ATeronica Dudarova, Sofia Gubaidulina, Elena Obraztsova are names known not only in Russia, but also abroad. We remember the great female musicians of the 20th century.
Veronika Dudarova
Veronika Dudarova. Photo: classicalmusicnews.ru
Veronika Dudarova. Photo: south-ossetia.info
Veronika Dudarova was born in Baku in 1916. In 1938 she graduated from the piano department of the music school at the Leningrad Conservatory and made an unusual decision for that time - to become a conductor. In the USSR at that time there were no women who dared to go out to the symphony orchestra. Veronika Dudarova became a student of two masters - Leo Ginzburg and Nikolai Anosov.
She made her debut as a conductor at the Central Children's Theater in 1944. Then she worked at the opera studio of the Moscow Conservatory.
In 1947, Veronika Dudarova became the conductor of the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, and in 1960 she took the post of chief conductor and artistic director of this ensemble. Dudarova's repertoire gradually included a huge amount of compositions - from Bach and Mozart to Alfred Schnittke, Mikael Tariverdiev, Sofia Gubaidulina.
In an interview, she spoke more than once about bloody rehearsals, that sometimes you have to "severely achieve results." In 1991, Dudarova organized and headed the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia. Her name is listed in the Guinness Book of Records: she became the first woman in the world to work with symphony orchestras for over 50 years.
Festival dedicated to Veronika Dudarova:
Sofia Gubaidulina
Sofia Gubaidulina. Photo: remusik.org
Sofia Gubaidulina. Photo: tatarstan-symphony.com
Composer Sofia (Sania) Gubaidulina was born in 1931 in Chistopol. Her father was a surveyor, her mother was a primary school teacher. Soon after the birth of their daughter, the family moved to Kazan. In 1935, Sofia Gubaidulina began to study music. In 1949, she became a student at the piano department of the Kazan Conservatory. Later, the pianist decided to write music herself and entered the composition department of the Moscow Conservatory - first in the class of Yuri Shaporin, then Nikolai Peiko, and then in graduate school under the guidance of Vissarion Shebalin.
Colleagues of Sofia Gubaidulina noted that already in her first works she turned to religious images. This is especially noticeable in the scores of the 1970s and 80s: "De profundis" for button accordion, violin concerto "Offertorium" ("Sacrifice"), "Seven Words" for cello, button accordion and strings. This was also manifested in later compositions - "The Passion According to John", "Easter According to John", "A Simple Prayer".
“My goal has always been to hear the sound of the world, the sound of my own soul, and to study their clash, contrast or, on the contrary, similarity. And the longer I go, the clearer it becomes to me that all this time I have been looking for that sound that would correspond to the truth of my life.
Sofia Gubaidulina
In the late 1980s Sofia Gubaidulina became an internationally renowned composer. Since 1991 she has been living in Germany, but often comes to Russia. Today, festivals dedicated to her are held in different countries, the best musical groups and soloists collaborate with her.
Documentary film about Sofia Gubaidulina:
Elena Obraztsova
Elena Obraztsova. Photo: classicalmusicnews.ru
Elena Obraztsova was born in 1939 in Leningrad. When the time came to enter the university, the girl chose the vocal department of the Leningrad Conservatory, although her father insisted that her daughter study radio engineering. In 1962, student Obraztsova became the winner of the All-Union Glinka Vocal Competition. Soon the young singer made her debut at the Bolshoi Theater - her first role was Marina Mnishek in Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.
The Russian repertoire of the singer also included Martha from the opera Khovanshchina by Mussorgsky, Lyubasha from The Tsar's Bride by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Helen Bezukhova from Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace. Elena Obraztsova performed the part of the Countess in The Queen of Spades by Pyotr Tchaikovsky throughout her musical career. The singer said: “I can sing it for up to a hundred years, as long as the voice sounds. And it overgrows and overgrows with new colors..
One of the most famous roles from the foreign repertoire Obraztsova was Carmen in Bizet's opera. Not only Soviet, but also Spanish listeners recognized her as the best performer of this party.
Exemplary partners were Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Mirella Freni. An important event in the life of the singer was a meeting with the composer Georgy Sviridov: he dedicated several vocal compositions to her.
Life Line program with Elena Obraztsova:
Eliso Virsaladze
Eliso Virsaladze. Photo: archive.li
Eliso Virsaladze. Photo: riavrn.ru
Eliso Virsaladze was born in Tbilisi in 1942. Her teacher at school and at the conservatory was her grandmother, the famous Georgian pianist Anastasia Virsaladze. In 1962, Eliso received third prize at the II International Tchaikovsky Competition. In 1966, after graduating from the Tbilisi Conservatory, she entered the graduate school of the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Yakov Zak.
Since 1967, Eliso Virsaladze has taught at the Moscow Conservatory. Among the graduates of her class are laureates of international competitions Boris Berezovsky, Alexei Volodin, Dmitry Kaprin.
The pianist's repertoire includes works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev. She often performs in an ensemble with cellist Natalia Gutman.
“This is an artist of a large scale, perhaps the strongest female pianist now”- this is how Svyatoslav Richter spoke about Virsaladze.
Today, Eliso Virsaladze performs a lot with solo and chamber programs, often playing with orchestras. She speaks of concerts as a sacrament: “You go on stage and belong to the composer you are performing and the audience you are playing for”.
Program "Collection of performances" and concert by Eliso Virsaladze:
Natalia Gutman
Natalia Gutman. Photo: classicalmusicnews.ru
The future cellist was born in Kazan in 1942, she received her first cello lessons from her stepfather, Roman Sapozhnikov. Then she studied at the Central Music School at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1964, Natalia graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Galina Kozolupova, and in 1968 she completed her postgraduate studies at the Leningrad Conservatory, where Mstislav Rostropovich was her head.
Back in her conservatory years, Natalia became a laureate of several competitions, including the II International Tchaikovsky Competition. In 1967 she began teaching at the Moscow Conservatory.
“If I just professionally move the bow and think about my own, it will be immediately audible! For me, the automatism of execution, indifference is a terrible failure! she says.
Now Natalia Gutman teaches young musicians in many European cities, organizes major festivals and continues to tour.
Speech at the "December Evenings" at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts:
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In the era of the formation of operatic vocals for female singers, the conditions were not very favorable. However, this did not greatly slow down the global process and we know many names of real stars - opera divas, I will not even list them. But here are the women who wrote music ... there were either no conditions at all, or there was not so much talent ... In any case, none of the names of women composers shone as brightly as, say, the names of Beethoven, or! Anyway, let's see what we have here? :)
- Hildegard of Bingen
Although women's names have not gained the same fame in the world of musical writing as men's, but there is a name very significant in terms of music history. This is Hildegard of Bingen, one of the first medieval composers who left notes of her compositions. Well, it’s clear what works, because this is the 12th century! Probably, a modern listener needs to be a very big fan in order to enjoy listening to medieval church chants. However, these are my purely theoretical fabrications - I have not yet been able to listen to something from Hildegard. So far I have found only this on the Internet, but there you must first become a member of the club, and only then listen. The move has not yet reached this point, although there are plans :). But in this story, perhaps, something else is more important: the very personality of the nun, who was officially canonized by the Pope in 2012. And he wrote very penetratingly about her:
Her story seems even more remarkable when you start to think about what, probably, the difficulties that were associated at that time were not just the existence of a female composer - Lord, yes, this is not an easy task even now - but, what is there, the existence of a woman who WAS AT LEAST SOMETHING.
Let's take a portrait of Hildegard in one hand, and a goblet filled with wine in the other, show ourselves close-up 1179 Let's make a toast to her not at all witchy, eccentric musicality.
- Barbara Strozzi
Maybe I, of course, will seem ignorant, but I didn’t listen to the music of this lady either and ... for some reason I think that this name left a trace more historical than musical. Namely: Barbara Strozzi was one of the first to publish her works not in collections, but, as they say, solo, and this is, you see, an application! She lived and worked in my favorite and favorite country - Italy. The nickname was “The Most Virtuoso”, but again, it seems that this assessment was more likely related to Strozzi, the singer. And as a composer - could she compete with the many brilliant authors who lived at that time? In any case, Monteverdi, Bach, Vivaldi, Purcell, Handel are world scale. But the name of Barbara Strozzi is not so often heard. However, stop being clever, now together with you for the first time I will listen to her composition:
Well, how do you like it? I listened, very nice!
- Clara Schumann
And in this case, one would like to say: yes, Clara was the wife of the composer Robert Schumann. That is, as it were, a derivative of a well-known male name. But in fact, it was rather Clara who “promoted” her husband, it was she who was the first performer of his works. Just like the music of Brahms, the public first heard performed by Clara. By the way, these are the key phrases - execution. Because Clara was a virtuoso pianist, in fact she was a child prodigy, her performances and tours began as a child. And Clara gave her last concert at the age of 71. That's how a pianist - yes, she was famous and successful. As a composer at that time, she was simply not taken seriously (this is not a woman's business!), And now the work of Clara Schumann is of interest, but her works are not performed too often.
The melodies and songs of the Russian people inspired the work of famous composers of the second half of the 19th century. Among them were P.I. Tchaikovsky, M.P. Mussorgsky, M.I. Glinka and A.P. Borodin. Their traditions were continued by a whole galaxy of outstanding musical figures. Russian composers of the 20th century are still popular.
Alexander Nikolaevich Skryabin
Creativity A.N. Scriabin (1872 - 1915), a Russian composer and talented pianist, teacher, innovator, cannot leave anyone indifferent. Mystical moments can sometimes be heard in his original and impulsive music. The composer is attracted and attracted by the image of fire. Even in the titles of his works, Scriabin often repeats such words as fire and light. He tried to find a way to combine sound and light in his works.
The composer's father, Nikolai Alexandrovich Scriabin, was a well-known Russian diplomat, a real state adviser. Mother - Lyubov Petrovna Scriabina (nee Shchetinina), was known as a very talented pianist. She graduated with honors from the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Her professional career began successfully, but shortly after the birth of her son, she died of consumption. In 1878, Nikolai Alexandrovich completed his studies and was assigned to the Russian embassy in Constantinople. The upbringing of the future composer was continued by his close relatives - grandmother Elizaveta Ivanovna, her sister Maria Ivanovna and father's sister Lyubov Alexandrovna. 
Despite the fact that at the age of five, Scriabin mastered playing the piano, and a little later began to study musical compositions, according to family tradition, he received a military education. He graduated from the 2nd Moscow Cadet Corps. At the same time, he took private lessons in piano and music theory. Later he entered the Moscow Conservatory and graduated with a small gold medal.
At the beginning of his creative activity, Scriabin consciously followed Chopin, choosing the same genres. However, even at that time, his own talent was already evident. At the beginning of the 20th century, he wrote three symphonies, then "The Poem of Ecstasy" (1907) and "Prometheus" (1910). Interestingly, the composer supplemented the score of "Prometheus" with a light keyboard part. He was the first to use light music, the purpose of which is characterized by the disclosure of music by the method of visual perception.
The composer's accidental death interrupted his work. He never realized his plan to create the "Mystery" - a symphony of sounds, colors, movements, smells. In this work, Scriabin wanted to tell all mankind his innermost thoughts and inspire him to create a new world, marked by the union of the Universal Spirit and Matter. His most significant works were only a preface to this grandiose project.
Famous Russian composer, pianist, conductor S.V. Rachmaninov (1873 - 1943) was born into a wealthy noble family. Rachmaninoff's grandfather was a professional musician. The first piano lessons were given to him by his mother, and later they invited the music teacher A.D. Ornatskaya. In 1885, his parents assigned him to a private boarding school to the professor of the Moscow Conservatory N.S. Zverev. The order and discipline in the educational institution had a significant impact on the formation of the future character of the composer. He later graduated from the Moscow Conservatory with a gold medal. While still a student, Rachmaninoff was very popular with the Moscow public. He has already created his "First Piano Concerto", as well as some other romances and plays. And his "Prelude in C-sharp minor" became a very popular composition. Great P.I. Tchaikovsky drew attention to the graduation work of Sergei Rachmaninov - the opera "Oleko", which he wrote under the impression of A.S. Pushkin "Gypsies". Pyotr Ilyich got it staged at the Bolshoi Theatre, tried to help with the inclusion of this work in the repertoire of the theater, but died unexpectedly.
From the age of twenty, Rachmaninov taught at several institutes, gave private lessons. At the invitation of the famous philanthropist, theatrical and musical figure Savva Mamontov, at the age of 24, the composer becomes the second conductor of the Moscow Russian Private Opera. There he became friends with F.I. Chaliapin.
Rachmaninov's career was interrupted on March 15, 1897 due to the rejection of his innovative First Symphony by the St. Petersburg public. Reviews for this work were truly devastating. But the composer was most upset by the negative review left by N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, whose opinion Rachmaninoff greatly appreciated. After that, he fell into a protracted depression, from which he managed to get out with the help of a hypnotist N.V. Dahl.
In 1901 Rachmaninoff completed his Second Piano Concerto. And from that moment begins his active creative work as a composer and pianist. Rachmaninoff's unique style combined Russian church hymns, romanticism and impressionism. He considered the melody to be the main leading principle in music. This found its greatest expression in the author's favorite work - the poem "The Bells", which he wrote for the orchestra, choir and soloists.
At the end of 1917, Rachmaninoff left Russia with his family, worked in Europe, and then left for America. The composer was very upset by the break with the Motherland. During the Great Patriotic War, he gave charity concerts, the proceeds of which were sent to the Red Army Fund.
Stravinsky's music is notable for its stylistic diversity. At the very beginning of his creative activity, she was based on Russian musical traditions. And then in the works one can hear the influence of neoclassicism, characteristic of the music of France of that period and dodecaphony.
Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum (now the city of Lomonosov) in 1882. The father of the future composer Fyodor Ignatievich is a famous opera singer, one of the soloists of the Mariinsky Theatre. His mother was pianist and singer Anna Kirillovna Kholodovskaya. From the age of nine, teachers taught him piano lessons. After completing the gymnasium, at the request of his parents, he enters the law faculty of the university. For two years, from 1904 to 1906, he took lessons from N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, under whose leadership he wrote the first works - the scherzo, the piano sonata, the Faun and the Shepherdess suite. Sergei Diaghilev highly appreciated the composer's talent and offered him cooperation. The joint work resulted in three ballets (staged by S. Diaghilev) - The Firebird, Petrushka, The Rite of Spring.
Shortly before the First World War, the composer left for Switzerland, then to France. A new period begins in his work. He studies the musical styles of the 18th century, writes the opera Oedipus Rex, music for the ballet Apollo Musagete. His handwriting has changed several times over time. For many years the composer lived in the USA. His last famous work is Requiem. A feature of the composer Stravinsky is the ability to constantly change styles, genres and musical directions.
Composer Prokofiev was born in 1891 in a small village in the Yekaterinoslav province. The world of music was opened for him by his mother, a good pianist who often performed works by Chopin and Beethoven. She also became a real musical mentor for her son and, in addition, taught him German and French.
At the beginning of 1900, young Prokofiev managed to attend the Sleeping Beauty ballet and listen to the operas Faust and Prince Igor. The impression received from the performances of the Moscow theaters was expressed in his own work. He writes the opera "The Giant", and then the overture to "Desert Shores". Parents soon realize that they can no longer teach their son music. Soon, at the age of eleven, the novice composer was introduced to the famous Russian composer and teacher S.I. Taneyev, who personally asked R.M. Gliera to engage in musical composition with Sergei. S. Prokofiev at the age of 13 passed the entrance exams to the St. Petersburg Conservatory. At the beginning of his career, the composer toured and performed extensively. However, his work caused misunderstanding among the public. This was due to the features of the works, which were expressed in the following:
- modernist style;
- destruction of established musical canons;
- extravagance and inventiveness of composing techniques
In 1918, S. Prokofiev left and returned only in 1936. Already in the USSR, he wrote music for films, operas, ballets. But after he was accused, along with a number of other composers, of "formalism", he practically moved to live in the country, but continued to write musical works. His opera "War and Peace", the ballets "Romeo and Juliet", "Cinderella" became the property of world culture.
Russian composers of the 20th century, who lived at the turn of the century, not only preserved the traditions of the previous generation of the creative intelligentsia, but also created their own, unique art, for which the works of P.I. Tchaikovsky, M.I. Glinka, N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov.
TEXT: Oleg Sobolev
AS IN ANY OTHER FIELD OF CLASSICAL ART Western world, in the history of academic music there are countless forgotten women who deserve to be told about themselves. In particular - in the history of composer's art. Even now, when the number of notable female composers is growing every year, the seasonal schedules of the most famous orchestras and the concert programs of the most famous performers rarely include works written by women.
When the work of a female composer nevertheless becomes an object of spectator or journalistic attention, the news about this is necessarily accompanied by some sad statistics. Here's a recent example: The Metropolitan Opera this season gave the brilliant "Love from afar" by Caia Saariaho - as it turned out, the first opera written by a woman, shown in this theater since 1903. It is comforting that the compositions of Saariaho - like, for example, the music of Sofia Gubaidulina or Julia Wolf - are performed quite often even without such newsworthy occasions.
Selecting a few little-known musical heroines from a large list of female names is a difficult task. The seven women that we will talk about now have one thing in common - they, to one degree or another, did not fit into the world around them. Someone solely because of their own behavior, which destroyed cultural foundations, and someone - through their music, to which there is no analogue.
Louise Farranc
Born Jeanne-Louise Dumont, she became famous in the European music world of the 1830s and 1840s as a pianist. Moreover, the girl's performing reputation was so high that in 1842 Farranc was appointed professor of piano at the Paris Conservatory. She held this post for the next thirty years and, despite the pedagogical workload, managed to prove herself as a composer. However, rather than "managed to show", but "could not show". Farranc came from the most famous dynasty of sculptors and grew up among the best people of Parisian art, so the act of creative self-expression was extremely natural for her.
Having published about fifty compositions during her lifetime, mostly instrumental, Madame Professor received rave reviews about her music from Berlioz and Liszt, but in her homeland Farranc was perceived as too non-French composer. In France, every first promising author scribbled many hours of opera, and the laconic and classically inspired works of the Parisian really ran counter to the then fashion. In vain: her best works - like the Third Symphony in G minor - to put it mildly, are not lost against the background of the mastodons of that time like Mendelssohn or Schumann. Yes, and Brahms, with his attempts to translate classicism into the language of the romantic era, Farranc bypassed ten or even twenty years.
Dora Pejacevic
A representative of one of the most noble Balkan noble families, the granddaughter of one of the bans (read - governors) of Croatia and the daughter of another, Dora Pejacevic spent her childhood and youth exactly as usual in the world pop culture they like to depict the life of young and carefully guarded by the family of young aristocrats . The girl grew up under the strict supervision of English governesses, almost did not communicate with her peers and, in general, was brought up by her parents with an eye to a further successful marriage for the family, rather than a happy childhood.
But something went wrong: as a teenager, Dora caught fire with the ideas of socialism, began to constantly conflict with her family, and, as a result, at the age of more than twenty, she was cut off from the rest of the Pejacevics for the rest of her life. This, however, only benefited her other passion: even at the dawn of the First World War, the rebellious noblewoman established herself as the most significant figure in Croatian music.
Dora's compositions, evenly inspired by Brahms, Schumann and Strauss, sounded extremely naive by the standards of the world around her - for example, at the time of the premiere of her old-fashioned piano concerto in Berlin and Paris, they were already listening with might and main to Lunar Pierrot and The Rite of Spring. But if we ignore the historical context and listen to Pejacevic's music as a sincere declaration of love for the German romantics, then one can easily notice her expressive melody, high-level orchestration and careful structural work.
Amy Beach
The most famous episode of Amy Beach's biography can be retold as follows. In 1885, when she was 18, Amy's parents married her to a 42-year-old surgeon from Boston. The girl was already a piano virtuoso at that time and hoped to continue her music studies and performing career, but her husband decided otherwise. Dr. Henry Harris Audrey Beach, concerned about the status of his family and guided by the then ideas about the role of women in secular New England society, forbade his wife to study music and limited her performances as a pianist to one concert a year.
For Amy, who dreamed of concert halls and sold-out recitals, this turned out to be tantamount to tragedy. But, as often happens, tragedy gave way to triumph: although Beach sacrificed her performing career, she began to devote herself more and more to writing and is now unambiguously identified by most researchers as the best American composer of the late Romantic era. Her two main works - the Gaelic Symphony published in 1896 and the piano concerto that followed three years later - are really beautiful, even if by the standards of those years they are completely devoid of originality. The most important thing is that in Beach's music, as one might assume, there is absolutely no place for provincialism and parochialism.
Ruth Crawford Seeger
Ruth Crawford Seeger is much more famous in the circles of serious fans, researchers and just lovers of American folk music than in the world of academic music. Why? There are two key reasons: first, she was the wife of the musicologist Charles Seeger, and therefore the ancestor of the Seeger clan, a family of musicians and singers who did more to popularize American folk than anyone else. Secondly, for the last ten years of her life, she worked closely on cataloging and arranging songs recorded on numerous trips by John and Alan Lomax, the largest American folklorists and collectors of folk music.
Surprisingly, until the beginning of their life together, both Ruth and Charles Seeger were composers of an extremely modernist persuasion, it was with great difficulty to apply the word “folklore” to their music. In particular, the compositions of Ruth Crawford of the early 30s can only be compared with the works of Anton Webern - and even then only in terms of skillfully built dramaturgy and laconically concentrated musical material. But if Webern's traditions shine through every note - it doesn't matter, Austrian or Renaissance music - then Seeger's works exist as if outside of tradition, outside of the past and outside of the future, outside of America and outside of the rest of the world. Why is a composer with such an individual style still not included in the canonical modernist repertoire? Mystery.
Lily Boulanger
It would seem, what kind of music could an eternally ill, deeply religious and pathologically modest Frenchwoman from high society compose at the beginning of the last century? That's right - one that could serve as a good soundtrack for Judgment Day. The best compositions of Lily Boulanger are written on religious texts such as psalms or Buddhist prayers, most often they are performed as if by an incorrectly tuned choir to a ragged, non-melodious and loud musical accompaniment. You can’t pick up an analog to this music right off the bat - yes, it is somewhat similar to Stravinsky’s early works and Honegger’s especially fiery compositions, but neither one nor the other reached such depths of despair and did not go into such extreme fatalism. When a friend of the Boulanger family, composer Gabriel Fauré, discovered that three-year-old Lily had absolute pitch, her parents and older sister could hardly imagine that this gift would translate into something so unangelic.
By the way, about my sister. Nadia Boulanger turned out to be a figure in the history of music, unlike any more significant. For almost half a century - from the 20s to the 60s - Nadia was considered one of the best music teachers on the planet. Having very specific views both on new music at that time, and on music in the literal sense of the word, classical, tough, uncompromising and exhausting her students with the most difficult tasks, Nadya, even for her ideological opponents, remained an example of musical intelligence of unprecedented memory and power. Perhaps she could have become as significant a composer as she turned out to be a teacher. In any case, she started as a composer - but, by her own admission, after Lily's death, something broke inside Nadia. Having lived for 92 years, the older sister never reached the heights of the few compositions of her younger sister, who burned out from Crohn's disease at the age of 24.
Elizabeth Maconki
Ralph Vaughan Williams, the greatest British composer of the last century, was a passionate champion of national musical traditions. So, he enthusiastically reworked folk songs, wrote choral works suspiciously similar to Anglican hymns, and, with varying degrees of success, rethought the work of English composers of the Renaissance. He also taught composition at London's Royal College of Music, where his favorite student in the 1920s was a young Irish girl named Elizabeth Maconki. Decades later, she will tell that it was Vaughan Williams, for nothing that he was a traditionalist, who advised her never to listen to anyone and in composing music to focus only on her interests, tastes and thoughts.
The advice proved to be decisive for Maconki. Her music has always remained untouched by both the global trends of the academy avant-garde and the age-old Anglo-Celtic love for rural folklore. It was during her student years that she discovered Bela Bartók (a composer, by the way, who also worked outside of any obvious trends), Makonki in her compositions naturally repelled the mature music of the great Hungarian, but at the same time she consistently developed her own style, much more intimate and introspective. Vivid examples of the originality and evolution of Makonka's composer's fantasy are her thirteen string quartets, written from 1933 to 1984 and together forming a cycle of quartet literature, in no way inferior to those of Shostakovich or the same Bartok.
Vitezslava Kapralova
A few years before the First World War, an inconspicuous Czech composer and concert pianist Vaclav Kapral founded a private music school for aspiring pianists in his native Brno. The school continued to exist after the war, soon earning a reputation as almost the best in the country. The flow of those wishing to study, and to learn specifically from the Corporal himself, even briefly made the composer think about stopping all other activities in favor of teaching.
Fortunately, his daughter Witezslava, who at that time had not yet celebrated her tenth birthday, suddenly began to demonstrate extraordinary musical abilities. The girl played the piano better than many adult professionals, memorized the entire classical song repertoire and even began to write small pieces. The corporal developed a plan, surprising in terms of the degree of arrogance, stupidity and commercialism: to grow a real monster of music from Vitezslava, capable of replacing him as the main teacher of the family school.
Of course, none of this happened. The ambitious Witezslava, who wanted to become a composer and conductor, at the age of fifteen entered two corresponding faculties at the local conservatory at once. So that a woman wants to conduct - this was not seen in the Czech Republic of the 30s before Kapralova. And to simultaneously conduct and compose - it was generally unthinkable. It was precisely to compose music in the first place that the newly enrolled student began - moreover, of such quality, such stylistic diversity and in such volumes that there is really no one to compare with.
“It is more likely that a man will give birth to a child than a woman will write good music,” the German composer Johannes Brahms once said. A century and a half later, women composers gather the world's largest concert halls, write music for films and come up with important social initiatives. "April", together with the cosmetic brand NanoDerm, tells about women whose talent and work helped to refute the stereotype about the "male" profession of a composer.
1. Cassia of Constantinople
The Greek nun Cassia was born into a wealthy Constantinopolitan family in 804 or 805. Today she is known not only as the founder of a convent in Constantinople, but also as one of the first women hymnographers and composers.
Cassia was very beautiful and, according to some sources, in 821 she even participated in a bride show for Emperor Theophilus. The girl was not destined to become the wife of the emperor, and soon Cassia took the veil as a nun in order to spend her whole life in the monastery she founded. There, Cassia composed church hymns and canons, and an analysis of her works, containing references to the writings of ancient authors, allows us to conclude that the girl had a good secular education.
Cassia of Constantinople is one of the first composers whose works can be performed by contemporary musicians.
2. Hildegard of Bingen
The German nun Hildegard of Bingen was an extraordinary person not only in terms of writing music - she also worked on works on natural science and medicine, wrote mystical books of visions, as well as spiritual poems.
Hildegard was born at the end of the 11th century and was the tenth child in a noble family. From the age of eight, the girl was raised by a nun, and at 14 she began to live in a monastery, where she studied art and liturgy.
The girl began to compose music on her own poems as a child, and already in adulthood she collected her works in a collection called "Harmonic Symphony of Heavenly Revelations". The collection includes chants, combined into several parts on liturgical themes.
3. Barbara Strozzi
The Italian composer Barbara Strozzi, who was later called "the most virtuoso", was the illegitimate daughter of the poet Giulio Strozzi, who later adopted her. Barbara herself had four illegitimate children from different men. The girl was born in 1619 in Venice and studied with the composer Francesco Cavalli.
Strozzi wrote cantatas, ariettas, madrigals, and the texts for her daughter's works were written by her father Giulio. Barbara became the first composer to release her works not in collections, but one at a time. The music of Barbara Strozzi is performed and re-released today.
4. Clara Schumann
Born Clara Wieck in 1819 in Leipzig, the son of Friedrich Wieck, a well-known piano teacher in the city and country. From an early age, the girl learned to play the piano from her father, and at the age of 10 she began to successfully perform in public.
Together with her father, Clara went on tour in Germany, then gave several concerts in Paris. Around this time, young Clara began to write music - her first works were published in 1829. At the same time, the young Robert Schumann became a student of Friedrich Wieck, whose admiration for the talented daughter of the teacher grew into love.
In 1940, Clara and Robert got married. Since then, the girl began to perform music written by her husband, often she was the first to present to the public the new compositions of Robert Schumann. Also, the composer Johannes Brahms, a close friend of the family, entrusted the debut performance of his works to Clara.
Clara Schumann's own writings were distinguished by their modernity and were considered one of the best examples of the romantic school. Robert Schumann also highly appreciated the writings of his wife, who, however, insisted that his wife focus on family life and their eight children.
After the death of Robert Schumann, Clara continued to perform his works, and interest in her own work flared up with renewed vigor in 1970, when recordings of Clara's compositions first appeared.
5. Amy Beach
American Amy Marcy Cheney Beach is the only woman in the so-called "Boston Six" of composers, which, in addition to her, included musicians John Knowles Payne, Arthur Foote, George Chadwick, Edward McDowell and Horatio Parker. The composers of the "six" are considered to have had a decisive influence on the formation of American academic music.
Amy was born on September 5, 1867 to a wealthy New Hampshire family. From an early age, the girl studied music under the guidance of her mother, and after the family moved to Boston, she began to study composition as well. Amy Beach's first solo concert took place in 1883 and was a great success. Two years later, the girl got married and, at the insistence of her husband, practically stopped performing, concentrating on writing music.
With her own works, she later performed on tour in Europe and America, and today Amy Beach is considered the first woman who managed to make a successful career in high musical art.
6. Valentina Serova
The first Russian female composer, nee Valentina Semyonovna Bergman was born in 1846 in Moscow. The girl did not manage to graduate from the St. Petersburg Conservatory due to a conflict with the director, after which Valentina began to take lessons from music critic and composer Alexander Serov.
In 1863, Valentina and Alexander got married, two years later the couple had a son, the future artist Valentin Serov. In 1867, the Serovs began to publish the magazine "Music and Theater". The couple maintained friendly relations with Ivan Turgenev and Polina Viardot, Leo Tolstoy, Ilya Repin.
Valentina Serova was rather reverent about her husband's work, and after his death she published four volumes of articles about her husband, and also completed his opera The Enemy Force.
Serova is the author of the operas Uriel Acosta, Maria D'Orval, Miroyed, Ilya Muromets. In addition to music, she also wrote articles about composing, published memoirs about meetings with Leo Tolstoy and memories of her husband and son.
7. Sofia Gubaidulina
Today, the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina lives and works in Germany, but her native Tatarstan annually hosts music competitions and festivals dedicated to the famous native of the republic.
Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol in 1931. As a girl, she graduated from the Kazan Musical Gymnasium, and then entered the Kazan Conservatory, where she studied composition. Having moved to Moscow, Gubaidulina continued her studies at the Moscow Conservatory, and after graduation she received an important parting word from the composer Dmitry Shostakovich: “I wish you to go your own “wrong” way.”
Together with Alfred Schnittke and Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina was one of the trinity of Moscow avant-garde composers. Gubaidulina worked a lot for cinema and wrote music for such films as "Vertical", "Man and His Bird", "Mowgli", "Scarecrow".
In 1991, Sofia Gubaidulina received a German scholarship and has since lived in Germany, regularly visiting Russia with concerts, festivals and various social initiatives.
“In ancient Greece, all harpists were men, and now it is a “female” instrument. Times are changing, and the words of Brahms that “it is more likely that a man will give birth to a child than a woman will write good music” sound frivolous, ”said Sofia Asgatovna in an interview.