Leah Broad, "Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World" (Faber & Faber, 2023)
This is a story of four composers whose careers,\xa0lives and\xa0loves as women working in 20th century Britain have since been\xa0largely forgotten.\nDr Leah Broad\u2019s 2023 debut\xa0Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World\xa0(Faber & Faber, 2023), reveals the life and music of some of Britain\u2019s most exciting 20th-century composers. A musicologist who gravitates towards figures at the margins of Western Art Music, the four subjects of Broad\u2019s biography (Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Doreen Carwithen and Dorothy Howell) experience success, even fame, before being pushed to the periphery. They compose operas, film music, songs and sonatas, encounter the Second Viennese School and fashion early freelance instrumental careers. Broad\u2019s narrative begins in 1858 with the birth of Ethel Smyth. She charts two world wars, the development of post-war British institutions such as the BBC and the Arts Council of Great Britain, and brings us all the way to Doreen Carwithen\u2019s death in 2003. In this time, the four composers take on the diverse politics of suffragette militancy, 60\u2019s American liberalism and a staunch British-Catholic conservatism. Through grouping such diverse personalities, Broad refuses the tendency to isolate women as historical anomalies or singular figures. Her fluent prose expertly interweaves their lives, whilst revealing a true diversity of music, thought and experience.\nJoseph\xa0Edwards is a writer and violinist based in London. His current research\xa0looks at the importance of\xa0sound in chronic illness experience. Contact him via email at\xa0joseph8edwards@gmail.com or through Twitter @joseph8edwards.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies