Quartet

Name: Quartet
Brand: Allen & Unwin
SKU: 9780571366118
Price: 36.99 NZD
Availability: InStock

How Four Women Challenged the Musical World

By Leah Broad

Brief Description

The lives, loves, adventures and trailblazing musical careers of four extraordinary women from a stunning debut biographer. Fabulous. Sunday Times A rare gift. Financial Times Passionate ... Vivid ... Timely. Telegraph Readable and inspiring. Guardian Compelling ... Ambitious ... Poignant. Spectator Magnificent. Kate Mosse Riveting. Antonia... Read More

Format: Paperback / softback

$36⁹⁹

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Quartet

$36⁹⁹

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The lives, loves, adventures and trailblazing musical careers of four extraordinary women from a stunning debut biographer.

The lives, loves, adventures and trailblazing musical careers of four extraordinary women from a stunning debut biographer.

Description

The lives, loves, adventures and trailblazing musical careers of four extraordinary women from a stunning debut biographer.

Fabulous. Sunday Times

A rare gift. Financial Times

Passionate ... Vivid ... Timely. Telegraph

Readable and inspiring. Guardian

Compelling ... Ambitious ... Poignant. Spectator

Magnificent. Kate Mosse

Riveting. Antonia Fraser

A breath of fresh air. Kate Molleson

Fascinating. Alexandra Harris

Wonderful. Claire Tomalin

Splendid. Miranda Seymour

Remarkable. Fiona Maddocks

Pioneering. Andrew Motion

Brilliant. Helen Pankhurst

Ethel Smyth (b. 1858): Famed for her operas, this trailblazing queer Victorian composer was a larger-than-life socialite, intrepid traveller and committed Suffragette.

Rebecca Clarke (b. 1886): This talented violist and Pre-Raphaelite beauty was one of the first women ever hired by a professional orchestra, later celebrated for her modernist experimentation.

Dorothy Howell (b. 1898): A prodigy who shot to fame at the 1919 Proms, her reputation as the 'English Strauss' never dented her modesty; on retirement, she tended Elgar's grave alone.

Doreen Carwithen (b. 1922): One of Britain's first woman film composers who scored Elizabeth II's coronation film, her success hid a 20-year affair with her married composition tutor.

In their time, these women were celebrities. They composed some of the century's most popular music and pioneered creative careers; but today, they are ghostly presences, surviving only as muses and footnotes to male contemporaries like Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten - until now.

Leah Broad's magnificent group biography resurrects these forgotten voices, recounting lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrating their musical masterpieces. Lighting up a panoramic sweep of British history over two World Wars, Quartet revolutionises the canon forever.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780571366118

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 07 March 2024

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Faber & Faber

Edition: Main

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 20.0mm

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 386g

Pages: 480

Collections

Arts & Culture Biography & Memoir Education & Reference Leah Broad Music & Musicians Musicians, Movie Stars & Creative Biographies Non-Fiction

About the Author

Leah Broadis a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford University, specialising in twentieth-century music. She was one of 2016's BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinkers and in 2015 won the Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism. She writes and speaks for organisations including Glyndebourne, London Chamber Orchestra and the BBC Proms. Quartet is her first book.

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