Dorothy Howell (b.1898):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.

Female “voices” and Feminism’, The Cambridge Companion to Women Composers ed. Susan Wollenberg & Matthew Head (Cambridge University Press), forthcoming Read about the Faber story, find out about our unique partnerships, and learn more about our publishing heritage, awards and present-day activity. BBC Proms, BBC Four, 29 Jul. 2022 (Expert guest for TV broadcast of the 'Sea' Prom featuring Carwithen, Vaughan Williams and Grace Williams) Doreen Carwithen (b.1922):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 . Almost brought to tears finishing @LeahBroad’s wonderful Quartet on the tube. A fierce work; truly a joyful read, bringing sentiments of solidarity, insight and hope.

This article was amended on 10 March 2023 to further clarify it is Leah Broad’s view that Benjamin Britten’s operas “often focused on the working classes”, and that this is an assessment the reviewer contests. Clear, happy, and naïve: Wilhelm Stenhammar’s Music for As You Like It’, Music & Letters, Vol. 99/3 (2018), 352-385

On a scorching summer's day, Clare Wadd undertakes a long-distance west London walk down Uxbridge Road It's been a strange... I am a music historian working on music in the twentieth century. All my work focuses on unfamiliar histories. I’m fascinated by the people and music who are at the margins of histories about Western Art Music. Currently, my research is focused on women composers in twentieth century Britain. I’m working particularly on four composers — Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell, and Doreen Carwithen. The project establishes their relative significance in their lifetimes, explores how this changes our narratives about British music of this period, and looks at how their music has been received since their death. They are the focus of my first book, Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World, published by Faber and Faber in 2023.Winner of the 2015 Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism, Leah’s writing has appeared in outlets including the Guardian, Observer, BBC Music Magazine, Huffington Post, and The Conversation. She has written articles and programme notes for institutions including Glyndebourne, London Chamber Orchestra, Longborough Festival Opera, the Wigmore Hall, Oxford Lieder Festival, Birmingham Symphony Hall, and the Elgar Festival.

BBC Proms 2015: Gary Carpenter, Anders Hillborg, Ørjan Matre, Alissa Firsova, B Tommy Andersson’, TEMPO, Vol. 70/275 (2016), 84-5 Scaramouche, Scaramouche: Sibelius on Stage’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 145/2 (2020), 417-456

Cookie Control

This was the question that, nearly a decade later, led me to write Quartet. There are so many phenomenal pieces that are still very little-known now, and the thing that links all of them is the gender of their composer. These women deserve to be known and for their music to be heard. Debut biographer Leah Broad will introduce this quartet of composers. The evening will feature musical interludes, performed by 97 Ensemble, including: CLARE WADD, Caught by the River Passionate... clear-eyed, intelligent​...Broad deftly weaves their stories together... And perhaps most importantly she evokes the experience ofactually listening to their music. ... Her book appears at a timelymoment. Doreen Carwithen (b.1922): 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. ANNALENA MCAFEE, ​Financial Times There's nothing shouty about Quartet, the musicologist Leah Broad's compelling group biography... The tone is restrained, but the quietly insistent patter of events, statistics, quotations and facts adds up by the end to a polemical roar.

Oliver Soden is the author of Michael Tippett: The Biography (Orion) and Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), published later this monthRadio 3 in Concert interval talks, from 2018 (Discussions about music by composers including Sibelius and Nielsen) Carwithen was in many ways the most conventional, giving up her own composing career to promote and nurture composer William Alwyn, her demanding and often unpleasant married lover and later her husband. ERICA JEAL, ​The Guardian In this absorbinggroup biography, Broad deftly handles the complexities of different lives and personalities... Broad has a rare gift for eloquent evocation of the music itself and answers the key question (was the work any good?) resoundingly in the affirmative,making a persuasive case for a revision and expansion of the musical canon.