money at all, and in 1907 one of the best-known British composers of the early twentieth century, Frederick Delius, was reported as saying: ‘No earnest musician should think of becoming what I may call a professional composer unless he has private means.’17 Another well-known, well-to-do British composer of the time, Hubert Parry, once calculated that in twenty years, during the early part of his career, he made no more than £25 from his compositions.18
Popular and acclaimed composers in the nineteenth century, such as Giacomo Meyerbeer, or Felix Mendelssohn, were frequently discussed, often with some bemusement, as to their professional status. In 1925, the composer Felix Borowski, writing in Etude Magazine, claimed: ‘Meyerbeer, like Mendelssohn, was an amateur, in as much as he composed for the love of art and not because he had to make a living.’19 Where did women fit into these debates about the professional composer? Did the relationship between women and professionalism in composition change as the twentieth century progressed?
In the late nineteenth century there was certainly an expectation from much of the general public and mainstream musical worlds that, as for so many careers and professions, women would pursue the creation of music as a hobby rather than developing it into a vocation that might be regarded as public or professional. Even in the first half of the twentieth century, despite the example of the liberated ‘new woman’, most women expected, and were expected, to be supported by a husband, or perhaps a father or brother. They were not thought to need or want to make money through composition and so were more likely to be regarded as amateurs, with all the attendant assumptions of lack of authority or even ability.
There were elements of a composing career other than financial that were seen as important in ensuring that a composer would be regarded and accepted as a professional. These included critical recognition, moving in establishment musical circles, belonging to musical associations or organizations, and receiving high-profile performances. As Marcia Citron defined it: ‘To be a professional composer is to be taken seriously in one’s own time and possibly in the future. It involves reputation, authority, and the circulation of a name within culture.’20 Exemplifying this, the British composer Elizabeth Maconchy (1907–94) was supported both financially and creatively by her husband. But she was a fiercely professional composer in, for instance, her involvement with organizations such as the Composers’ Guild of Great Britain (of which she became ‘Chairman’ in 1959), and her commissions from the BBC and from leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists.21
Another significant marker of recognition was the awarding of high-profile prizes for composition, usually at an early stage in a composer’s career, offering invaluable opportunities for travel and further training. In 1879, Maude Valérie White had been awarded the British Mendelssohn Scholarship. In 1913 the French composer Lili Boulanger (1893–1918) was awarded the Prix de Rome for composition, following a considerable battle by women to be allowed to enter for the prize, a fight comprehensively explored by Annegret Fauser in her 1998 article.22 The American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Music Composition in 1930.23 White, Boulanger, and Crawford Seeger, were each the first woman to be awarded their particular prize.
A composer would also be more easily regarded as a professional if she or he worked in some other musical sphere as well – as performer, director, or educator, for example. Dorothy Howell (1898–1982), who caused a sensation in 1919 at the age of twenty-one when her symphonic poem Lamia was premiered at London’s Promenade Concerts, was a professor of harmony and composition at London’s Royal Academy of Music from 1924 to 1970. Despite this prestigious teaching position, Howell’s compositional work was largely forgotten, or overlooked, after her period of acclaim in the 1920s.24
There is no doubt that in the late nineteenth century it was common for a woman who had established a high-profile career as a performer to use her public platform to play or sing her own music. Both Chaminade and Beach, for example, had highly successful careers as pianists, while Lehmann had been a renowned concert singer. All frequently included their own music in their recitals and concerts. This was nothing new. Earlier in the century Clara Schumann, widely recognized as a highly successful concert pianist, like many other women of the time, frequently programmed her own compositions. An example from early in her career is her op. 8 Variations de concert pour le pianoforte sur la ‘Cavatine du Pirate’ de Bellini (1837) which she performed frequently on her tours in 1837–8 in Germany and Vienna.25 Women performers who continued to promote their own music into the mid-twentieth century include the American pianist-composer Philippa Schuyler (1931–67).26
The situation for women working as composers who were not also known as performers could be more difficult. Despite the numbers of women who were determined to succeed in complex, large-scale genres such as the symphony or opera, it was hard for them to break away from the expectation that if they were to create music it would be as amateurs, writing on a small scale in genres such as song or short instrumental pieces. By composing works like symphonies or operas, however, it was easier for them to become regarded as professionals since they were creating music that met the expectations of the canon. For women who were primarily songwriters, despite often resounding financial success following the publication of their work, it became increasingly difficult, as the twentieth century progressed, for them to be regarded as anything other than amateur composers of undervalued salon music. The change in the reputations of, for example, both White and Lehmann was dramatic and extreme.27
Music created by women was expected to be as unthreatening, decorous, and demure as women themselves were supposed to be. In 1889, a British reviewer of sheet music by the Norwegian pianist and composer Agathe Backer-Grøndhal (1847–1907) found it to be ‘remarkably original, attractive, and vigorous to a degree absolutely surprising in one so fair and feminine in appearance and manner’.28 Examples of similar critical language can be found throughout the history of classical music in the Western tradition. As Laura Hamer has written of our own time: ‘Women musicians are still regularly subjected to gendered criticism, which often undermines their artistry by focusing on their appearance.’29
In other ways, a woman composer’s gender might be used to imply that she was simply incapable of success. Thus, despite the resolve of the British composer Rosalind Ellicott (1857–1924) to create a successful compositional career, her music frequently met with a variety of gendered assumptions. The reviewer of a performance of her cantata Henry of Navarre (text by Thomas Babington Macaulay), for example, voiced significant reservations:
Obviously the fire of Macaulay’s verses is not shared by the music and, after all, who can wonder at it? Such a theme needs to be handled by a strong man, not by a woman, whose imagination can hardly conceive the scene at Ivry – the exultation and despair, the delirium of the fight and the triumph.30
As the twentieth century progressed, women composers found that their work still provoked the same kind of reaction from critics, especially if it failed to live up to expectations about what a woman composer would (or should) produce. In 1935 the critic William McNaught reviewed a London concert at which new music by Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams, and Elisabeth Lutyens was premiered. He found the concert to be ‘an interesting study of the young female mind of today. This organ, when it takes up musical composition, works in mysterious ways. No lip-stick, silk stocking, or saucily tilted hat adorns the music evolved from its recesses’.31
As Kiri Heel has demonstrated in her doctoral thesis, the critical reception of Germaine Tailleferre is particularly interesting since she was the only female member of the composer grouping ‘Les Six’. From the early days, Tailleferre was set apart and her music denigrated. One particularly withering assessment came from the British music critic Cecil Gray in his Survey of Contemporary Music (1927):
Of Mlle Germaine Tailleferre one can only repeat Dr. Johnson’s dictum concerning a woman preacher, transposed into terms of music: ‘Sir, a woman’s composing is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.’ Considered apart from her sex, her music is wholly negligible.32
Despite the many powerful and compelling musical works by women that had been heard in the nearly forty years since the critics’ surprise that a woman had created Smyth’s orchestral music, very little had changed regarding women’s creative capacity. In 1903, Otto Weininger, in his widely read book Sex and Character, claimed that ‘the female is soulless, and possesses neither ego nor individuality, personality nor freedom, character nor will’.33 Such ideas had far-reaching influence on attitudes towards women as creative artists, both the attitudes of creative women themselves, and those of the wider public.34 It was not only male critics and commentators who held such views. In 1907, the novelist Marie Corelli wrote:
[Woman] always lacks the grand self-control which is the inward power of the Great musician. She was born to be a creature of sweet impulses – of love – of coquetry – of tenderness – of persuasiveness – and these things, instilled by the unconscious grace and beauty of her natural ways into the spirit of man, are no doubt the true origin of music itself – music which she inspires, but cannot create.35
During the last two decades of the nineteenth century there was a sense of excited adventure for many women as they broke down barriers, including musical ones. But at the same time as some women were demanding and gaining greater independence and opportunities for self-expression, the arguments ranged against their activities grew into a powerful force of backlash and reaction. Among the voices speaking against a picture of unequivocal progress for women is that of Margot Asquith, remembering the 1880s from her old age in the 1930s: ‘Among the young women there was more intellectual ambition, more sense of adventure, and much more originality in the West End of London in my youth than there is today’.36
After the Second World War, there was a particular drive to see women return to their roles as home makers, wives, and mothers. This can be seen in the reception and careers of Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams, as reflected in their correspondence over a period of fifty years. After a youth of exuberance and possibility, as well as notable musical achievements, both women settled into a quieter lifetime of creating music, while feeling overlooked and neglected.37
Painstaking scholarship since the 1990s has re-examined the music and explored the careers of women who were working as composers during this period. Monographs include Adrienne Fried Block on Amy Beach, Ita Beausang and Séamus de Barra on Ina Boyle, Rae Linda Brown on Florence Price, and Judith Tick on Ruth Crawford Seeger.38 These monographs have been complemented by scholarship dealing with groups of women composers, as with Caroline Potter on the Boulanger sisters, Rhiannon Mathias on Maconchy, Williams, and Lutyens, Laura Seddon on British women composers of chamber music in the early twentieth century, and Laura Hamer on French musicians in the 1920s and 1930s.39 Significant work on various women composers has been published in articles in academic journals, on authoritative websites, and in doctoral theses, all of which additionally rehabilitates and reinvigorates our understanding of the significance of these women.
This scholarship also clearly shows that the barriers facing these composers were continually, sometimes subtly, rebuilt and so constantly needed to be dismantled. There was no sustained sense of progress in equality of opportunity for women who wanted to work and to be taken seriously as composers. A thought-provoking example is in the awarding of the prestigious British Mendelssohn Scholarship, won by Maude Valérie White in 1879. More than fifty years later, Elizabeth Maconchy, a finalist for the award, was told by a member of the panel that she had not been given the scholarship since she would only get married and never write another note.40
The question of defining professionalism and applying it to women composers of these generations remains problematic, as scholars who have grappled with the issue, such as Citron, have demonstrated. Meaning different things in different countries, for women of different classes and races, is professionalism a useful or valid marker? The women who fit the image of the canonical male composer creating complex, large-scale musical works and living a public life involved in musical organizations, receiving mainstream commissions and performances, are generally the ones who have been regarded as successful and identified as professional. These assumptions overlook the worlds of women who worked outside the musical mainstream, as represented, for instance, by many of the late nineteenth-century songwriters such as Maude Valérie White, or in the twentieth century by the composer Phyllis Tate (1911–87), who refused a prestigious teaching position at London’s Royal Academy of Music because she believed that ‘creativity could not be taught’.41
For all the composers mentioned in this chapter, and the many unmentioned, living a creative life in music was something for which they had to fight. If asked who they believed they were, each would probably have answered, ‘I am a composer’. Perhaps in the end this is what matters: that weaving their sound worlds, creating their intricate, complex webs of melody, was a fundamental part of their identity.
