Music Recommendation
Women write music history – 250 short portraits for the new year
"It seems to me that the time has come for women in the music world. And I just happen to be there." This quote from the English composer Ethel Smyth is around 100 years old, but today, male composers still dominate the stages of concert halls and opera houses – Beethoven and Brahms, Mozart, Verdi and Wagner. Female composers still rarely appear on the repertoire.
Musicologist Arno Lücker has been studying the music and careers of women composers for many years and has now compiled 250 informative and inspiring short portraits in one volume. Most of the women had to fight for the space for their creative development against numerous obstacles. Starting with the Byzantine Kassia, the first known female composer in the history of music, through to the musical avant-garde of the 21st century, Lücker immerses us in the lives and music of pioneering, sometimes still underestimated female composers.