I’ve been listening to classical music all my life, and give thanks every day for the advent of internet radio since the beginning of this century, which has given a quantum leap to the breadth and scope of music  now at my fingertips, and lets me carry it with me everywhere. People of my generation thought Walkmans (remember them?) were cool; who could have envisaged this back then?

Two seismic events in recent global history have dramatically pushed even further the boundaries of and irreversibly altered (for the better) the music ‘playlist’, as it were.

One of those events was the “Me Too” movement that went viral around the world following the exposure of numerous sexual-abuse allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein in October 2017. The other was the murder in May 2020 of George Floyd, a black American man by a white police officer in Minneapolis, sparking off outrageous protest first in the US that quickly spread globally.

They seem to have triggered some collective soul-searching among radio presenters, curators of concert seasons or music festivals and performers themselves, to shake off even more vigorously the stereotype that classical music was the preserve of “dead white men.” It’s not as if it wasn’t being addressed before, but now it took on a fresh urgency. Suddenly I was hearing music by composers on radio stations that had never graced their playlists before.

In this column, I’ll dwell on the positive fallout of the “Me Too” movement on the soundscape of classical music today.

In her first book published last year, ‘Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World,’ multi-award-winning writer and historian Dr. Leah Broad, who specialises in twentieth-century cultural history, especially women in the arts, gives us a group biography of four women composers: Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen.

As you can expect, it is a long read, and I’ve barely scratched its surface.

She makes pertinent observations in the Preface: “Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, …it was thought not just unlikely but a biological impossibility for women to manage the kind of abstract thought associated with composition. It was begrudgingly accepted that women could write and paint because, as one author put it, these art forms ‘all have a basis of imitation.’ But music was different. 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.”

The lifespans of British women composers Smyth, Clarke, Howell and Carwithen cover 145 years. But today let me tell you about another woman composer from across the English Channel who precedes all of them and whose music literally stopped me in my tracks some years ago.

When I hear a snippet of classical music that I cannot immediately identify, I play a ‘game’ with myself, and whoever else around (my family) might be disposed to play along. From the musical style, the instrumental forces and other tell-tale clues, we try to narrow down the list of ‘suspects’ and then hazard an educated guess from among them. And if the snippet is on radio, I wait impatiently for the identity to be revealed, hoping there won’t be some inane commercial break instead.

In 2018 or so I happened to be at home and heard a work in mid-performance on Classic FM. The segment I had stumbled upon had vigour an almost unrelenting energy, always moving forward, modulating this way and that, with some lyrical oases for woodwinds along the way. Who could this be?  It was from the Romantic period, no doubt about it, judging from the orchestral forces. But it wasn’t any of the ‘usual suspects’ I knew and loved.

It turned out to be Overture no. 1 by Lousie Farrenc.

That was my first introduction to her and I have been a devotee ever since, encountering her again and again on the airwaves, and even in my son’s Trinity Grade 6 Piano syllabus, an eloquent, heartfelt Impromptu.

Discovering her music was a delight, but why did have only have to hear her in my fifties and not sooner?

She was born Jeanne-Louise Dumont in Paris in 1804, fortunately to a supportive family. Piano lessons began early in childhood with Cecille Soria, former pupil of the celebrated Muzio Clementi, (called ‘Father of the Piano’ for being among the first to write compositions and etudes expressly for the capabilities of the instrument) and later with other masters such as Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Nepomuk Hummel (about whom I’ve written quite recently).

At fifteen, when she showed promise as a composer, she studied with Anton Reicha, composition teacher at the Conservatoire de Paris, but only ‘privately’, as Conservatoire composition classes allowed only males as students. 

At seventeen, she married Aristide Farrenc, a flute student ten years her senior; the couple gave concerts throughout France and later opened ‘Éditions Farrenc’, which would remain a leading music publishing house for decades.

These activities and the birth of her daughter interrupted her composition studies, but she nevertheless earned a formidable reputation as a virtuoso concert pianist and in 1842 was appointed to the permanent position of Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatory, a position she held for thirty years. Farrenc was the only woman to hold the prestigious position there throughout the 19th century.

But she had to fight her corner. For nearly a decade, Farrenc was paid less than her male counterparts and she was vocal about it.  Finally, after the extremely successful premiere in 1850 of her nonet (a work well worth listening, which as the name suggests is a chamber work for nine instruments: flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello and double-bass)

she once again demanded equal pay, and was given it.

Farrenc also produced and edited an influential book, ‘Le Trésor des pianistes’, (The Treasure of Pianists)

about early music performance style.

A leading contemporary music writer and critic François-Joseph Fétis wrote about her in 1862: “The public, as a rule not a very knowledgeable one, whose only standard for measuring the quality of a work is the name of its author. If the composer is unknown, the audience remains unreceptive, and the publishers, especially in France, close their ears anyway when someone offers them a halfway decent work; they believe in success only for trinkets. Such were the obstacles that Madame Farrenc met along the way and which caused her to despair.”

Undeterred, she continued to compose for most of her life. She died in her home city in 1875.

I have so far explored and love all her three symphonies

and her two overtures. Among her chamber works. Same goes for the chamber works I’ve found so far: two piano quintets, two piano trios, the nonet I told you about earlier and her sonata for cello and piano. But there’s so much more.

On March 8, International Women’s Day, many radio stations gave the spotlight to women composers. Hopefully the time will soon dawn when their works are so pervasive and familiar that they don’t need just a day in the sun.

(An edited version of this article was published on 10 March 2024 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)