Women Composers

* 1815 in München
✝ 1880

Josephine Lang (1815-1880) came from Münich where her father was a court musician and her mother an opera singer. Lang was composing songs by age 13, and was only 15 when she wrote the song presented here. After meeting the young Lang in 1831, Mendelssohn wrote, 'She has the gift of composing songs and singing them as I have never heard before. It is the most complete musical joy I have ever experienced.' Lang responded to his enthusiasm by idolizing…

* 1965 in Ettingen

was born in 1965 at Ettlingen/Germany. She studied flute, theory of music and composition at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart. There she passed her concert exam in 1992. She is winner of several prices: the Concours National de Musique/1981, the German youth competition 'Jugend musiziert'/1983 and the International Kuhlau Competition/1993. From 1995 on she has been teaching flute at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart. As a chambermusic-player specialised on German romantic music as well as French contemporary music she has been performing in numerous…

* 1850 in Rastatt
✝ 1927 in Baden-Baden

Luise Adolpha Le Beau’s father, whose main occupation was as a member of the Baden War Office, took on the ambitious task of her education, starting with piano lessons when she was six years old. He also extended his pedagogical efforts to other subjects then generally taught in schools, with the result that Luise lived and learnt almost exclusively at home. The (spatially) close relationship with her parents was to continue until their deaths (1896 and 1900). A few teachers…

* 1755 in Danzig
✝ 1790

Franziska (Dorothea) Lebrun, geborene Danzi, wurde in Mannheim geboren und am 24. März 1756 getauft. Ihre Eltern waren der Cellist Innozenz Danzi und seine Frau Barbara, eine Schwester Carl Joseph Toeschis; der Komponist und Cellist Franz Danzi (1763-1826) war ihr Bruder. Franziska Lebrun erlebte somit in ihrer Jugend ein reiches musikalisches und kulturelles Leben, das sie prägte und förderte.

* 1953 in Taiwan

Hope Lee received formal music training at the McGill University in Montréal and at the Staatlich Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, Germany as a recipient of a DAAD scholarship and a Canada Council Grant. Her main teachers in composition are Bengt Hambraeus, Brian Cherney and Klaus Huber. During this period, she also attended the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik and the Durham 1979 Oriental Music Festival in England. While living in Berkeley, California, she studied Chinese traditional music and poetry, as…

* 1620
✝ 1704

In northern Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a good deal of music was composed by women. One of the most productive composers was the noblewoman Isabella Leonarda. She left almost 200 compositions in 20 volumes including mostly sacred vocal music such as motets for soloist and continuo as well as a mass for soloists, choir, strings and continuo. Her only purely instrumental opus is no. 16 which is made up of the 12 sonate da chiesa. These works…

* 1795

Riese, was a German pianist and composer. She was a child prodigy in both activities. Aged ten, she gave a concert in her home town of Berlin, astonishing the audience, who acclaimed her as a brilliant pianist. Her Piano Sonata Opus 1 was published when she was 15. She was born in Berlin and studied with Clementi's pupil Franz Lauska. According to the dedications on her Op 11, and 12, she later studied with Ferdinand Ries, a former Beethoven pupil.…

* 1977 in Changhua, Taiwan

The woman composer, pianist and bamboo flute player Meng-Chia Lin was born in Taiwan. She completed her piano and composition studies at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg and at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover and electronic composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Cologne. Her works are performed in Germany, France, Austria, China, Taiwan and the USA, including at festivals in Donaueschingen, Witten, Berlin MärzMusik (Berlin March music), ZKM Karlsruhe and Acht Brücken (eight bridges) Cologne. Her works…

Josephine Lorenziti was singer, pianist, and composer. Her father Joseph Lorenziti (died 1764) was leader of the musical chapel of Prince Karl-August of Nassau-Weilburg in Kirchheim unter Teck, and her three brothers were active as musicians and composers as well. Particularly well10 known was her brother Bernard, who was a violin player in the orchestra of the Paris opera. She published several compositions around 1800 in Paris, among them the Six Romances for voice and piano, Trois Grandes Sonates op.…

* 1957 in Amsterdam

The composer Camille van Lunen was born in Amsterdam and grew up in several different European countries. After studying the viola in Brussels, she moved to The Hague to study singing and composition, which she continued in Cologne where she now lives. Her work is full of wit and color and often treats social and spiritual themes of our time. Van Lunen's experience as a singer is reflected in her own vivid writing for both solo voice (in the songs…