#ClassicsaDay #WomensHistoryMonth Week 2, 2023
By Ralph Graves
March is Women’s History Month. And for Classics a Day, it’s another opportunity to focus on classical music composed by women. And not just composers in the 21st Century.
Every year when we do this theme, I discover more female composers whose music I have never heard before. But it’s music that deserves to be heard — and more than once.
Here are my posts for the second week of Women’s History Month, 2023.
03/06/23 Emilie Mayer: Piano Concerto in B-flat major
Meyer wrote her piano concerto in 1850. It was the same year a Berlin concert exclusively devoted to her music was staged, launching her career as a composer.
03/07/23 Anna Bon: Flute Sonata in F major, Op. 1, No. 2
Bon was a performer and composer attached to the Esterhazy court (where Haydn was). She published three volumes of music by 1759. And in 1767 she and her husband moved to Thuringia and disappeared from history.
03/08/23 Maddalena Casulana (c.1540–c.1590): Vagh’amorosi augelli
Casulana was a lutenist, composer, and singer. Her Madrigals, Book 1 (1566) is the earliest print collection of a female composer in Europe.
03/09/23 Luise Adolpha Le Beau: Piano Concerto in D minor, Op. 37
Le Beau’s primary teacher was Josef Rheinberger, although she studied very briefly with Clara Schumann in the summer of 1878.
03/10/23 Mel Bonis: Scènes de la forêt
Bonis wrote over 300 works during her lifetime. She attended the Paris Conservatoire with classmates Claude Debussy and Gabriel Pierné.
