Quartet: How Four Women Changed The Musical World - 'Magnificent' (Kate Mosse)

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Shaping the Narrative: Music for a Public’, The Routledge Companion to Applied Musicology ed. Christopher Dromey (Routledge), forthcoming The oldest of her four composers, Ethel Smyth, born in 1858, was a doughty figure in the Suffragette movement, and during a period of imprisonment once conducted her fellow inmates in a rousing rendition of her own Suffragette anthem The March of the Women. Clarke, born nearly 30 years later, carved out an impressive performing as well as composing career, and astonished listeners with the daring modernism of her music. Dorothy Howells, a decade younger than Clarke, cultivated a rhapsodically romantic style tinged with chinoiserie which soon fell out of fashion, so despite early successes – such as the rapturously received premiere of her symphonic poem Lamia at the 1919 Proms – she slipped from view in later years. Doreen Carwithen, born in 1922, was the first notable film composer in Britain, and scored dozens of productions including the Pathé documentary about the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. Approaching Incidental Music: "Reflexive Performance" and Meaning in Till Damaskus (III)', Journal of the Royal Musical Association, forthcoming

Record Review, BBC Radio 3, 10 Dec. 2022 (Review of new recordings including works by Laura Netzel, Undine Smith Moore, Dobrinka Tabakova and Jean Sibelius) Clear, happy, and naïve: Wilhelm Stenhammar’s Music for As You Like It’, Music & Letters, Vol. 99/3 (2018), 352-385 Book Chapters Fenella Humphreys, winner of the 2018 BBC Music Magazine Instrumental Award, has attracted critical admiration and audience acclaim with the grace and intensity of her remarkable performances.

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Although Broad is a passionate advocate for these women’s music, convincingly arguing that it should be heard far more, she never really explains how her chosen women might have changed their or our musical worlds – or even what changing the musical world might mean. Given the book’s title, this is a fundamental flaw. With her playing described in the press as “ alluring”, “ unforgettable” and “a wonder”, Fenella is one of the UK’s most established and versatile violinists. She enjoys a busy career combining chamber music with solo work, performing in the most prestigious venues around the world. She is frequently broadcast on the BBC, Classic FM, Scala Radio and international radio stations.

Amanda Maier: Violin Concerto in D Minor, Piano Quartet in E Minor, Swedish Tunes and Dances; Sonata for Violin and Piano, Four Songs; Works for Piano’, 19th-Century Music Review (published online 7 May 2019), 1-5If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Rebecca Clarke (b.1886):This talented violist and Pre-Raphaelite beauty was one of the first women hired by a professional orchestra in London, later celebrated for her modernist experimentation. Smyth wrote copious memoirs; the other three women left less material, but still emerge brightly. After Clarke, we meet the unassuming Dorothy Howell, whose 1919 orchestral work Lamia brought her acclaim aged just 21 – and the support of the conductor Henry Wood, founder of the Proms and an important gatekeeper. After the second world war she settled into life away from the spotlight, writing mainly for children. Lastly there is Doreen Carwithen, a rising star as a student whose career was subsumed into that of her tutor William Alwyn, whom she would marry following a 20-year affair. Carwithen was elusive – even her own sister didn’t know she had been a very successful film composer until after her death.