Collaboration
Music, like any other artform, is generally a collaborative effort. Although we tend to think of child prodigies, virtuosos and musical geniuses as anomalies, in fact they tend to study, improvise, practice, and collaborate with other great musicians and artists as they grow into their own. In earlier centuries, whole families tended to be steeped […]
Further Resources and Musical Scores!
When I first discovered some of the composers featured in this project, I struggled to find written and published works by many of them, as well as their biographies or even recordings of their music. More recently, there seems to be a flurry of interest in these once obscure composers, and an eruption of effort […]
June: Delphine von Schauroth
Born in 1813 in Magdeburg, Germany, Delphine von Schauroth was considered one of the most gifted pianists of her time. Making her debut at the age of nine in 1822, she toured Europe, astonishing audiences with her skill while inspiring rave reviews, poetic verses, portraits, and a plaster cast of her face for phrenologists to […]
May: Emilie Mayer
Emilie Mayer is unique among the composers featured in this project. She was not born, nor married, into a musical family. She was not an aristocrat. She did not study at a conservatory. Yet she became one of the most prolific and successful women composers of the nineteenth century, and enjoyed a fruitful career. Still, […]
The Vital Role of the Salon Concert
Prior to the twentieth century, there were few opportunities for women musicians and composers to share musical experiences with others. Although they could attend public concerts in some circumstances, they could seldomly participate, their seating was limited and confined to less optimal areas of the theater, and even then, attending concerts was only for the […]
April: Louise Farrenc
Born the same year that Napoleon was crowned emperor of France, Jeanne-Louise Dumont joined a family of renowned artists and sculptors and was trained alongside her siblings in the fine arts from an early age. She excelled at painting and sculpting but showed so much musical talent that she studied composition (an opportunity rarely available […]
March: Fanny Hensel
Of all the composers introduced and explored in The Composer Project over the course of this year and beyond, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel is without contest one who should be recognized alongside the greats, a household name like her brother Felix. Musically innovative and a prolific composer (she produced nearly 500 pieces ranging from solo piano […]
February: Maria Szymanowska
Maria Szymanowska (nee Wolowaska) was born into a family who encouraged and nurtured her musical gifts by hosting one of the most popular and respected musical salons in Warsaw during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. There, every musician of note who travelled through Warsaw made an appearance, and Maria was surrounded by artists […]
January: Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart
Everyone knows the name Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. But few are familiar with his older sister Maria Anna (also known by her nickname Nannerl), whom the young virtuoso studied, performed, and toured with when they both were young. Four years older than her precocious brother, Nannerl was an exceptional pianist whose reputation originally exceeded his own […]