1200 Years of Women Composers: From Hildegard To Higdon

Das Ewig Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan.
(The eternal feminine
leads us upwards.)

Kassia (c.810–before 867)
Blessed Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)

Caterina Assandra (1580–1632)
Francesca Caccini (1587–1640?)
Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana (1590–1662)
Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1602–1678)
Sulpitia Cesis (fl. 1619)
Barbara Strozzi (1619–1677)
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665–1729)
Anna Bon (born 1738/1739)
Maria Theresa Paradis (1759–1824)
Maria Agata Szymanowska (1789–1831)
Louise Farrenc (1804–1875)
Fanny Mendelssohn (1805–1847)
Josephine Lang (1815–1880)
Clara Schumann (1819–1896)
Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska (1834–1861)
Alice Mary Smith (1839–1884)
Agathe Backer Grøndahl (1847–1907)
Augusta Holmès (1847–1903)
Teresa Carreño (1853–1917)
Maude Valérie White (1855–1937)
Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944)
Guy d'Hardelot (1858–1936)
Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)
Amy Woodforde-Finden (1860–1919)
Liza Lehmann (1862–1918)
Alice Tegnér (1864–1943)
Amy Beach (1867–1944)
Henriette Renié (1875-1956)
Alma Mahler (1879–1964)
Poldowski (1879–1932)
Marion Bauer (1882–1955)
May Brahe (1884–1956)
Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979)
Florence Beatrice Price (1888-1953)
Katherine K. Davis (1892-1980)
Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983)
Lili Boulanger (1893–1918)
Henriëtte Bosmans (1895–1952)
Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901–1953)
Sophie Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté (1901–1974)
Claude Arrieu (1903-1990)
Elizabeth Poston (1905–1987)
Elisabeth Lutyens (1906–1983)
Louise Talma (1906–1996)
Grace Williams (1906–1977)
Imogen Holst (1907–1984)
Elizabeth Maconchy (1907–1994)
Grażyna Bacewicz (1909–1969)
Minna Keal (1909-1999)
Ljubica Marić (1909–2003)
Barbara Pentland (1912–2000)
Violet Archer (1913–2000)
Margaret Allison Bonds (1913–1972)
Vitezslava Kapralova (1915-1940)
Joan Trimble (1915–2000)
Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006)
Jeanne Demessieux (1921–1968)
Doreen Carwithen (1922–2003)
Jean Eichelberger Ivey (born 1923)
Tatyana Nikolayeva (1924–1993)
Ruth Schonthal (1924–2006)
Erzsébet Szőnyi (born 1924)
Emma Lou Diemer (born 1927)
Ruth Anderson (born 1928)
Thea Musgrave (born 1928)
Lucia Dlugoszewski (1931–2000)
Sofia Gubaidulina (born 1931)

Pauline Oliveros (born 1932)
Kazuko Hara (born 1935)
Keiko Abe (born 1937)
Diana McIntosh (born 1937)
Gloria Coates (born 1938)
Joan Tower (born 1938)
Annea Lockwood (born 1939)
Ellen Zwilich (born 1939)
Kay Gardner (1941–2002)
Meredith Monk (born 1942)
Maryanne Amacher (1943-2009)
Tania León (born 1943)

Rhian Samuel (born 1944)
Elizabeth Raum (born 1945)
Barbara Benary (born 1946)
Marilyn Shrude (born 1946)
Franghiz Ali-Zadeh (born 1947)
Nicola LeFanu (born 1947)
Diana Burrell (born 1948)
Bernadette Speach (born 1948)
Alexina Louie (born 1949)
Beth Anderson (born 1950)
Elena Firsova (born 1950)
Libby Larsen (born 1950)
Elodie Lauten (born 1950)
Pamela St. John (born 1950)
Lois V Vierk (born 1951)
Judith Bingham (born 1952)
Kaija Saariaho (born 1952)

Chen Yi (born 1953)
Anne LeBaron (born 1953)
Bun-Ching Lam (born 1954)
Sally Beamish (born 1956)
Chaya Czernowin (born 1957)
Linda Bouchard (born 1957)
Ellen Fullman (born 1957)
Karin Rehnqvist (born 1957)
Eve Beglarian (born 1958)
Hilda Paredes (born 1959)
Annie Gosfield (born 1960)
Unsuk Chin (born 1961)
Jennifer Higdon (born 1962)

Isabel Mundry (born 1963)
Augusta Read Thomas (born 1964)
Olga Neuwirth (born 1968)
Roxanna Panufnik (born 1968)
Misato Mochizuki  （born 1969)
Helena Tulvea (born 1972)
Lera Auerbach (born 1973)

This is the Spotify playlist that features all the 116 composers listed above: 1200 Years of Women Composers. (1012 tracks, 3.7 days) Sorted by the birth years of the composers. It's a Spotify anthology of women composers, as well as a brief history of western classical music. It's really fascinating to hear music constantly reinventing itself from the monophonic and deeply spiritual medieval chant of Hildegard all the way into Higdon's lush and ultra-modern percussion concerto. This is my personal favourite playlist so far, hope you enjoy it too;)

If you appreciate what women and music brought to this world, please help to spread the word about this post, by retweeting this in twitter, sharing in your blog, facebook, google reader or via email. After all, it is the feminine side of mankind, I believe, that gives us the beautiful things in life.

Chinese Contemporary Classical Music

I just made a Spotify playlist of Chinese and Chinese-born contemporary composers' works. These are not traditional Chinese music, just like Takemitsu's music are not Gagaku, though many of these composers did draw inspirations from the tradition.

Just for fun, I also included Der Abschied from the new BIS recording of Mahler's Song of the Earth, in which the vocalists sang the original Chinese text of the Tang poetry, in Cantonese. Der Abschied was based on Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei's 送別 (Farewell), you can find more about him on this page, it also includes a translation of his poem Hut Among The Bamboo, upon which Zhou Long set the first movement of his orchestral suite: Poems From Tang. About other titles of the works: Tu for Orchestra is from Zhou Long's wife, China's leading female compose Chen Yi, Tu means the picture or the map. Meng Dong means haze or ignorant, Wu Xing means five elements.

Biographies of these composers:

Bright Sheng, Chen Qigang,Chen Yi, Ge Gan-ru, Lei Liang, Qu Xiaosong, Tan Dun, Zhou Long, Zhu Jianer, and the Butterfly Lovers(traditional).

Zhou Long – Out Of Tang Court
Orchestre National De France – Wu Xing: L`eau (Water)
Orchestre National De France – Wu Xing: Le bois (Wood)
Orchestre National De France – Wu Xing: Le feu (Fire)
Orchestre National De France – Wu Xing: La terre (Earth)
Orchestre National De France – Wu Xing: Le métal (Metal)
The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto
Bright Sheng – H'un (Lacerations): In Memoriam 1966-1976
Shanghai Quartet – Poems From Tang: I. Hut Among The Bamboo
Chen Yi – Tu For Orchestra
Qu Xiaosong – Mong Dong
Tan Dun – Orchestral Theatre II, "Re"
Arditti Quartet – Lei Liang: Serashi Fragments
Chen Qigang – Three Laughs
Zhu Jianer – Symphony No. 4: Symphony No. 4 "6.4.2 - 1"
Ge Gan-ru - Chinese Rhapsody
Gustav Mahler – VI. Sung Bit - Der Abschied Ending Of Cantonese Version

Click here for the Spotify playlist. Check out their full works if you like the sampler, most of these composers have more than one album on Spotify, just search for them yourself. I hope Spotify will add some Wen Deqing and Wang Xilin's works soon.

Click here to read Alex Ross' article "Symphony Of Millions" on the Chinese classical music scene.

A Sea of Timbres: Higdon's Percussion Concerto

A female composer, a female conductor, and a percussion concerto!

At times it sounds a bit like Béla Bartók's Music For Strings, Percussion & Celesta, but with a shifted emphasis almost recklessly focused on the different timbres of percussion. There are many fascinating  examples of contemporary classical composers' use of percussion, Reich's Drumming, Lachenmann's Interieur I, and Wilco's drummer Glenn Kotche's solo works on Nonesuch is well worth a spin. When fragment of John Adams' Nixon In China begins to play in Sid Meier's Civilization IV, you know for sure that you have entered the modern age.

Here's Higdon's Percussion Concerto on Spotify:

James MacMillan – Macmillan: The Confession Of Isobel Gowdie / Adès: Chamber Symphony / Higdon: Percussion Concerto

Conducted by Marin Alsop, here's her writing on Higdon:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104464863

Happy listening, and I hope someday someone will make another Shining for Higdon's deep yet exciting music:)