Quartet

Starred review from July 31, 2023
Music historian Broad’s rich and revealing debut resurrects the careers and lives of four trailblazing 20th-century female British composers who “redefined who musicians could be and what they could do.” Exploring her subjects’ musical genius and the obstacles they faced in a nearly all-male music world, Broad spotlights operatic composer Edith Smyth (1858–1944), the “first to really force musical institutions to confront their gender problem” by relentlessly pushing for performances of her work; violist Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979), whose “ear for modern harmony” helped her to create evocative modernist compositions and become among the first women hired by a professional orchestra; pianist Dorothy Howell (1898–1982), who dreamed up “inventive, imaginative” compositions and melodious Catholic church music ; and Doreen Carwithen (1922–2003), one of the first prominent British female film composers, though she later sidelined her musical ambitions to promote the career of her longtime lover and former composition instructor, William Alwyn. Mixing extensive research with keen renderings of the artists’ personalities (“Edith wove a web of legends around herself all her life—without a little self-mythologizing she might never have achieved the things she did”), Broad’s evocative history makes abundantly clear that “music is not and has never been exclusively a man’s world.” Fans of feminist histories and music lovers alike will revel in this scrupulously detailed outing.

September 1, 2023

Award-winning music writer/historian/debut author Broad (music history, Univ. of Oxford) presents this group biography that considers four musical women of the early 20th century as pioneers, although there were few actual firsts among them. Their predecessors had been ignored and quietly erased by men composers and critics. Their intimate connections, networks, loves, and life choices create a fascinating picture of what it meant to be a woman artist in Britain during the interwar and post--World War II period. Ethel Smyth, Doreen Carwithen, Rebecca Clarke, and Dorothy Howell wrote and performed operas, symphonies, and shorter pieces. Carwithen became one of the first women to be known as a film composer. While these women faced obstacles and disadvantages, their class and race also gave them opportunities to build musical careers and develop networks of friends and patrons. This work is also a social history of 20th-century Britain. VERDICT A beautifully written examination of complicated, intertwined lives during a period of intense social change. Collections of social history, music, and women's biographies will benefit.--Edwin Burgess

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 15, 2023
A captivating group biography of four impressive British women composers. In her first book, a vibrant narrative, music historian Broad redefines whom musicians could be and what they could do. Each of her subjects wrote "exquisite, breathtaking music" and achieved "extraordinary" things. Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) is first. A rebellious, eccentric suffragette--she wrote the anthem "The March of the Women" in 1910--she is the "grande dame" of the book. Openly queer, she was a trailblazer for female conductors and composers. "When composing under the immediate influence of a muse," writes Broad, "Ethel could write music that was both bold and intimate, sprightly and humorous, and always with a driving energy that stunned her listeners." Her vast body of work would inspire others, including Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979). A viola virtuoso, she spent much of her life in America, eventually settling there. Unlike Smyth's initial pieces, Clarke's first musical compositions were far more accepted and celebrated. In 1913, she was "one of only six women to play in the string section of the Queen's Hall Orchestra--the first women in England to be employed in a professional orchestra." Conservative and quiet, Dorothy Gertrude Howell (1898-1982) bonded with Smyth, and they "became threads in the rich tapestry of each other's lives." The "crunchy chords" in her early pieces, Broad writes, would become the "searing, intense, uncomfortable discords that make her later works so powerful." Her 1919 symphonic poem, Lamia, was a huge success. Finally, Doreen Carwithen (1922-2003) lived a complex life in the shadows. A star at the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied piano and composition, she received a scholarship to score films and went on to become one of the first women to have a career as a film composer. Her affair and later marriage to the popular, married composer William Alwyn resulted in what Broad calls the "familiar" story: a woman's work subsumed by the man's. A stellar work of social and music history sprinkled with emotional dashes of love, sex, and politics.

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