From Boulanger to Pakhmutova. Women composers. Great women musicians of the 20th century Famous women composers

October 1 was celebrated as International Music Day. Of course, this is primarily a celebration of composers. But for some reason, people rarely ask the question - why are there so few female composers? You can conduct an experiment and survey, say, 100 people on the topic “who is your favorite composer.” And probably all 100 respondents will name a male writer. For example, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Rachmaninov, Strauss, Beethoven or Prokofiev... And not a single woman will be on this list.

But over the past two centuries there were (and are) composers representing the fair sex, whose names thundered in Europe or are known now.

And today, we can talk about the most prominent female composers.

Representatives of the fair sex came seriously into music only at the beginning of the 20th century. Of course, one can say about the heroines of the 19th century - Louise Farranc or Joanna Kinkel. But they were not very well known to the wider musical community.

Therefore, we can start, perhaps, with the Frenchwoman Lily Boulanger. Unfortunately, few people remember her now, but at the beginning of the 20th century, Lily’s name thundered throughout Europe. She was, to put it bluntly modern language, is super popular, although God gave her very few years.

Lily grew up in a musical family, her father was a composer, and also served as a vocal teacher at the Paris Conservatory. Interestingly, her mother - singer Raisa Myshetskaya - was born in St. Petersburg.

Lily learned to read music at the age of six - then she didn’t even know letters and couldn’t read. Of her early compositions, only the E major waltz has survived. But in 1909 she entered the Paris Conservatory, and already in 1913 she became the first woman to receive the Grand Prix de Rome for the cantata “Faust and Helena”. In 1914, as a laureate of the Rome Prize, she spent four months in " eternal city" However, her trip was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. She died untimely from tuberculosis in March 1915, when she was not yet 25 years old... She was buried in the Montmartre cemetery, but very few know where her grave is.

In the 20th century, the Englishwoman Ruth Gyps was extremely popular. Since childhood, she has performed as a pianist. However, already at the age of eight she performed her first original composition. Why not Mozart in a skirt? In 1936 she entered the Royal College of Music, where she studied piano, oboe and composition, and after graduation she again performed as a pianist and oboist. Then Ruth suffered a serious arm injury and concentrated on writing own compositions and management of musical groups. So, in 1953, Gips founded and led the chamber wind ensemble “Portia Wind Ensemble”. The peculiarity of this team was that it consisted exclusively of female musicians. In 1955, under the leadership of Gyps, the London Repertory Orchestra was created, consisting mainly of young musicians, and in 1961 the Chanticleer Orchestra was created. As for Jips's compositions, she wrote five symphonies. Experts especially appreciate the Second Symphony, where, according to professionals, Ruth outdid herself. Ruth Gips died in 1999 at the age of 78.

Sofia Gubaidulina is called a bright star of classical music. She entered the Conservatory in 1954 and successfully completed not only her studies, but also her postgraduate studies. As Gubaidullina herself says, what was important for her then was the parting word spoken by Dmitry Shostakovich: “I wish you to follow your ‘wrong’ path.”

Gubaidulina not only created “serious” music, she also wrote compositions for 25 films, including “Mowgli” and “Scarecrow”. But in 1979, at the VI Congress of Composers, her music was criticized in a report by Tikhon Khrennikov. In general, Sofia was blacklisted domestic composers. In 1991, Gubaidulina received a German scholarship, and since 1992 she has lived near Hamburg, where she creates her works. And he comes to Russia quite rarely.

Well, and, of course, we can’t help but say about Alexandra Pakhmutova. She is perhaps the most successful female composer last decades. From early childhood she was distinguished by exceptional musical talent. And she wrote her first melodies when she was only three years old. Moreover, at the age of four, little Sasha composed the play “The Roosters are Crowing.”

It is not surprising that she was later accepted into the Central Music School at the Moscow State Conservatory without any problems. By the way, she graduated from the Conservatory in 1953, and then successfully completed her graduate studies. And even while studying, she wrote music, and became one of the most popular and in demand composers of the USSR.

Pakhmutova's main hobby is songs. The songs, the music for which Alexandra Nikolaevna wrote, were and are performed by many outstanding Soviet and Russian pop artists: Sergei Lemeshev and Lyudmila Zykina, Muslim Magomaev and Tamara Sinyavskaya, Anna German and Alexander Gradsky, Joseph Kobzon and Valentina Tolkunova, Lev Leshchenko and Maya Kristalinskaya, Eduard Khil and Sofia Rotaru, Valery Leontyev and Lyudmila Senchina.

In general, despite the fact that there are fewer women composers than men, they also left a bright mark on world music.

Indeed, in addition to all those listed above, there were and are such talents as Barbara Strozzi, Rebecca Saunders, Malvina Reynolds, Adriana Helzki and Karen Tanaka, and the contribution of the fair half of humanity to the world musical heritage is also very great.

In the era of the formation of opera vocals, conditions for female singers were not very favorable. However, this did not significantly slow down the 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, and 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.

“A man would rather give birth to a child than a woman write good music", he once said German composer Johannes Brahms. A century and a half later, women composers are gathering the world's largest concert halls, writing music for films and performing important social initiatives.

1. Cassia of Constantinople

The Greek nun Cassia was born into a wealthy Constantinople family in 804 or 805. Today she is known not only as the founder of a convent in Constantinople, but also as one of the first female hymnographers and composers.

Cassia was very beautiful and, according to some sources, in 821 she even took part in the bride parade for Emperor Theophilus. The girl was not destined to become the emperor's wife, and soon Cassia became a nun to spend her whole life in the monastery she founded. There, Cassia composed church hymns and canons, and an analysis of her works, which contain references to the works of ancient authors, allows us to conclude that the girl had a good secular education.

Cassia of Constantinople is one of the first composers whose works can be performed by modern musicians.

2. Hildegard of Bingen

The German nun Hildegard of Bingen was an extraordinary person not only when it came to writing music - she also worked on works on natural history and medicine, wrote mystical books of visions, as well as spiritual poems.

Hildegard was born at the end of the 11th century and was the tenth child in a noble family. From the age of eight, the girl was raised by a nun, and at 14 she began living in a monastery, where she studied art and liturgics.

The girl began composing music based on her own poems as a child, and as an adult she collected her works in a collection called “Harmonic Symphony of Heavenly Revelations.” The collection includes chants, combined into several parts on liturgical themes.

3. Barbara Strozzi

The Italian composer Barbara Strozzi, who was later called "the most virtuoso", was illegitimate daughter poet Giulio Strozzi, who later adopted her. Barbara herself had four illegitimate children from different men. The girl was born in 1619 in Venice and studied with the composer Francesco Cavalli.

Strozzi wrote cantatas, ariettas, madrigals, and her father Giulio wrote the texts for her daughter’s works. Barbara became the first composer to release her works not in collections, but one at a time. Barbara Strozzi's music is still performed and reissued today.

4. Clara Schumann

Nee Clara Wieck was born in 1819 in Leipzig, in the family of Friedrich Wieck, a well-known piano teacher in the city and country. WITH early age the girl learned to play the piano from her father, and already at the age of 10 she began performing successfully in public.

Together with her father, Clara went on a tour of Germany, then gave several concerts in Paris. Around this time, young Clara began to write music - her first works were published in 1829. At the same time, young Robert Schumann became a student of Friedrich Wieck, whose admiration for the teacher’s talented daughter grew into love.

In 1940, Clara and Robert got married. Since then, the girl began to perform music written by her husband, often she was the first to present new works by Robert Schumann to the public. Also, the composer Johannes Brahms, a close friend of the family, trusted Clara with the debut performance of his works.

Clara Schumann's own compositions were distinguished by their modernity and were considered one of the best examples romantic school. Robert Schumann also highly valued his wife’s works, but he insisted that his wife concentrate on family life and their eight children.
After the death of Robert Schumann, Clara continued to perform his works, and interest in her own work flared up with renewed vigor in 1970, when recordings of Clara’s compositions first appeared

5. Amy Beach

American Amy Marcy Cheney Beach - the only woman in the so-called “Boston Six” of composers, which, in addition to her, included musicians John Knowles Payne, Arthur Foote, George Chadwick, Edward MacDowell and Horatio Parker. It is believed that the composers of the “six” had decisive influence on the formation of American academic music.

Amy was born on September 5, 1867 into a wealthy New Hampshire family. WITH early years the girl studied music under the guidance of her mother, and after the family moved to Boston, she began to study the art of composition. First solo concert Amy Beach took place in 1883 and was a great success. Two years later, the girl got married and, at the insistence of her husband, practically stopped performing, concentrating on writing music.

She later performed her own works on tour in Europe and America, and today Amy Beach is considered the first woman who managed to make a successful career in high musical art.

6. Valentina Serova

The first Russian female composer, née Valentina Semyonovna Bergman, was born in 1846 in Moscow. The girl failed to graduate from the St. Petersburg Conservatory due to a conflict with the director, after which Valentina began taking lessons from music critic and composer Alexander Serov.

In 1863, Valentina and Alexander got married, and two years later the couple had a son, the future artist Valentin Serov. In 1867, the Serovs began publishing the magazine “Music and Theater”. The couple maintained friendly relations with Ivan Turgenev and Polina Viardot, Leo Tolstoy, Ilya Repin.

Valentina Serova was quite sensitive to her husband’s work, and after his death she published four volumes of articles about her husband, and also completed his opera “Enemy Power.”

Serova is the author of the operas “Uriel Acosta”, “Maria D'Orval”, “Miroed”, “Ilya Muromets”. In addition to music, she also wrote articles about the art of composition, published memoirs about meetings with Leo Tolstoy and memories of her husband and son.

7. Sofia Gubaidulina

Today, the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina lives and works in Germany, but in her native Tatarstan are held annually music competitions and festivals dedicated to the illustrious native of the republic.

Sofia Gubaidulina was born in the city of Chistopol in 1931. As a girl, she graduated from the Kazan music gymnasium, and then entered the Kazan Conservatory, where she studied composition. Having moved to Moscow, Gubaidulina continued her studies at the Moscow Conservatory, and after graduating she received an important parting word for herself from the composer Dmitry Shostakovich: “I wish you to follow your “wrong” path.”

Together with Alfred Schnittke and Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina was one of the trinity of Moscow avant-garde composers. Gubaidulina worked a lot for cinema and wrote music for such films as “Vertical”, “Man and His Bird”, “Mowgli”, “Scarecrow”.

In 1991, Sofia Gubaidulina received a German scholarship and has since lived in Germany, regularly coming to Russia for concerts, festivals and various social initiatives.

"IN Ancient Greece all harpists were men, but now it is a “female” instrument. Times are changing, and Brahms’s words that “a man would rather give birth to a child than a woman write good music” no longer sound serious,” said Sofia Asgatovna in an interview.

INEronica Dudarova, Sofia Gubaidulina, Elena Obraztsova are names known not only in Russia, but also abroad. We remember the great women musicians of the 20th century.

Veronica Dudarova

Veronica Dudarova. Photo: classicalmusicnews.ru

Veronica Dudarova. Photo: south-ossetia.info

Veronica Dudarova was born in Baku in 1916. In 1938 she graduated from the piano department music school at the Leningrad Conservatory and made an unusual decision for that time - to become a conductor. In the USSR at that time there were no women who decided to join the symphony orchestra. Veronica Dudarova became a student of two masters - Leo Ginzburg and Nikolai Anosov.

She made her debut as a conductor at the Central children's theater in 1944. Then she worked in the opera studio of the Moscow Conservatory.

In 1947, Veronica Dudarova became conductor of the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, and in 1960 she took over the post of chief conductor and artistic director this team. Dudarova’s repertoire gradually included a huge volume of works - from Bach and Mozart to Alfred Schnittke, Mikael Tariverdiev, Sofia Gubaidulina.

In an interview, she spoke more than once about bloody rehearsals, about the fact that sometimes you have to “severely achieve results.” In 1991, Dudarova organized and headed the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia. Her name is included in the Guinness Book of Records: she became the first woman in the world to work with symphony orchestras for more than 50 years.

Festival dedicated to Veronica Dudarova:

Sofia Gubaidulina

Sofia Gubaidulina. Photo: remusik.org

Sofia Gubaidulina. Photo: tatarstan-symphony.com

Composer Sofia (Sania) Gubaidulina was born in 1931 in Chistopol. Her father was a surveyor, her mother a teacher junior classes. Soon after the birth of their daughter, the family moved to Kazan. In 1935, Sofia Gubaidulina began studying music. In 1949, she became a student at the piano department of the Kazan Conservatory. Later, the pianist decided to write music herself and entered the composition department of the Moscow Conservatory - first in the class of Yuri Shaporin, then Nikolai Peiko, and then in graduate school under the direction of Vissarion Shebalin.

Colleagues of Sofia Gubaidulina noted that already in her first essays she addressed religious images. This is especially noticeable in the scores of the 1970s and 80s: “De profundis” for accordion, violin concerto “Offertorium” (“Sacrifice”), “Seven Words” for cello, accordion and strings. This was also evident in his later works - “The Passion According to John”, “Easter According to John”, “Simple Prayer”.

“My goal has always been to hear the sound of the world, the sound of my own soul and study their collision, contrast or, conversely, similarity. And the longer I walk, the clearer it becomes to me that all this time I have been searching for the sound that would correspond to the truth of my life.”

Sofia Gubaidulina

In the late 1980s, Sofia Gubaidulina became a worldwide famous composer. Since 1991 she has lived in Germany, but often comes to Russia. Today at different countries festivals dedicated to her are held, the best cooperate with her musical groups and soloists.

Documentary film about Sofia Gubaidulina:

Elena Obraztsova

Elena Obraztsova. Photo: classicalmusicnews.ru

Elena Obraztsova was born in 1939 in Leningrad. When the time came to enter the university, the girl chose the vocal department of the Leningrad Conservatory, although her father insisted that her daughter study radio engineering. In 1962, student Obraztsova won the All-Union Glinka Vocal Competition. Soon the young singer made her debut in Bolshoi Theater— her first role was Marina Mnishek in “Boris Godunov” by Modest Mussorgsky.

The singer’s Russian repertoire also includes Marfa from the opera “Khovanshchina” by Mussorgsky, Lyubasha from “ The Tsar's Bride» Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Helen Bezukhova from “War and Peace” by Sergei Prokofiev. Elena Obraztsova performed the role of the Countess in Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades” throughout musical career. The singer said: “I can sing it for up to a hundred years, as long as my voice lasts. And it grows and acquires new colors".

One of the most famous roles From the foreign repertoire, Obraztsova became Carmen in Bizet’s opera. Not only Soviet, but also Spanish listeners recognized her as the best performer of this role.
Obraztsova’s partners were Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Mirella Freni. An important event The singer's life was marked by a meeting with composer Georgy Sviridov: he dedicated several vocal compositions to her.

“Life Line” program with Elena Obraztsova:

Eliso Virsaladze

Eliso Virsaladze. Photo: archive.li

Eliso Virsaladze. Photo: riavrn.ru

Eliso Virsaladze was born in Tbilisi in 1942. Her teacher at school and the conservatory was her grandmother, the famous Georgian pianist Anastasia Virsaladze. In 1962, Eliso received third prize at the II International Tchaikovsky Competition. In 1966, after graduating from the Tbilisi Conservatory, she entered graduate school at the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Yakov Zak.

Since 1967, Eliso Virsaladze has taught at the Moscow Conservatory. Among the graduates of her class are laureates of international competitions Boris Berezovsky, Alexey Volodin, Dmitry Kaprin.

In the pianist's repertoire, a special place is occupied by works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Prokofiev. She often performs in an ensemble with cellist Natalia Gutman.

"This is an artist large scale"maybe the strongest female pianist right now", - this is what Svyatoslav Richter said about Virsaladze.

Today Eliso Virsaladze performs a lot with solo and chamber programs, and often plays with orchestras. She speaks of concerts as a sacrament: “You go on stage and belong to the composer you are performing and the audience you are playing for.”.

Program “Collected Performances” and Eliso Virsaladze’s concert:

Natalia Gutman

Natalia Gutman. Photo: classicalmusicnews.ru

The future cellist was born in Kazan in 1942, and received her first cello lessons from her stepfather, Roman Sapozhnikov. Then she studied at Central music school at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1964, Natalia graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Galina Kozolupova, and in 1968 she completed graduate school at the Leningrad Conservatory, where her director was Mstislav Rostropovich.

Even during her conservatory years, Natalia became a laureate of several competitions, including II International competition named after Tchaikovsky. In 1967 she began teaching at the Moscow Conservatory.

“If I just move my bow professionally and think about my own things, it will be immediately audible! For me, automatic execution and indifference are a terrible failure!”- she says.

Now Natalia Gutman teaches young musicians in many European cities, organizes major festivals and continues to tour.

Speech at the “December Evenings” at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts:

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WOMEN COMPOSERS

Do not look for women's names in the table of contents of this book, you will not find them. For the reason that all the “best” Western composers are endowed by nature with at least one common property - the presence of a Y chromosome.

The centuries-old tradition of not allowing women to music education and speaking in public. In the Middle Ages, women were prohibited from entertaining listeners by singing and playing the instrument. musical instruments, although in the quiet of the abbeys the nuns formed orchestras and even composed music. The ban on women's public performances was lifted only when castrati could no longer meet the demand for high voices. (Castration of young singers was finally considered reprehensible at the end of the eighteenth century.) Women were able to become famous as opera singers- however, it’s not easy to achieve a serious attitude towards yourself as an artist if everyone around you treats you like a prostitute.

Except opera stage, other paths into music for women were cut off. Throughout the nineteenth century, women were excluded from musical educational establishments, so they could only study at home. But even if a woman managed to receive solid training, putting her skills into practice meant challenging conventions and encountering misunderstandings from others.

It was only in the mid-twentieth century that women appeared in leading orchestras. At the height of World War II, they took the place of men conscripted into the army. Since then, there have been more and more women among musicians, but female conductors still have to prove their worth - even those who were able to break through, like Marin Alsop, who led the Baltimore symphony orchestra, brilliantly demonstrated that women are capable of handling the baton no worse than men.

As a result, and contrary to the spirit of the times, the art of composition continues to be dominated by men. It's not that women composers don't exist. For example, the Englishwoman Elizabeth Maconkey (1907–1994) created wonderful music for poetic works, including the famous poem by Dylan Thomas “And death shall lose its power.” Makonki was considered the best student on the course at Royal music college, but she did not receive the prestigious Mendelssohn scholarship, because, as the college director said: “You’ll get married and never write another note.” Not a single work written by a woman has taken root in the modern repertoire concert halls or opera houses, although, judging by some signs, the situation is changing - women composers are increasingly making their presence known.