The most popular female composer. From Boulanger to Pakhmutova. Women composers. Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin

In the era of the formation of opera vocals, conditions for female singers were not very favorable. However, this did not slow down much global process and we know many names of real stars - opera divas, I won’t even list them. But the women who wrote music... there were either no conditions at all, or there wasn’t that much talent... In any case, none of the names of female composers shone as brightly as, say, the names of Beethoven, or! Still, let’s see: what do we have here? :)

• Hildegard of Bingen

Let female names and have not gained the same fame in the world of musical writing as men, but they have a very significant name from the point of view of the history of music. This is Hildegard of Bingen, one of the first medieval composers to leave recordings of her compositions. Well, it’s clear what kind of works they are, after all, this is the 12th century! A modern listener would probably have to be a very big fan to enjoy listening to medieval church chants. However, these are purely theoretical fabrications of mine - I have not yet been able to listen to anything from Hildegard. So far I have only found this on the Internet, but there you must first become a member of the club, and only then listen. It hasn't gotten to that point yet, although there are plans :). But in this story, perhaps, something else is more important: the very personality of the nun, who was officially canonized by the Pope in 2012. He also wrote very insightfully about her:

Her story seems even more remarkable when you begin to think about what difficulties, probably, were associated at that time not only with the existence of a female composer - Lord, this is not an easy matter even now - but, so what, the existence of a woman who AT LEAST REPRESENTED SOMETHING.

Let's take the portrait of Hildegard in one hand, and a goblet filled with wine in the other, show ourselves close up 1179 -th and let's propose a toast to her not at all witchy, eccentric musicality.

• Barbara Strozzi

I may, of course, seem ignorant, but I also haven’t listened to this lady’s music and... for some reason I think that this name also left a trace more historical than musical. Namely: Barbara Strozzi was one of the first to publish her works not in collections, but as they say - solo, and this, you see, is already an application! She lived and worked in my favorite and most beloved country - Italy. The nickname was “Most Virtuoso,” but again it seems that this assessment applied more to Strozzi, the singer. And as a composer, could she compete with the many brilliant authors who lived at that time? In any case, Monteverdi, Bach, Vivaldi, Purcell, Handel are of global scale. But you don’t hear the name Barbara Strozzi very often. However, enough of being clever, now together with you I will listen to her composition for the first time:

Well, how do you like it? I listened to it, very beautiful!

• Clara Schumann

So in this case, I just want to say: yes, Clara was the wife of composer Robert Schumann. That is, as if derived from the well-known male name. But in reality, it was Clara who “promoted” her husband; she was the first performer of his works. Just like the music of Brahms, the public first heard it performed by Clara. By the way, these are the key phrases - execution. Because Clara was a most virtuoso pianist, in fact she was a child prodigy, her performances and tours began in childhood. A last concert Clara gave at the age of 71 years. That's how the pianist is - yes, she was famous and successful. As a composer at that time, she was simply not taken seriously (not a woman’s business!), but now the work of Clara Schumann is of interest, but her works are not performed very often.

Today, domestic musical science little is known about the composers of music from the middle and late XIX century. For a long time it was believed that there were no female composers at that time. This misconception was due to the lack of biographical facts and specific documented examples: many works of female composers of the 19th century existed in the form of autographs and single editions, so it is now very difficult to find and systematize them.

However, foreign music historians have done significant work in the study of female composers. creativity XIX century, confirming the musical and creative activity of female authors, which makes it possible to fill the existing gap in literature in Russian.

Among the studies that served as sources of information for this article are “The International Encyclopedia of Women Composers” by Aaron Cohen, works by Bea Friedland, Elsa Thalheimer, Eva Weisweiler, articles by Heinrich Adolf Koestlin, Marcia I. Citron, Christine Heitman. With the help of the facts presented in these sources, we can get acquainted with some details of the biographies of women creators of the 19th century, and also partially recreate the picture social status the authors of this historical period. Among the most significant female composers of the 19th century are the Germans Fanny Hansel, Josephine (Caroline) Lang, Joanna Kinkel, Louise Adolphe Le Beau, Emilie Mayer, as well as the French Louise Farran and Augusta Maria Anna Holmes.

Fanny Hansel

Talented composer Fanny Hansel, the elder sister of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, fully experienced all the difficulties of the composer's path of a woman of the 19th century. Being a gifted musician and having received a wonderful music education, she, however, was not able to fully realize herself as a composer, since her entire family, including her musician brother, disapproved of musical career Fanny.

Fanny Hansel was born in 1805 into a culturally enlightened family, which allowed her to early childhood communicate with prominent people of their time. She subsequently became a prominent figure in the thriving Berlin salon. Hansel was an excellent pianist, but did not perform in public due to her family's prejudices. And even her marriage did not change the situation, despite positive attitude husband, Prussian court artist Wilhelm Hansel musical activity wives. The important historical role of Fanny Hansel lies in her influence on the creative fate of her brother Felix. M. I. Citron writes: “They inspired each other musically and intellectually, and each helped shape the other's future works. For example, Felix’s oratorio “Saint Paul,” completed in 1837, benefited from Fanny’s participation in the composition process.” However, Felix opposed the publication of his sister’s works, and out of about 400 of her works, only a few were published.

Most of her works were published after her death, between 1846 and 1850. Moreover, the first publications of Fanny Mendelssohn's music were carried out under the name of Felix Mendelssohn: 3 songs in his op. 8 (1827) and 3 songs in op. 9 (1830). The reasons for using the brother's name are unknown, especially since, according to Citron, the use of creative pseudonyms was an atypical practice among female composers of the 19th century.

Only in 1837 did the first work by Hansel appear, signed by her own name, - it was a song published in one of the anthologies. Over the next decade, the composer's works were not published, with the exception of individual songs published in 1839. Shortly before the composer's death, a collection of songs for voice and piano accompaniment, op. 1, which "gave Hansel the great satisfaction of finally seeing her writings published in full under her own name."

First song op. 1 “Swan Song” is written based on poems by Heinrich Heine. Fanny had the opportunity to see the great poet, which led to the creation of this work.
Fanny Hansel's creative interests were concentrated in typically "feminine" genres associated with the tradition of home music playing - mainly piano and vocal music. She left behind a wealth song creativity, and also experimented with large forms- from sonata to oratorio. Many of her works - songs without words, sonatas, romances - were published under the name of Felix. Among her unpublished compositions are the vocal quartet “In the Grave,” the cantata “My Soul is So Calm,” the song cycle “Home Garden,” the piano quartet Asdur, and the piano trio.

She is also the author of an overture for orchestra, as well as a trio and string quartets. Despite the little fame of her work, many of the composer’s works, including orchestral and chorales, were presented at the Sunday music collections. Fanny Hansel died in 1847.

Joanna Kinkel

Josephine Lang

Louise Adolphe Le Beau

Louise Farranc

Emilia Mayer

Augusta Maria Anna Holmes

Composer's heritage Joanna Kinkel(1810 – 1858) consists of the following works: a vocal cantata, a ballad for voice and piano “Don Ramiro”, a church work for choir and orchestra “Hymnis in Coena Domini”, as well as a cycle of songs “Stormy Journeys of Souls”.

Melodies and songs of the Russian people inspired creativity famous composers second half of the 19th century century. Among them were P.I. Tchaikovsky, M.P. Mussorgsky, M.I. Glinka and A.P. Borodin. Their traditions were continued by a whole galaxy of outstanding musical figures. Russian composers of the 20th century are still popular.

Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin

Creativity of A.N. Scriabin (1872 - 1915), a Russian composer and talented pianist, teacher, and innovator, cannot leave anyone indifferent. In his original and impulsive music, mystical moments are sometimes heard. The composer is attracted and attracted by the image of fire. Even in the titles of his works, Scriabin often repeats words such as fire and light. He tried to find the possibility of combining sound and light in his works.

The composer's father, Nikolai Alexandrovich Scriabin, was a famous Russian diplomat and active state councilor. Mother - Lyubov Petrovna Skryabina (nee Shchetinina), was known as a very talented pianist. She graduated with honors from the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Her professional activity began successfully, but soon after the birth of her son she died of consumption. In 1878, Nikolai Alexandrovich completed his studies and was appointed to Russian embassy in Constantinople. The future composer's upbringing was continued by his close relatives - his grandmother Elizaveta Ivanovna, her sister Maria Ivanovna and his father's sister Lyubov Alexandrovna.

Despite the fact that at the age of five Scriabin mastered playing the piano, and a little later began to study musical compositions, according to family tradition, received military education. He graduated from the 2nd Moscow Cadet Corps. At the same time, he took private lessons in piano and music theory. Later he entered the Moscow Conservatory and graduated with a small gold medal.

At the beginning of its creative activity Scriabin consciously followed Chopin and chose the same genres. However, even at that time his own talent had already emerged. At the beginning of the 20th century, he wrote three symphonies, then “Poem of Ecstasy” (1907) and “Prometheus” (1910). It is interesting that the composer supplemented the Prometheus score with a light keyboard part. He was the first to use light music, the purpose of which is characterized by revealing music by the method of visual perception.

The composer's accidental death interrupted his work. He never realized his plan to create “Mystery” - a symphony of sounds, colors, movements, smells. In this work, Scriabin wanted to tell all of humanity his innermost thoughts and inspire them to create a new world, marked by the union of the Universal Spirit and Matter. His most significant works were only the preface to this grandiose project.

Famous Russian composer, pianist, conductor S.V. Rachmaninov (1873 - 1943) was born into a wealthy noble family. Rachmaninov's grandfather was professional musician. His first piano lessons were given to him by his mother, and later they invited music teacher A.D. Ornatskaya. In 1885, his parents sent him to a private boarding school with the professor of the Moscow Conservatory N.S. Zverev. Order and discipline in educational institution had a significant influence on the formation of the future character of the composer. He later graduated from the Moscow Conservatory with a gold medal. While still a student, Rachmaninov was very popular among the Moscow public. He has already created his “First Piano Concerto”, as well as some other romances and plays. And his “Prelude in C sharp minor” became a very popular composition. Great P.I. Tchaikovsky drew attention to Sergei Rachmaninov’s graduation work - the opera “Oleko”, which he wrote under the impression of the poem by A.S. Pushkin "Gypsies". Pyotr Ilyich achieved its production in Bolshoi Theater, tried to help with the inclusion of this work in the theater’s repertoire, but unexpectedly died.

From the age of twenty, Rachmaninov taught at several institutes and gave private lessons. At the invitation of a famous philanthropist, theater and musical figure Savva Mamontov, at the age of 24, the composer became the second conductor of the Moscow Russian Private Opera. There he became friends with F.I. Chaliapin.

Rachmaninov's career was interrupted on March 15, 1897 due to the non-acceptance of his innovative First Symphony by the St. Petersburg public. Reviews of this work were truly devastating. But the composer’s biggest disappointment was the negative review left by N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, whose opinion Rachmaninov greatly valued. After this, he fell into a prolonged depression, from which he managed to get out of it with the help of the hypnotist N.V. Dalia.

In 1901, Rachmaninov completed work on the Second Piano Concerto. And from this moment his active creative activity as a composer and pianist began. Unique style Rachmaninov combined Russian church chants, romanticism and impressionism. He considered melody to be the main leading principle in music. This found its greatest expression in the author’s favorite work, the poem “Bells,” which he wrote for orchestra, choir and soloists.

At the end of 1917, Rachmaninov and his family left Russia, worked in Europe, and then went to America. The composer had a hard time with the break with his homeland. During the Great Patriotic War he gave charity concerts, the proceeds of which he sent to the Red Army Fund.

Stravinsky's music is distinguished by its stylistic diversity. At the very beginning of his creative activity, it was based on Russian musical traditions. And then in the works one can hear the influence of neoclassicism, characteristic of the music of France of that period and dodecaphony.

Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), in 1882. The father of the future composer Fyodor Ignatievich is a famous opera singer, one of the soloists Mariinsky Theater. His mother was pianist and singer Anna Kirillovna Kholodovskaya. From the age of nine, teachers taught him piano lessons. After completing the gymnasium, he, at the request of his parents, enters Faculty of Law university. For two years, from 1904 to 1906, he took lessons from N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, under whose guidance he wrote his first works - a scherzo, a piano sonata, and the suite “Faun and Shepherdess”. Sergei Diaghilev highly appreciated the composer's talent and offered him cooperation. The result of the joint work was three ballets (staged by S. Diaghilev) - “The Firebird”, “Petrushka”, “The Rite of Spring”.

Shortly before the First World War, the composer left for Switzerland, then to France. A new period begins in his work. He's studying musical styles XVIII century, writes the opera “Oedipus Rex”, music for the ballet “Apollo Musagete”. His author's handwriting changed several times over time. The composer lived in the USA for many years. His last famous work"Requiem". A special feature of the composer Stravinsky is the ability to constantly change styles, genres and musical directions.

Composer Prokofiev was born in 1891 in a small village in the Ekaterinoslav province. The world of music was opened to him by his mother, a good pianist who often performed works by Chopin and Beethoven. She became a real musical mentor for her son and, in addition, taught him German and French.

At the beginning of 1900, young Prokofiev managed to attend the ballet “The Sleeping Beauty” and listen to the operas “Faust” and “Prince Igor”. The impression received from the performances of Moscow theaters was expressed in his own creativity. He writes the opera "The Giant" and then the overture to "Desert Shores". The parents soon realize that they cannot continue teaching their son music. Soon the aspiring composer, at the age of eleven, was introduced to the famous Russian composer and teacher S.I. Taneyev, who personally asked R.M. Gliera to do with Sergei musical composition. S. Prokofiev passed the entrance exams to the St. Petersburg Conservatory at the age of 13. At the beginning of his career, the composer toured and performed a lot. However, his work caused misunderstanding among the public. This was due to the features of the works, which were expressed in the following:

• modernist style;
• destruction of established musical canons;
• extravagance and ingenuity of compositional techniques

In 1918, S. Prokofiev left and returned only in 1936. Already in the USSR, he wrote music for films, operas, and ballets. But after he was accused, along with a number of other composers, of “formalism”, he practically moved to live in the country, but continued to write musical works. His opera “War and Peace”, ballets “Romeo and Juliet”, “Cinderella” have become the property of world culture.

Russian composers of the 20th century, who lived at the turn of the century, not only preserved the traditions of the previous generation of creative intelligentsia, but also created their own unique art, for which the works of P.I. Tchaikovsky, M.I. Glinka, N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov.

TEXT: Oleg Sobolev

AS IN ANY OTHER AREAS OF CLASSICAL ART Western world, in the history of academic music there are countless forgotten women who deserve to be told about themselves. Especially in the history of composing art. Even now, when the number of notable women composers is growing every year, the seasonal schedules of the most famous orchestras and concert programs the most famous performers Works written by women are rarely included.

When the work of a female composer does become the object of audience or journalistic attention, the news about this is necessarily accompanied by some sad statistics. Here's a recent example: This season the Metropolitan Opera presented Kaija Saariaho's brilliant Love from Afar - as it turned out, the first opera written by a woman to be shown at this theater since 1903. It's a consolation that Saariaho's works - like, for example, the music of Sofia Gubaidulina or Julia Wolf - are performed quite often even without such informational reasons.

Selecting a few little-known musical heroines from a large list of female names is a difficult task. The seven women we will talk about now have one thing in common - they, to one degree or another, did not fit into the world around them. Some solely because of their own behavior, which destroyed cultural foundations, and some - through their music, for which it is impossible to find an analogue.

Louise Farranc

Born Jeanne-Louise Dumont, she became famous in the world of European music in the 1830s and 1840s as a pianist. Moreover, the girl’s performing reputation was so high that in 1842 Farranc was appointed professor of piano at the Paris Conservatory. She held this post for the next thirty years and, despite her teaching workload, managed to prove herself as a composer. However, rather than “managed to manifest”, but “could not help but manifest.” Farranc came from a famous dynasty of sculptors and grew up among the best people Parisian art, so the act of creative self-expression was extremely natural for her.

Having published about fifty works during her lifetime, mostly instrumental, Madame Professor received enthusiastic reviews of her music from Berlioz and Liszt, but in her homeland Farranc was perceived as an overly un-French composer. In France, every first budding author wrote multi-hour operas, and the laconic and inspired by the music of the classical era, the works of the Parisian really went against the fashion of the time. In vain: her best works - like the Third Symphony in G minor - to put it mildly, are not lost against the background of mastodons of that time like Mendelssohn or Schumann. And Brahms, with his attempts to translate classicism into the language of the romantic era, was ten or even twenty years ahead of Farrank.

Dora Pejacevic

Representative of one of the most famous Balkan noble families, the granddaughter of one of the bans (read - governors) of Croatia and the daughter of another, Dora Pejacevic spent her childhood and youth exactly as the world pop culture usually likes to depict the life of young aristocrats carefully protected by their families. The girl grew up under the strict supervision of English governesses, had almost no contact with her peers and, in general, was raised by her parents with an eye to a further successful marriage for the family rather than a happy childhood.

But something went wrong: Dora, as a teenager, became passionate about the ideas of socialism, began to constantly conflict with her family and, as a result, at more than twenty years old, she found herself separated from the rest of the Pejacevics for the rest of her life. This, however, only benefited her other hobby: at the dawn of the First World War, the rebellious noblewoman established herself as the most significant figure in Croatian music.

Dora's works, equally inspired by Brahms, Schumann and Strauss, sounded extremely naive by the standards of the world around her - let's say, at the time of the premiere of her old-fashioned piano concert in Berlin and Paris, they were already listening to Pierrot Lunaire and The Rite of Spring. But if we abstract from the historical context and listen to Pejacevic’s music as a sincere declaration of love for German romantics, then you can easily notice its expressive melodicism, high-level orchestration and careful structural work.

Amy Beach

Most famous episode Amy's biographies The scourge can be retold like this. In 1885, when she was 18 years old, Amy's parents married her to a 42-year-old surgeon from Boston. The girl was already a piano virtuoso and hoped to continue her music studies and performing career, but her husband decided otherwise. Dr. Henry Harris Audrey Beach, concerned about the status of his family and guided by the then ideas about the role of women in secular New England society, forbade his wife to study music and limited her performances as a pianist to one concert a year.

For Amy, who dreamed of concert halls and sold-out recitals, it turned out to be tantamount to tragedy. But, as often happens, tragedy gave way to triumph: Beach, although she sacrificed her performing career, began to devote herself more and more to composing and is now clearly identified by most researchers as the best American composer of the late romantic era. Her two main works - the Gaelic Symphony published in 1896 and the piano concerto that followed three years later - are truly beautiful, even if by the standards of those years they are completely devoid of originality. The most important thing is that in Beach’s music, as one might expect, there is absolutely no place for provincialism and parochialism.

Ruth Crawford Seeger

In circles of serious fans, researchers and simply lovers of American folk music, Ruth Crawford Seeger is much better known than in the world of academic music. Why? There are two key reasons: first, she was the wife of musicologist Charles Seeger, and therefore the ancestor of the Seeger clan, a family of musicians and singers who did more to popularize American folk than anyone else. Secondly, she recent years For ten years of her life she worked closely on cataloging and arranging songs recorded during numerous trips by John and Alan Lomax, the largest American folklorists and collectors of folk music.

Surprisingly, right up to the start life together Both Ruth and Charles Seeger were composers of an extremely modernist bent, to whose music the word “folklore” could be applied with great difficulty. In particular, the works of Ruth Crawford of the early 30s can only be compared with the works of Anton Webern - and even then only in terms of skillfully constructed dramaturgy and laconically concentrated musical material. But if in Webern traditions shine through every note - no matter whether Austrian or Renaissance music - then Seeger’s works exist as if outside tradition, outside the past and outside the future, outside America and outside the rest of the world. Why is a composer with such an individual style still not included in the canonical modernist repertoire? Mystery.

Lily Boulanger

It would seem what kind of music could be composed at the beginning of the last century by an eternally ill, deeply religious and pathologically modest Frenchwoman from high society? That's right - one that could serve as a good soundtrack for Judgment Day. Best essays Lily Boulanger are written on religious texts such as psalms or Buddhist prayers, and are most often performed as if by an incorrectly regulated choir under a ragged, tuneless and loud musical accompaniment. You can’t find an analogue for this music right away - yes, it is partly similar to Stravinsky’s early works and to the especially fiery works of Honegger, but neither one nor the other reached such depths of despair and did not go into such extreme fatalism. When a friend of the Boulanger family, composer Gabriel Fauré, discovered that three-year-old Lily absolute pitch, parents and older sister could hardly imagine that this gift would be embodied in something so unangelic.

By the way, about my sister. Nadia Boulanger turned out to be a much more significant figure in the history of music. For almost half a century - from the 20s to the 60s - Nadya was considered one of the best music teachers on the planet. Having very specific views both on music that was new at that time and on music that was literally classical, tough, uncompromising and exhausting her students with the most difficult tasks, Nadya, even for her ideological opponents, remained an example of musical intelligence of unprecedented memory and power. Perhaps she could have become as significant a composer as she turned out to be a teacher. In any case, she started out as a composer - but, by her own admission, after Lily’s death, something broke inside Nadya. Having lived for 92 years, the older sister never reached the heights of the few works of the younger one, who died from Crohn’s disease at the age of 24.

Elizabeth Maconkey

Ralph Vaughan Williams, the largest British composer last century, was a passionate advocate of national musical traditions. So, he enthusiastically recycled folk songs, wrote suspiciously similar Anglican hymns choral works and with varying degrees of success rethought creativity English composers Renaissance. He also taught composition at London's Royal College of Music, where his favorite student in the 1920s was a young Irish girl named Elizabeth Maconkey. Decades later, she will tell you that it was Vaughan Williams, even though he was a traditionalist, who advised her to never listen to anyone and to focus only on her interests, tastes and thoughts when composing music.

The advice turned out to be decisive for Makonka. Her music has always remained untouched by both the global trends of the academic avant-garde and the eternal English-Celtic love for rural folklore. It was during her student years that she discovered Béla Bartók (a composer, by the way, who also worked outside of any obvious trends), Makonki in her compositions naturally drew on the mature music of the great Hungarian, but at the same time consistently developed her own style, much more intimate and introspective. Clear examples of the originality and evolution of Makonka's composer's imagination are her thirteen string quartets, written from 1933 to 1984 and together forming a cycle of quartet literature, in no way inferior to those of Shostakovich or Bartok.

Vitezslava Kapralova

A few years before the First World War, the inconspicuous Czech composer and concert pianist Vaclav Kapral founded a private music school for beginner pianists. The school continued to exist after the war, soon earning a reputation as almost the best in the country. The flow of people wanting to study, and to study specifically from the Corporal himself, even briefly made the composer think about stopping all his other activities in favor of teaching.

Fortunately, his daughter Vitezslava, who at that time had not yet celebrated her tenth birthday, suddenly began to demonstrate extraordinary musical abilities. The girl played the piano better than many adult professionals, memorized the entire classical song repertoire and even began writing short plays. The corporal developed a plan, surprising in its degree of arrogance, stupidity and commercialism: to raise from Vitezslava a real monster of music, capable of replacing him as the main teacher of the family school.

Of course, nothing of the sort happened. The ambitious Vitezslava, who wanted to become a composer and conductor, at the age of fifteen entered two relevant faculties at once at the local conservatory. For a woman to want to conduct - this was never seen in the Czech Republic in the 30s before Kapralova. And to conduct and compose at the same time was generally unthinkable. It was composing music that the newly enrolled student first of all began - and of such quality, such stylistic diversity and in such volumes that there was really no one to compare with.