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

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Winner of the 2015 Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism, Leah’s writing has appeared in outlets including the Guardian, Observer, BBC Music Magazine, Huffington Post, and The Conversation. She has written articles and programme notes for institutions including Glyndebourne, London Chamber Orchestra, Longborough Festival Opera, the Wigmore Hall, Oxford Lieder Festival, Birmingham Symphony Hall, and the Elgar Festival. 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. Debut biographer Leah Broad will introduce this quartet of composers. The evening will feature musical interludes, performed by 97 Ensemble, including: BBC Proms, BBC Four, 29 Jul. 2022 (Expert guest for TV broadcast of the 'Sea' Prom featuring Carwithen, Vaughan Williams and Grace Williams)

None of these women are part of the musical canon, despite the valiant efforts of performers and scholars, in the way their British male contemporaries were. Elgar is heard rather than Smyth, and Delius rather than Clarke. Britten is given many more performances than either Howell or Carwithen. And they certainly need championing, because they’ve had to battle against a male-dominated profession which has denigrated and belittled them for centuries. Women were considered too physically delicate and emotionally unstable to muster the sustained effort needed for a symphony or a concerto. A charming little salon song or piano “character piece” was the most that could be expected from them. Even really gifted ones who tried to break free, such as Clara Schumann, eventually had to admit defeat. The Aeolian Ladies’ Orchestra, for example, was founded and conducted by double bass player Rosabel Watson in the early 1890s. This was not an amateur ensemble and often played canonical repertoire by composers such as Mendelssohn and Grieg, although it also played lighter music at seaside resorts. Surprising absence ALEXANDRA COGHLAN, ​The Spectator Broad resists heralding her composers as moral heroes... QUARTETmakes a forceful case for re-establishing these four women as composers of note. BBC Radio Oxford, 29 Jan. & 1 Aug. 2019 (Introductions to classical music, comparing composers and biscuits)

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Just finished @LeahBroad’s Quartet - a terrific insight into the life and music of Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell & Doreen Carwithen, and an important rallying cry to us all. Can’t recommend it highly enough! CLARE WADD, Caught by the River Passionate... clear-eyed, intelligent​...Broad deftly weaves their stories together... And perhaps most importantly she evokes the experience ofactually listening to their music. ... Her book appears at a timelymoment. With a panoramic sweep – encompassing the suffragette movement and two world wars, from London to New York – Dr Broad’s majesticgroup biography resurrects their extraordinary lives and music for a new generation.’ In focusing on Carwithen’s achievements as a film composer, Broad plays down Lutyens’s pioneering work in the film industry. She also claims, as do many others, that when Clarke and five other string players joined the Queen’s Hall Orchestra in 1913, they were “the first women in England to be employed in a professional orchestra”. In fact, women had been playing in professional orchestras for many years. Become a Faber Member for free and receive curated book recommendations, special competitions and exclusive discounts.

Ideas: Beethoven’s Scowl on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), 22 Sept. 2020 (Guest academic in discussion about Beethoven’s impact one music history) Cant [sic] think how Ethel ever liked me,” wrote Virginia Woolf, Ethel Smyth’s last great love, “such a new moon slip of a life, compared with her full orange harvest glow.” Almost brought to tears finishing @LeahBroad’s wonderful Quartet on the tube. A fierce work; truly a joyful read, bringing sentiments of solidarity, insight and hope. ELLEN PEIRSON-HAGGER, ​The New Statesman Fabulous... Each of Broad's quartet...deserves a book to herself, but together they carry this story through the seismic transformations of their world, society and technology.This was the question that, nearly a decade later, led me to write Quartet. There are so many phenomenal pieces that are still very little-known now, and the thing that links all of them is the gender of their composer. These women deserve to be known and for their music to be heard. Leah Broad’s magnificent group biography resurrects these forgotten voices, recounting lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrating their musical masterpieces. Lighting up a panoramic sweep of British history over two World Wars, Quartet revolutionises the canon forever. Faber & Faber was founded nearly a century ago, in 1929. Read about our long publishing history in a decade-by-decade account. Hidden Women: Silenced Scores' Sunday Feature, BBC Radio 3, 23 Jan. 2022 (Presenting feature on British women and modernism)

It’s not complete erasure: Nichols interviews soprano Irène Joachim about Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande,” and organist Dame Gillian Weir about Messiaen. But rarely do women appear with complete—or even the majority of—creative agency. Not that Nichols is pursuing a particularly exclusive agenda: His study of music in Paris after the Great War, Harlequin Years, discusses Boulanger and Tailleferre, as well as the famed patron of the arts, Winnaretta Singer. That fact makes the scarcity of women in this larger collection all the more curious. “If we choose it, music histories could be filled with the notes of surprising, exciting and delightfully difficult women,” says Broad. Consciously or not, From Berlioz to Boulez makes its choice painfully clear. In their time, these women were celebrities. They composed some of the century’s most popular music and pioneered creative careers; but today, they are ghostly presences, surviving only as muses and footnotes to male contemporaries like Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten – until now. Scaramouche, Scaramouche: Sibelius on Stage’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 145/2 (2020), 417-456 Read about the Faber story, find out about our unique partnerships, and learn more about our publishing heritage, awards and present-day activity.

Surprising absence

A new kind of music biography, one embellished with intimate detail and nuance not found in the hagiographies of male composers written by men... it makes for captivating reading.

Record Review, BBC Radio 3, 5 Feb. 2022 (Reviewing Paavo Berglund conducting Sibelius's Symphonies) 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. I remain unconvinced that these four women changed the musical world. Programming and recording more of their music will certainly broaden and enrich the musical world. And this is what Broad seems to be suggesting.To mark International Women’s Day, join us for a celebration of the lives, loves, adventures and trailblazing musical careers of four extraordinary women – Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen – the subjects of Leah Broad’s new book Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? ERICA JEAL, ​The Guardian In this absorbinggroup biography, Broad deftly handles the complexities of different lives and personalities... Broad has a rare gift for eloquent evocation of the music itself and answers the key question (was the work any good?) resoundingly in the affirmative,making a persuasive case for a revision and expansion of the musical canon. I’m a historical musicologist, and all my work focuses on unfamiliar histories. I’m fascinated by the people and music who are at the margins of histories about Western Art Music. Currently, my research is focused on women composers in twentieth century Britain. I’m working particularly on four composers — Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell, and Doreen Carwithen. The project establishes their relative significance in their lifetimes, explores how this changes our narratives about British music of this period, and looks at how their music has been received since their death.