How do composers go in and out of awareness? Why do some composers' works continue to be played while others do not? What does the composer's gender or other identifying characteristics have to do with their work enduring beyond their lifetime? These are some of the questions addressed by Oxford music historian Leah Broad in her new book Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World.
I recently finished this group biography after serendipitously discovering it at the library, and I've subsequently bought it for several musician friends, including music teachers. Learning about the four women Broad profiles in the book - Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen - took me on delightful journeys to YouTube and other platforms to listen to previously unknown (to me) music. I already had some personal knowledge of Ethel Smyth and Rebecca Clarke, but the other two were completely new to me.
As a British historian, Broad selected four English women whose work was particularly important in the first half of the 20th century. Because of the time period and location, the women's stories intertwine with many social and political movements of their time, including World War I and World War II, women's suffrage and the general movement of women into the workforce.
Broad follows the four women chronologically, starting with Smyth because she came earliest and also because she probably had the most influential composing career of them all. Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) was an English composer and suffragist. She is known for her contributions to both classical music and the women's suffrage movement. Smyth was one of the most prominent female composers of her time and composed in various genres, including orchestral, chamber, and vocal music.
Her works include operas like "The Wreckers" and "Der Wald," as well as choral and orchestral compositions. Smyth was also an active supporter of women's rights and was involved in the British suffragette movement in the early 20th century, even as one of Emmeline Pankhurst's closest friends and confidantes.
Smyth's legacy extends beyond her musical contributions, as she played a significant role in advancing the cause of women's rights during a pivotal period in history. She also was a huge personality, having intimate friendships with author Virginia Woolf and other luminaries of her time, and leaving behind several memoirs that helped cement her reputation and legacy.
However, even with all of these contributions in her favor, Smyth's compositions fell out of favor soon after her death. Broad points to the fact that Benjamin Britten grew his reputation on the claim that England had never had an operatic composer of note, despite the fact that Smyth wrote five operas that were performed regularly throughout Europe. And so she was effectively silenced by England's "first" great operatic composer's debut of Peter Grimes.
Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) was both a composer and violist. Broad emphasizes her works for chamber ensembles and her skill as a performer on the viola. Broad describes Clarke's heady rise to fame as a chamber musician and as a young professional woman at London's conservatories. Interestingly, Clarke spent the latter half of her life in the United States where she had family and eventually married.
Clarke was not as involved in the women's movement as Smyth, although she faced many of the same gender barriers Smyth contended with herself. Some of Clarke's works were never even published, and some have been more recently published, even just in the past few years. It's worth noting that her Viola Sonata, initially thought to be lost, gained renewed attention in the late 20th century and is now considered one of her most important works. Clarke's contributions to music have been increasingly acknowledged, and her legacy continues to be celebrated in the classical music world.
Born in 1898 and 1922 respectively, Doreen Howell and Dorothy Carwithen entered a different professional world than Smyth and even than Clarke, but they too had intriguing personal lives that informed their work and impacted their legacies. It is easy to see why Broad chose to highlight Carwithen's story in particular: as a student, she started an affair with her married tutor, eventually changing her name to suit his will and essentially making herself and her music disappear in the service of his career.
But while all four of these women had biography-worthy lives and careers, it remained a puzzle to me at the end of the book why Broad chose these particular women to group together. They only met each other on a handful of occasions. And while they all resisted moving into avante garde styles or embracing the experimental compositional techniques that were hallmarks of extreme modernists, their compositions differed in their instrumentation and preferred formats. And aside from Smyth, none of them was particularly active in advocating for the mainstreaming of women's works politically or socially. Thus, the claim that these women "changed" the musical world felt unexplored, despite being in the book's title.
Any why did these women's works mostly get forgotten? Aside from Benjamin Britten's deliberate effort to diminish Smyth's operatic contributions, the theories were sparse. One significant figure in the book is Henry Wood, conductor of the promenade concerts, or "Proms", in London for nearly half a century. Wood repeatedly and deliberately programmed works by these women and others on his Proms concerts, giving them incredibly valuable exposure and making their careers in some sense. When he died in 1944, his powerful advocacy was gone and works by female composers at the Proms and on the BBC dropped off dramatically. Perhaps the conclusion is that without male champions, women's work naturally falls out of favor, pushed aside to accommodate the male work that doesn't require such champions.
Despite these flaws, Quartet offers something rare and wonderful: an in depth and serious study of women as major contributors to the musical landscape of the 20th century and the musical heritage we all still enjoy today. I'm going to continue my listening journey into these women's music - what I can find of it - and hope to see them programmed more frequently in the future.
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