Radio 3’s International Women’s Day - Celebrating Women composers

Composer Clara Schumann once said “a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?” 

This year, Radio 3’s International Women’s Day focus on women in music on 8 March looks at inspiring women of the past and present, and forward to the next generation of women composers, conductors and performers. Until we see gender parity at all levels within the world of classical music, we should take every opportunity to inspire women with the conviction that they can achieve anything they set their minds to. International Women’s Day provides us with an opportunity to do that. 

I’ve always wondered what heights Clara Schumann might have scaled had she had the opportunities afforded to her male counterparts. Barbara Strozzi was one of the most important composers of Italian cantatas in the 17th century, and published over 100 vocal works during her lifetime – no mean feat considering the limited opportunities available to women in her day. By exploring her life in Composer of the Week I hope you will all enjoy discovering one of my favourite pieces of music, her cantata Che si può fare. It’s a complaint against the pitiless stars that carry us, inevitably, as the bass repeats, to an imaginary hell - but what a beautiful descent! I find it utterly mesmerising with its descending ground bass.

I am also looking forward to the Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert which comes live from the Royal College of Music’s Women in Music Festival. RCM alumni The Albany Trio, who are committed to bringing new audiences to works by female composers, play pieces by Rebecca Clarke, Judith Weir, and the world premiere of a work they’ve commissioned from Judith Bingham specifically for International Women’s Day, The Orchid and its Hunters.

Part of the challenge of bringing this music to a wider audience is that a lot of it hasn’t been recorded. The BBC's performing groups are all committed to changing that. For International Women’s Day the BBC National Orchestra of Wales has recorded a programme of music by contemporary Welsh composers for Afternoon on 3 showcasing some of the finest orchestral music in recent years, from the heroine’s anguish in Rhian Samuel’s Clytemnestra, based on the Greek Tragedy Agamemnon, to Hilary Tann’s ‘deepest respect’ to the victims of Tiananmen Square in The Open Field, along with broadcast premieres of three new pieces by Welsh composers.

Live in Radio 3 in Concert, the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jessica Cottis and BBC Singers conducted by Grace Rossiter perform several works inspired by natural phenomena. Thea Musgrave's virtuosic Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra, Helios, depicts the circular movements around the world of the ancient Greek sun god, and the BBC Singers and Symphony Orchestra join forces in Judith Weir's delicate piece for orchestra and chorus Moon and Star – an evocation of the vastness of space, with words by 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson.

The BBC Proms Inspire scheme for young composers has spotted the talents of Tansy Davies and Alissa Firsova to name but two, and is an excellent way for young composers to get themselves heard. But there are still more applications from boys than girls, with a worrying drop off from young women in the senior category (17-18 year olds). Do girls think composition isn't for them? A day like this is a way to shout from the rooftops that music is for everyone, and until young women feel empowered to put themselves forward we’re a very long way from parity. The Inspire team have set up a series of workshops for young women composers aged 12-20, led by composer Anna Meredith, musician Jack Ross and percussionist Beth Higham-Edwards, which will culminate in a performance of a piece they’ve created on In Tune – which comes direct from the Royal Festival Hall on the opening day of Southbank Centre’s Women of the World Festival, with Suzy Klein hosting live music from soprano Ruby Hughes and folk star Eliza Carthy.

Suzy will also be joined by Gillian Moore, Southbank Centre's head of classical music, and Jessy McCabe, the teenage student who successfully campaigned for one of Britain's biggest exam boards to include female composers on the A-level music syllabus. Jessy told me that Radio 3’s IWD focus last year gave her the ammunition and confidence: “not to take no for an answer when Edexcel originally replied” claiming that “Given that female composers were not prominent in the Western classical tradition (or others for that matter), there would be very few female composers that could be included.”

Performance poet Hollie McNish has written a book and a series of poems about motherhood. Composer Emily Hall has been commissioned to write a childrens' opera for Hull 2017. Scientist Helen Pearson is an expert on the longest running study of human development. Edwina Attlee is a writer with an interest in launderettes, sleeper trains, fire escapes, greasy spoons, postcards, and the working lives of women. She'll be sharing audio tales from the National Life Stories Archive at the British Library, where women talk about working lives spent on oil rigs, in steel plants, and a host of other places. Ailsa Grant Ferguson has studied Dorothy Leigh's Mother's Blessing, which was the bestselling book by a woman of the 17th century. They join Anne McElvoy on Free Thinking to look at the ways in which every day experiences in the lives of women feed into creativity.

All week The Essay features women telling their own inspirational stories including mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and conductor Alice Farnham. When the composer Nicola LeFanu was growing up it simply didn't occur to her that composition was an unusual thing for a woman to do; it seemed completely natural, surrounded as she was by women who wrote music: her mother, the composer Elizabeth Maconchy, and Maconchy’s friends including Welsh composer Grace Williams and Irish composer Ina Boyle. It was only when Nicola went on to study music herself that she realised how few women had been included in the books which told the history of Western Classical music. Her music and teaching have inspired many young women composers, but she laments the fact that opportunities which might have been available in the Sixties weren’t there in the Eighties. Each generation seems to face different challenges in the pursuit of equality.

If we give it the platform, the music speaks for itself.

Olwen Fisher is a Producer for Radio 3

• International Women's Day is on 8 March find out more about Celebrating Women Composers