Sounds and Sweet Airs

March 21, 2016
This absorbing sheaf of feminist biographical sketches chronicles four centuries of female composers struggling to write music against the headwinds of sexist mores, straitened employment opportunities, and child-rearing duties. Cultural historian Beer (Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot) profiles seven women, including Renaissance Medici court composer Francesca Caccini; Fanny Helsen, whose brother, composer Felix Mendelssohn, discouraged her from publishing her music; Clara Schumann, who sacrificed her music writing to support the composing career of her husband, Robert; and 20th-century avant-garde composer Elizabeth Maconchy. In her telling, these women led decidedly interesting lives, weathering murderous court intrigues, plague, war, and histrionic romances. From their diverse stories, she draws recurring themes: the importance of mentors; the desperate search for stable (if sometimes tyrannical) aristocratic patrons or the rare paying gig that accepted women; chauvinist assumptions, from the 17th-century suspicion that women musicians were essentially courtesans to the later conviction that they were shallow dilettantes; and pregnancies and family-care burdens that made writing difficult (Schumann raised eight children while supporting her family as a touring concert pianist). Beer’s thesis that her subjects were geniuses excluded from the canon only by patriarchal prejudice isn’t entirely convincing, but she writes with rich detail and sympathetic insight about their ambitious, adventurous battle to overcome barriers to creativity. Photos.

March 15, 2016

Enthusiasts of classical music may have heard of Fanny (Mendelssohn) Hensel, Clara (Wieck) Schumann, and Lili Boulanger, but even the most ardent among them may not be aware of Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerrre, Marianna Martines, and Elizabeth Maconchy. All eight are profiled in this book, described by Beer (Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer and Patriot; My Just Desire: The Life of Bess Raleigh, Wife to Sir Walter) as "a celebration of the achievements of a handful of women over four centuries of Western European history." Starting in 17th-century Florence (Caccini) and moving through the years to 20th-century London (Maconchy), the author recounts the lives and careers of composers who just happened to be female, setting each individual's story in the social context of her times and providing a detailed portrait of the artist and her music. Suggestions for further reading and listening complete this carefully compiled collective biography. VERDICT Serious students of music and women's history will want to add this title to their required reading lists.--Carolyn M. Mulac, Chicago

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2016
Where are the great women composers? Here, says cultural historian Beer, are eight: Francesca Caccini and Barbara Strozzi in the seventeenth century, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and Marianna Martines in the eighteenth, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Clara Schumann in the nineteenth, and Lili Boulanger and Elizabeth Maconchy in the twentieth. While relating their lives, Beer points up what was said of them in their times, the social conditions and attitudes that straitjacketed their professional music careers, and the qualities of their outstanding compositions. The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women were best known for and dependent on their singing (though Martines never ventured beyond her family home in Vienna), and Hensel and Schumann were virtuoso pianists (once married, Hensel, like Martines, didn't travel). Schumann had to tour to support her many children, which impinged heavily on her composing before husband Robert's death and curtailed it afterward. Both feminist analyst and fluent biographer, Beer makes engrossing and cogent cases for her subjects. She concludes that the proof of their art lies in the hearing and recommends recent recordings.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)