Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World

by Leah Broad

The lives, loves, adventures and trailblazing musical careers of four extraordinary women from a stunning debut biographer.

Ethel Smyth (b1858): Famed for her operas, this trailblazing queer Victorian composer was a larger-than-life socialite, intrepid traveller and committed Suffragette.

Rebecca Clarke (b1886): This talented violist and Pre-Raphaelite beauty was one of the first women ever hired by a professional orchestra, later celebrated for her modernist experimentation.

Dorothy Howell (b1898): A prodigy who shot to fame at the 1919 Proms, her reputation as the 'English Strauss' never dented her modesty; on retirement, she tended Elgar's grave alone.

Doreen Carwithen (b1922): One of Britain's first woman film composers who scored Elizabeth II's coronation film, her success hid a 20-year affair with her married composition tutor.

In their time, these women were celebrities. They composed some of the century's most popular music and pioneered creative careers; but today, they are ghostly presences, surviving only as muses and footnotes to male contemporaries like Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten - until now.

Leah Broad's magnificent group biography resurrects these forgotten voices, recounting lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrating their musical masterpieces. Lighting up a panoramic sweep of British history over two World Wars, Quartet revolutionises the canon forever.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, History, Classical Music, Feminism, Historical

568 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 28, 2023

Reviews

[Vera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh I loved this so much! A unique topic explored in fascinating detail (namely women in classical music), told through the lives of four composers. Honestly, can you name more than three women who composed classical music? I certainly couldn't, until now, and I am so glad to have this author shine a spotlight on this little discussed area. Especially enjoyable reading this while listening to the accompanying playlist!

[Mary Lee]

Quartet makes an unapologetic case for the importance of women in music history, and analyses both the obstacles that women faced, and the ways that they found to overcome them and assert their agency in a world where the odds were stacked against their success. But this book does not ‘rewrite’ history. It relates a history that has always been there, waiting to be told.

[Tom Edney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent biography - informative and engaging while also laying the foundation for so much more to be written about the four composers it focuses on.

[Reuben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic ! Wonderfully written, gripping account of four British composers. I'm looking forward to taking in the Spotify playlist, but I think Doreen and Rebecca's music is going to be right up my street.

I was expecting more musical analysis/jargon, but in the end the more biographical writing was very enjoyable. The music and the private lives in equal measure, acknowledging and criticising the sources and truths from the time in equal measure.

This is an astonishing first book by Leah Broad, I look forward to more in the future.

[Dom Carver · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting read! Learnt a lot about a history of women who even my nan’s generation could call contemporaries! I was so happy to learn that Leah Broad went to school in Sevenoaks, so feels awesome to be promoting a local author and musicologist!

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is it with publishers these days? they seem to think that perfectly good books need hyperbolic titles. I don't think you can make a great case for these four composers changing the musical world - mostly they battled against it in their quest to be just themselves.

Having said that - it's a really good book, gracefully written. Broad does not get bogged down in trying to describe music in words, her descriptions are pithy and short and don't try to do too much. The four composers she chose to write about were widely different from one another in their music and in how they contended with the overwhelming sexism with which their music was received.

If we know anything about suffrage or Virginia Woolf, we think we know who Ethel Smyth is, but this book provides a portrait that is both sympathetic and broad in scope. I had never heard of the other three composers. The revelation for me was Rebecca Clarke - I love the viola and that was her primary instrument, so I went looking for her Viola Sonata and found a recording on YouTube of Matthew Lipman and Jeremy Denk that made me want more.

The story of Doreen Carwithen was the most sad - she gave up her successful career composing music for film scores when the married composer with whom she'd had a 20 year affair finally left his wife to marry her. She even began using her middle name once she was married, so it was almost as if she disappeared or became another person. Her husband sounded both less talented than she, and personally unappealing in his self-centered egotism, but she devoted herself to promoting his work. It was only at the very end of her life, after he was long dead, that she finally said, "I'm not Mary, I'm Doreen."

Definitely worth reading if you have any interest at all in 20th century music. I have to go find more music by Rebecca Clarke!

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the introduction to this book, Broad talks about how the passage of time has removed female composers who were famous in their own time from our musical story. I felt surprised by this, thinking surely the opposite was true: female composers were likely little known and now being celebrated. By the time I read the sentence ‘The process of writing Ethel’s music out of history began with her obituaries’, you could see the sad decline to the end of the book mapped out. These women have through circumstance and societal structure been forced to the margin of the musical world, leaving forgotten beautiful, powerful, and meaningful music which was at least moderately appreciated in their time, despite often being sidelined due to their gender. Crazy to think that so much of their work remains hidden and unpublished. Really great read, would highly recommend.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wonderfully structured and very readable collection of biographies serves not only to introduce the reader to four talented but largely overlooked composers who happen to be female (the term "female composers" being anathema to one of them, Ethel), but also provides a fresh, feminist perspective on the challenges faced by talented women in late 19th/early 20th century England.

These women had to succeed in a world where men were the exclusive gatekeepers of opportunity, sat in judgement of their work, often dished out ridicule when traditional gender roles were threatened, and sometimes rewrote history to suit their sexist world view.

One might wonder at the extent to which misogyny, and prejudice in general, has robbed the world of the gifts of great talent. Leah Broad's book provides a case study, showing how the remarkable work of four composers who happen to be female almost came to be forgotten. Thanks in part to her efforts, it will not be.

[ella luna · Rating 5 out of 5]

it is very crazy that i didn’t know who ethel smyth was! the other three women are also remarkable and amazing but damn ethel was really famous and i had never heard of her before this. i loved this book so much and hope every classical music annoying man reads it and pays his respects to these composers. i am excited to tell my girl students about these artists & tell them that they can do anything!

[Zach Reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

The lives of these four composers have been absolutely fascinating to read about. I've loved the music of Clarke and Smyth for a long time but to my shame I'd never heard of Howell and I only knew Carwithen as she is from my hometown!

They are four fabulous composers from my favourite period of classical music, and I am so looking forward to seeking out more of their music as a result of this book.

I found myself picturing their lives vividly, and being a male composer living in the 21st century, found myself surprised and inspired by so much in this book. The research and writing is brilliant and brings these real characters to life.

[Roderick Hart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quartet introduces the reader to the lives and music of four composers – Ethel Smyth, Dorothy Howell, Rebecca Clarke and Doreen Carwithen. Starting with the lives, she has done an excellent job in introducing us to each of these women in the context of their family and the times in which they lived. Apart from being composers, their backgrounds and personalities were very different. Few people have had to put up with a father like that of Rebecca Clarke who, among other things, bought an airgun and used it to fire pellets into the legs of his children.

Of the four, two had affairs with married men, Clarke escaping this to have a happy marriage in later life. The case is less happy with Carwithen. Before reading this book, I had the impression that she sacrificed herself on the altar of the composer, William Alwyn, the man with whom she had an affair and later married. This was an impression the book strongly reinforced. Emotion can make fools of us all, as it surely did in the case of Doreen Carwithen.

To what extent was their work as composers helped or hindered by men? Leaving the critics aside (probably the best place to leave them), some were supportive, a notable example being Henry Wood of Proms fame, who programmed their works as often as he could. Hubert Parry secretly supported Clarke financially after a damaging intervention by her father.

"Parry offered to pay for the remaining term himself, and when she would not hear of that, he proposed that her fees be covered by the College’s hardship fund. Overwhelmed with gratitude, Rebecca consented and enrolled for her final year. It was only many years later that she discovered the College had no such fund. Parry paid her fees."

On the other hand, I was shocked to read that when Hamilton Harty took over at the Hallé he fired all the women musicians in the band. I don’t know what he was knighted for but it may have been for services to misogyny.

In giving us the lives of these women, Leah Broad uses what might be called a novelistic style at the popular end of the market.

"A comfortable stillness falls over Harrow on the Hill, basking in the warm glow of the August sun. Geese patter along the roads, weaving in and out of the dappled shadows cast by the thick red and white blossoms on the chestnut trees reaching their protecting arms over tired travellers. The air is thick with clover. From the very top of the hill the bustle of London is just visible in the far distance, but it lies beyond fields glimmering with yellow buttercups and clouds of daisies. Occasionally the delicate peals of the muffin-man’s bell and murmurs from the ducks add to the hazy quiet."

Some readers may not take to a style of writing so heavy with adjectives, but I would say that it serves its purpose. We get to know how these women lived. It is also worth noting that Broad’s account of their lives is very well researched and she uses quotations from her sources very effectively.

Moving on to the music, Leah Broad was faced with the problem that music is difficult to write about. One approach is that adopted by the late Dr Robert Simpson.

"The tutti dies away and a simple but mysterious transition leads to – what? To the whole complex that grew from Ex8, this time beginning in F major; the internal modulations are subtly changed, and some passages are freshly composed, so that it eventually arrives at an F major which is only the dominant of B flat – it travels, in fact, by a devious route from F major to the dominant of B flat!" (Bruckner and the Symphony, BBC 1963)

Exercise 8 is a quotation from the score in staff notation, so any reader who can’t deal with this has a problem right away. Simpson goes on to say; "The reader who finds such jargon incomprehensible need not worry". Maybe not, but the same unworried reader might not be any the wiser. To cater for such readers, the writer about music may have to rely on descriptive language. This is Leah Broad’s approach, and in this case it easy to justify because many readers will have not be familiar with these women’s music. Before reading her book, I knew only a few pieces by Carwithen and Clarke, one piece by Smyth (I had heard none of her operas) and nothing at all by Howell, so I found her descriptions helpful. The author would hope that we will follow up on her descriptions and listen. And here we arrive at a problem.

As far as I can see, reviews of this book have been positive. But one reviewer, while not modulating to the dominant of B flat, has sounded a negative note. Andrew Clement writing in the Guardian. For example, he questions the validity of the book’s subtitle, How Four Women Changed the Musical World. He surely has a point. He also notes that the four women Leah Broad has chosen to write about all had what we might call a conventional attitude to composition. None of them had any interest in atonal or serial music. Again, this is true, but so what? Those who are advocates for such music are free to listen to it and write about it, so go ahead, persuade us.

Interestingly, Clement later returned to the attack in a review of an eight CD set of music by French women. The set is called Compositrices, and apart from choosing a starting point in time which misses out Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre entirely, it is amazingly comprehensive. Clement is impressed by this set, and no wonder. But in reviewing it he writes the following.

“This kind of meticulously assembled survey, expertly performed and beautifully presented with scrupulous documentation (though without texts and translations for many of the songs) does far more for the cause of these unjustly overlooked composers than any number of books making grand claims about their importance; those championing their British equivalents would do well to follow its example.”

The words “books making grand claims about their importance” link to Quartet, so the target is Leah Broad. There is no doubt that Compositrices is invaluable, as are other French sources. The three CD set of music by Charlotte Sohy, for example, is a wonderful case in point, and not only as regards the music. The notes are exemplary and the graphic design a delight. Another French resource is La Boîte à Pépites, which may be found on Youtube. And be it noted, La Boîte does not confine itself to French compositrices.

It is easy to argue that sources such as these, which allow us to hear the music for ourselves, are of more value than descriptions of it. But it is equally easy to argue that these approaches can coexist. No sleeve notes could hope to come up with anything like the biographical background provided by Quartet. Adjectives notwithstanding, this is an excellent book which does its author much credit. We should take the gifts we are given.

I have often wondered why it was that society at large has been able to accept women authors more readily than women composers. Leah Broad provides an explanation.

"Creating music required the ability to think both logically and emotionally, and involved no imitation of nature whatsoever. It was a talent considered beyond women’s reach."

How sad is that.

A Technical Note
There are frequent instances of words being split in two when the text was converted to ebook format. Here are just a few: decipher able, com poser’s, music al, pla cing, hasten ed.

This won’t do.

[Elisabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful book exploring more into the life of four women who according to the name ' challenged the musical world'. As no prior in-depth book exists exploring their contribution to the musical world, this is a wonderful tribute. The author explores the life, aspirations, childhood, influences, the successes and the defeats of these women, and how they crossed their paths in life.
Whilst their contribution to music has not been menial, the lack of awareness definitely is.

[Dominic H · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a lot from this biographical study of four twentieth century women composers (Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen ). Despite what's implied by the quotations on the cover Leah Broad has not written a polemic, nor attempted to create a movement or make connections where none exist. But her careful and clear exposition of the women and their careers is a model of lucid and informative writing. She doesn't quite succeed though in any of the four composers discussed in nailing what is special or distinctive about their works. I suspect like many coming to this book I was familiar with some of Ethel Smyth and Rebecca Clarke's works and my understanding has been really enhanced. I don't know anything by Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen and I was left wondering where to start. This is a quibble though perhaps, as I guess almost anywhere will do and I'm left to reflect how many probably less worthy male composers l've been 'fed' listening to Radio 3 in the car over the past 40 years. Books like this can't come soon enough as a corrective to lazy programming. I should add that Broad's grasp and conveyance of social history and milieu is excellent and provides first rate context.

[Marc Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very interesting book and well written. Not only because it tells us the lives of four women,who were composers, but it depicts also the period from about 1950 till now as well from the point of view of the position of women in the society as there considering as a composer, on the background of the historical occurences. The live stories are told mixed, so sometimes confusing and difficult to coordinate, demanding a great deal of attention. The real position of the four woman as composers out of the UK is to be evaluated, but it is out of consideration that they are underestimated and should be honored for their work. Due to reading this book the inerest is definitely waked up to lissen more and with more attention to music written by a female composer and to evaluate their music only on the real import.
To recomend!

[Jan Woodward · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book that gives us an insight into women and their journey in the music world through the lives of four gifted musicians.
Spanning two centuries we glimpse the world of the female musician at a time when the suffragettes were still fighting for the vote right up to the 1970s. As well as being packed with facts, intrigue, musical analysis and historical insight, it is one of those rare books that is also written with creativity and emotion. From the first few pages I was hooked on knowing more about the lives of these intriguing women and it held my interest right to the very last page. It has had fantastic reviews across the board and I can only agree that this is one of the important book s published this year.

[Emma Creasey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biography of four women composers. A surprising page turner, thanks in large part to Ethel Smyth, by whom I am awed and appalled in equal measure, but Leah Broad is able to tell all of the stories in a way that makes all four women real and compelling. Can't say I warmed to Doreen Carwithen's subsuming herself entirely to her husband to the point of going by a different name but People are Funny. There is a discography at the back; I would like a chronological summary of compositions as well although that isn't always available given that music is still being found. Describing music in prose is always a bit of a problem but Broad does her best!

[Noé · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an avid classical music fan and violist, I was excited to happen upon Quartet in my local bookshop. I was only familiar with Rebecca Clarke prior to reading, though I did hear an Ethel Smyth piece broadcast while I was reading !
Leah Broad takes a very narrative and personal approach to this quad-biography, and provides ample emotional and historical context for each of these women.
I'm not usually drawn to biographies, but Broad's writing was quite engaging and had me eager to keep reading.

[Jane Gregg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely edifying

[BookswithLydscl | · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up. A really interesting collective biography of 4 women, lost generally to history and overshadowed by men. Listened to the audiobook, narrated by the author and highly recommend.

[Ann Koenig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting red about women composers who fought to be recognised.

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but slow

[Mia Lozado · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book was great but it felt like i was reading a textbook so it was very hard for me to want to read it esp after classes sigh….

[Anna Denfeld · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an important read for young women!

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating - necessary reading for all classical musicians!

[Michelle Wibisono · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written and incredibly engaging book on a topic close to my heart.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fascinating!

[Susan Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding book highlighting 4 composers from 20th century whose works have largely been lost. Yes, they were women whose talent and struggles to be recognised, performed and published were very real. There is an unconscious bias against their works even now; they face more criticism that men's compositions. Ethel Smyth style has the stereotype if being difficult. When her opera was finally performed at Glyndebourne, reviews repeated this characteristic as lazy filling. Would they have said this about a male composer when reviewing a performance? No. Listening to the music of these 4 composers is remarkable and I hope they become part of the repertoire and respected in their own rights. I highly recommend this book.

[Carole Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book about four women musicians and their lives and loves! The author is a historian at Oxford university, so a bit surprising that the claim that one of them was first women in professional orchestra, which I don’t think is true, interesting that these women wrote some very lovely music which is hardly every played , I have sought out some and have really liked it. it doesn’t need a musical background to or musical knowledge to enjoy , there is some rather purple prose, but by and large it’s interesting .

[Ellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and accessible. I liked the overlapping biography style. If it had expanded on some of the themes and ideas a bit more it would’ve been five stars, but it mainly focused on the happenings. I loved stopping to listen to the pieces being described as I was going through it.

[Andrew Z · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend this book on 4 English women composers: Ethyl Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell, and Doreen Carwithen. It is vivid, conversational and informative all at the same time.