How Four Women Changed the Musical World
by Leah Broad
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Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2023
480 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
The lives, loves, adventures and trailblazing musical careers of four extraordinary women from a stunning debut biographer.
Ethel Smyth (b.1858): Famed for her operas, this trailblazing queer Victorian composer was a larger-than-life socialite, intrepid traveller and committed Suffragette. Rebecca Clarke (b.1886): This talented violist and Pre-Raphaelite beauty was one of the first women ever hired by a professional orchestra, later celebrated for her modernist experimentation. Dorothy Howell (b.1898): A prodigy who shot to fame at the 1919 Proms, her reputation as the 'English Strauss' never dented her modesty; on retirement, she tended Elgar's grave alone. Doreen Carwithen (b.1922): One of Britain's first woman film composers who scored Elizabeth II's coronation film, her success hid a 20-year affair with her married composition tutor. 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. 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.
"Broad's evocative history makes abundantly clear that 'music is not and has never been exclusively a man's world.' Fans of feminist histories and music lovers alike will revel in this scrupulously detailed outing." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[C]aptivating...A stellar work of social and music history sprinkled with emotional dashes of love, sex, and politics." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Leah Broad is a music historian. Currently a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford University, she specialises in twentieth-century music. She was one of 2016's BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinkers and in 2015 won the Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism. She writes and speaks for organisations including Glyndebourne, London Chamber Orchestra and the BBC Proms. You can follow her on Twitter @LeahBroad.
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