Obscure Music Mondays

Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) has been featured by us a number of times previously with her music for orchestra, voice, and strings, however today we look at one of her few works for organ, the Short Chorale Preludes. Smyth was an active and proponent of the women's suffrage movement, but faced many challenges as a woman in the male dominated...

Frank Hoyt Losey was a prolific composer of music for bands, with a penchant for marches. His Gloria March remains a standard in the band repertoire today. While Losey wrote often for bands and orchestras in a march style, he occasionally experimented with ragtime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YdQvWG9pVA While Losey published over 400 works, much of his life was a mystery, from his...

We've previously taken a look at two works by Mélanie Hélène Bonis (Mel Bonis), her Suite en Trio and Sonata for Cello and Piano. If you're not familiar with Mel Bonis, make sure to take a look at those previous works to learn more about her. This week we take a look at her Piano Quartet No. 1, Op. 69...

Agathe Ursula Backer Grøndahl (December 1, 1847 – June 4, 1907) was a Norwegian pianist and composer from a well-to-do family that supported the arts. Agathe and her three sisters all showed artistic talent. When Backer Grøndahl was 10, she moved with her family to the capital of Norway, Christiana (present-day Oslo) where she studied with Ludvig Mathias Lindeman and other...

Edward Alexander MaDowell (Dec. 18, 1860 - Jan. 23, 1908) was an American composer and pianist, born in New York City. He was a part of the Second New England School, known more commonly as the Boston Six. MacDowell wasn't born in to a musical family, but he took music lessons from a Columbian violinist, Juan Buitrago, who lived with the MacDowell...

Clara Schumann (Sept. 13, 1819 - May 20, 1896) was a German composer and pianist, born to musical parents in Leipzig. Her father was well-known throughout Leipzig, where he sold and repaired pianos, and gave piano lessons. She took lessons from him, and he also made sure she was educated in music theory, counterpoint, harmony, and composition. She had her first recital...

Domenico Carlo Maria Dragonetti (April 7, 1763 – April 16, 1846) was a double bass virtuoso and composer, born in Venice, Italy. He lived there for 30 years and worked at various opera houses before moving to London, England. There he played at the King's Theatre, and lived there the rest of his life. Dragonetti knew Joseph Haydn and Ludwig...

Louise Farrenc (May 31, 1804 - Sept. 15, 1875) was a French pianist, teacher, and composer. Born in Paris, she started the piano at an early age, and later on also showed a knack for composition. At the age of fifteen, her parents let her study composition with Anton Reicha at the Paris Conservatory. Later on she embarked upon a...

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (Sept. 5, 1867 - December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist.  Extremely gifted from a young age, Beach's talents seemed to run in the family, with various members playing instruments or singing, and showing great aptitude for music. Beach was exceptionally talented, having learned 40 songs around the age of one, and at two...

Samuel Colderidge-Taylor (Aug. 15, 1875 - Sept. 1, 1912) was born in London, England, to Alice Hare Martin, an English woman, and Dr. Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, from Sierre Leone. They weren't married, and Daniel Taylor returned to Africa before 1875, unaware he had a son. Martin named her child after the poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and was raised in Croydon...