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
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
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
England
Dame Elizabeth Maconchy
Elizabeth Maconchy was a fiercely individual Irish-English composer who wrote music that was often highly dissonant, contrapuntal, intense, even disturbing—and far from the more pastoral,
Austria
Elise Schmezer
Elise Schmezer was a singer, pianist, and composer who published about forty songs between 1848 and 1856. Little is known about her life. She was
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
Germany
Clara Faisst
Clara Faisst was a composer, pianist, and poet who spent the bulk of her life in Karslbad, Germany. In her twenties she studied music in
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
Mexico
Rodrigo Ruiz
Rodrigo Ruiz is a Mexican-American composer who writes vocal, chamber, and orchestral music that has been described as “unabashedly tonal.” His music sounds by turns
France
Cécile Chaminade
French composer and pianist Cécile Chaminade wrote approximately four hundred works, including 125 songs. Almost all of her works were published in her lifetime—rare for
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
Ireland
Ina Boyle
Until recently, the name Ina Boyle was something of an enigma. Although she was one of the most prolific composers in Ireland during the first