Music from six remarkable composers... who just happen not to be men.
James Brown once sang, 'It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World' - and for centuries, classical music was exactly that. While talent knows no gender, opportunity certainly did, and countless musical voices were silenced by social barriers and prejudice. But...
James Brown once sang, 'It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World' - and for centuries, classical music was exactly that. While talent knows no gender, opportunity certainly did, and countless musical voices were silenced by social barriers and prejudice. But some composers refused to be quiet. This episode introduces music by six women who found ways to make their voices heard: Fanny Mendelssohn, whose works sometimes appeared under her brother's name; Florence Price, who broke barriers as an African-American woman in classical music; and contemporary voices like Jennifer Higdon and Elena Kats-Chernin, whose works premiere in today's concert halls, alongside powerful music from Peggy Glanville-Hicks and Maria Herz.
The Music
The Words
Hello everyone. Welcome to the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast. Five hundred years of incredible music. My name is Peter Cudlipp and if you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. But it can perhaps be hard to know where to start… especially when there is just so much good music to choose from. So each episode of the podcast is going to be tied together with a bit of a theme.
And for today… well, you’re listening to a piece of music written by Fanny Mendelssohn and I’m going to read out the names of the other composers whose works I’ll be playing… and that should give you a clue…Jennifer Higdon, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Elena Kats-Chernin, Florence Price and Maria Herz. Yes, women. Women composers. Like women writers and women painters… they have been around for centuries… but in the words of James Brown and Betty Jean Newsome… It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World… Or at least it was until about last Thursday. Jokes aside, for most of the existence of ‘classical music’ the global assumption of female inferiority and the accompanying required subservience meant that most doorways were closed and pathways were blocked for any women who wrote or wanted to write music. This is at last changing. And the world is much better for it. Two of the composers I am going to play in this episode have careers as professional composers of classical music today. I’d argue that this opportunity has only existed for one… maybe two generations. The others, from earlier eras, were not so fortunate. But at least some of their music survived and has been recorded. And some of it is finding a place on concert stages.
Ok, let’s get to the music… For a long time the viola seemed to be the musically disappointing cousin of the violin… this slightly larger looking, slightly deeper sounding instrument that you could frequently never quite make out in the texture of an orchestra… leading to jokes like… How do you keep your violin from being stolen? Put it in a viola case. But in recent decades the viola seems to be getting its moment in the spotlight and music is being written for it as a solo instrument. American composer Jennifer Higdon wrote her Concerto for Viola and Orchestra ten years ago for her colleague Roberto Díaz. Here is the third section. Diaz is the soloist and Giancarlo Gerrero conducts the Nashville Symphony Orchestra.
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That was the third section of Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto for Viola and Orchestra. Roberto Diaz was the soloist and Giancarlo Gerrero conducted the Nashville Symphony Orchestra.
The composer Fanny Mendelssohn was in some ways luckier than most women of the early 1800s who may have aspired to writing music. She grew up in a tolerant, progressive household where she was encouraged to explore her gifts and she would write over 125 pieces for piano and even more songs. But her reputation was eclipsed by that of her brother, Felix Mendelssohn, who whilst being supportive of her could do little to promote her work as even the concept of a ‘woman composer’ practically did not exist. A very small amount of her work was actually published in her lifetime but to get some of it published it had to be under the name of her brother. That plus what can be generously called casual misogyny in fact meant that until only a couple of decades back, one of her major compositions for solo piano, her Easter Sonata, was incorrectly attributed to her brother. It is a great piece and here is just the fourth section which was given the Italian subtitle ‘allegro con strepito’… meaning ‘fast with rumbling’. It is about 8 minutes long and is player here by Isata Kanneh-Mason.
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That was Isata Kanneh-Mason playing the fourth section of Fanny Mendelssohn’s ‘Easter Sonata’.
Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks was born in 1912… was a spectacular pianist… and was an incredibly gifted composer but she almost by necessity had to spend most of her working life outside of Australia. Whilst much of her career, primarily as an author not as a composer, was based in the US; she remained connected to Europe where she had studied and travelled extensively. In 1954 she wrote a piano concerto and called it the ‘Etruscan Concerto’. Taking the title from a non-fiction book by D. H. Lawrence called Etruscan Places, she gave each section of the work a quote from the book. For the second section called ‘Meditation’ she added from Lawrence: There is a queer stillness and a curious peaceful repose about the Etruscan places....” In this performance Richard Mills conducts the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and the soloist is Caroline Almonte. ‘Meditation’ from Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ ‘Etruscan Concerto’.
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That was Richard Mills conducting the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and the soloist is Caroline Almonte with ‘Meditation’ from Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ ‘Etruscan Concerto’.
I hope you are enjoying this episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ podcast featuring music by Composers who are not men. In 2009 the Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin was commissioned to write a percussion concerto for the Sydney Youth Orchestra and the percussionist Claire Edwardes. As far as I can tell Kats-Chernin took her title for the concerto, ‘Golden Kitsch’ from a little gold toy piano she found in a shop and this instrument plays a significant part in the piece. One thing to perhaps ponder whilst listening to the piece is that when composers usually write a concerto… it is for a single solo instrument accompanied by the orchestra. But with a percussion concerto the soloist is playing multiple instruments through the work… jumping from one to the next as they are lined up across the front of the stage. The piece is about 18 minutes long and in this performance Benjamin Northey is the conductor, with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the percussion soloist is the player the work was written for… Claire Edwardes. Here is ‘Golden Kitsch’, the concerto for percussion and orchestra by Elena Kats-Chernin.
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That was Benjamin Northey conducting the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the percussion soloist Claire Edwardes with ‘Golden Kitsch’ by Elena Kats-Chernin.
I had never heard of the mid-20th century American composer Florence Price until a few years ago. But then not many people had. As well as being a woman, Florence Price was, in her own words, especially disadvantaged… In a 1943 letter to the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, she introduced herself: “My dear Dr. Koussevitzky, To begin with I have two handicaps—those of sex and race. I am a woman; and I have some Negro blood in my veins.” Of the four symphonies Price wrote, two were performed in her lifetime. But her work never found its way into the mainstream. For all intents and purposes this pioneering artist, the first African American woman to have a symphony performed, had vanished almost totally without trace by the time of her death in 1953. The score of her 4th symphony from 1945 was presumed lost until its discovery in 2009 in the attic of a house outside Detroit where Price had spent some of her final years. Here is the final section of Florence Price’s 4th Symphony performed by the Fort Smith Symphony Orchestra conducted by John Jeter.
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That was the Fort Smith Symphony Orchestra conducted by John Jeter with the final section of Florence Price’s 4th Symphony. To finish today here is another composer who is only now getting some recognition. Her name is Maria Herz and she was born in Germany in 1878. By the beginning of the 20th century she was a well-regarded performer, lecturer and emerging composer. Then a combination of marriage, motherhood and migration… followed by the death of her husband at a young age and the impact of two world wars… conspired to limit her activities as a composer and to consign her compositions to storage in the home of her final years in… of all places… New Jersey. In 2015 her grandson donated her music to the Zurich Central Library and from there it has found its way onto concert platforms and even more recently onto recordings… like this one. Here is Christiane Silber conducting the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra with the 3rd of the Four Short Orchestra Pieces by Maria Herz.
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That was Christiane Silber conducting the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra with the 3rd of the Four Short Orchestra Pieces by Maria Herz.
My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to The ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. If you would like to listen to past episodes or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net. There you will also find some mini-episodes that address some of what I want to call the vexing questions for a listener new to Classical Music like… ‘Are conductors actually important?’; ‘Why does the word ‘sonata’ keep turning up?’ and ‘Why is almost everything in Italian?’. I hope you have enjoyed this episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts. That would also mean the search algorithms will smile more benignly on the show and it might reach a few more people. For that I would be very grateful. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net. Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’.
This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.
And if you have listened to the credits… here is a little bonus for you… two more minutes of music by Maria Herz…The second part of her Orchestra Suite. Here is Christiane Silber conducting the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra.