Women Composers

Zela Margossian is an Australian pianist, composer and recording artist of Armenian heritage. Born in Beirut, she is currently based in Sydney. She is the founder of the Zela Margossian Quintet which was nominated for an ARIA Award upon the release of her first album, Transition, in November 2018. In 2022, Zela Margossian Quintet were signed on the American label, Ropeadope, who released Margossian’s second album, The Road, in February 2022. Both albums have received positive reviews nationally and internationally,…

in Germany

* 1954 in Moskau

Olga Magidenko comes from a Russian family of musicians. At age six, she began playing the piano and at the same time she started to compose like her father, Mikhail Magidenko. In the former Soviet Union, he was a renowned composer who wrote many operas in particular. Her mother was a pianist. 6-years-old Olga wrote her first children's songs. At eleven, she decided to continue seriously with composition and she attended to a composition working group at her school. This…

* 1897
✝ 1964

Alma Maria Werfel, verwitwete Mahler, geschiedene Cropius war eine der exzentrischsten, weiblichsten, intelligentesten Frauen ihrer Zeit. Die Tochter des Wiener Kunstmalers Schindler wuchs zu einer Persönlichkeit von komplexer Natur. Sie wurde zu einer symbolischen Gestalt in der Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts - ein weiblicher Hamlet: 'Ich habe von Gesichtern und Gesichten gelebt und deswegen die Liebe bis zur Neige ausgekostet, weil ich auch hassen konnte!' Von ihrem eigenen musikalischen Schaffen sind nur einige Kunstlieder erhalten. Als Gastgeberin künstlerischer Salons scharte…

* 1802
✝ 1834

Nélia Maillard, singer and composer, was acknowledged as a great singing talent. In the years 1828/29 her name can be found on the program notes of many concerts of the “Concerts Spirituels”. Her sisters Caroline and Hortense Maillard were also singers in the choir of the “Concerts Spirituels”. In 1829 Nélia Maillard was married to Amédée Empaire and apparently ceased to appear in public. Their marriage remained childless. Prior to her marriage in 1829 Nélia Maillard taught voice at the…

in Canada

Sharon Lynn Makarenko is a Canadian multi-instrumental musician and composer. Classically trained, she holds an LLCM and ARCT in Piano Performance and an ARCT in Pedagogy. She had the honor of studying under Lilian Schmunk, whose teacher had studied with one of Chopin’s students. She has enjoyed an active musical career, work­ing extensively in multiple genres, from classical to folk to rock. Minimal and contemplative, her current work is influenced by her exploration of the intersection of classical music with…

Singer Maria Malibran was of Spanish descent and lived from 1808 to 1836. During her lifetime she was extremely popular. She was born as the daughter of Spanish composer and singer Manuel del Populo Garcia in Paris on March 24th 1808. Her younger sister was singer and composer Pauline Viardot-Garcia. Already during her childhood Maria Malibran performed in public in Naples and made her debut at the age of eighteen in London in the role of Rosina in “The Barber…

* 1922 in Berlin
✝ 2016 in Berlin

Ursula Mamlok started composing as a child. She started studying Composition and Piano in Berlin with Professor Gustav Ernest. In 1938 she and her parents emigrated to Ecuador, where she had no possibility of continuing her studies. She received a scholarship to attend the Mannes College of Music in New York on the basis of compositions she submitted to them. Here she was taught, among others, by the conductor Georg Szell and Stefan Wolpe. Ursula Mamlok has received many awards,…

* 1959 in Romania

Laura Manolache is a composer and musicologist. She studied at the National University of Music in Bucharest (UNMB) and was awarded year-long scholarships in Cologne (1992–1993) and Osnabrück (1999, 2003) by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). She was also award­ed a scholarship by the Romanian Academy Family Foundation Menachem H. Elias in Vienna (1996). Manolache taught at the UNMB between 1991 and 2017, obtaining her PhD there in 1995. She also served as director of the “George Enescu” National…

* 1932
✝ 1996

graduated from the Amsterdam Conservatory in 1953. Her subjects included piano, violin and conducting. She proceeded to study composition and orchestration with Hans Henkemans and electronic music with Gottfried Koenig at the Institute of Sonology at the University of Utrecht. She has performed as a concert pianist and has led both children and adults groups in music improvisation. Her activities include conducting amateur and professional choirs and orchestras, producing music program series for radio, and lecturing and writing on music…

* 1909 in Kragujevac
✝ 2003 in Belgrad

Ljubica Maric was born on March 18, 1909 in Kragujevac. She was the most important artist in the 20th century Serbian music. After completing her training in Belgrade, Ljubica Maric pursued her musical education at the State Conservatory in Prague. In 1933 she spent one year studying piano with Emil Seling in Berlin. After her return to Yugoslavia she taught music theory at the Music Academy of Belgrade. In the years after the Second World War Ljubica Maric devoted herself…

* 1743 in Wien
✝ 1811

Marianna Martines, sometimes referred to as Maria Anna or Anna Katharina, her baptismal name, was born in Vienna in 1744, the daughter of Nicolò Martines (also spelled Martinez), a Neapolitan of Spanish descent, knighted by the Empress Maria Theresia and serving as a master of ceremonies to the papal nuncio. His privileged social position in the Viennese diplomatic circles enabled him to procure the best possible instruction for his daughter. Her education was supervised by Pietro Metastasio, the court poet…

* 1937 in Torun, Polen
✝ 2021 in Torun, Polen

Bernadetta Matuszczak studied Theory of Music and Piano at the State University of Music in Posen. She studied Composition at the State University of Music in Warsaw and completed her studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Bernadetta Matuszczaks composition is characterized by a strong interest in literature and a musical imagination with a precise feel for rhythm and drama. She received several awards while still a student, such as the Grzegorz-Fitelberg Prize in 1966 and the prize of the Jeunesses…

* 1812 in Friedland
✝ 1883 in Berlin

Emilie Mayer, who was born in 1812 in Friedland (Mecklenburg) and died in 1883 in Berlin, is one of the most remarkable German women composers of the 19th century. In an era when women composers were generally only permitted to perform their works in a domestic setting – preferably that of a salon – Emilie Mayer practised her vocation as a full-time profession. Besides her musical talent, her extraordinary career can be attributed to the unusual circumstances of her biography.…

* 1940 in Baltimore, USA

Ruth McGuire started piano lessons at the age of three, instruction in theory and the organ was added when she was ten. She studied music in the USA from 1958 to 1962 and continued her studies after her move to Vienna at the University of Music there. From 1963 and 1974 her time was mainly taken up by her eight children and she took sporadic lessons in the harpsichord. In 1979 she resumed her studies of ecclesiastical music, organ and…

in Germany

After successfully majoring in classical guitar at the UdK Berlin under the direction of Prof. Martin Rennert, Ulrike Merk completed a postgraduate degree as a soloist with Prof. Angelo Gilardino at the Accademia Internazionale Lorenzo Perrosi in Biella, Italy. She earned her PhD at the UdK Berlin, where she taught from 2003 to 2015. As composer, she studied with Prof. Dr. Hartmut Fladt and attend­ed courses led by Leo Brouwer and Frangis Ali-Zade. She received an award for her wind…

* 1786
✝ 1856

Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen was the first-born child of the banker Johann Abraham Anton Schaaffhausen. She goes down in the annals of history as the 'Rhine Countess'. Undoubtedly the name stands for her exemplary noblesse and culture as well as for her social commitment which she demonstrates, for instance, during the cholera epidemic in Genoa in 1835. As a token of thanks King Carlo Alberto had a coin minted bearing her name. Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen as she is called after her marriage to…

* 1980 in Romania

Anamaria Meza was born in a small Transylvanian town called Deva, where she studied piano at the Sigismund Toduta music-highschool. Continuation of the academic studies (1999–2006) in Cluj-Napoca, at the Gheorghe Dima Music Academy, studying musical composition with Prof. Dora Cojocaru and Prof. Cornel Täranu. Short-term composition studies (2002) with Prof. Violeta Dinescu at the Carl von Ossietzky-University in Oldenburg. Her musical writings involve solo instruments, small instrumental ensembles, orchestra, as well as vocal-instrumental ensembles or choir, with or without…

* 1942 in Tokio

Haruna Miyake (Haruna Shibata) wurde am 20. September 1942 in Tokio (in einer Familie von Intellektuellen) geboren: Ihr Vater war Forscher auf dem Gebiet der Physik und der Medizin, ihre Mutter Schauspielerin. Als einziges Kind erfuhr sie die ungeteilte Förderung der Eltern, die sie sehr darin unterstützten, ihr musikalisches Talent auszubilden. Sie begann ihre Karriere als Pianistin bereits 1956 und debütierte mit einem Klavierkonzert von Mozart, begleitet vom Tokioter Sinfonieorchester. Während ihrer Teenagerzeit lebte Haruna Miyake drei Jahre mit ihrer…

* 1962 in Buenos Aires
✝ 2021 in Valencia

4 Latin Grammys für Claudia Montero Argentinean composer Claudia Montero (1960-2021) has emerged as one of the most outstanding and acclaimed composers in Latin America today. Her music “is strongly rooted in South American traditional music . apart from the joy it expresses there is also a sort of melancholy behind the music . not sadness, just an elegiac sense or yearning for older times . that is rooted in Claudia’s traditions from that part of the world” (David Brophy,…

* 1781
✝ 1848

The life and works of the pianist, pedagogue and composer Elise Müller (1782–1849) have not yet been adequately researched. In Bremen, where she was born and lived her entire life, she founded a girls school, at which she taught languages, history and geography, in addition to music. With her brother she helped found the Singakademie in Bremen. From 1833 until her death she corresponded with Karl August Varnhagen von Ense. A song of hers appears here for the first time…

* 1962 in Dakar

2019 : Grand Prix Sacem: Composer of the year for her life's work, Contemporary Classical Music. Florentine Mulsant is a French composer born on 27th of March 1962 in Dakar. Her musical style derives from two marked sources: the post-serial heritage which influenced the European composers in the 50s, and the revival of musical expressionism which is more and more vivid among today's composers. Florentine Mulsant studied during 12 years at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where…

* 1975 in Spain

Conchi Muna is a Spanish pianist, composer and author based in Germany. In her approach, she aims to combine piano music with poetry and inner journeys, incorporating improvisation and meditation as two of the most important elements. She has released two albums to date: “Las mujeres que soy” (2015) and “Dejar ir – Loslassen” (2018).

* 1962