The winner of the RPS Storytelling Award is Quartet by
@LeahBroad
, which 'weaves the stories of four composers the world should know better. She brings them to life with such sensitivity and nuance, changing our perceptions of their artistry and impact.'
#RPSAwards
Well it's mid-week and freezing cold, so here's a thread of composers as biscuits.
1. J. S. Bach, Chocolate Leibniz. Basically cannot go wrong with this biscuit.
25. John Cage, biscuit tin that you open expecting there to be biscuits but you forgot it was actually the tin you use for all the random screws that you don’t know where they go or what they're for. Best use = prepared piano.
I WROTE A BOOK AND NOW THE PROOFS ARE HERE IT'S REAL OMG Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell & Doreen Carwithen will be hitting your shelves in March 2023!!!!!!
28. Schoenberg, brandy snaps. A tricky customer, this biscuit. Undercooked and it's soggy. Overcooked and it's too sharp and shreds your mouth. Eugh. But get it right and this biscuit will blow your mind.
I am so, *so* excited to be writing a group biography of 4 women composers - Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell & Doreen Carwithen - which will be published by the fabulous
@elgrffths
and her wonderful team at
@FaberBooks
!
Can I just give a massive shout out to
@BBCRadio3
for scheduling a tonne of women composers? There hasn't been a day this year when I've turned on the radio & haven't heard music by women at some point. It's so noticeable and really, really welcome.
In which I dip my toe in to the murky waters of classical music & fashion.
"Nineteenth-century ideas about what classical music is, who it is by, for and about have all been upended. So, too, must ideas about how it looks."
PERFORMERS: want to play more works by British women but need scores/info? Then PLEASE get in touch, as I am v keen to collaborate & get more of the fabulous music I'm researching performed. Will gladly share what resources I have/try to locate scores if you want specific works!
#QUARTET
is published today!!!! Thank you so much to everybody who has supported this book, and to everyone who's bought/read a copy. I hope you enjoy reading about Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell & Doreen Carwithen as much as I enjoyed writing about them ❤️📚🎶
It's rare that I write a very negative review, but
#T
ár has done it - I *hated* this film. It is problematic on so many levels that I'm only scraping the surface here. The movie feels like regression dressed up as progress
Also works for opera.
Harry Potter and the Magic Flute
Harry Potter and the Elixir of Love
Harry Potter and the Flying Dutchman
Harry Potter and the Damnation of Faust
Harry Potter and the Force of Destiny
Harry Potter and the Cunning Little Vixen
Teaching a music & gender course really brings home what a tiny proportion of recorded classical music was written by women & what a learning barrier that is. I so often can't play women's work to students, but always have options for comparable men. Pls more recordings of women.
Thrilled, elated, excited & all the superlatives that THE COVER AND PRE-ORDER FOR QUARTET IS HEEEEEEEERE!!!! You can now buy from bookshops & online, to have Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell & Doreen Carwithen arrive on your doorstep 2/3/23:
New policy. Every time a company announces a season with no women composers, they also have to publish a statement explaining why they have decided to omit half the population from their programming. Because by this stage a woman-free programme really is a choice.
The latest RCM news is dreadful, but I'm not sure scrapping 1-to-1 tuition is the right way forward. Of course you can learn a lot from group tuition - but there's also a lot you can do in a solo lesson you can't in group. Surely we need to make 1-to-1 safe, not scrap it.
I love opera, but the ticket price is only a small part of why opera is perceived as inaccessible. It's about broader things too - like concert norms, dress, audience behaviour, broader culture. And those things are much harder to quantify.
It’s only 30 days until
#QUARTET
is published! 😱 The one thing I want this book to do is bring people to amazing music, so every day until publication day I’m going to tweet a piece from the book in this thread. Join me for everything from Smyth to Mahler & Disney (yes Disney)…
I’ve been on a symphony binge-fest recently and I wanted to share some awesome music, so every day for the next 50 days I’m gonna tweet one of my favourite symphonies on this thread. Only 1 rule: No composer can appear more than once.
#50Symphonies
The letters between Ethel Smyth and Virginia Woolf, and Ethel Smyth and Edith Somerville, are some of the most beautiful love letters I've ever read. They're so joyful and moving and generous. I can't wait to share them when my book comes out 🥰🥰🥰
What's your degree in?
Musicology.
"What instrument do you play?"
"I study music history. Like art history, but with music instead of paintings."
"...you can do that? That's a real subject?"
Twitter, say hello to my new baby boy Otto. Things we have learned so far: he likes Purcell, Pärt, and Renaissance polyphony. Not so keen on Stravinsky, but he'll learn.
Happy birthday Brahms,
#botd
in 1833! Composer Ruth Gipps adored Brahms's music, and one of my favourite quotes about him comes from her: "People's loves and hates come and go; the Brahms Symphonies will go on for ever."
A lot of anger about the "canon" on classical music Twitter floating around ATM, revolving around (seemingly unverifiable) claims like this. Is it so hard to believe different people might like different pieces? That someone might want to hear Beethoven & Price & Smyth & Bach?
Composer & violist Rebecca Clarke was born
#OTD
in 1886. As well as being an incredible composer she was also amazingly glamorous & loved fashion. Her sister Dora drew her in 1917 with her nose stuck in
@voguemagazine
, where she was delighted to be profiled as a musician to watch
For anybody interested in Rebecca Clarke - new website has just gone up with complete information about her manuscripts (published and unpublished), materials, and how to access them:
Omg
#QUARTET
is currently the no. 1 selling classical music book on Amazon 😭😭 thank you everybody who is ordering and showing that there is a market for books like this - that women belong in our music histories, and these lives are worth remembering ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
I've never felt more like I need music to distract me from/help me make sense of the world. So I'm posting 50 of my favourite pieces (
#50Favourites
), 1 a day on this thread for next 50 days. No theme, this is just music that makes my heart happy & isn't
#COVID19
related
Programming Brahms 2 and want to pair it with a work by a woman? This week's post is on diversifying orchestral repertoire, with programme pairings, instrumentations, recordings, play times, & score locations of some key works by historical British women
Composer Johannes Brahms was born
#OTD
in 1833. Fellow composer and friend Ethel Smyth adored his music, but objected to his attitude towards women. She complained that he was often 'staring at them as a greedy boy stares at jam-tartlets'.
Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was born
#OTD
in 1872. One truly remarkable thing about him was how much he supported women - Elizabeth Maconchy said studying with him was 'like turning on a light' 🎶
Happy birthday to composer & violist Rebecca Clarke,
#botd
in 1886! Fellow composer Ethel Smyth was a fan: when they met in 1925 Smyth described Clarke as 'a perfect darling - and a lady...very very gifted'. Clarke wrote in her diary that Smyth was a 'funny cracked old thing.'
Violinist Marie Hall was born
#OTD
in 1884. She was one of the most sought-after violinists of the early twentieth century, and Vaughan Williams dedicated 'The Lark Ascending' to her. Hall premiered the version with piano in 1920, and the version with orchestra in 1921 🎻🎻
It's
@bbcproms
time!!! So looking forward to hearing the Wreckers live for the second (!!) time this year with the fantastic
@glyndebourne
cast. Live on
@BBCRadio3
from 6.30pm, will be talking about wonderful Ethel Smyth, her opera, and the influences behind it with
@KateMolleson
My husband thought he wouldn't recognise any music by a list of composers I gave him, so we played a game of 'do you recognise this piece'. Turns out he knows *a lot* more classical music than he thought. Suspect this is true for many ppl who think they don't know any classical
Happy
#InternationalCatDay
! 😂🐈
To celebrate, here are some composers who were REALLY into cats: 🧵
Ruth Gipps, who was so into cats she wrote music about cats
Happy birthday Vaughan Williams! As well as being a prolific composer, RVW was also a dedicated teacher. His student Ruth Gipps remembered him as 'the only altogether good person I have ever met.'
Ethel Smyth was born
#OTD
in 1858. Composer of 6 operas, author of 11 books, owner of many dogs, toothbrush-wielding-conductor & friends/lovers with people inc Emmeline Pankhurst & Virginia Woolf Smyth was extraordinary. You can find out more in
#QUARTET
Venues & programmers I am begging you - if you are running an event/festival/programme where the theme is related to women, please programme some women. It's not hard
Happy birthday Ethel Smyth, my favourite dog-loving composer!
‘nothing is more natural than that in a certain sense a dog should be more than all the world to you.'
If you'd like to hear her music, some recommended recordings: 🧵
#BOTD
Shame on anyone making racist comments & on the media for turning a moderate comment into an inflammatory news story.
@ShekuKM
is a wonderful advocate for music education & classical music & spoke brilliantly about it on
#DesertIslandDiscs
. That's what stories should be about
Replying to the barrage of racism against my son
@ShekuKM
this week. So many feel it’s ok to call for deportation, flogging, sending him ‘back to Africa’ and to use ‘Ni**er’ against someone trying to engage in a conversation about music and inclusion. Horror, rage, heartbreak.
Seeing as it’s
#WomensHistoryMonth
, over the next month I’m going to share 31 of my favourite recordings of music by historical composers who also happened to be women. One a day on this thread, with as little overlap between composers as possible!
#31Women
"Classical music is a universal language; from the music of 18th century Austria to the music of 19th century Germany, it represents the entirety of what human civilization has to offer." This is brilliant 🤣🤣
Happy birthday to Franz Schubert! He was one of Ethel Smyth's favourite composers, & his music was described poetically by her as a 'crystal stream welling and welling for ever'
I've been working for a while on a Big Project: a full catalogue of Avril Coleridge-Taylor's works + score locations! Delighted it's at the stage where I can release it & I'm making it available online for free. You can subscribe to get it to your inbox at
I am missing opera *so much* at the minute, so I’m very glad everyone voted for
#50Operas
! I’ll be sharing 50 of my favourite operas on this thread, one opera a day, with only one opera per composer allowed. There will be DRAMA.
Please please can quartets record new cycles of the Maconchy String Quartets? These works are so brilliant, and they more than deserve the kind of recordings that Shostakovich, Beethoven, Schubert etc get. I want to hear what different ensembles bring to these masterpieces ❤️
#50Nordics
starts today! Every day for the next 50 days I’m tweeting music by Nordic composers on this thread, one new composer every day. I got a bit carried away with this one, so there will be multiple pieces by each composer 😃
Tune in to
@BBCRadio3
at 18.45 today to find out about Avril Coleridge-Taylor, Dorothy Howell & Doreen Carwithen: had an amazing time making this programme with
@paulfarnold
exploring their music & sometimes heartbreaking lives. Is on
@BBCSounds
after!
A very happy birthday to Doreen Carwithen!! Composer of multiple film scores, orchestral pieces, chamber works, and one of the best piano concertos I know. I wrote more about her life & music for
@MusicMagazine
Fantastic news - closure of the
@BBCSingers
has been suspended! I hope there's now a proper investigation into how such a decision was made in the first place, and measures put in place to stop similar future reductions of classical music provision
Ethel Smyth wrote some of the most astute & lively character portraits I've ever read. Sometimes her descriptions are beautiful - and her put-downs are hilarious. So here is a thread of my favourite Ethel Smyth invective (with the odd compliment): 🧵🧵🧵
This is such an important photo - really shows clearly how current estimation of Ethel Smyth & her music is at odds with how her contemporaries viewed her. She was, in 1922, considered a significant and "modern" composer
A photo from the inaugural meeting of the International Society of Contemporary Music in Salzburg in August 1922, including Arthur Bliss, Paul Hindemith, Ethel Smyth, Egon Wellesz and Anton Webern.
A huge thank you to the wonderful staff at
@Dauntbooks
for hosting such a lovely launch for
#QUARTET
last night, and for my first ever book window!! If you're in London and want a signed copy, Daunts now have a fair few 😂