European Women Musicians Of The 19th Century Romantic Period To Explore

Despite social, educational, and economic restrictions, women participated in every aspect of musical life in the nineteenth century。Songs, keyboard music, chamber music, symphonies, and operas composed by women were performed and published。Performers were seen and heard on concert stages throughout Europe, and women flocked to the great conservatories established in the nineteenth century and availed themselves of the professional training now open to them。Women were employed as teachers in the public conservatories and founded their own schools as well。Denied membership in symphony and opera orchestras, they established their own ensembles。Women writers and scholars produced basic studies on music and musical life。As in previous centuries, however, most of the professional women musicians were from families of musicians with a generations-long tradition。The new prosperity of the middle classes afforded a great many women the time to study music。A large group of amateurs developed, some rising to the highest levels of musical proficiency but not given the opportunity to work professionally because of the prevailing attitudes toward feminine behavior。Most often, the well-to-do musical amateur, no matter how talented, was forced to limit herself to domestic music making。The accomplishments of professional and amateur women musicians of the nineteenth century have largely been ignored by historians。They are only mow beginning to be recognized。...