Melancholy Mixtape / International Women's Day Edition
Explore feelings of devotion and awe, longing and grief, in six moments of classical music penned by women composers.
Welcome to the latest Melancholy Mixtape, a series here at Shades of Blue that weaves together moments of melancholy classical music to help you cultivate calm, connection, and healing throughout the month. (If you're a new subscriber, head over here to check out previous installments.)
The classical music industry isn't known for moving fast — especially when it comes to correcting the massive gender imbalance among composers programmed by our leading ensembles. But finally, the tide seems to be turning in a meaningful way.
Take the Philadelphia Orchestra, for example. Of the 55 composers whose music the ensemble performed in the 2018–19 season, not a single one was a woman. ("Zero is a very damning number," admitted the orchestra's head of artistic planning in a 2018 interview with NPR.) But by the 2022–23 season, more than one in four composers represented were women. And according to data from the Institute for Composer Diversity's 2024 Orchestra Repertoire Report, there was a 644% increase in women composers programmed by U.S. orchestras between 2015 and 2024.
Why it's taken so long for gatekeepers to realize the harm in excluding women's voices from the concert stage will never cease to mystify. But recent concerted efforts to rectify this have led to a treasure trove of music being rediscovered, performed, and recorded at an increasingly rapid pace.
So for this International Women's Day, I've assembled a Melancholy Mixtape of six musical moments created exclusively by women composers. Spanning 800 years, these selections transcend antiquated discussions of whether a work is "masculine" or "feminine" based on the gender of its composer. (A discussion point that has dominated critical reviews of music written by women for centuries.)
But most importantly, they remind us of music's purpose: to move us, to help us see beyond the borders of our own worldview, to deliver expressions of devotion and awe, grief and longing, shaped by personal experiences in the world.
Regardless of how you consume this Melancholy Mixtape — getting to know each work one by one here on Substack, or listening to them all at once on YouTube, Spotify, or Idagio — I hope you enjoy this month's selections.
Hildegard of Bingen / Ave generosa (Hymn to the Virgin)
Grace Davidson, soprano (Follow along with the Latin text and English translation.)
A visionary mystic, composer, poet, healer, and abbess, Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) spent the majority of her life cloistered in a Benedictine convent in the remote hills of southwest Germany. Over her four decades as Mother Superior, Hildegard composed hymns to be sung at daily devotions, 77 of which she collected under the title Symphonia armoniae celestium revelationum (Harmonic Symphony of Celestial Revelations) — sublimely radiant chants for solo voice that likely weren't heard outside the convent's walls for nearly 800 years.
Francesca Caccini / Lasciatemi qui solo (Leave Me Here Alone)
Benedetta Mazzucato, mezzo-soprano L'Arpeggiata Christina Pluhar, conductor (Follow along with the Italian text and English translation.)
The most prominent (and highly paid) singer in Florence's Medici Court for more than 25 years, Francesca Caccini (1587–ca. 1645) was also a prolific composer who produced music for courtly entertainments, theatrical works — including what is likely the first opera written by a woman — and reams of intimate songs like Lasciatemi qui solo. Against a stark harmonic backdrop of solo lute, Caccini's hypnotic melody conveys an ocean of grief, as the speaker pleads with the sirens to:
Sweeten my sufferings and Soften my weeping, Go elsewhere to swim, Dampen the waves' Cruel scorn, and their ire. Leave me to die.
Louise Farrenc / Symphony No. 3, II. Adagio cantabile
Orchestre national de Metz Grand Est David Reiland, conductor
Louise Farrenc (1804–1875) was one of the most prominent musicians in 19th-century France — the only woman appointed professor of piano at the Paris Conservatory in her lifetime, whose music received praise from fellow composers and critics alike. And even in a time in which Parisian audiences were dismissive of both women composers and French orchestral music, she composed music of unbridled beauty in three exceptional symphonies — like the slow movement of the Third, in which pastoral peace blossoms from a shepherd's song into a ravishing climax for full orchestra.
Henriette Renié / Légende (Legend)
Valérie Milot, harp
To harpists, their instrument is synonymous with Henriette Renié (1875–1956), who developed a method of harp technique still used across the globe today. An in-demand teacher from the age of 12 — musicians more than twice her age would plead for lessons with her — she composed works that not only explored vivid emotional landscapes, but also showcased the innovations of the modern harp.
In Légende, inspired by the poem Les Elfes by Leconte de Lisle, Henriette displays her talent for setting dramatic scenes with cinematic clarity. As a knight rides through a dark forest on the way to his wedding, a queen and her horde of elves entice him to stay and dance with them on the moonlit grass. The knight continues his journey, but the queen places a curse on him, in which he sees an apparition of his fiancé by the roadside. Horrified by the ghostly sight and believing his beloved dead, the knight collapses and dies d'angoisse et d'amour — of anguish and of love.
Florence Price / Fantasie for Violin and Piano No. 2
Randall Goosby, violin Zhu Wang, piano
Florence Price (1887–1953) broke many barriers imposed upon Black musicians in the United States — from publishing her first composition at age 11, to being the first Black woman to have a symphony performed by a major US orchestra. But after her death, many of her works collected dust in an abandoned house in St. Anne, Illinois, until they were rediscovered in 2009.
Among those scores was the Second Fantasie for violin and piano, which showcases all of the elements of Florence's style — her love of Romanticism's lush harmonies, the rhythmic thrust of jazz and dance hall music, and a heartfelt lyricism rooted in the African American spiritual tradition.
Grażyna Bacewicz / Piano Quintet No. 1, III. Grave
Krystian Zimerman, piano Kaja Danczowska and Agata Szymczewska, violin Ryszard Groblewski, viola Rafal Kwiatkowski, cello
Known as the "first lady of Polish music" in her lifetime, Grażyna Bacewicz (1909–1969) found success as both violinist and composer, one whose style evolved from works built upon traditional Classical forms like the sonata and symphony to music of angular, dissonant modernism. Whether she was writing for orchestra, violin showpieces, or deeply personal chamber works, the rhapsodic character of Polish folk songs run through the music's veins — like the emotional heart of her First Piano Quintet, in which the string quartet develops a solemn hymn introduced by the solo piano into a roar of communal grief.
Want to share your experience with one of the works in this month's mixtape? I'd love to hear about it! Leave a comment below or reply to this email. (And if you enjoyed your time here today, would you ever so kindly tap that little heart below? 👇🏼)
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Wow! Thank you for this revelation.
Oh boy, that harp! Where has Henriette Renié been all my life? What a magnificent piece.
Gorgeous selections again. Thank you Michael.