Female Composers

For a long time the prejudice has prevailed that women cannot compose, since they allegedly lack the requisite creative talent. It is indeed true that they have been less active in the field of musical composition than their male contemporaries, but reasons for this can be found in the social circumstances of the still recent past. In the late eighteenth andnineteenth centuries, the ages of the Enlightenment and the flowering o f great achievement in music, women were denied the education and encouragement which would have made possible individual accomplishment beyond the limits of domestic music-making. In spite of these hindrances there were highly gifted women who overcame the hurdles and were able to provetheir talent for composition. Of course these belonged to the wealthy m iddle and upper classes, or were women from musical families who were able to receive a thorough training. This selection, comprising 19 women composers from eight countries, cannot claim to be completely rep