Winter 2023

Above: Processing
suffragettes, c. 1908, World’s
Graphic Press Limited, 36-38
Whitefriars Street, Fleet Street,
London. ‘Women’s Social and
Political Union’ teams draw the
carriage of released prisoners
away from Holloway, LSE
Library. Source: Wikimedia
Commons
with his orchestral compositions, Fanny was
expected to stay home playing salon concerts.
“Fanny was allowed to play the piano, as long
as it supported her brother and made her more
attractive as a marriage prospect. Teaching the
piano was also an acceptable occupation for
women, at a time when most professions were
closed to women,” notes Ruth. Fanny’s ‘Adagio’
“is tricky to get right. It’s a delicate balance of a
slightly naïve, sweet and pleasant [melody] with a
[calming] meditation, and to try and find exactly
the right tempo to let it be a dream, and to open
with it, is difficult.”
Fanny Mendelssohn’s near contemporary, Clara
Schumann, had much greater freedom to travel,
performing in concerts throughout Europe as
a highly celebrated pianist. From childhood to
middle age, she produced a good body of work but,
following the early death in 1856 of her husband,
the composer Robert Schumann, Clara largely gave
up composing, leaving a legacy of just 23 published
works. In preparing to perform Clara Schumann’s
‘Three Romances’ Ruth found that “it took a lot of
personal energy to discover the depth in it. But I
had played the same piece for another recital in
France in May, and I worked quite a lot on it then,”
adding, “it has been a year where I’ve begun to play
more women’s repertoire.”
Although she is now recognised as an important
composer of the Romantic era, Schumann herself
seemed to have absorbed the prevailing view that
women did not have the ‘genius’ to create great
music. “I once believed that I possessed creative
talent,” she claimed, “but I have given up this idea;
a woman must not desire to compose – there has
never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect
to be the one?” No doubt Clara would have been
able to put more energy into her composing if
she did not have eight children to provide for
and a husband whose health was precarious. As
Ruth comments, “When it comes to women, the
perception of competence is always the issue.
Not just in music, but everywhere. And it’s not
just men, women can be just as sexist without
realising it.”
The work of English composer Ethel Smyth
(see feature on p.14) was new to Ruth. “Her ‘Violin
Sonata’ required the most preparation because
10 Restoration Conversations • Winter 2023