Women in Music Timeline (2024)

Birth of Kassia, composer of Byzantine chant. Read more...

Birth of Hildegard of Bingen (d1179), German Benedictine abbess, visionary, writer and composer. Read more...

Eleanor of Aquitaine, important patron of troubadours, is born. Read more...

Lifetime of Beatriz, countess of Dia (b late 12th century), composer of A chantar m'er de so qu'eu no volria, the only surviving melody known to be by a woman troubadour. Read more...

The 16-year-old Isabella d'Este arrives at the court of Mantua as bride of Francesco II. Under her patronage, the Gonzaga court saw its most glorious artistic period. Read more...

Birth of the future Elizabeth I of England. An accomplished musician herself, Elizabeth was among history's most important patrons of music. Read more...

The publication record for female composers begins, with an organ setting of the hymn Conditor alme by the Spanish nun Gracia Baptista in Luis Venegas de Henestrosa's Libro de cifra nueva para tecla, harpa, y vihuela. Read more...

Maddalena Casulana publishes her first book of madrigals, the first music publication devoted to the works of a woman. Her aim, as she states in the dedication, is 'to show to the world the foolish error of men who so greatly believe themselves to be the masters of high intellectual gifts that [these gifts] cannot, it seems to them, be equally common among women'. Read more...

Foundation of Ferrara's famous 'Concerto delle donne' led by Laura Peverara, an ensemble of virtuosic singers that became a model for similar groups elsewhere and influenced the style of the Italian madrigal in the last 20 years of the sixteenth century. Read more...

Probable birthdate of the singer and composer Adriana Basile. Read more...

Vittoria Aleotti publishes her Ghirlanda de madrigali. Although probably student works, these four-voice madrigals show a command of an impressive variety of sixteenth-century styles. Read more...

Just 18 years old, the already-famous singer Caterina Martinelli dies while preparing to sing the title role in Monteverdi's opera Arianna. Monteverdi, with whose family the young singer had lodged for three years, writes the beautiful Lagrime d'amante al sepolcro dell'amata in her memory. Read more...

Benedictine nun Caterina Assandra publishes her Motetti, op.2. Read more...

Lucia Quinciani becomes the first woman to publish a monody, setting a text from Guarini's famous pastoral drama Il pastor fido. Read more...

Francesca Caccini publishes her Primo libro delle musiche, a book of monodies. Read more...

Birth of the composer and singer, Barbara Strozzi. Read more...

Francesca Caccini's opera La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina is performed in Florence. It is the first opera composed by a woman. Read more...

Francesca Campana publishes her Arie for 1-3 voices. Read more...

Claudia Rusca, a Milanese nun, publishes a collection of Sacri concerti. Read more...

Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, an Benedictine nun in Milan, publishes her Primavera di fiori musicali. Read more...

Barbara Strozzi publishes her first book of solo madrigals. Read more...

Sophie Elisabeth, duch*ess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, studies composition with Heirich Schätz. Read more...

Three songs by Lady Mary Dering are included in Henry Lawes' Select Ayres and Dialogues, which is dedicated to her. Read more...

Isabella Leonarda, a nun and prolific composer, publishes her first book of motets. Read more...

Sophie Elisabeth, duch*ess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, publishes her second collection of hymn melodies. Read more...

In Paris Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre composes music for a ballet, Les jeux à l'honneur de la victoire. Read more...

In Bologna, composer and painter Angiola Teresa Moratori Scanabecchi's oratorio, Il martirio di S Colomba is performed at the Oratorio of S Filippo Neri. Read more...

Amalia Catharina, Countess of Erbach, publishes a collection of Pietist songs. Read more...

Jacquet de la Guerre's opera, Cephale et Procris has its premiére at the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris. Read more...

Maria de Raschenau's oratorio Le sacre visioni di Santa Teresa is performed in Vienna. Read more...

Camilla de Rossi is commissioned by Joseph I to compose an oratorio, Santa Beatrice d'Este. Read more...

Birth of Kitty Clive, star of the London stage and famous interpreter of the music of Handel. Read more...

Pallade e Marte, a 'componimento dramatico' by Maria Margherita Grimani, is performed in Vienna for Charles VI's nameday. Read more...

Jacquet de la Guerre's Te Deum is sung in Paris on the occasion of the recovery of the young Louis XV from smallpox. Read more...

Les Génies, ou Les caractères de l'Amour, by an 18-year-old composer known today only as Mlle Duval, is performed at the Opéra in Paris. Read more...

Julie Pinel publishes a collection of French airs. Read more...

Wilhelmina, Princess of Prussia sees her opera Argenore performed at the court opera in Bayreuth. Read more...

Elisabeth de Haulteterre publishes her Premier livre de sonates for violin and continuo. Read more...

Maria Teresa Agnesi's cantata Il restauro d'Arcadia is given at the Teatro Regio in Milan. Read more...

Maria Antonia Walpurgis takes a leading role in her own opera, Il trionfo della fedeltà at Dresden. Read more...

Anna Bon dedicates her op.1 flute sonatas to her employer, Frederick the Great. Read more...

Walpurgis's opera Talestri, regini della amazoni is given at Nymphenburg and, unusually for opera of the period, is published, by Breitkopf in Leipzig. Read more...

Maddalena Laura Lombardini Sirmen performs her own violin concerto at the Concert Spirituel in Paris. Read more...

Marianne von Martínez is made an honorary member of the Bologna Accademia Filarmonica. Read more...

Anne Louise Boyvin d'Hardancourt Brillon de Jouy, a friend of Benjamin Franklin, composes her March des insurgents to celebrate a colonies victory in the American Revolutionary War. Read more...

Corona Schröter takes the lead role in Goethe's Die Fischerin, for which she composes the first setting of his poem 'Der Erlkönig' later treated to a famous setting by Schubert. Read more...

Maria Hester Park publishes keyboard sonatas with violin accompaniment in London. Read more...

Maria Theresia von Paradis's melodrama Ariadne und Bacchus has its première at the Schlosstheater in Laxenburg. Read more...

Three sonatas for piano, by the distinguished Mozart singer Margarethe Danzi, are published posthumously in Paris. Read more...

Military music by pianist Maria Brizzi Giorgi is performed for Napoleon when he passes through Bologna. Read more...

Louise Reichardt publishes 12 Gesänge in Hamburg. Read more...

Amalie, Princess of Saxony, composes a comic opera, Le nozze funeste. Read more...

Maria Aghate Szymanowska publishes a Divertimento for violin and piano and a Sérénade for cello and piano in Leipzig. Read more...

Birth of 'the Swedish Nightengale' Jenny Lind. Read more...

Sophie Bawr writes the first published history of women in music, contributing the volume on the Histoire de la musique to the Encyclopédie des dames, published in Paris. Read more...

Première of Piano Concerto by Clara Wieck (later Schumann) at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, with the 16-year-old composer as the soloist. Read more...

Louise Farrenc composes her Piano Quintet in A minor, op.30. Read more...

Emilie Zumsteeg publishes six lieder, op.6. Read more...

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel composes her Piano Trio op.11. Read more...

Felicita Casella's Portuguese opera Haydée is given in Oporto. Read more...

Ann Mounsey's oratorio The Nativity is performed at St Martin's Hall, London. Read more...

Marie Grandval's operetta Le sou de Lise is performed at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens. It is published under a pseudonym 'Caroline Blangy'. Read more...

Casella's opera Cristoforo Colombo is given at the Théâtre Impérial, Nice. Read more...

Liliuokalani, later Queen of Hawaii, publishes He mele lahui Hawaii, used until 1876 as the Hawaiian national anthem. Read more...

Soledad Bengoecha de Cármena's zarzuelas Flor de los cielos and El gran día are given at the Teatro Jovellanos, Madrid. Read more...

Maude Valérie White is the first woman to win the Mendelssohn Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Read more...

Augusta Holmès' dramatic symphony Les Argonautes has its première in Paris. Read more...

Cécile Chaminade's opéra comique, La Sévillaneis privately performed in Paris. Read more...

Birth of composer and highly influential teacher of composition, Nadia Boulanger. Read more...

Luise Adolpha Le Beau composes her Piano Concerto, op.37. Read more...

Amy Marcy Beach composes her Mass in E flat. Read more...

Ethel Smyth completes her Mass in D. Read more...

French composer Lili Boulanger is born. Read more...

Beach publishes her 'Gaelic' Symphony. Read more...

Mary Wurm founds and conducts a women's orchestra in Berlin. Read more...

Tekla Griebel Wandall's opera Skøn Karen is performed in Copenhagen. Read more...

Pauline Viardot composes an opéra comique, Cendrillon, on the story of Cinderella. Read more...

Ethel Smyth's opera The Wreckers has its première (in German, as Standrecht) at the Neues Theater, Leipzig. Read more...

Rebecca Clarke becomes the first female pupil of Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music. Read more...

Dutch composer and conductor Elisabeth Kuyper becomes the first woman to teach theory and composition at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. Read more...

After meeting Emmeline Pankhurst, Ethel Smyth composes her March of the Women, which becomes an anthem of the British women's suffrage movement. Read more...

Alma Mahler publishes Fünf Lieder in Berlin. Read more...

Ethel Smyth serves two months in Holloway Prison for her activism on behalf of women's suffrage. Read more...

At a time when nearly all major symphony orchestras are exclusively male, Henry Wood admits four women, including the violist/composer Rebecca Clarke, into the New Queen's Hall Orchestra. Read more...

Lili Boulanger becomes the first woman to win the Prix de Rome. Read more...

Birth of the great Jazz singer Billie Holiday. Read more...

American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald is born. Often considered the quintessential female jazz singer, she influenced countless American and international popular singers of the post-swing period. Read more...

Music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge founds the South Mountain Chamber Music Festival (later the Berkskhire Music Festival) an important summer festival of chamber music. Read more...

Rebecca Clarke's Viola Sonata ties for first place with Ernst Bloch's Viola Suite in the prestigious Coolidge Competition. The tie is broken in favour of Bloch by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge herself who, however, becomes an important patron of Clarke. Read more...

Ethel Smyth is made a DBE, the first female composer to be so honoured. Read more...

Elisabeth Kuyper founds the American Women's Symphony Orchestra in New York City. Read more...

Ruth Crawford's Violin Sonata is performed in New York at the League of Composers concert. Read more...

Imogen Holst wins the Cobbett Prize for composition at the Royal College of Music in London. Read more...

Elizabeth Maconchy's suite The Land is played at the London Promenade Concerts. Read more...

Margaret Bonds performs Florence Price's Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony. The occasion marks two firsts for African Americans. Price is the first African American woman to have a work performed by a major symphony and Bonds is the first African American to perform as soloist with the Chicago SO. Read more...

Ethel Leginska conducts her own opera, Gale at the Chicago City Opera. Read more...

Elisabeth Lutyens writes her Chamber concerto no.1, using her own version of the 12-note method. Read more...

Having been denied the use of Constitution Hall in Washington, DC, African-American singer Marian Anderson, with the support of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, gives a concert at the Lincoln Memorial, drawing an audience of some 75,000 people. Read more...

At the age of 20, Maria Callas sings her first Tosca, a role on which she would leave an indelible mark. Read more...

Première of Martha Graham's ballet Appalachian Spring to music by Aaron Copland. Read more...

American performance artist and composer Laurie Anderson is born. She made an unexpected crossover into the popular domain with her song 'O Superman', and became one of the most influential women composers of her time. Read more...

Peggy Glanville-Hicks's opera The Transposed Heads has its première (in a concert version) at the Louisville Symphony. Read more...

Avril Coleridge-Taylor composes the Ceremonial March to celebrate Ghana's independence. Read more...

In Tokyo, Mieko Shiomi with two colleagues forms Group-Ongaku, an experimental ensemble. Read more...

Louise Talma's The Alcestiad is the first opera by an American woman to be produced at a major European opera house, at Frankfurt. Read more...

Esther Ballou's Capriccio for violin and piano is given its first performance at the White House, Washington, DC. Read more...

Ruth Anderson founds the electronic music studio at Hunter College, New York. Read more...

Dorothy Rudd Moore helps found the Society of Black composers. Read more...

Jazz pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams' Music for Peace, later known as Mary Lou's Mass, is commissioned by the Vatican. Read more...

Meredith Monk's theatre piece Juice is given at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Read more...

Nicola LeFanu, daughter of composer Elizabeth Maconchy, has her work, The Hidden Landscape performed at the Proms concerts in London. Read more...

Musicologist Janet Knapp becomes the first female president of the American Musicological Society. Read more...

Thea Musgrave's opera, Mary Queen of Scots has its première at the Edinburgh Festival. Read more...

Performance artist Laurie Anderson's O Superman reaches number 2 on the British pop charts. Read more...

Composer Irma Ravinale is appointed Director of the Conservatorio di S Cecilia in Rome. Read more...

International Alliance for Women and Music is founded. Read more...

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra votes to accept women members of the orchestra. As of the end of 2006, the orchestra included one woman, a harpist. Read more...

Following a campaign by musicologist Liane Curtis, Amy Marcy Beach's name is added to the frieze of famous composer names on the Hatch Memorial Concert Shell in Boston, Massachusetts. Beach, a native of Boston, is the only female composer on the frieze. In celebration, the Boston Pops performs Beach's Bal Masque. Read more...

Jessye Norman sings the première of Judith Weir's woman.life.song at Carnegie Hall Read more...