The number of members attending Adrian’s Lecture Recital on 28th June on Women Organ Composers attested to their preference for the summer date. The choice of subject may well have been another factor, like dipping into a deep untapped well of music.
The chosen composers ranged from the London-based noblewoman Elisabetta de Gambarini and the Pieta-educated Anna Bon in the 18th century to the high-heeled Parisienne Jeanne Demessieux whose elegance at the console was matched by her formidable technical prowess.
Some of the women mentioned made a name for themselves away from the organ, e.g. Clara Schumann who has now emerged from her husband’s shadow with works for orchestra and piano and with the fine organ Prelude and Fugue which was performed.
Cecile Chaminade, Nadia Boulanger, Ethel Smyth, Amy Beach and Florence Price are similarly best known for orchestral works but wrote too for organ, Chaminade’s Prelude in D minor being requested by Queen Victoria for her own funeral.
Two English women, Elizabeth Stirling and Elizabeth Mounsey, are remembered primarily as Organists and held posts at London churches in the 19th century.
The range and accomplishment of these composers testifies to their skill, though not to the difficulties they faced, as women, in being heard at all. It is sad to think how much more music has gone unheard, or even unwritten, because of the prevailing attitudes of the times.