Four Centuries of Great Music March 24, 2024 Music of Women Composers Episode 4

This week on Four Centuries of Great Music I am continuing my series of celebrating Women composers as part of Women’s History month.  One more chance to promote women music creators which I do across all my shows on WRUU.

This episode we begin as we ending the last episode with the music of Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre.

Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729) was the first woman in France to compose an opera. Born into a family of master masons and musicians, she played the harpsichord and sang at the court of Louis XIV from the age of five. Madame de Montespan kept Élisabeth in her entourage for three years, and her first composition were divertissements intended for court. She married the organist Marin de La Guerre in 1684 and left the gilded world of Versailles for Paris. “She gave lessons and concerts for which she was soon renowned throughout the city.” Élisabeth published her “First book of harpsichord pieces” at the age of twenty-two, but her tragédie lyrique Céphale et Procris, “staged at the Académie Royale de Musique met with disapproval.” She abandoned any other dramatic projects and focused on composing sonatas, a new and highly popular emerging genre.

Her sonatas “are conspicuous for their variety, rhythmic vigour and expressive harmony, as well as for certain innovative features in the violin writing.” Inspired by Corelli, her sonatas alternate between Italian and French idioms. “The former is present in the expressive opening movements, the incisive rhythms and the fugal sections of the fast movements. The composer remains true to the French aesthetic in the dances featured in some of the sonatas, the use of the viol as a solo instrument, and the melodic vein of the arias.”

Her G minor trio sonata for two flutes and continuo, like her other sonatas often have an extraordinary abundance of thematic material.  For instance the presto section of this sonata starts with a deftly handled three-part imitation of a broken chord figure.  But after only 20 measures this material is swept away and the instruments begin a dialogue between a slow descending scale of six of more notes and a swirling  counterpoint in triplet quavers.  

Her sonatas have an aria section composed of a short, lyrical  theme acting as a refrain for an extended freely developing rondeau-like structure.  The G minor trio sonata has an “aria” section labelled affettuoso, which has a gavotte-like character, but the unusual five-bar phrases of its rondeau there differentiate it from the standard ballroom gavotte.


Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre: Trio Sonata for Two Flutes and Continuo in G Minor    The Bach Players    Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Chamber Music from the Brossard Collection    Coviello Classics Records


Lili Boulanger was an important composer of early twentieth century French music. Her compositional style represents a development and mastery of musical techniques of the great composers of her time including Fauré, Debussy and Wagner combined with her own creative expression. The result is a compelling musical language that was uniquely her own. She held an important place among her contemporaries in Paris and her accomplishments were considered newsworthy during her lifetime (1893- 1918). She obtained a much sought-after publishing contract with Ricordi. Her more famous sister, Nadia Boulanger, felt that Lili was the better composer of the two, and her peers and music professors clearly felt that both her musical and personal qualities were extraordinary. Evidence of her intelligence, creativity, and artistic growth can be seen in her music. As the first woman to win the Prix de Rome (July 5, 1913), Lili Boulanger, unlike Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, or Alma Mahler, was acknowledged and acclaimed during her lifetime for her skill as a composer. Yet, nearly a century later the music of this talented French composer is not as well known as it deserves to be.
Today I will be playing 4 songs from her Clairieres Dans Le Ciel Clair-air don leh see-ell song cycle.


Written in 1914 by a 20-year-old composer fresh off her triumph as the first woman to win the Prix de Rome, the cycle remains little-known. Its length and considerable technical difficulty, plus a tendency among performers to emphasize the sensuality of French music and soften its sharp corners, have often obscured the piece’s most astonishing feature: searing emotional force.

Individual songs are occasionally excerpted out for their beauty, but Clairières when considered in its complete form, it is a work of startling truth.

Spiritually closest perhaps to Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Clairières maps one person’s experience of a harrowingly intense love. The narrator (almost un-gendered except for a few adjective endings) worships a girl, loses her, and suffers acutely. We don’t learn any specifics: it’s not clear if a definitive split occurred, if she drifted away to another place or phase of life, or if she died. The love may have been one-sided, vividly flowering only in the narrator’s mind. Boulanger created her own sequence of thirteen songs. from a poetry collection by Francis Jammes.

Written for tenor, we will be hearing the transcription for soprano.

We will be listening to four songs from this 13 song cycle:
Lili Boulanger: Clairieres Dans Le Ciel (For Voice And Piano)  I. Elle Etait Descendue
Lili Boulanger: Clairieres Dans Le Ciel (For Voice And Piano)_ II. Si Tout Ceci
Lili Boulanger: Clairieres Dans Le Ciel (For Voice And Piano)_ III. Nous Nous Aimerons
Lili Boulanger: Clairieres Dans Le Ciel (For Voice And Piano)_ IV. Demain, Fera Un An


Emile Naoumoff, piano & Isabelle Sabrie, voice    In Memoriam Lili Boulanger    Marco-Polo Records


Gabriela Lena Frank is and American composer born and raised in Berkeley, California, United States. Her father is of Lithuanian Jewish heritage and her mother is Peruvian, of Chinese descent.

Frank received her bachelor's and master's degrees from Rice University and a Doctorate in Music Composition from the University of Michigan in 2001.

Frank's work often draws on her multicultural background, especially her mother's Peruvian heritage. In many of her compositions, she elicits the sounds of Latin American instruments such as Peruvian pan flute or charango guitar, although the works are typically scored for Western classical instruments and ensembles such as the symphony orchestra or string quartet. She has said, "I think the music can be seen as a by-product of my always trying to figure out how Latina I am and how gringa I am.”

Here is a performance of her Elegía Andina by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya from the album Take Six    self-released

Next is Dora Pejacevic sonata for cello and piano

Dora Pejačević   was born in Budapest in 1885, but grew up in her ancestral Croatia. Dora was educated by a private English governess, and she was fluent in several languages. She taught herself to play the piano and her early compositions paved the way for her study music. She attended the Croatian Music Institute in Zagreb, and also took lessons in Dresden and in Munich. However, in musical terms she was largely self-taught, “which is remarkable considering the inventiveness, rich brilliance and enduring quality of her compositions.” Dora died in Munich in 1923, at the young age of 38.

Today we will hear her cello sonata in E minor op 35 written in 1913.  It is in 4 movements: I. Allegro moderato;  II. Scherzo: Allegro;  III. Adagio sostenuto and IV. Allegro comodo. Here is a performance by Christian Poltéra, cello & Oliver Triendl, piano from the album Pejacevic: Piano Trio - Cello Sonata    CPO Records


Swedish violinist and composer Amanda Röntgen-Maier was the first female graduate in music from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm in 1872. Maier decided to continue her private studies in Leipzig with the concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Engelbert Röntgen. She met and became acquainted with Brahms, Joachim, Grieg and Clara Schumann, who greatly admired her. She publically performed many of her own compositions with her future husband pianist Julius Röntgen, son of Engelbert. The married couple moved to Amsterdam, where Amanda spent her time on housekeeping and motherhood. “Her composing faded into the background and her concertizing came to an almost complete halt, as in bourgeois society, public appearances were considered unfitting for a married woman.” In 1886 Röntgen-Maier fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, and by the time of her death at the age of 41, she was practically forgotten.

Amanda Röntgen-Maier: Piano Quartet in E Minor - I. Allegro
Amanda Röntgen-Maier: Piano Quartet in E Minor - II. Andante
Amanda Röntgen-Maier: Piano Quartet in E Minor - III. Presto con fuoco
Amanda Röntgen-Maier: Piano Quartet in E Minor - IV. Largo espressivo - Allegro vivace - Presto

Gregory Maytan, Bernt Lysell, Sara Wijk & Ann-Sofi Klingberg     Amanda Maier, Vol. 1    dB Productions


Laura Netzel was a Finnish-born Swedish composer, pianist, conductor and concert organizer.  She was born in Rantasalmi, Finland in 1839, and was proud of her Finnish heritage throughout her life, even though she was just one year old when she moved permanently to Stockholm.  Netzel studied piano, voice and composition.  She died in Stockholm in 1927.


Laura Netzel: Humoresque Op 37  (transcribed for flute and piano by Paula Gudmundson)
Laura Netzel: Suite for Flute and Piano Op 33

Breaking Waves - Flute Music by Swedish Women Composers
Paula Gudmundson, flute and Tracy Lipke-Perry, piano. MSR Classics