If, like me, you have books sitting unread atop a bookshelf or on a pile beside your bed, I urge you to take the plunge. My initial hesitation in opening the debut biography Quartet by Leah Broad which had sat beside my bed for quite some time, was richly rewarded. Quartet could not be further from the sometimes-dusty academic tomes of yesteryear. Instead, page after page of eloquent and captivating prose tells the story of four women who redefined what it means to be a musician. How Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howells and Doreen Carwithen, despite becoming ‘ghostly presences’ were ‘each a trailblazer in their own way’. And how this celebration of four forgotten celebrities is only the beginning. As I learn, there is so much more to come.
Before chatting outside London’s British Library, I knew I had already caught the bug. At the mention of Doreen Carwithen’s name, thoughts had immediately turned to the late 2010s, when as a member of the Prometheus Orchestra, I had performed her Suffolk Suite and Piano Concerto in the William Alwyn Festival, set up in 1990 at Carwithen’s request to secure her husband’s legacy using funds he left in his will. As Broad details in her book, in 1961 William left his wife and children to join Doreen in the coastal village of Blythburgh. Leaving all remnants of her professional life behind, and now known as Mary Alwyn, she spent her days ‘copying out parts, typing up manuscripts and hassling conductors and record labels’ on her husband’s behalf.
Oh, the irony! Why had Carwithen neglected her own work?
Why had the music of Broad’s four women composers lay dormant for so many years?
And what force of nature was needed to transform all these forgotten manuscripts into something publishers would be interested in? Yes, others have championed these four women’s cause, but perhaps few with quite the ferocity and determination of historian and broadcaster Leah Broad.
After comparing reading glasses (which seems to be a running theme in my life …) we chat about all things female. Broad shares details of her new recording project Unheard Heritage with conductor John Andrews, pianist Samantha Ege and record label Resonus Classics. We touch on the importance of language when talking about and performing these long-forgotten works, and who, amongst today’s very healthy crop of women composers, catches her eye?
From the off, I am keen to learn what sparked her initial interest in these four ladies, and how they became the subject of such intense scrutiny.
Broad explains how in her younger years, she had studied the piano music of Beethoven, Brahms and Debussy, but that it never occurred to her to question the fact that all the music was by men. ‘I just playing what I was given. And I wasn’t given any music written by women. I was always told that good composers were men. That women didn’t write good music. As a child I didn’t question this, but when I went to university my interest in their untold stories took hold.’
Doctoral studies at Oxford University initially focused on Sibelius’ theatre music. ‘I was looking at how an unknown part of a well-known composer’s life changes our view of their work, but I kept coming across scores by women which didn’t fit the narrative I’d been given about women writing bad music.
‘It became increasingly apparent that women wrote extraordinary music,’ she says. ‘Some didn’t have access to music education, but many did. So the story I had been told growing up was clearly not true. I was interested in finding all the incredible music that was out there but not being played. If this music had been written by men, it would be known.
‘I felt this is a story I want to tell.’
Who were these women who had so inspired her?
‘Rebecca Clarke was possibly the first. I remember sitting in the opticians in 2013 and hearing her Viola Sonata. I had a migraine and I couldn’t see. It was horrible. So I put the radio on and heard her music. At the time, I didn’t know who the composer was, but it was so good, I immediately wanted to play it. I’d never heard of Clarke, so I started my search and every single piece was astonishingly good. That led me to Ethel Smyth, which led to Doreen Carwithen and finally to Dorothy Howell. She was an accidental find: I met her family as you do… and we spent an afternoon digging through manuscripts in their living room. But Rebecca Clarke was the first who completely blew me away.
‘Once you start looking there are hundreds. Nadia Boulanger is also a particular love. Luckily, around this time more people were starting to record music by women and enough material existed for me to search for more.’
Why is this music not known? Is it just social circumstance – the historic belief that women’s place was in the home – or is it something deeper? Broad believes it is a combination.
‘At a fundamental level, you could argue that it’s simply misogyny. But the idea that women can’t compose has practical consequences. Attitudes within the music industry at that time meant their music was less likely to be performed. If you couldn’t get your work performed, no-one knew about it. As a result, women’s music was less likely to get that crucial second performance.
For a lot of women, particularly in the twentieth century when high modernism was in high fashion, if you didn’t write in this style (which many didn’t) performances became even rarer.’
My mind immediately turns to the Boulanger sisters. Why do we know more of their work than say Doreen Carwithen?
Broad argues that Nadia, known as one of the most prolific composition teachers of the twentieth century, was kept in the history books by her connection to her many male pupils – names such as Philip Glass, Aaron Copland, Astor Piazzolla and Elliot Carter. And that only recently have her compositions been taken seriously. The most recent performance of her Fantaisie variée at the BBC Proms (5th August 2027) with Alexandra Dariescu, Kahchun Wong and the Hallé being an example.
‘Teaching was considered an acceptable role in which a female could excel,’ she asserts.
Carwithen, in contrast, did not have this status. The added complication of essentially writing herself out of the history books by changing her name to Mary Alwyn the day she set up home with William, probably didn’t help.
I wonder, instead, if there is something in the female psyche, perhaps an acceptance of circumstance which has prevented so many women from making that extra push to see their work published or performed?
‘I think that historically, expectations around how women should behave have hampered ambition. Ethel Smyth was the exception. She was adamant that her music be published, and then suffered for it. Either you were belligerent and as a consequence perceived as a difficult woman who others didn’t want to work with, or you just let yourself be forgotten. I hope that this is less of a problem now, although we still have tendencies to label assertive women bossy, fiery or feisty.
Asking about Broad’s own experience getting her book published, I wonder how she pitched such a niche subject?
‘I think because it was the right book, in the right place, at the right time, it worked.’ She describes taking a number of ideas to her literary agent, who just said: “This is the one!”
Did she have a working title? ‘Yes, Quartet!
‘Some readers outside the classical music industry though have been surprised by the story. People who know nothing about classical music have said to me – “Of course women can compose. Why would they not?” Because they are used to reading Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen. To find out about the huge barriers women composers faced is quite shocking.
‘I think it’s very important to write seriously about women, and that when women create excellence, we recognize its worth, not just because it’s composed by a woman.’
I recall how frustrated I had felt just a couple of weeks before whilst sitting in a chamber recital in the Netherlands given by the violinist Pinkas Zuckerman as he played a violin sonata by Swedish violinist and composer, Amanda Maier. To me, her music seemed just as good as her male contemporaries Brahms, Grieg and Schumann whose sonatas are all staples on conservatoire repertoire lists. Why did I not now know her work? And why, I thought, are teenagers not learning or studying Maier’s music?
Broad is pragmatic and proffers that we need to be able to include women without hearing them as women first, and artists second.
‘We should judge music by its quality – full stop!’
In turn, then as writers, do we have a responsibility to be conscious of the language used to describe these neglected works? What advice does she have for fellow writers?
She is clear: ‘When it comes to contemporary composers, I almost never mention that they are women, unless to flag an historical imbalance. When dealing with different eras, each with very different expectations and barriers, we do have to acknowledge that gender affected how people were perceived. Likewise, words matter. Words like virile can be replaced with powerful which better conveys the emotional impact.
‘But we also need to explain that women had other roles. Many were friends and colleagues to the most eminent performers of the day.
‘And we need to move away from all women programming. Can we be more creative? Usually when we see a programme featuring work by male composers, we find stylistic connections. To me, it makes more sense to pair Rebecca Clarke with Vaughan Williams or Frank Bridge say’.
This is where her recently launched Unheard Heritage initiative, focused on world premiere recordings of little-known composers, comes into its own. Broad argues that imaginative programming requires detailed knowledge of the music. And without scores or recordings, it’s hard to hear music in its best light, never mind leaving an audience wanting to know more.
‘This is where the conservatoires are so important,’ she says. ‘They are the gateway for the next generation of musicians.’
As an esteemed Oxford graduate, does she teach in the hallowed seats of power?
‘I used to say yes. Up until now though, I have seen myself first and foremost as a writer, but increasingly, I want to use all my research to help inform my other work. We just recorded Avril Coleridge-Taylor’s Piano Concerto and her orchestral works with the BBC Philharmonic. It went really well. People want to hear her music. Already, it has been broadcast internationally and requests to perform are flooding in. This music deserves to be heard. In Avril’s lifetime, none of her orchestral scores were published so now, led by RCM researcher Tom Edney, we have made editions of all the pieces we recorded direct from the manuscripts. Five years of work for one album, but it has been worth it.’ Perhaps soon I ponder, all her work might be published.
We chat briefly about how life has improved for women composers who are very much the lifeblood of the current international music scene, and I recall the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s very vivid performance of Ellen Reid’s Body Cosmic in which she depicts very vividly her lived experience of childbirth!
I ask who are her favourites? Quick as a flash, Dobrinka Tabakova rolls off her tongue.
‘I love her music and she will laugh if she sees this because she knows I take every opportunity to say how brilliant she is. There are so many, but Dobrinka and Errollyn Wallen are my top two.
What attracts her?
‘Errollyn is constantly surprising. Every time I think I know what her style is, she comes up with something else. I love the humour in her music; her rhythmic sense is gorgeous, particularly in her orchestral writing, but her songs too, are so witty in a bleak humour kind of way.
‘Dobrinka’s writing, particularly for strings, is incredibly soulful. Her orchestration has a luminous quality which I find endlessly captivating. I haven’t heard a piece which I haven’t loved. Her Cello Concerto is one of THE best pieces written in the twenty-first century.
Looking to the future, I ask if there will be another book. Will she continue to tell those untold stories or is it all top secret?
I learn that her next biography will tell the story of how women musicians in the Second World War used their art for political ends. How seven women, from four different countries, shaped the wartime culture both through their personal stories and their music. ‘Essentially, a history of the Second World War through their eyes.’
Starting in the UK, ‘I contrast pianist Myra Hess and composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor, with German pianist Elly Ney. She supported the Nazis, but escaped retribution mostly because she was a woman and she played classical music, which was thought to be apolitical. Ney had a very successful post-war career, but I look at why earlier, she had felt so drawn to the Nazi party and appeared to prop up their regime through her artistic work?
And lastly, how did she manage to escape reproach?
Her excuse that “she just played Beethoven” seems hollow because she was one of the most prominent pianists of the Third Reich. She played Beethoven for German soldiers – the Wehrmacht – in the occupied Netherlands.
‘On paper, both Myra Hess and Elly Ney played exactly the same music, so Ney could justify her actions. She could answer her critics by asking: “What has playing Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata got to do with WWII?” I argue that Beethoven is not just Beethoven. Context is important.
‘In the middle of all this, Avril Coleridge-Taylor wrote lots of compositions directly responding to the war. But performances were rare, because as funding became scarce, resources were funnelled towards established composers. In those years, everyone wanted to hear music they knew. They wanted to hear Myra Hess play Beethoven’s Appassionata at the National Gallery. Funding issues and subsequent concerns around patriotism and nationalism made life much more challenging for female composers which is why performances of their work fell off a cliff.’
Elizabeth Maconchy’s Life Story, and a new interpretation of
Doreen Carwithen’s Piano Concerto
Leah Broad’s new book This Woman’s War: Women and Music in World War II, is published in February 2027, so watch this space! I doubt it will sit by my bedside for very long before I take the plunge and read more of her untold stories.
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