Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Women and the Piano by Susan Tomes - Available

Women and the Piano

A History in 50 Lives

by Susan Tomes
ebook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Read a sample Read a sample
1 of 1 copy available
Women are an essential part of the history of the piano—but how many women pianists can you name?
 
Throughout most of the piano’s history, women pianists lacked access to formal training and were excluded from male-dominated performance spaces. Even the modern piano’s keys were designed without consideration of women’s typically smaller hands. Yet despite their music being largely confined to the domestic sphere, women continued to play, perform, and compose on their own terms.
 
Celebrated pianist and author Susan Tomes traces fifty such women across the piano’s history. Including now-famous names such as Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn, Tomes also highlights overlooked women: from Hélène de Montgeroult, whose playing saved her life during the French Revolution, to Leopoldine Wittgenstein, influential Viennese salonnière, and Hazel Scott, the first Black performer in the United States to have a nationally syndicated TV show.
 
From Maria Szymanowska to Nina Simone, and including interviews with women performing today, this is a much-needed corrective to our understanding of the piano—and a timely testament to women’s musical lives.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 23, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780300277760

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780300277760
      • File size: 12106 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Booklist

      March 15, 2024
      Today, women pianists are not strangers on the concert stage, but it wasn't always so. Without formal training and with social conventions that kept them from playing the piano in public, women were not able to pursue professional music careers for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no matter how musically gifted they were. Tomes (The Piano, 2022) begins with a pair of essays outlining the instrument's origins and its growing popularity. Fifty brief biographies follow, arranged chronologically under three headings: "The dawn of the piano era," "Women in the age of the concert pianist," and "Jazz and light-music pianists." There are familiar names, including Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Nadia Boulanger, Wanda Landowska, Alicia de Larrocha, Mary Lou Williams, Hazel Scott, and Nina Simone, but, more importantly, dozens more who are not as well-known. There are extensive end notes and a generous selection of suggestions for further reading. Music students, fans of the piano, and anyone interested in learning about these hidden musical figures will find much to appreciate in this concise and carefully composed work.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading