Composer of the month
Each month we will be featuring a composer whose work we admire. You can subscribe to the Spotify playlist or simply listen to the music on the Spotify player on this page to hear some of the incredible compositions from each months’ composers. You can also join the discussion on Twitter using #Composeher.
June 2023 – Missy Mazzoli
Missy Mazzoli (b. 1980) is an American composer known particularly for her operatic, chamber and orchestral works. In 2018 she became one of the first two women ever to receive a commission from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, for a new opera based on the book, Lincoln in the Bardo.
May 2023 – Maddalena Laura Lombardini Sirmen
1745 – 1818. Maddalena Laura Lombardini Sirmen was an Italian composer known primarily for her violin works and string quartets. During her lifetime she was a successful solo violinist – in addition to being a renowned composer – and often performed with her husband, Ludovico Sirmen.
April 2023 – Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou
1923 – 2023. Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou was an Ethiopian composer known for her melodic blues piano compositions, the recordings of which were often performed by the composer herself. Guèbrou was a nun for the latter part of her life, living a reclusive life in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem.
March 2023 – Ursula Mamlok
1923 – 2016. German composer, Mamlok, wrote extensively for chamber ensembles, noting her ambition that ‘music should convey the various emotions in it with clarity and conviction…to accomplish this with a minimum of material, transforming it…to give the impression of ever-new ideas that are like the flowers of a plant, all related yet each one different.’
February 2023 – Ruth Gipps
1921 – 1999. English composer, Gipps, is known for her wide variety of works ranging from solo instrumental pieces to symphonies. She was highly critical of certain contemporary musical trends – such as Serialism – during her lifetime, adopting a more tonal style than some of her peers.
January 2023 – Anna Clyne
Anna Clyne (b. 1980) is an English composer who has composed a wide range of classical works, alongside electro-acoustic pieces. Her interest in visual arts has inspired several of her recent projects and resulted in collaborations with other artists across a variety of media.
December 2022 – Elfrida Andrée
1841 – 1929. Swedish composer and organist, Andrée, was one of the first female organists officially appointed in Scandinavia and was the first Swedish woman to conduct a symphony orchestra. She was also an activist in the Swedish women’s movement.
November 2022 – Roxanna Panufnik
British composer Roxanna Panufnik (b. 1968) has written a wide range of pieces ranging from ballet to opera, choral works to chamber compositions. Her particular interest is world music and she often combines various other musical influences within her works, aiming to build ‘musical bridges between faiths’.
October 2022 – Charlotte Sohy
1887 – 1955. French composer, Sohy, was a true polymath: during her lifetime, she not only composed a wide variety of musical works, but also authored a novel and wrote multiple plays. She signed many of her works under the pseudonym of Charles Sohy in order to avoid the misogyny that affected many of her female peers.
September 2022 – Else Marie Pade
1924 – 2016. Pade was a Danish composer who is best known for her electronic musical works and ‘musique concrète’ (concrete music) – utilising pre-recorded sounds as material for new compositons. Pade was the first Danish composer to use both these new forms of music in the 1950s.
August 2022 – Galina Ustvolskaya
1919 – 2006. Ustvolskaya was a Russian composer, whose large scale works often call for unusual instrumental forces. She was, for a time, a pupil of Dmitri Shostakovich, who admired her work hugely and famously said ‘It is not you who are under my influence, it is I who am under yours.’
July 2022 – Doreen Carwithen
1922 – 2003. English composer, Carwithen, was a highly-respected film composer, completing scores for over 30 films during her lifetime. She was also known for her concert works – including a piano concerto and violin sonata – and her string quartets.
June 2022 – Ethel Smyth
1858 – 1944. Smyth was an English composer, prominent member of the women’s suffrage movement, and the first female composer to be honoured with a damehood. During her lifetime she was frequently criticised for writing music “too masculine” for a “lady composer”.
May 2022 – Nkeiru Okoye
American composer Nkeiru Okoye (b. 1972) often composes music which explores historic American events, people or places. She has composed numerous chamber and orchestral works, but is best known for her opera about American abolitionist and social activist, Harriet Tubman.
April 2022 – Jessie Montgomery
American composer Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981) focusses a large portion of her work on improvisation and the vernacular and, over recent years, has become increasingly known for her chamber and orchestral works. She also incorporates the theme of social justice into many of her compositions and projects.
March 2022 – Tania León
Cuban composer Tania León (b. 1943) is not only an award-winning composer, but a renowned conductor and educator too. Her orchestral work, Stride, was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
February 2022 – Rebecca Clarke
1886 – 1979. Clarke was an English composer and violist who composed a large number of pieces specifically for the all-female ensembles in which she played. Since her death, her compositions have been the subject of renewed interest, and many works have recently been published for the first time.
January 2022 – Chen Yi
Chinese composer Chen Yi (b. 1953) is known for her widely varied output, but particularly her chamber repertoire which uses traditional Chinese instruments. In 2006, Yi was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Si Ji.
December 2021 – Liza Lim
Australian composer Liza Lim (b. 1966) focusses on themes of beauty, ecological connection and ritual transformation in her works, which include four operas and numerous orchestral pieces.
November 2021 – Lili Boulanger
1893 – 1918. Boulanger was a French composer whose works were composed primarily for voice and chorus. Her 1913 cantata, Faust et Hélène, won the Prix de Rome, making her the first woman to win the prestigious prize in its history.
October 2021 – Thea Musgrave
Scottish composer Thea Musgrave (b. 1928) is known particularly for her operatic works, having composed more than ten of them throughout her career. Musgrave once remarked, ‘Yes I am a woman, and I am a composer. But rarely at the same time.’
September 2021 – Clara Schumann
1819 – 1896. One of the most celebrated pianists of her era, Schumann was also a composer, however her husband, Robert, and social pressures of the time, prevented her compositions finding the success during her lifetime that they now enjoy.
August 2021 – Grażyna Bacewicz
1909 – 1969. Bacewicz was a renowned composer and violinist, and one of the first Polish female composers to receive acclaim internationally. Her works include chamber music, stage works, film scores and larger orchestral pieces.
July 2021 – Barbara Strozzi
1619 – 1677. One of the most successful composers of her time – with more works in print than any other composer – Strozzi, was prolific not only as a composer, but also had a respected career as a Baroque singer.
June 2021 – Kaija Saariaho
Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952) is known particularly for her interest in spectralism (the acoustic properties of sound) and her use of electronic – and pre-recorded – elements within her works, which range from chamber music to operas.
May 2021 – Rebecca Dale
Rebecca Dale (b. 1985) is a British composer whose work ranges from traditional concert repertoire to scores for screen / TV. She composes extensively for choral ensembles and her work Materna Requiem, released on disc in 2018, topped the classical music chart.
April 2021 – Ruth Crawford Seeger
1901 – 1953. One of the ‘ultramodern’ American composers, Crawford Seeger also took a particular interest in American folk songs. The works she composed between 1930 and 1933 have been particularly influential on future generations of composers.
March 2021 – Julia Perry
1924 – 1979. Julia Perry was an American composer whose music was heavily influenced by both the African American and the European classical music traditions. Although very few recordings of works by Perry are available commercially, she composed a wide variety of music, including twelve symphonies.
February 2021 – Sally Beamish
Sally Beamish (b. 1956) is a British composer whose works are often strongly influenced by traditional Scottish music but also, at times, by the jazz tradition.
January 2021 – Hannah Kendall
Hannah Kendall (b. 1984) is a British composer whose works have previously been performed at the BBC Proms, and whose output ranges from solo piano compositions to choral music, and even a chamber opera.
December 2020 – Vítězslava Kaprálová
1915 – 1940. Despite dying at the tragically young age of 25, Czech composer and conductor, Kaprálová, composed a large number of works and has received widespread posthumous acclaim.
November 2020 – Fanny Mendelssohn
1805 – 1847. Mendelssohn was a prolific composer and talented pianist, but her work went largely unpublished until after her death. Of the few works which were published during her lifetime, many were done so under the name of her brother, Felix.
October 2020 – Sofia Gubaidulina
Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931) is a Tatar-Russian composer and her music – profoundly spiritual in nature, influenced by her devout Russian Orthodoxy – often features unusual instrumental combinations.
September 2020 – Errollyn Wallen
Errollyn Wallen (b. 1958) is a Belize-born composer, whose influences range from avant-garde classical music to popular songs. Warren was the first black female composer to have a work performed at the BBC Proms (in 1998), her Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra.
August 2020 – Nadia Boulanger
1887 – 1979. Boulanger was not only a renowned teacher of some of the greatest musicians of the 20th Century, but a succesful conductor and composer. Her sister, Lili, was also a renowned composer and Nadia often gave concerts of both their music.
July 2020 – Eleanor Alberga
Eleanor Alberga (b. 1949) is a Jamaican composer whose work ranges from opera to chamber music, and orchestral works to film scores. Alberga’s 2015 composition, Arise, Athena!, was performed at the Last Night of the Proms that same year.
June 2020 – Amy Beach
1867 – 1944. Beach was the first American female composer to have a symphony – her Gaelic Symphony – published in the USA. She was also an accomplished pianist with a successful touring career, performing her own music alongside more established works at the time.
May 2020 – Unsuk Chin
Known for taking inspiration from a wide-range of sources – from Balinese Gamelan to electronic music, sculptural artwork to Samuel Beckett – South Korean composer, Chin (b. 1961), says of her work, ‘My music is a reflection of my dreams’.
April 2020 – Elizabeth Maconchy
1907 – 1994. Considered ‘one of the finest composers the British Isles have produced’, Maconchy is known particularly for her cycle of thirteen string quartets, and tireless championing of female composers, particularly during the 1930s in London.
March 2020 – Florence Price
1887 – 1953. The first African-American female to have a composition – her Symphony in E minor – performed by a major orchestra (the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), Price was not only a composer, but also a teacher and performer.