Quartet

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 was one of the first women ever hired by a professional orchestra. Dorothy Howell (b.1898): A prodigy who shot to fame at the 1919 Proms. Doreen Carwithen (b.1922): One of Britain’s first woman film composers who scored Elizabeth II’s coronation film. 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 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.