Women composers in the 19th century

"I don't just play the piano ..." was the title of a music program on SWR2 in 2016 that portrayed composing women from different centuries. Playing the piano, which is, so to speak, the basic skill of a daughter from a good family, is usually one of the focal points of female composers in the 19th century. They performed as pianists and gave piano lessons, but not only that, they also composed for this instrument. In addition, they often received singing lessons and then accompanied themselves on the piano. In this way, the second focus of composition, the song, also grew out of this domestic musical tradition.

Many of the female composers we have chosen for our concert in honor of Clara Schumann grew up with female "role models" in their families who performed in public as musicians. Clara Schumann's mother, Marianne Tromlitz, performed as a soloist in the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts. Clara's friend of many years, Pauline Viardot Garcia, was born to sing, so to speak: Her father is an opera tenor and composer, her mother a singer and actress. After the death of her older sister, the famous singer Maria Malibran, Pauline, who was initially trained as a pianist, followed in her sister's footsteps. Josephine Lang's mother was also a singer. Fanny Hensel and Mary Wurm also had mothers who gave their children lessons themselves and provided them with a solid musical education.

Although familiar with music and closely associated with women who practise their profession as musicians in public, female composers are breaking new ground with their work. Composing is not considered a woman's job. As the critic Hans von Bülow wrote: "Reproductive genius can be attributed to the fair sex, just as productive genius is absolutely to be denied. There will never be a female composer, only a female copyist. I do not believe in the feminine of the term: creator. I also hate to death everything that smacks of female emancipation."
 

Clara Schumann saw herself primarily as a pianist. "I feel called to reproduce beautiful works [...]. The practice of art is a large part of my self, it is the air in which I breathe." She judged some of her own compositions to be less than successful. "[...] of course it always remains women's work, where there is always a lack of strength and here and there a lack of invention." And: "But I can't compose, it makes me quite unhappy at times, but I really can't, I have no talent for it." Her reasoning: "Women as composers can't deny themselves, I accept that from myself as from others." There are also statements that show pleasure in their own compositions: "There's nothing like the pleasure of having composed something yourself and then hearing it."

Robert appreciates Clara's compositions and sometimes admonishes her not to neglect composing. He also regrets that she does not get to compose in addition to her many tasks. "Clara has written a series of smaller pieces that are as delicate and musical in their invention as she had never managed before. But having children and a husband who is always fantasizing and composing do not go together. She lacks sustained practice, and this often moves me, as many an intimate thought is lost that she is unable to carry out." In these lines, Clara appears to be a composer to be taken seriously. However, no solution to the problem is sought. And when the two enter into direct competition, equality is no more. Robert suffers when Clara is the center of attention on concert tours. Robert wants to be depicted above Clara on a double medallion because the productive composer is above the reproducing artist. The fact that a clear hierarchy is concealed behind the superficial equality is also evident in the quote from Franz Liszt: "No happier, no more harmonious union was conceivable in the world of art than that of the inventing man with the performing wife, of the composer representing the idea with the virtuoso representing its realization."
 

For Pauline Viardot, creative and performing artists are of equal value. " [...] the dramatic artist must constantly create - he must conceive human, living, feeling, passionate, perfect figures, true to nature down to the smallest detail, and present them to the audience. Above all, I admire the creative master, and right next to him the creative artist. Both are inseparable - for each alone remains mute, and together they create the highest and noblest pleasure of man, art." Pauline was able to experience both sides intensively, devoting a long time to her stage career. Her eldest daughter grew up with her mother and her husband often accompanied Pauline on her tours. Then, at the age of 42, she ends her stage career, teaches, composes and only gives a few concerts. Clara Schumann admires the ease with which Pauline accomplishes everything. After the performance of two short operettas by Pauline, she writes: "The skill, subtlety, grace and roundness with which everything is done, often with the most amusing humor, is wonderful! [...] and as soon as she has written it all down, it just plays from sketch sheets! And how she rehearsed it, the children, how enchanting they are [...]! Everywhere in the accompaniment you can hear the instrumentation - in short, I found again confirmed what I have always said, she is the most ingenious woman I have ever met, and when I saw her sitting at the piano like that, conducting everything with the greatest ease, my heart softened [...]."

Although Fanny Mendelssohn received the same musical training as her brother Felix, her situation as a woman made it impossible for her to publish her compositions. Her father wrote to his fifteen-year-old daughter: "What you wrote to me about your musical activities in relation to Felix in one of your earlier letters was as well intended as expressed. Music may become his profession, whereas for you it can and should only ever be an adornment, never the foundation of your being and doing; [...]. Persevere in this attitude and this behavior, they are feminine, and only the feminine adorns women." Later he also admonishes her in this sense, which Fanny comments to a friend as follows: "The fact that one's miserable feminine nature is brought forward every day, at every step of one's life, by the masters of creation, is a point that could infuriate one, and thus deprive one of femininity, if it did not make evil worse."

Felix, who encouraged other female composers such as Josephine Lang and Johanna Kinkel in their compositions, remained dismissive of Fanny's efforts. He writes to his mother: "You praise her new compositions, and that is really not necessary, [...] because I know who they are by. Also [...] that as soon as she decides to publish something, I will give her the opportunity to do so as much as I can and relieve her of all the trouble that can be spared. But persuade I cannot publish anything for her because it is against my views and convictions. [...] I regard publishing as something serious [...] and believe that one should only do it if one wants to appear and stand as an author for the rest of one's life. [...] And Fanny, as I know her, has neither the desire nor the profession to be an author, she is too much of a woman for that, as is right [...]." When Fanny decided to publish her compositions at the age of forty, knowing that her brother would not like it, Felix finally gave her the "blessing of the trade" and wished her much joy.
 

Johanna Kinkel seems to have known very early on that she wanted to "make music her business". The family did not think this was appropriate. Her grandmother says: "Thank God we don't need our only child to learn music for her own entertainment". Johanna is therefore sent to a school where she is supposed to learn "housekeeping". But she doesn't like that at all. "Oh, how much better and easier I would have learned basso continuo, because I had already heard somewhere that there was a thing by that name that helped you to compose."
"I don't want to be a dilettante, I want to be an artist." She subsequently pursued this goal with great determination. She travelled to Felix Mendelssohn to play for him and then organized her musical training in Berlin. After studying basso continuo, she felt able to put her ideas into practice. "I had felt the urge to compose from a young age, but I didn't want to weaken it by putting a lot of amateurish ideas on paper without knowing the theory, as so often happens. [...] Now that I realized what had previously prevented me from clearly expressing my inner melodic world, I felt as if all my thoughts wanted to bud and blossom into sounds."
 

If one believes the reviewers of the time, none of the women composed as "masculine" as Louise Adolpha Le Beau. "One does not usually expect such solidity of theoretical development, such dexterity in the treatment of form, as in orchestration, from ladies; here we find a masculine, serious spirit, an artistic development on an extremely solid foundation, combined with a fine feeling for beauty of form and sound," said one reviewer in praise of Le Beau. When she approached Rheinberger in Munich to take lessons, he turned her down. He did not want to teach women. After playing her own compositions, she was accepted as "Mr. Colleague", and he attested to the exceptional quality of her Violin Sonata op. 10, saying it was "masculine, not as if composed by a lady". This praise runs like a red thread through the reviews, as in the following comment: "Ms. le Beau is one of the exceptions who make it further; if there weren't many men writing really bad music, then I would express my praise in the words: she composes like a man!" On the one hand, Le Beau seeks recognition as a composer; on the other, she finds herself in competition with her male colleagues. Despite her qualities, she searches in vain for an opera house that will perform her opera, and a professorship for composition in Berlin also remains closed to her. Women are not considered for this position.

If you look at the compositions of women from the 19th century, piano works and songs clearly dominate the picture. This is the case with Clara Schumann, Johanna Kinkel, Josephine Lang and largely with Fanny Hensel. However, an overview of Fanny Hensel's compositions is still not available today.

Fanny Hensel describes her difficulty in writing longer works as follows: "It is not so much the manner of writing that is lacking as a certain principle of life, and due to this lack my longer works die of old age in their youth, I lack the strength to hold the thoughts properly, to give them the necessary consistency. That is why I succeed best with songs, which only require a pretty idea without much strength of execution [...]." When women venture into composition, it is in the areas of piano music, song and chamber music. The large forms, oratorio, opera and symphony belong to "male" composition. Mary Wurm and Louise Adolpha Le Beau are active in this area, although not for the most part.
 

Since Beethoven, the symphony has been the crowning glory of a composer's career, so to speak. Mary Wurm wrote a children's symphony and Louise Le Beau a (single) symphony (op. 41), which earned her admiring reviews: "It is probably the first time that a lady has soared to the pinnacle of instrumental music, and with success. The composer not only knows how to treat the symphonic form masterfully, but also how to unify it with a wealth of musical ideas." And: "It undoubtedly takes a great deal of courage for a lady to write a symphony, both because of the peculiar difficulties of this musical genre and because of the prejudice that is held by the public against a lady's achievement in this field of composition, which was previously reserved exclusively for men. Miss Le Beau was able to draw her courage from the wealth of her musical invention, her phenomenal compositional technique for a lady and her secure mastery of orchestral means of expression. Her Symphony in F major is a musical work which, although not always equal in quality, is captivating and excellently developed in all movements..."

In this respect, only one of the composers we have selected has really reached Olympus. Fortunately, musical quality also exists without a mountain of the gods. This magnificent, diverse world of female composers is well worth a visit, and there is still much to discover.