March Read: Female Pioneers in Music

A musical timeline of female composers both past and present, from Hildegard von Bingen and Clara Schumann to Meredith Monk, Kaija Saariaho, and Caroline Shaw.

Hildegard von Bingen (1098 - 1179)

Hildegard von Bingen was a German Benedictine polymath of the High Middle Ages - an abbess, writer, philosopher, Christian mystic, and composer. One of the best known composers of sacred monophony (characterized by its simplicity of texture and chant-like style), Hildegard has an impressive surviving repertoire of over seventy musical compositions, each with its own poetic text. She is one of the few composers known to have written both music and text for her own compositions.

Fanny Mendelssohn (1805 - 1847)

Fanny Mendelssohn was a German composer and pianist of the early Romantic era. The older sister of Felix Mendelssohn, a number of her works were published under her brother’s name due to her family’s reservations and social conventions of the time. Fanny’s compositions include four cantatas, more than 125 pieces for solo piano, and over 50 lieder, most of which were unpublished in her lifetime. Her Easter Sonata was mistakenly attributed to her brother, before recent studies corrected her authorship; musical analysis points to Fanny’s greater harmonic experimentation and exploration in her music, as compared to that of her brother.

Clara Schumann (1819 - 1896)

Clara Schumann was one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era. A wunderkind, she began touring at age 11, and was one of the first pianists to perform from memory. At age 13 she started writing her piano concerto, of which Felix Mendelssohn conducted the premiere. Clara married composer Robert Schumann, together with whom she had eight children. Through touring and performing, Clara earned most of the money in the Schumann household, which was extremely unusual for the time. Throughout her performance career, she premiered many works by her husband and by their friend and contemporary Johannes Brahms. After her husband’s early death, Clara continued her concert tours in Europe for decades, and became a distinguished educator and editor of her late husband’s works.

Amy Beach (1867 - 1944)

Amy Beach was an American composer and pianist. Her “Gaelic” Symphony was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman, and was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896. Instead of being sent to Europe to study music, which was most common for male composers at the time, she took lessons with local tutors and read all the books she could find about composition techniques and music history.

Meredith Monk (1942 - Present)

Meredith Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker and choreographer. Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theater, and dance. She is primarily known for her vocal innovations, including a wide range of extended techniques. Her music has been used in major films, such as The Big Lebowski. She was awarded the National Medal of Arts by president Barack Obama in 2015.

Kaija Saariaho (1952 - Present)

Kaija Saariaho is a Finnish composer currently based in Paris. After studying composition in Finland and Germany, her research at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) in Paris marked a turning point in her music. Her characteristically rich, polyphonic textures are often created by combining live music and electronics. In 2016, the Metropolitan Opera in New York gave its first performance of Saariaho’s opera L’Amour de loin, the second opera by a female composer ever to be presented by the company - the first being performed more than a century earlier, in 1903.

Du Yun (1977 - Present)

Du Yun is a Chinese born composer, multi instrumentalist, vocalist and performance artist. She was the first Asian woman to win the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for music, with her opera Angel’s Bone. A 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, her works include compositions for solo instruments, electroacoustic music, chamber music, orchestral works, opera, indie pop, punk, theatre, oral tradition music, sound installations, and performance art pieces. She has been Professor of Composition at Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University since 2017.

Caroline Shaw (1982 - Present)

Caroline Shaw is an American violinist, singer, composer and producer. She became the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2013, for her a cappella piece Partita for 8 Voices. She is currently an adjunct faculty member at New York University, and a creative associate at The Juilliard School. Her composition and vocal skills gained attention worldwide with her collaboration with Richard Reed Parry of the band Arcade Fire. She was invited by Kanye West to work on a project in which she remixed his song “Say You Will”. She has appeared on TV shows such as Mozart in the Jungle, and wrote the score for the 2018 film Madeline’s Madeline.