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Mozart's sister was just as accomplished but she was a girl and didn't get the same attention
As I understand it, it was their father, Leopold, who insisted that she quit her music career once she became of marrying age. Which she did, but we still have lots of her music. She continued to write and send the scores to her brother.
I have a theory that a few pieces of music that we attribute to Wolfgang are actually Anna’s. Not because he was trying to take credit, but because he adored his sister and wanted to make sure her music got heard. But it’s just a theory, nothing I can prove.
Sounds compelling! Surely some historians have dived in to it..?
Can you imagine the kind of music we'd enjoy if she had been given an equal chance?
Yes. Classical
Maybe she'd have invented something new. A band named Rage Against the Classical Machine.
Some of those that work forces, ARE THE SAME THAT WRITE CHORUSES HUH!
Not really what I meant but, funny, thanks 👍
After reading mozart’s letters I couldn’t stop thinking about how much incredible music was lost because of the cultural oppression of women of that time period.
That goes beyond music. Art, science, literature, philosophy, and more have all suffered because of oppression. Moreso for women of color
E: My musician partner recommended Florence Price, but here's a comprehensive wiki page
I don't know about this, can you provide a link?
This is the book I’m referring to: https://www.powells.com/book/mozarts-letters-mozarts-life-9780393328301?condition=Used+-+Good&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23231155612
Clara Schumann is now-a-days getting a lot more recognition as a composer, whereas she was mostly known as a performer and wife to Robert Schumann during her lifetime.
Women‽ Making music‽ How absurd, everyone knows that it’s 1679 and women aren’t allowed to touch things that aren’t kitchen utensils and babies, they can’t even read! Oh sirrah, how deliciously you delight me with notions of “famous women!”
Small correction, in those days, women's work is making thread. Not to say women didn't cook, but that seems to have been a shared responsibility for all civilizations throughout history.
Note that I said thread, not cloth or clothes. Weaving and tailoring was often a man's job, but making thread took a large part of the woman's time. Though in 1679 the Spitting Wheel existed and that made making thread take a significantly less amount of time versus say a thousand years before when the Spitting Wheel didn't exist and the drop l thimble was 12 hours a day every day for all women just to keep the family in enough warm clothes to survive. Depending on climate, of course.
Acoup.blog has a lot more on what history is normal women's work in the day although realistically it isn't much because those types of things weren't written about in history. Still, we know enough to reconstruct and it had to have been that. It turns out women's work is easy to figure out just because we know feeding babies had to be done by women (nursing) for the first couple of years and making thread is one of the few jobs that are compatible with having a baby around that needs to nurse at throughout the day. Once the baby was two you could say okay go with dad but by then women was used to doing it then there's a good chance she was pregnant and couldn't do a lot of the "men's work" jobs that had to be done so she is left doing this women's work things that needed to be done.
But seriously, that was prolly similar to answers you would have gotten from people of that day, sadly. :/
Nope. Because in those days, unless they were wealthy, women worked.
Same for men, but men's work and women's work was different for good reasons and the people who write history rarely wrote about either (unless the subject is a noble.). If they did write about peasant work, it would have been men's work, not women's work. There's a good chance you should read slave above, but free men who weren't nobles, also had to work hard
Small farms couldn't divide work into women's and men's. They did what had to be done (except for looking after the kids. The mother would do that and also harvest, run a vegetable garden, etc).
In the busy season yet it was all hands of deck. However most of the year farming isn't that much. And making thread used a large chunk of time. Even at harvest women were not taking the same jobs if they had a baby (or were pregnant) - since they physically couldn't do some jobs. Women who were not doing either would do the hard work. The elderly (body near worn out) would also not be doing the hard work.
But overall, the point is that women's work would be anything that was compatible with pregnancy and nursing a baby. There is a large amount of this work to do. There was also a large amount of work that was not compatible with this which men in turn took on, even though only a small minority was things where testosterone made men better.
Well, of course, there are famous women, but only because of their status through birth and/or marriage
Predating all of them by some centuries, you could maybe check out work by Hildegard of Bingen. I don't know enough to suggest any particular piece but I've heard one or two pieces and they're beautiful.
Yeah, I really like this one.
An orphanage in Venice was also a music school. Vivaldi was one of the many teachers. The orphan girls were taught all sorts of musical skills from singing to composing. How much nicer is this than work them to death in the doom factory!
Mozart's sister was supposedly his equal, but her life wasn't allowed to take the same course.
The last time I looked this up I remember seeing a crazy theory that Vivaldi was secretly a woman passing as a man and that's kind of stuck with me too.
Yes.
There were also composers of color working in Europe contemporaneously.
You don't hear about them either. The reason is what you'd expect.
Names/examples would be awesome?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevalier_de_Saint-Georges
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bridgetower
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Magdalena_Bach (there's some scholarly thinking that she may have done some of Johann Sebastian's work)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9cile_Chaminade (personal favorite)
There's an extensive Wikipedia list of female composers as well. Someone already mentioned Clara Schumann. Nadia Boulanger was hugely influential if not widely performed as well.
Louise Farrenc is the one I'm aware of, and this is my favourite piece of hers. It stands shoulder to shoulder with the other works in the classical canon and is noteworthy regardless of its composer being a woman.
She predates Mozart by many decades but I like her harpsichord suite: https://bachtrack.com/composer/de-la-guerre
Fanny Mendelssohn
I don't remember where I got this list but here are some notables I felt the need to write down.
- Dora Pejacevió
- Alma Mahler
- Francesca Caccini
- Lili Boulanger
- Melanie Bonis
- Peggy Glanville-Hicks
- Margaret Bonds
- Cécile Chaminade
I forgot who it was, but one of them had a female student they wanted to bone. So they gave her stupid easy parts because she wasn't that good. Then she made it clear she wasn't interested and he gave her an actual part everyone else was doing then kicked her out of the school because she sucked.
Edit. Looked it up because it was bugging me. It was Beethoven and the girl was Therese Malfatti. They think he named Für Elise actually Für Therese after her, but he had super sloppy hand writing and people thought it was Elise.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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