Composer
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United States

Sarah Kirkland Snider

Sarah Kirkland Snider is one of the most inventive and prolific composers working today. Her music spans a diverse range of genres—orchestral, chamber, choral, operatic,

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Germany

Marie von Kehler

Precious little is known about the German composer Marie von Kehler. We have more music by her than documentary information about her. She was born

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Germany

Marie Vespermann

Marie Vespermann was a quintuple threat: a pianist, singer, composer, poet, and dramatist, who showed prodigious musical gifts as a child. Born into an artistic

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England

Dame Ethel Smyth

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

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Margaret Bonds
United States

Margaret Bonds

Composer and pianist Margaret Bonds grew up in a musically rich environment in Chicago—her mother was a gifted organist, and in high school Bonds studied

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France

Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger was one of the most renowned composition teachers of the twentieth century—or of any century. Her students are a who’s who of famous

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England

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

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

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England

Rebecca Clarke

Rebecca Clarke was one of most distinguished and gifted British composers in the first half of the 20th century. Born to an American father and

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Mary Wurm
England

Mary Wurm

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

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Chile

Carmela Mackenna

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

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France

Lili Boulanger

Lili Boulanger had a tragically short life. She died at age twenty-four from intestinal tuberculosis, and spent much of her life in poor health, having

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United States

H. Leslie Adams

The composer and pianist H. Leslie Adams has had a long and illustrious career. Now in his nineties, he was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in

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Did you know?

A portfolio of Clara Faisst’s autograph manuscripts (as well as photographs and programs) was discovered at a garbage site in Karlsruhe, Germany; the manuscripts would have been lost forever were it not for an eagle-eyed passerby.

Did you know?

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.