Mary Wurm was a pianist and composer, born in England to German parents. She grew up in a musical family: her father was a music teacher, her mother was a violinist, and her younger sisters Adele, Alice, and Matilde also went on to have considerable careers as pianists. As a
Fanny Hensel was one of the most prolific and original song composers of the nineteenth century. She composed almost 250 songs, among which are some of the most pathbreaking and affecting songs of her era. Only a handful of these songs were published during her lifetime, but thankfully, all of
Carmela Mackenna was a Chilean woman composer who wrote a wide variety of works, including solo piano pieces, chamber music, choral music, orchestral music, and songs. She belonged to an aristocratic family, and thus received training in music and foreign languages. Mackenna married a diplomat, so her life involved traveling
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an acclaimed British conductor and composer. The son of an Englishwoman and a man from Sierra Leone, he showed great musical talent as a child; he learned violin and piano from his father and started singing in a church choir when he was only ten years old.
Dame Ethel Smyth was a British composer, writer, and social activist who made significant contributions to many musical genres. A tireless advocate for her own music, Smyth was well-known during her lifetime and became notable not only for her compositional output but also for her service to the women’s suffrage
Marie Franz published one opus of six songs in 1846, under her maiden name Hinrichs, and then, after marrying the composer Robert Franz, stopped writing music. Or so the story went: it turns out that a collection of fifteen song manuscripts is housed in the Handel House in Halle, Germany,
The music by these composers has not been recorded very often, in some cases not at all. This is why one of the purposes of the ASA is to offer quality video recordings of this overlooked repertoire.
Fanny Hensel’s op. 1 (a collection of six songs) was published in the summer of 1846, less than a year before she died of a stroke at the age of 41.
Marie Vespermann appeared in public concerts as young as age nine and began composing songs at age twelve.
Marie Franz composed a stirring setting of Goethe’s poem “Meine Ruh ist hin,” which is even more turbulent than Franz Schubert’s immortal 1814 setting of the same text — “Gretchen am Spinnrade.”
Mary Wurm was a gifted piano teacher. In 1914, she published a collection of music designed for the teaching of preschool-age children, The ABCs of Music (Das ABC der Musik).
Stephen Rodgers is the Edmund A. Cykler Chair in Music and Professor of Music Theory and Musicianship at the University of Oregon, where he has been teaching since 2005. Rodgers’s research focuses on the relationship between music and poetry in art songs from the nineteenth century to the present day, especially art songs by underrepresented composers.
