EXTRAORDINARY MUSIC!  COMPELLING STORIES!

The women featured on this program were two things – great musicians and great composers.  It is in their songs that we find their true personality and “voice”.  One can read their bios, but to understand who they were as people and why you should care, you must listen to the songs they created, for this is the very music of their soul!  As musicians, they enjoyed extraordinary freedom to travel with impunity; to work among the poets, composers, instrumentalists, the royalty, the wealthy; to share ideas with the other great creative personalities of their time.  They were needed, cherished, worshipped, adored, revered, and RESPECTED!  They were also muses, mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, lovers – human beings leading quotidian lives and yet able to transcend their daily existence through their music.
​Kassia​ (Byzantine, c. 805 – c. 865)
Kassia is the first woman composer in the West of whom we have a preserved record of her compositions.  Beautiful, educated, talented, she was offered as a bride to Emperor Theophilos, but, when he pointed out that it was through a woman that sin was introduced into the world (Eve), she promptly countered that, while that may be true, it was also through a woman that grace came into the world (Mary).  Flummoxed, the emperor found a different wife and Kassia went on to found her own convent, which became a center of literacy, music, and poetry, and a place for nurturing the sacred Wisdom tradition.  At least 50 of her hymns are still used in the Byzantine Church and one day a year – 7 September – is devoted entirely to her veneration
The Comtessa Beatritz de Dia (France, c. 1175)
Western Art Music as we know it has its roots in the songs of the troubadour, and as a troubairitz (female troubadour), Beatritz was part of the culture that first created Art for Art’s sake.  Her music for the canso, Ah chanter m’er, is the only preserved poetry and music of a troubairitz.  Believed to be the daughter of southern French royalty, five of Beatritz’ poems have come down to us and each is evidence of the contemplative aesthetic which elevates the secular to the sacred.  Her music is still performed today and has been embraced by a range of performers from Early Musicians to Arabic pop stars.
Francesca Caccini (Italy, 1587 – 1641)
As one of the leading members of the first generation of opera composers, she was THE first woman to compose an opera, as well as the first Italian – man or woman – to have her opera performed outside of Italy (Warsaw).  She was the daughter of Giulio Caccini, one of the inventers of opera.  Her mother, sister, and later her step-mother were all professional singers and musicians and influenced musical development from the Medici courts in Paris and Florence to the lucrative musical scenes of Lucca and Venice.  Francesca’s prolific dramatic and vocal works often incorporated the use of feminist topics and she was a champion of concerts by women.  She played harp, harpsichord, lute, theorbo, and guitar, but was called simply, La Cecchina – the songbird.
Barbara Strozzi (Italy, 1619 – 1677)
Barbara Strozzi was the first woman in history to make a living solely as a composer, pre-dating that other famous self-employed musician, Beethoven, by over one hundred years.  She self-published 125 vocal selections in eight volumes and is credited with inventing the Cantata form.  “The most prolific composer – man or woman – of printed secular vocal music in Venice during the middle of the 17th century” (Glixon), Strozzi was a singer, lutenist, and poet and was the only female member of the Unisoni, a group of the finest Venetian poets, historians, philosophers, and writers.
Antonia Bembo (Italy and France, c. 1640 – c. 1720)
Antonia Padoani Bembo was one of the first women to be established as an international professional musical presence.  Known as “the girl who sings”, she was born, educated, and married in Venice, but disappears from the historical record shortly thereafter.  A few years later, a singer by the same name appears in the court of Louis XIV.  This “new” Bembo was immediately engaged as a pensioned musician for the court of the Sun King, living in a nearby convent and composing operas and secular and sacred cantatas and motets in both the Italian and French styles.  We have no record of what she looked like.  It is thought that, to escape an abusive marriage, Bembo had fled Venice with a travelling musician – it was Carnival and everyone was masked – leaving her children and her inheritance safely behind in a convent.  She never saw her children again.  While her voice earned her a place in the court of the Sun King, she seems to have abandoned singing once in France and turned solely to composing, often lending her “voice” to the powerful female characters she created.
Anna Amalia, Duchess of Saxe-Weimar​ (Germany, 1739 – 1807)
Not only one of the great keyboardists and composers of her day, Anna Amalia was one of the first musicologists.  Niece to Frederick the Great, one of the greatest musical patrons in history, she continued his legacy of artistic patronage and her court was called “The Court of the Muses”, hosting Goethe and Schiller, and a legion of poets, theatricals, translators, and musicians.  Thriving in the dazzling intellectual world of Weimar, Anna Amalia’s artistic spirit was fueled not only by a brilliant intellect, but by a profound sense of historicity, decades before such a concept was developed.  She was the first compiler of the works of J. S. Bach and her library remains the largest collection of 18th century works in the world, numbering over 1,000,000 volumes.  Anna Amalia was a bard in the highest sense of the tradition and helped preserve the greatest flowering of German intellect and culture.
Corona Schröter (Germany, 1751 – 1802)
Corona Schröter’s spectacular singing brought her into contact with some of the greatest intellectual figures in history.  As a performing professional in numerous mediums ranging from singing to acting, published poet to teacher, she is perhaps the first to be a true Renaissance performer in the modern professional world.  Her artistry was vigorously championed by both Goethe and Schiller, and she appeared as a professional actress in their stage works.  She was a leading light in one of the world’s most brilliant intellectual cultures – the Court of the Muses, under the patronage of Anna Amalia.
Sophie Gail (France, 1775 - 1819)
Sophie Gail’s approach to composition was nothing short of revolutionary.  She is one of the first composers in history to take a genuine philological approach in composition; her romances aim not just for a musical, but also for a psychological depiction of the text. Almost a hundred years before exotic movement of the fin de siècle, Gail used authentic native musical elements in her compositions. She was one of the first composers to use exotic accompaniments to create unique musical worlds in each of her songs. Gail’s friend and touring colleague, Angelica Catalani, championed her career as a world class diva.  An accomplished accompanist and composer of numerous songs and four operas (all of which were produced by the Opera-Comique in Paris), Gail was an early forerunner of the 19th century virtuosic performer.  She was the only woman composer to have her works included in multiple contemporary anthologies.
Angelica Catalani (Italy, 1780 - 1849)
Angelica Catalani’s artistry perfectly represents the musical Zeitgeist of her time; her vocal pyrotechnics and improvisational skills were not only legendary, but unrivaled. Billed as “The greatest singer in the world” (just ask her!) and the prototype for the character of Tosca, thanks her high-handed behavior, she was the most highly-paid and famous singer of her time.  As a child, she had been placed in a convent by her impoverished parents, but was soon released by Papal decree because of her astonishing voice…and the fact that people were applauding for her during Mass.  She quickly conquered the operatic world, singing London’s first Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, and had opera after opera written to showcase her sparkling talents. She was immortalized by the artist Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, the official portraitist of Marie Antoinette, and was powerful enough to turn down a concert for Napoleon to accept a contract from the King of Portugal, which paid her $8,000.  To give you some perspective, the average woman working on a farm at that time earned $8.00 A YEAR.  Catalani never forgot her humble beginnings and was famous for her charity – historians estimate she donated over half a million dollars to those less fortunate – and in her retirement, she founded a free school of singing for girls.  The compositions she left us include her many variations on popular songs and arias of her time, as well as her original songs, again with delightfully elaborate variations.
Isabella Colbran (Italy, 1785 - 1845)
Isabella Colbran had one of the most spectacularly successful performing careers in history.  When Naples was the center of the opera world, she was the center of Neapolitan opera: she reigned as its prima donna for 10 years, usually arriving at the theater in a sedan chair.    Rossini, later married to Colbran, wrote 10 of his operas for her voice and credited the success of his operas to her and her alone.  In fact, even though Beethoven was envious of Rossini’s international celebrity, Rossini was actually better known as “Signor Colbran”.  Isabella composed four collections of songs that introduced elements later copied by the likes of Bellini.  She spent her later years taking care of Rossini’s ill father.
Fanny Mendelssohn (Germany, 1805 – 1847)
Fanny was a leading feminine presence in a family known for its historical tradition of sacred, public consciousness.  When she was only 13, she memorized and performed 24 Bach preludes as a present for her father’s birthday.  As a woman of a certain social station, she was discouraged by her family from publishing her music (from which she might receive an unnecessary income).  Her devoted brother, Felix, nonetheless, included her compositions among his own published editions.  She programmed a popular Sunday afternoon concert series, functioning as accompanist, soloist, conductor, and choral director.  These concerts became not only an outlet for her own compositions, but a venue for other women composers, as well.  Successful in every genre she undertook – from solo and choral vocal writing to piano and orchestra – Fanny wrote over 450 compositions and with her brother, championed the re-discovery and subsequent popularity of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
​Maria Malibran (France, 1808 - 1836)
Maria Malibran was the rock-star of the Romantic opera world.  Upon her arrival in Venice, 20,000 people greeted her (the Malibran Theatre and Hotel Malibran in Venice are still active). Upon her arrival in Lucca, the crowd unhitched the horses from her carriage and pulled it through the streets themselves. When she lost a slipper during a performance in Naples, the first two rows of audience members leapt into the orchestra pit to retrieve the souvenir.  Poets memorialized her, composers wrote for her, and movies have been made about her life.  Malibran was the daughter of Manual Garcia, legendary tenor for Rossini, and sister to mezzo-soprano and composer, Pauline Viardot (see below).  Malibran traveled with her family to America at 17 years of age and sang the first performances of Italian opera in the New World.  By 19 she had returned alone to Europe and proceeded to systematically conquer the opera world, role by dramatic role.  Her vast repertoire included Mozart’s Don Giovanni (Zerlina), Rossini’s Otello, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, and Bellini’s Norma. She often began the morning with a vigorous swim or horseback ride, then spent five hours at rehearsal, sang an opera in the evening, and attended a private party afterwards, where she would be the featured entertainment. She would frequently include many of her nearly 50 songs in her private recitals, accompanying herself on the guitar or piano. Her compositions enjoyed a wide publication during her lifetime, were snatched up immediately by her enthusiastic, cult-like following, and received praise by contemporaries such as Berlioz, who found her songs "delicious, Well written, vigorous, and truly dramatic".   Her quintessential Romantic death at age 28 – due to complications of a fall from horseback – rocked the music world much like Princess Diana’s death.  Speaking decades after her death, even the great Verdi invoked her name as the operatic ideal.  There are still Malibran Societies today, which continue to revere her artistry and legendary magnetism. 
Clara Schumann (Germany, 1819 – 1896)
Clara Schumann was perhaps the greatest pianist of the 19th Century.  A piano prodigy and engaging performer, who began touring Europe at age 9 with her demanding father/teacher, she was the first pianist to perform her concerts from memory.  Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Liszt revered her.  After a litigious battle with her father, she married Robert Schumann and was the greatest performer and champion of his music.  She raised their 8 children while continuing to tour, compose, and teach.  Pauline Viardot was a life-long friend, as was Johannes Brahms, who always carried the torch for her.  Her image was used on the 100 Deutsche Mark.
Pauline Viardot (France, 1821 - 1910)
Pauline Viardot is one of the most ravishing artistic presences in all of history. She was as wondrous, as magical, as beguiling, and as singular as the legendary unicorn.  Her art seeks to engage the listener at the most profound level of humanity and is informed by a classical sense of equipoise that allows it to transcend all barriers of class, culture, and language.  The youngest daughter of Manuel Garcia, (see Malibran), Pauline was a piano prodigy and accompanist who rivaled Liszt and Chopin. Her mother insisted she pursue singing as a career, like the rest of her family, and Pauline became the leading mezzo-soprano in the world for most of the 19th century. She spoke, sang, and composed in 6 languages, and she learnt her 7th – Greek – as an adult so she might read Homer in the original.  Brahms, Meyerbeer, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky wrote music for her and she was the first to introduce Russian Art Song to the West.  Viardot was life-long friends with novelists George Sand and Ivan Turgenev. Through her popular Salon, she helped launch the careers of Saint-Säens, Massenet, Fauré, and Gounod.  She wrote 5 operas and over 200 songs and other compositions.  Richard Wagner sent his singers to her so they could learn how to sing!
Carlotta Ferrari (Italy, 1837 – 1907)
This extraordinary woman was one of the first to be recognized during her lifetime as a composer and poet of the highest order.  She was known as “The Bellini in Skirts” for the exquisite, Apollonian nature of her operatic writing, and as “The Italian Sappho” for her literary and poetic genius displayed through a feminine prism.  At the tender age of 20, she wrote, produced, and conducted her first opera.  She studied composition privately with Francesco Strepponi, the uncle of Giuseppe Verdi’s wife and renown diva, Giuseppina Strepponi.  Maestro Verdi himself was an enthusiastic advocate and supporter of her music and the two maintained an active correspondence.  It was Verdi’s hope that “some young genius, untainted by the influence of ‘schools’ would burst on to the Italian scene” (Phillips-Matz).  That genius was Carlotta Ferrari!  La Ferrari published four volumes of verse, prose, and opera libretti and went on to become not just a successful composer and performer, but a successful teacher of composition at the Academia Filarmonica in Bologna, the home of Italian counterpoint and the same institution that trained young Mozart.
Cecile Chaminade ​(France, 1857 - 1944)
Due to the high artistic level of her compositions, Cecile Chaminade was the first woman composer to be awarded the French Legion of Honor.  Through the patronage of Bizet, she received an extensive private musical education and later hosted one of the most popular music salonsin Paris.  Her American tour was wildly successful, resulting in hundreds of “Chaminade Clubs”.  She was one of the first women to perform as a piano soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra and her compositions range from opera and ballet to choral symphonies.  In the tradition of Haydn, she “wedded amateur music with the highest degree of exquisite craftsmanship” and was the most published woman composer of her time.
Liza Lehmann (Britain, 1862 - 1918)
Liza Lehmann ("Leeza, if you please!" per her memoir) was one of the most successful and prolific composers in the history of English song.  The song of “emperor and clown” is heard in her compositions.  Her genius lay in the exaltation of words for words’ sake, always “walking with kings yet never losing the common touch”.  Her life and works represent the epitome of English song, as well as the striving of professional women musicians to achieve an egalitarian atmosphere in the music world. She served as the first president of the Society of Women Musicians.  Primarily a recitalist, she usually accompanied herself at her concerts, and made two wildly successful tours of America, and one of the few women composers featured at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Her vast oeuvre of songs speaks to the inner child in all of us. Lehman reminds us that you’re never too old for make-believe.  The world is still filled with magic!
Katherine Kennicott Davis (America, 1892 – 1980)
A quintessential American intellectual, representing the true American genius of cultural synthesis, Katherine Davis was spectacularly successful in the concert hall and the family living room.  Her art presents the earnest, approachable culture of America’s heartland.  Born in Missouri, she attended Wellesley and after graduation continued on there, teaching theory and piano, while also attending the New England Conservatory of Music.  Her prolific output includes operas, choruses, children’s operettas, cantatas, piano and organ music, and songs.  Her music has never gone out of favor and to this day is sung by school children, as well as the world’s great concert artists.  Like the work of the great mythologist Joseph Campbell, Davis’ art, while highly intellectual, is still embraced by a popular culture:  her carol The Little Drummer Boy will be played in every mall in America come December and has been sung by everyone from choirboys (the Vienna Boys’ Choir) to bad boys (David Bowie).  One of her favorite scores was Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
​Margaret Bonds (America, 1913 – 1972)
“What do you do with a genius child?” (Langston Hughes).  The entirety of Margaret Bonds’ life embodies the universal egalitarian spirit of the Harlem Renaissance.  Bonds was a vibrant, creating spirit in fields ranging from composition and pianist to music editor and impresario for ballet and theatre.  Her famous setting of He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands has been recorded by virtually every major American soprano and is simply standard recital repertoire.  Her music embodies her panentheistic approach to art – ALL of creation is sacred.  She was the first African American pianist to perform with the Chicago Symphony and as part of the Harlem Renaissance, set many of the poems of Langston Hughes.  January 31st is Margaret Bonds Day!
This curated collection of women composers can be programmed in many ways...
Divas Song:  before Lady Gaga and Madonna, there were the REAL divas!
All In the Family (or "Daddy sang bass, Momma sang tenor")
Variety Pack:  an overview of a thousand years of vocal music by women composers
The Italians:  an art flourishes
One-Stop Shopping (they did it all!)
Pauline Viardot:  The Unicorn, The Genius
Trials and Triumphs:  rising above
All content by Kay Krekow and Harry N. Dunstan, Ph.D.
Frank A. Robey, Ph.D., Director of Business Development
The American Center for Puccini Studies
Copyright 2014
(Special Thanks to Artistic Consultant, Dr. William Ashbrook)