There are arguably more women composers today than ever before, but women composing music is by no means a new phenomenon. Why do we so rarely hear music by celebrated women composers of earlier eras?
“They’ve been written out of history,” said noted Bay Area pianist Sarah Cahill. “We see this over and over—celebrated … and then one by one we sort of watch them disappear. And so, why?”
Long a champion of women composers, Cahill has been grappling with that question and others while working to bring the lost repertory of piano works composed by women through the centuries into the concert hall.
This weekend and next week, at the top of Women’s History Month, Cahill will share her thoughts about music by women composers and the classical music canon and perform two concerts during a residency at Otterbein University in Westerville.
Cahill will perform American composer Lou Harrison’s Piano Concerto with the Westerville Symphony, Sunday, March 1 at 5 p.m. in Fritsche Theatre of Otterbein University’s Cowan Hall, Peter Stafford Wilson conducting. That concert will also include Gustav Holst’s Japanese Suite and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7.
The natural environment will be the focal point of Cahill’s solo concert, The Woods So Wild, featuring nature-inspired piano works from around the world and across the centuries, on Wednesday, March 4 at 7:30 p.m. in Riley Auditorium of Otterbein’s Battelle Fine Arts Center.
While at Otterbein, Cahill will converse with music students about the historical exclusion of works by women composers from the classical music canon and biases that often color how we hear those works. That conversation springs from her three-volume recording series (First Hand Records) and live concert program The Future Is Female, which revives keyboard works by women composers renowned during their lifetimes, then forgotten.
Take, for instance, Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729). A prodigiously gifted keyboard player and composer, de La Guerre was remarkably successful and well known in her day. But her music is rarely performed today.
“She should be heard with her contemporaries Couperin and Rameau,” Cahill said in a recent interview.
De La Guerre is only one example of many. There’s also the Russian pianist and composer Leokadiya Kashperova (1872-1940), whose works were critically acclaimed in Russia and across Europe in her times but are scarcely performed today, and her legacy stands on her contributions as the teacher of one of the most important male composers of the 20th century.
“History has relegated her to being the piano teacher of Igor Stravinsky,” Cahill said, “but she was a celebrated composer in her lifetime.”
A recent edition produced by the British musicologist Graham Griffiths has made Kashperova’s works more accessible, which might result in more performances of them. And as works by contemporary women composers continue to garner performances, Pulitzer Prizes and other top awards, there is hope that their music may come to be performed more, including side by side with works by the male composers who dominate the canon.
But there remains work to be done to this end, in the face of countless factors—financial, aesthetic, social—that performing ensembles and solo artists are forced consider in selecting concert repertory.
In the end, Cahill says, the quality of the music—whoever composed it—is what matters most.
“It has to be about the music itself,” Cahill said, “and not about any other considerations.”
Transcript of Interview:
Jennifer Hambrick: In your work as a performer and recording artist, and in your work beyond the stage and recording studio, you have been an advocate for reconsidering the classical music canon to reflect women’s contributions. To begin with, kind of let’s lay some groundwork, if you don’t mind. If you would, talk about the classical music canon—what it is, and how you view it. And of course, I realize this is a very good question.
Sarah Cahill: Yeah, let me begin, then, by asking you a question, because I know you are a musician yourself. So, growing up, studying classical music, did you ever perform a work by a woman?
Jennifer Hambrick: You know, I actually did, because I grew up as a flutist primarily, and so there was the Chaminade Flute Concertino, Cécile Chaminade’s beautiful Flute Concertino. But that was—I mean, that was, just kind of off the top of my head, the one work by a woman that sort of comes to mind.
Sarah Cahill: Right, right. Well, yeah, I mean, I grew up as a pianist with a wonderful, wonderful teacher. And she taught me Bach and Beethoven and Mozart and all the great music, but never, ever, ever one single work by a woman. And even the more minor composers, even when I played music that was sort of, you know, second tier, third tier, fourth tier—I’m not mentioning any names because I don’t want to shame any composers—they were all White male composers. And I think, you know, it took me a long time—I started playing contemporary music and that’s been most of my career. And so, I started working with wonderful composers like Tanya Leon, who won the Pulitzer Prize recently, and Pauline Oliveros and Annea Lockwood and a number of other composers. So, I was working with living women composers. But I started thinking about the Classical era, the Baroque, Romantic and how women have been written out of history. And we’re certainly seeing more progress. And I know you on the radio, you pay music by women There are many more great recordings, many more great performances than there were and that the music is more widely available. And that’s all just tremendously great. But when I was growing up and learning about classical music, it was my piano teacher and my father. And we listened to Stravinsky and Mahler and all the great composers, but it started to dawn on me a little bit, huh, you see those big posters in music schools, posters of the great composers, and there are, like, fifty men on those posters and maybe, possibly one woman. But I also think about in the piano world, what would it be like if Yuja Wang played one piece by a woman? What would it be like if Igor Levit played on a piece by a woman? I mean, it would be a seismic shift, I think. And that’s what we need. And so that has become sort of my mission and immersing myself in music by women as a self-education, but also to do my very small part to tilt a little bit of the imbalance that has been going on for centuries and centuries.
Jennifer Hambrick: Sure. And actually, we’ll get to the “centuries and centuries” bit in just a moment, but I want to sort of step out of the narrative just a little bit, because you said something really intriguing there. If Yuja Wang or Igor Levit were to perform one piece by a woman, do you know in your mind what you would like that piece to be?
Sarah Cahill: What would I like that piece to be. If it were Igor Levit, I would like him to play a sonata by Hélène de Montgeroulx. If it were Yuja Wang, probably something by Grażyna Bacewicz. I think she would do a really great job with some of her etudes. Or the Lousie Farrenc etudes. That would be great to hear.
Jennifer Hambrick: Okay. And these are names that probably a lot of folks who will see this interview haven’t heard of. Wonderful music. Yeah, so okay, thank you. Very interesting.
Sarah Cahill: I mean, I think that’s the thing most to consider, is that it’s important to hear this music. I think, yes, gender is important. All those issues are important. Identity is important. But the music is the most important for all.
Jennifer Hambrick: Sure, sure, sure. Absolutely. And there’s room for it. Do you know what I mean?
Sarah Cahill: Yes, yes.
Jennifer Hambrick: There’s room for it. There’s always room for more. So, this seems like maybe an obvious question, but to kind of, again, lay some cards on the table, so to speak. Could you talk about some of the barriers to music by women composers being included in the canon? And of course, as you mentioned a moment ago, this is nothing new. It’s been going on for centuries. And I’ll say it’s maybe systemic, right? But I’d love to hear you talk about how all this works, how this all came about.
Sarah Cahill: Yeah, that’s an interesting question because there’s so much. They’ve been written out of textbooks. What fascinates me is that many of these composers were really celebrated in their lifetime. Like, Élisabeth Jaquet de la Guerre, a baroque composer, one of the first French composers to publish keyboard music. You know, and really lots of performances. And we see this over and over—celebrated in her lifetime, or Leokadiya Kashperova who, now, history has relegated her to being the piano teacher of Igor Stravinsky, but she was a celebrated composer in her lifetime. And then one by one we sort of watch them disappear. And so, why? You know, the usual prejudice and sexism and, I think, lots of sort of microaggressions in terms of how these women are portrayed. I mean, even visually—you look at portraits of Louise Farrenc, and she’s this kind of prudish-looking—she’s portrayed in this very, like, she’s sort of weak or not that interesting. And then you see portraits of male composers—I mean, think of the portraits we see of Beethoven, and he’s so rugged and strong looking and he looks like a genius. But women composers have never been portrayed that way. You know, other things—I just read a review in the New York Times about an Emily Dickinson piece that Kevin Putz did. And the critic writes ‘Emily,’ and that’s a thing that people do over and over, that they’ll call a great woman artist by her first name, but we never hear people say ‘Walt’ rather than ‘Walt Whitman.’ Or we always hear ‘Thoreau.’ We never hear ‘Henry.’ But it’s ‘Emily,’ and I think that’s another thing, that we automatically call—it’s just another sort of diminishment, in a way, a kind of putting them in their place.
Jennifer Hambrick: Sure, yeah, okay. And, yes, the sort of stereotyping, the characterizing of woman as in some way other, I’ll put it, or in some way diminished or diminutive, or just doing the wrong thing in the wrong place is super rampant. You know, when you consider folks like Augusta Holmès, who was writing these big, big forms, big, huge symphonic forms in the later nineteenth century. There was all this writing in the Parisian press saying that she shouldn’t be doing this. So, I mean, these narratives kind of came out of a dominant voice, it was a male voice, all the power having been in the hands of the men. And this is not to castigate all men. I just want to make that very clear.But this phenomenon historically is real.
Sarah Cahill: Yes. No, it’s so true. And you read the reviews, I mean, it’s a no-win situation, so that if a woman like Lousie Farrenc writes a big, strong symphony, then she’s blamed for being too loud or aggressive or one thing or another.
Jennifer Hambrick: Not ladylike.
Sarah Cahill: Right. But if she writes beautiful—I mean, over and over, it’s like, well she’s a miniaturist, she writes pretty melodies. And you think, oh, well that sounds like describing Frederic Chopin. But Chopin would never be blamed for those sorts of qualities, I think. You know, I have to say, I think we should also celebrate the advocates who have brought these composers forward and have either through performances—like there’s a new recording of a comspoer Elsa Barraine that Cristian Măcelaru did with the National Orchestra of France. And it’s really amazing. And you learn about this comspoer, Elsa Barraine, who studied with Paul Dukas at the Paris Conservatory and was a contemporary of Messiaen, a good friend. And her music is really fantastic. And she took time off from composing to fight in the French resistance. And did just extraordinary work, both as an activist and as a composer. But it takes a really good recording, and then people take notice. It’s like, wow, Cristian Măcelaru has just come out with this recording of this comspoer. We should listen. So, I think in many cases it’s people who advocate, or musicologists like this guy Graham Griffiths in the U.K. who started doing editions of Leokadiya Kashperova. And now we know about her because of his work. And he did an edition through Boosey & Hawkes.
Jennifer Hambrick: Right, absolutely. That’s a really wonderful point. And you, of course, will count among those advocates. For your own sex. And speaking of which, one of your recording projects is The Future Is Female. It is currently, at least, a three-volume series that highlights music by women composers. Could you talk us through that project – what was the real or immediate impetus for it, if there kind of was one, maybe a sampling of some of the composers on the discs, and your general, I’ll say, approach to selecting the composers who are represented on them? Because part of the issue with the canon is that even among male composers, some have been selected and others have not. And so, I would imagine that, you know, we might be dealing with somewhat smaller numbers of people among women composers just historically before our times, and that’s a hole other conversation, or we’ll get to that question. But there still is a selection process, right? So tell us about The Future is Female.
Sarah Cahill: Yeah, there is a selection process, and I think the first consideration is always the quality of the music itself. So, I went back in time and started with Élisabeth Jaquet de la Guerre in 1687, I think it is, that she wrote her keyboard suites. And I love those. And you know, she should be heard with her contemporaries Couperin and Rameau. And it was wonderful, because I have spent most of my career playing contemporary music, so going back to the Baroque and really getting into those ornaments and the dance forms of those suites was a revelation. And then I think—yeah, it was a long process, and it took years just sort of digging in and talking to friends and talking to Baroque specialists and talking to Romantic music specialists and sharing information and going to libraries and doing lots of research. I mean, I have to say I’m still sort of every day finding music by women composers that I would have liked to include on this. There’s so much. And I also do this as a kind of marathon performance. So, I’ve done this on a number of International Women’s Day – March 8—at the Barbican in London and at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. And I do multiple hours and just sit there and play this music from different centuries and have the composers kind of in dialogue with each other across the centuries. And I think that’s really fascinating and just sort of showing the music that’s out there. And in a way, I mean, of course the best thing is for this music to be integrated into programs and not just, like, here’s women on International Women’s Day, and now we’ll get back to the regular programming of all these male composers. But what I really love is when young pianists decide they’re going to play some of this music and they get inspired by hearing Mel Bonis. I have a friend, a young pianist in her 20s who came to the Metropolitan Museum concert, stayed for the whole six hours. And then she did an Instagram post, and she said, ‘Oh, here are the pieces I’m going to include in my repertoire now.’ And that’s the best possible outcome, is sort of disseminating some of this music and, yeah, even just a little bit of the classical canon includes a few more pieces.
Jennifer Hambrick: Sure, sure. And that starts to change the kind of narrative that we, in a sense, started out with. We’re a young musician and we’re playing Beethoven, Bach, Brahms and all the other male composers, and this young pianist is saying, ‘I’m going to add these wonderful works by women composers into the repertoire.’ And I think maybe that’s an important point. What I’m not hearing from this conversation, and what I haven’t picked up on in studying, as it were, your career and your body of recorded work, is we’re not talking about eliminating.
Sarah Cahill: Yes, yes. We don’t want to cancel Beethoven.
Jennifer Hambrick: Right, just because he was male. There’s always room for more, as we said earlier.
Sarah Cahill: Exactly. It’s addition, not subtraction.
Jennifer Hambrick: Right, and it makes things only richer and potentially more interesting, right?
Sarah Cahill: Right.
Jennifer Hambrick: I might surmise that today there are more women composers than probably in any generation leading up to this point. Data for orchestral programming involving some of the major U.S. orchestras still shows works by women composers as occupying a very, very small percentage of works those orchestras perform. A lot of different factors go into programming an orchestra concert season. Those factors can include—among, I’m sure, many, many, many others—performing music that the orchestras know their audiences like (maybe composers like Beethoven and Brahms and Mozart and so forth), performing music that really supports the mission and, if you will, brand of the orchestra (and that repertory might largely overlap with the repertory in the first group), performing music that might bring in new audiences (so for instance, video game music and film music and so forth), and performing music that appeals to wide audience diversity. I think it’s safe to say that all of these groups are not currently equally represented on orchestra concert series, I’ll say. In your view, should these groups and maybe others be equally represented? Are there still risks involved for performing ensembles in doing that? Or are those perceived risks more imaginary risks than anything, And if so, what might you recommend for mitigating those risks?
Sarah Cahill: So, I guess I would argue that there is this way of music directors doing programming of thinking I’m not interested in gender or any of these issues in choosing the music I choose. I just want to choose good music. But I think that can be a very ignorant point of view and a very narrow point of view. Because it seems like they’re being neutral, but in fact they’re not being neutral. They’re stating a point of view, which is I’m only going to do this group of White male composers. I guess I would argue that, I mean, a lot of classical—I know that a lot of classical orchestras and ensembles and soloists are thinking about audience and thinking about how to attract audience, and it’s a big, big, big issue of course—and younger audiences. But I don’t see that as a barrier to performing music by women, do you?
Jennifer Hambrick: No, I, personally, would not see it as a barrier, unless it’s a question of, is Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, right now in the year 2026, still a bigger draw than Clara Schumann’s wonderful piano concerto?You know what I mean?
Sarah Cahill: Yes.
Jennifer Hambrick: Is Beethoven Five going to draw a larger audience than Clara Schumann’s Piano concerto?
Sarah Cahill: Then you can put them both on the same program, and then everyone will love the other piece.
Jennifer Hambrick: Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, we’re not talking about replacing Beethoven or any other composer with anyone else. We’re not talking about that. We’re just trying to make room. But at the same time, there are some practical considerations, and also maybe some fears, some concerns about really serving the audience with what we think they like. And maybe what we think they like is, kind of, it just happens to be the classical canon, the male, if you will, canon. So I guess, in a way, what I’m asking is, how do we best sort of scoot this great music by women composers in? And I would say, again, this question of orchestra programming is maybe different from programming a chamber series or a chamber concert, like a string quartet putting its programs together, you as a piano soloist putting your programs together. Those maybe smaller ensembles or solo performers—it may be a little more of a nimble way to program.
Sarah Cahill: No, I understand what you’re saying, and it makes me think of the Ballade by Germain Tailleferre, which is a beautiful, beautiful piece. And you might listen to it and think, oh, it sounds kind of like Ravel’s G major Concerto. And then you realize that she wrote her Ballade in 1920 and he wrote his concerto in 1930. So, it’s one of those things. But then, everybody loves Ravel’s G major Concerto, so how do you then say, ‘Oh no, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to do Germain Tailleferre’s Ballade instead’? And of course it’s a really interesting question, but I would imagine that all these great marketing departments and PR departments probably have some really, really good way of doing it. And I think some orchestras are doing it now. Gabriela Ortiz is a composer who is getting so many performances. And I remember when nobody knew who she was. Mexican composer, Gabriela Ortiz. And then Gustavo Dudamel commissioned something like eight pieces from her now. And they’re fantastic and they’re winning Grammys and all over the world now her music is being performed. And it’s dazzling and brilliant and exciting and energetic and audiences really love it. But I think, again, it takes an advocate like Gustavo Dudamel to put it forward and say, ‘This is what we’re going to listen to. Yes, this is a new piece, this is a new violin concerto.’ But I think the LA Phil has a really good—and they have lots of young people come to their concerts. It’s like a destination for date night. It’s really exciting. So, I think there’s a way to do it, certainly. Because there are orchestras where it’s like, oh, Gabriela Ortiz? Who is she, and why should we go hear her? So, I think it is a matter of how it’s introduced, how the music is introduced and brought forward. But it’s a really interesting question, and I think it’s something that music directors lose sleep over.
Jennifer Hambrick: So, to kind of summarize things. Where do you see the canon today? Are we still seeing the same kinds of vast institutional marginalization of women as was certainly once the case? You mentioned earlier that things are maybe getting better, but are there signs that things might be moving in a different direction and maybe even picking up momentum, in your view?
Sarah Cahill: That’s a great question. I see maybe incremental change, but not a lot of change. And I think it’s partly that the classical canon is passed on from music teacher to music teacher—it’s passed on from generation to generation. So, when I go to conservatories or music schools to teach or work with students, they’re often-especially pianists are often very resistant to music that they aren’t familiar with. And so, if they think of the twentieth century as Ravel and Debussy and Prokofiev and Bartok, then they are resistant to, hey, how about Germain Tailleferre? How about Florence Price? I mean, I think they see these famous pianists playing the Rachmaninoff piano concertos, and that’s what they think success as a pianist is. And success is not necessarily playing the Bacewicz etudes. But I do try to make headway here and there and say, ‘You know, here are some great pieces by Clara Schumann. Just give them a try.’ But I think it’s hard because their teachers have the ultimate say, and yeah—I just think it has to be about the music itself and not about any other considerations. And it makes me think of Florence Price’s letter to Serge Koussevitzky when she sent him some of her scores, and said, ‘Just look at the music. And yes, there’s gender and there’s race, but just look at my scores.’ And then he never replied. That’s why one of the things I’m doing at Otterbein University is a workshop about some of our preconceptions and biases the go into listening to music. I had an English teacher in high school who would cover up the name of two poems, and one was a famous poet, one was a not famous poet, and we’d have to judge them just based on the poem itself. And it’s such a wonderful idea. I’m going to have the students listen to Clara Schumann and Robert Schumann, or Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Mendelssohm or Barbara Strozzi and Claudio Monteverdi. If you hear them side by side and you don’t know the composer, you don’t go in with those biases, like, ‘Monteverdi, this must be really great, and Barbara Strozzi, probably not so great, because I haven’t heard of her and she’s a woman,’ or whatever. And then also, I think the stories about these composers, as interesting as they are, sometimes do a disservice. Because if we hear they didn’t have access to education, they had domestic responsibilities, they had to take care of the household, they had to manage the children and the family—if we hear about those things, those are important biographical details, but they also make us sort of feel sorry about the composers or diminish them in some ways. We don’t listen to their music the same, I think, if we think, oh, this poor little Clara Schumann had to take care of her husband with mental illness and her 10 children and how could she possibly be a good composer?’ So, there’s a lot that goes into listening. But in this workshop, that’s what I want to do, is say, ‘Just listen to these two pieces of music and form your own opinion, make your own judgement, and we’ll go from there.’ If you don’t know the composer, you don’t have those biases. It’s just like—I don’t know about you, but when I go into an art museum, sometimes I look at the painting, but then I look at the little label next to it, and I’m like, oh, that’s by, you know, so-and-so minor artist. I’m going to move on to the next one. I’m going to find the Picasso.
Jennifer Hambrick: Right, yeah.
Sarah Cahill: So, it’s an interesting exercise.
Jennifer Hambrick: Sarah Cahill, once again, thank you so much for your time today. We’ve been talking about your work as a champion of women composers and, in particular, your recording series The Future Is Female. Thanks for your time today.
Sarah Cahill: Thank you so much. Thank you, Jennifer.
