-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
How Four Women Changed the Musical World
by Leah Broad
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)
This information about Quartet was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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.
If you liked Quartet, try these:
by Miranda July
Published 2025
The New York Times bestselling author returns with an irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious and surprising novel about a woman upending her life
by Karen Valby
Published 2025
The forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas and their fifty-year sisterhood, a legacy erased from history—until now.
by Maame Blue
Published 2024
An internationally award-winning writer makes her triumphant American debut in this emotionally powerful story—a potent blend of Queenie and The Vanishing Half—about a woman's journey to uncover a foundational family secret from the childhood she does not remember.
In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
