Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Composer's Lounge Who is the most famous female composer?

Of any genre, all-time.

Recently, I have been having a discussion with a feminist type of woman, and I mentioned that only the male brain is capable of high level of music creativity (not to be confused with performance, which I know that women can do very well.) She showed me the Wikipedia listing for female composers, and pretty much the only names I recognized were the wives of the great composers - and I attribute the contribution by those women to be the same as Yoko and Linda to John and Paul.

There's a number of more or less famous female composers, amongst them I'd name these:

- Sofia Gubaidulina
- Kaija Saariaho
- Galina Ustvolskaya
- Elizabeth Lutyens
- Clara Schumann
- Fanny Hensel Mendelssohn
- Germaine Tailleferre
- Louise Farrenc
- Cecile Chaminade
- Ruth Crawford Seeger
- Thea Musgrave
- Augusta Read Thomas
- Chen Yi
- Jennifer Higdon
- Judith Weir
- Joan Tower
- Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
- Unsuk Chin
- Elena Firsova
- Lera Auerbach

There are undoubtedly more. For a start I'd recommend to listen to some Gubaidulina. Try Stimmen... verstummen. Her violin concerto Offertorium is also said to be very good. I find the idea that women can't be good composers to be quite silly, honestly, and I attribute the small number of female composers more to societal norms (according to which women just were not supposed to be composers) than to anything else.

One of Australia's best-known composers is a woman - Elena Kats-Chernin. The fact that you haven't heard of the women composers in the Wikipedia entry says nothing about the quality of their music.

That's a really sexist comment, I agree with mrenaud, it's just that women were not supposed to compose, just like women were not supposed to vote at one point, hopefully this will change as time progresses.

It's well known that Mendelssohn, whilst genuinely admiring his sister Fanny's music, strongly discouraged her from seeking publication, as he firmly believed it was not fitting for a married woman to seek such recognition.

Not mentioned so far were the Boulanger sisters - Lili (who died young) won the Prix de Rome for composition in 1913, and Nadia taught composition to a huge number of significant (male) composers of the 20thC.

Where to begin?

The medieval mythic Hildegaard of Bingen

The great American pianist Amy Beach

Professor Judith Lang Zaimont

And a bunch of contemporary pedagogical composers who write piano music for students:

Melody Bober
Martha Mier
Carol Klose
Jennifer Linn
Jeanine Yeager
Eugenie Rocherelle
Naoko Ikeda
Glenda Austin
Sondra Clark
Barbara Becker

My vote for the "most famous female composer" is Clara Schumann.

There's also Amy Beach and Ethel Smyth.

Perhaps I am not quite as broad in my knowledge of music (pun not intended), but I've never heard of any of these women - aside from a few that the wives of famous composers. I guess I would prefer to listen to the few quality pieces of music over and over then listen to not-so-quality pieces.

OK, so to help me gauge the quality of the best piece of music composed by a woman, what exact piece of music written by these women would you recommend for my listening? (Preferably something popular enough that I could download at a "price I can't refuse.") I don't want to consider anything from the wives of the composers since there would be a good chance that the true authorship is not reliable.

Well maybe you'd better stick to your "few quality pieces" if you're afraid of hearing something of lesser quality, or unwilling to even buy a CD. That means you'd miss out on a lot of very interesting music written by male composers too, but there you are. As for suggesting any piece written by the wife of a male composer is likely to be actually by him, well give me a break! With attitudes like this (what century are we actually in now?) it's no wonder there aren't more high-profile female composers.

But containing my ire for a moment, you might enjoy the viola sonata by Rebecca Clarke. When she submitted it for a competition in 1918 she did so under the name "Anthony Trent". One wouldn't have thought you'd need to do so in 2008, but maybe we're not so far from those days as I thought.

Yes, I forgot about Rebecca Clarke. I've read good things about her, but have not heard her music. The symphonies and chamber music by Louise Ferrenc are very good.

Unless you reincarnate as a whale, the idea that musical creativity is an attribute of the males of your species is unsubstantiated balderdash.

Let's look at the world of performers and composers a little closer. To begin with, we talk about known works and known performers - how does this "known" part come to be? How does the composer end up knowing how to compose? How does he get published? It doesn't just happen. As romantically as we like to think about such things, the art world is not totally romantic.

The musicians of the past had some kind of background to them. They didn't just get up one day and play and compose through innate talent alone. Somebody taught them - somebody sponsored them. Leopold Mozart was "in the business" and he did a regular PR job, taught his two children preparing them for their (well, his son's anyway) future career extremely early, invested in them. While they were still little and cute he got them to play among the gentry so they would be known, doing little parlour tricks like playing through table cloths. Poor Beethoven was not so lucky in paternal support, but he, too, studied with someone.

They had to study with someone, needed to have someone willing to take them, possibly have a patron, family member, somebody to support them in their efforts to become able to do what they did. Then after they reached these abilities, the needed to perform somewhere. Somebody had to take them in and find them acceptable. A talented musician with splendid repertoire and no audience - where does that lead? Nowhere. The composer needs to learn the ins and outs of composing, and then he needs his compositions published and accepted. Oh, and so does she.

Back to Nanette Mozart. She was a prodigy like her brother. As soon as she hit puberty she disappeared. Did she suddenly lose her talent? To make a blanket statement about musical creativity sitting in the Y gene based on the prevalence of known scores without looking at the whole picture is short sighted, though I must admit, rather imaginative.

I smell a troll.

Don't trolls hang out bait? That makes me a fish. So the smell is fishy, or a can of worms?

I understand that members of the fairer sex can be good instructors. In fact I'd say that except at the top levels, a female music instructor would be preferable to a male.

It's just that compared to the massive amount of material compose by men, there is a much, much smaller amount of material composed by women - and certainly in the top range of quality, there is virtually nothing composed by women.

Why is there so much anger out there? Especially from musicians, who for women, tend to be the most level headed.

You've already admitted your knowledge of music is not broad. Why don't we just leave it at that.

Let's not feed it. I think AZN is right.

Political correctness.

With no offense intended, I think it's silly to post a list of obscure (except to a niche audience) female composers, to show that there are just as many well-known female composers as there are male. I think it's quite obvious that there are many many many more famous male composers than there are female composers, and that none of the composers listed in this thread have the fame and frequent programming in concerts as their male colleagues. To claim otherwise is pulling at straws.

We can all speculate as to the why, but unless we're trained and qualified to perform such a study/analysis, I'm not sure we'll get very far, especially since it is a very sensitive subject, especially for women. It's very easy to have an emotional reaction, to repeat the cliched arguments without really any deep support for them, and to demonize anyone who dares say something politically incorrect. I'm not saying those cliched arguments are necessarily wrong, and I agree with others that this doesn't prove that women in general are not as good at composing as men. I've heard some great music by women, but on the other hand does that show that women as a whole are as good as men, or only that gender differences are not either or, and there are always women with more "masculine" characteristics and vice-versa? I do think the question is a good one: there have been very well-accepted and very well-known female writers and poets, scientists, politicians, performers -- why not composers?

Probably the most famous female composer alive right now is Rachel Portman. Very few people know her by name, but I'm willing to bet everyone here has heard her work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Portman
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006235/

MOST famous?

Clara Schumann,
Fanny Mendelssohn.

they simply rock.

Joan Tower is one of favourite composers! Real quality darkness to her music