England
Amanda Aldridge
Amanda Aldridge was a British singer, pianist, composer, and teacher. Her father, the celebrated Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge, died when Amanda was a little over a
Germany
Marie Franz
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
Germany
Pauline Decker
Pauline Decker (née von Schätzel) was a German opera singer who published about thirty songs later in her life. Born into a distinguished musical family—her
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
United States
Mary Turner Salter
Born in Peoria, Illinois, Mary Turner Salter went to high school just across the Mississippi River in Burlington, Iowa, before moving east to study music
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,