Scala Radio Composer of the Week
Discover more about our Composer of the Week, in partnership with Donne
Last updated 5th Nov 2021
We have partnered up with Donne, Women in Music, a charity whose main goal is to celebrate, advance and amplify women in music so that they are seen, heard and appreciated for their talent, and so they can leave a legacy of inspiration for future generations.
At the beginning of this year, we joined forces with Donne to highlight some of the female composers who haven't been played on the station before, with the aim to introduce a wider audience to these composers and ensure that their work could be enjoyed by all.
This time, we will be celebrating a different composer each week, delving deeper into their music, and as well as having a selection of their tracks played across the week.
Donne Composers of the Week:
Hiromi
Hiromi Uehara, known professionally as Hiromi, is a Japanese jazz composer and pianist. She is known for her virtuosic technique, energetic live performances and blends of musical genres such as stride, post-bop, progressive rock, classical and fusion in her compositions.
Hiromi refuses to define herself or her music. She prefers to play and let her audience make up their own minds about what to call her music, saying, "It's just the union of what I've been listening to and what I've been learning."
Chiquinha Gonzaga
Chiquinha Gonzaga was a pioneer in both her professional and social life. She was the first female composer, conductor, performer, music teacher and writer in Brazil to live by her professional work.
Born in Rio de Janeiro during the time of Brazilian monarchy and slavery, she faced the prejudices of a patriarchal and sexist society. She fought for social independence and actively participated in the abolitionist and republican movements.
Gonzaga composed many pieces, included 77 works for the stage. Over 300 of her compositions, blending Brazilian and European musical traditions, were published during her lifetime. Her courage and determination made her a personality ahead of her time. Her life story is an example of perseverance, struggle and success. Chiquinha Gonzaga composed until the end of her life.
Laura Valborg Aulin
Laura Valborg Aulin (1860–1928) was born in Gävle, Sweden, into a musical family. She studied piano and composition in Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Paris, where her teachers included Massenet and Godard.
Aulin had a significant career as a composer & pianist in her hometown of Stockholm, which was interrupted in 1903 when she moved to Örebro to work as a music teacher. During her active years as a composer, she had numerous works published and performed. With a good education and heavily influenced by her musical upbringing, she wrote music that was much appreciated during her lifetime: mostly works for home and the salon, which, although influenced by French music, still belongs within the Scandinavian tradition. Her works show harmonic refinement and a powerful temperament, while her tone poems for piano are written in a more lyrical style.
At the age of 43, Aulin (also referred to as Valborg Aulin) decided to move from the capital, that place where grew up in, to Örebro, a city some 125miles to the west. There Aulin began working as a teacher, organist, pianist and arranging concerts although she ceased composing. The reasons for her departure has never been determined, although the move has been viewed with much speculation. The American Scholar posits that the reasons she possibly became fed up with the constant challenges faced by her regarding the musical culture in Stockholm, particularly since Aulin was female and also that she had certain difficulties with her mother. The Swedish Musical Heritage posits the same reasons. Other reasons suggested by The Swedish Art Music Society include the fact that the Aulin Quartet gradually ceased to perform and that the early death of the composer Ludvig Norman along with other members of her support structure. This combined with a lack of friends may have been one another reason.
Either way, Aulin's work was performed less and less, and would be temporarily forgotten - it was only in 1991 that one of her quartets was given its next performance.
Julie Cooper
Julie Cooper is an award-winning Welsh composer whose music is broadcast extensively on Film, Television and all visual media worldwide. She has scored multiple cinematic orchestral and chamber albums featured on television drama, wildlife documentaries, film and advertising.
Known for her evocative, eclectic scores and versatility as an orchestrator, she has created soundtracks for numerous theatre and BBC Radio Drama productions.
For the concert platform, her commissions have ranged from percussion quartet to full orchestra and choir, with performances at high-profile venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, St. David's Hall, Henley Festival, Newbury Spring Festival and Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. The diverse range of musicians and instruments she has been fortunate to write for are a constant source of creative inspiration, including Dame Evelyn Glennie, Grace Davidson, Claire Moore, 4-Mality, The Locrian Ensemble of London, Justin Pearson, Andy Findon, Safri Duo, Nicholas McCarthy and contemporary urban dance company Union Dance.
Her latest album will be released by Signum Classics in 2022, featuring Grace Davidson, Elena Urioste and Tom Poster, Nicholas McCarthy and conducted by Jessica Cottis.
Augusta Holmès
Augusta Holmès was a French composer of Irish descent, who had to fight for the right to become a musician — her mother actively discouraged it, and only after her death was Augusta able to take music lessons. By 1875, her compositions were performed in France, and she became a celebrity in Parisian cultural circles. A disciple of César Franck, she was also a close friend of Franz Liszt, who admired her work and encouraged her to keep composing. She corresponded with the cultural elite of Europe, and held her own very popular salon from an early age.
Holmès' powerful, energetic music bears witness to how this woman held her own in a sphere where men exerted so much influence. Her compositions were often characterised as 'masculine' and 'virile' by the men she competed against.
She appears to have held everyone in thrall with her striking good looks, breadth of culture and ebullient personality. "Like children, women know no obstacles; and their will breaks everything. Mademoiselle Holmès is indeed a woman, she is 'outrageous'". This misogynistic outrage came from Saint-Saëns and reflects that period's admiring amazement for this woman who managed, thanks to her talent, but also to her will, to make recognize that the word "composer" also had a feminine.
Saint-Saëns even proposed marriage, and said, "we were all of us in love with her!". Franck's highly charged Piano Quintet was rumoured to be infused with his passion for her, and Debussy wrote after her death, "We shall never forget what delightful and powerful music she gave us".
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