Quartet: How Four Women Changed The Musical World - 'Magnificent' (Kate Mosse)

Product Information

I’m a historical musicologist, and 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. Music Matters, BBC Radio 3, 9 Mar. 2019 (Discussion about representations of women composers in the media and on academic syllabi) 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.

KATE MOLLESON Subtly devastating... one of the author's serious achievements in Quartetis to insist on the ways in which her subjects...can be frustrating or disappointing or simply human... Hugely ambitious, beautifully written​. 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.MIRANDA SEYMOUR The characters are fascinating, the composition is brilliant: a finely developed musical quartet in literary form.

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. 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. Amanda Maier: Violin Concerto in D Minor, Piano Quartet in E Minor, Swedish Tunes and Dances; Sonata for Violin and Piano, Four Songs; Works for Piano’, 19th-Century Music Review (published online 7 May 2019), 1-5ANNALENA 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. Argh! Erm. I think I’d choose Ethel’s The Prison, Rebecca’s Piano Trio and song ‘The Salley Garden’, Dorothy’s Violin Sonata and Doreen’s Piano Concerto.