RON HENGGELER

November 22, 2023
Composers of Classical Music, and San Francisco's Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall 

In my library, I have a book of classical music composers that was published in 1926. The book is a weighty tome, and the text is in French. I scanned and digititized all the full-page images of the composers and found it curious that there was not a single woman represented. This was a troubling omission so I went on-line and did searches for women composers of Western classical music. Here are some of the results, along with the scanned images of the male composers from the pages of the old French book. This collection is by no means a complete list.

"Classical music is a wonderful 1200 year-old tradition that witnesses everything that it has meant and what it means right now to be human. "

Michael Tilson Thomas

Isaac Albéniz 

1860-1909 

Spanish virtuoso pianist, composer, and conductor 

"I want the Arabic Granada, that which is art, which is all that seems to me beauty and emotion."

Ambroise Thomas 

1811-1896

French composer and teacher, best known for his operas Mignon and Hamlet

Amy Beach 

1867-1944 

American composer and pianist 

“Music is the superlative expression 
of life experience…”

Ludwig van Beethoven 

1770-1827 

German composer and pianist 

"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents."

Barbara Strozzi 

1619-1677

Italian singer and composer of the Baroque Period.

Louis-Hector Berlioz 

1803-1869 

French Romantic composer and conductor

"Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down."

"A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence."

Georges Bizet

1838-1875

French composer of the Romantic era

"As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note."

Johannes Brahms

1833-1897 

German composer, pianist, and conductor of the Romantic period

“The idea comes to me from outside of me - and is like a gift. . ."

Anton Bruckner 

1824-1896 

Austrian composer, organist, and music theorist best known for his symphonies, masses, Te Deum and motets.

"It is no common mortal who speaks to us in this music."

Cécile Louise Stéphanie Chaminade 

1857-1944 

French composer and pianist

César Franck 

1822-1890 

Composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher  

"I dared much, but the next time, you will see, I will dare even more. . ."

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words. "

Victor Hugo

Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier 

1841-1894 

French Romantic composer and pianist

Clara Josephine Schumann 

1819-1896 

German pianist, composer and piano teacher 

"There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself and then listening to it."

"Music is the shorthand of emotion."

Leo Tolstoy

François Couperin 

1668-1733

French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist

Claude Debussy 

1862-1918

French composer

"Art is the most beautiful of all lies."

Antonín Leopold Dvorák

1841-1904 

Czech composer

"In the Negro melodies of America I find all that is needed for a great and noble school of music."

"If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music."

Gustav Mahler

"Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art. "

Frederic Chopin

Sir Edward Elgar

1857-1934 

English composer

"My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require."

Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre 

1665-1729

French musician, harpsichordist and composer

 Erik Satie 

1866-1925

French composer and pianist 

"If only the whole world could feel the power of harmony."

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Dame Ethel Mary Smyth 

1858-1944 

English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement

“I feel I must fight for [my music] because I want women to turn their minds to big and difficult jobs, not just to go on hugging the shore, afraid to put out to sea.” 

Fanny Mendelssohn 

1805-1847 

German composer and pianist of the early Romantic era

“It must be a sign of talent that I do not give up, though I can get nobody to take an interest in my efforts.” 

"It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself. "

Johann Sebastian Bach

Gabriel Urbain Fauré 

1845-1924 

French composer, organist, pianist and teacher 

Florence Beatrice Price 

1887-1953 

American classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra.

"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."

Ludwig van Beethovan

Francesca Caccini

1587-1640 

Italian composer, singer, lutenist, poet, and music teacher of the early Baroque era. 

Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi 

1583-1643

Italian composer of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods

"My music is best understood by children and animals."

Igor Stravinsky

Germaine Tailleferre

1892-1983 

French composer and the only female member of the group of composers known as Les Six.

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka 

1804-1857 

Russian composer often regarded as the fountainhead of Russian classical music.

"A nation creates music. The composer only arranges it."

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."

Aldoux Huxley

Christoph Willibald Gluck 

1714-1787 

Composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period

Edvard Grieg 

1843-1907

Norwegian composer and pianist

"To have the ability to withdraw into oneself and forget everything around one when one is creating - What, I think is the only requirement for being able to bring forth something beautiful. The whole thing is - a mystery."

"Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memories."

Oscar Wilde

Gustav Mahler 

1860-1911 

Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer

"The impressions of the spriritual experiences gave my future life its form and content." 

George Frideric Handel

1685-1759 

German-born Baroque composer

"Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not. God knows."

Hans Sachs 

1494-1576

German Meistersinger, poet, playwright, and shoemaker

"All poetic inspiration is but dream interpretation."

Hildegard of Bingen 

1098-1179

Also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath of the High Middle Ages.

"The truly holy person welcomes all that is earthly."

Orlande de Lassus 

1532-1594 

Composer of the late Renaissance, considered to be one of the three most famous and influential musicians in Europe at the end of the 16th century. 

Jean-Marie Leclair 

1697-1764 

Baroque violinist and composer

Lili Boulanger 

1893-1918 

French composer, and the first female winner of the Prix de Rome composition prize. Her older sister was the noted composer and composition teacher Nadia Boulanger.

Franz Liszt 

1811-1886 

Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, and organist of the Romantic era

"Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist."

Louise Farrenc 

1804-1875 

French composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher

Jean-Baptiste Lully 1632-1687 

Italian-born French composer, instrumentalist, and dancer who is considered a master of the French Baroque music style

"Give Mozart a fairy tale and he creates without effort an immortal masterpiece."

Camille Saint-Saens

Maddalena Casulana 

1544-1590 

Italian composer, lutenist and singer of the late Renaissance

Maria Szymanowska 

1789-1831 

Polish composer and one of the first professional virtuoso pianists of the 19th century

Marion Eugénie Bauer 

1882-1955 

American composer, teacher, writer, and music critic

Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet 

1842-1912 

French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas

"I have departed from this planet and I have left behind my poor earthly ones with their occupations which are as many as they are useless; at last I am living in the scintillating splendor of the stars, each of which used to seem to me as large as millions of suns."

Felix Mendelssohn

1809-1847 

German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period

"Life and art are not two different things."

André Charles Prosper Messager 

1853-1929 

French composer, organist, pianist and conductor

Giacomo Meyerbeer 

1791-1864 

German opera composer

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky 

1839-1881

Russian composer, and one of the group known as "The Five"

"Art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity." 

"Music is indeed the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."

Ludwig van Beethovan

Wolfgangus Mozart

1756-1791

A prolific and influential composer of the Classical period.

“The music is not in the notes, 
but in the silence between."

"Mozart is the incarnation of music."

Joseph Hyden

Nadia Boulanger 

1887-1979

French composer, conductor, and teacher 

She taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century

"Nothing is better than music. 
When it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for…"

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."

Pablo Picasso

Jacques Offenbach 

1819-1880 

German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the Romantic period 

Giacomo Puccini

1858-1924 

Italian opera composer

“Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.”  

Maurice Ravel 

1875-1937 

French composer, pianist and conductor 

“The only love affair I have ever had
was with music.”

"There's music in the sighing of a reed; There's music in the gushing of a rill; There's music in all things, if men had ears; The earth is but the music of the spheres."

Lord Byron

Rebecca Helferich Clarke 

1886-1979 British-American classical composer and violist 

“I can’t do it unless it’s the first thing I think of every morning when I wake and the last thing I think of every night before I go to sleep.”

Igor Stravinsky 

1882-1971 

Russian composer, pianist and conductor

"Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time." 

Richard Strauss 

1864-1949 

German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist

"The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play."

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov 

1844-1908

Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five. 

"Orchestration is part of the very soul of the work. A work is thought out in terms of the orchestra, certain tone-colors being inseparable from it in the mind of its creator and native to it from the hour of its birth."

Gioachino Antonio Rossini 

1792-1868 

Italian composer 

"Give me a laundry-list and I'll set it to music."

"Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass?"

Michael Torke

Ruth Crawford Seeger

1901-1953

American modernist composer

Camille Saint-Saëns 

1835-1921 

French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era

"The artist who does not feel completely satisfied by elegant lines, by harmonious colors, and by a beautiful succession of chords does not understand the art of music."

Robert Schumann 

1810-1856 

German composer, pianist, and influential music critic

"To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist."

Franz Peter Schubert 

1797-1828

Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras

"You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves."

"Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements."

Giacomo Puccini

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi 

1678-1741

Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher, impresario, and Roman Catholic priest

"There are no words, it's only music there."

Virgil Thomson 1896-1989 

American composer and music critic. 

"Let your mind alone, and see what happens."

"To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist."

Robert Schumann

Richard Wagner 

1813-1883 

German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor 

"The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice."

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 

1840-1893 

Russian composer of the Romantic period

“Truly there would be reason to go mad 
were it not for music.”

"Where words fail, music speaks."

Hans Christian Anderson

Teresa Carreño 

1853-1917 

Venezuelan pianist, soprano, composer, and conductor

"To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time."

Leonard Bernstein

"Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below."

Joseph Addison

"Music is the highest, most powerful, most overriding of all the arts. In the presence of music, all the other arts take on the character of the music, not vice versa, and it is capable of, and can produce in us, the finest, most delicate, of possible human reactions."

Mark Anstendig

"If music be the food of love, play on."

William Shakespeare