Blattner Series Lecture and Zoom chat with Heather Hadlock, Associate Professor of Musicology, Stanford University.

Imagining Friendships

A “room of one’s own,” though necessary for creative work, can be a lonely place. Until the 20th century, isolation was a defining feature of a female composer’s experience. Each woman who composed and published her music in 19th century Europe tended to regard herself, and be celebrated or disparaged by her contemporaries, as the first and only woman with the talent, skill, and ambition to compose. They worked within masculine networks, typically beginning with musical fathers or brothers and extending outward to husbands, teachers, mentors, peers, students, and publishers. Even female composers who knew and appreciated each other, as Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel did for a few years in the 1840s, left scant traces of their relationship in letters and diaries.

This lecture will consider the overlapping lives of Schumann, Hensel, and Louise Farrenc, three brilliant and prolific pianist-composers of the Romantic era. What did they have in common? How did their creative lives and opportunities differ according to the city, class, and family each was born into? Where did their paths cross, and what did they know of each other? Above all, what might they have heard and appreciated in each others’ music?