25 Of The Greatest Female Composers Of All Time

Start with: “Ordo Virtutum”Saint and Doctor of the Church

Hildegard was the tenth child of a noble family and had visions from early childhood. At eight she was given to the Benedictine monastery at Disibodenberg, and in 1136 the nuns elected her to lead their community. She later founded her own convents at Rupertsberg and Eibingen and wrote books of theology, medicine and visions.

She left 69 musical works plus the Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues), a sung morality play of 82 songs. Her soaring chants make her one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony and the most recorded in modern times. In 2012 the Catholic Church declared her a saint and a Doctor of the Church.

Listen on SpotifyApple MusicRelated: What is Gregorian chant?

Start with: “Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 7”

Born in Leipzig in 1819, Clara Wieck made her debut at the Gewandhaus at nine and was touring Europe, including Paris, by 11. She became one of the greatest pianists of the 19th century, with a performing career that lasted 61 years, and helped make it normal to play from memory. She married Robert Schumann in 1840 against her father's wishes and raised eight children.

She wrote her Piano Concerto in A minor when she was only 13 and 14. Her later works include the Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17, and the Three Romances for violin and piano, Op. 22. After Robert's death in 1856 she championed his music and that of her close friend Johannes Brahms.

Listen on SpotifyApple MusicRelated: Robert Schumann: 10 interesting facts

Start with: “Easter Sonata”

Fanny Mendelssohn, the older sister of Felix, was as gifted as her brother but was told by her father that music could only be "an ornament" in her life. She wrote more than 450 works, mostly songs and piano pieces, and ran a celebrated series of Sunday concerts at the family home in Berlin. Six of her songs were even published under Felix's name.

She only began publishing under her own name in 1846, a year before her death. Her best-known works include the piano cycle Das Jahr (The Year), the Piano Trio in D minor and the Easter Sonata, which was wrongly credited to Felix until 2010.

Listen on SpotifyApple MusicRelated: Fanny Mendelssohn: 10 interesting facts

Start with: “D'un matin de printemps”🏆 First woman to win the Prix de Rome

Lili Boulanger was born in Paris into a musical family. Her father, Ernest Boulanger, was a composer and Prix de Rome winner, and her older sister Nadia became one of the most famous composition teachers of the 20th century. Lili was ill for most of her life, from bronchial pneumonia at two to the intestinal tuberculosis that killed her at 24.

In 1913, at 19, she became the first woman to win first prize in the Prix de Rome, with her cantata Faust et Hélène. In the few years left to her she wrote three psalm settings, Vieille prière bouddhique and the bright orchestral piece D'un matin de printemps, music shaped by Debussy and Fauré but with a voice of its own.

Listen on SpotifyApple MusicRelated: 13 of the greatest French composers

Start with: “Symphony No. 1 in E minor”First Black woman played by a major US orchestra

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Florence Price studied at the New England Conservatory, graduating with honors in 1906. Segregation limited her career in the South, and after a lynching in Little Rock in 1927 her family moved to Chicago. She divorced her abusive husband in 1931 and supported herself and her children through teaching and composing, helped by friends including Margaret Bonds and Langston Hughes.

In 1932 her Symphony in E minor won first prize in the Wanamaker Foundation Awards, and in 1933 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra played it, making her the first African American woman to have her music performed by a major US orchestra. She wrote over 300 works, and in 2009 dozens of lost scores were found in her abandoned summer home in St. Anne, Illinois.

Listen on SpotifyApple MusicRelated: 16 of the greatest American composers

Start with: “Emma”🏆 Oscar win

Rachel Portman began composing at 14 and studied music at Worcester College, Oxford. She made her name writing for British television, including Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Jim Henson's The Storyteller, before moving into film.

Her score for Emma (1996) made her the first woman to win the Academy Award for an original score, and she was nominated again for The Cider House Rules and Chocolat. She has written more than 100 scores for film, television and theater, an opera, The Little Prince, for Houston Grand Opera, and won an Emmy for Bessie in 2015.

Listen on SpotifyApple MusicRelated: 15 of the greatest film composers

Start with: “Che si può fare”8 published volumes

Barbara Strozzi was born in Venice, probably the daughter of the poet and librettist Giulio Strozzi, who encouraged her talent and arranged lessons with the opera composer Francesco Cavalli. By her late teens she was admired as a virtuoso singer, and her father set up a musical academy where her music and voice could be heard.

She published eight volumes of her own music and had more secular vocal music in print than any other composer of her time in Venice, man or woman. Her cantatas and arias, such as "Che si può fare," are full of drama and longing. She had several children with the nobleman Giovanni Paolo Vidman and died in Padua in 1677.

Listen on SpotifyApple MusicRelated: 15 of the greatest Baroque composers

Start with: “Gaelic Symphony”

Amy Beach is often called the first successful American woman composer of large-scale concert music. Born in New Hampshire, she could reportedly sing 40 songs by the age of one and was writing waltzes by four. Instead of studying in Europe, she trained with local teachers in Boston and largely taught herself composition and orchestration.

Her Gaelic Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She also wrote a Mass in E-flat and a Piano Concerto, which she premiered as soloist in 1900. Today the Gaelic is sometimes called the finest American symphony before Ives.

Listen on SpotifyApple Music

Start with: “Mi Teresita”

Born in Caracas in 1853, Teresa Carreño moved with her family to New York in 1862 and played for Abraham Lincoln at the White House the following year. She grew into one of the great pianists of her age, nicknamed "the Valkyrie of the Piano," and championed new music by Edward MacDowell and Edvard Grieg.

She was also a soprano, a conductor and a composer of about 75 works, including the little waltz Mi Teresita and a Himno a Bolívar. She married four times, once to the pianist Eugen d'Albert. Venezuela's main arts center, the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex in Caracas, is named after her.

Listen on SpotifyApple MusicRelated: 20 of the most famous female piano players

Start with: “La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina”Oldest surviving opera by a woman

Francesca Caccini was the daughter of the composer Giulio Caccini and grew up in Florence with a broad education in languages, mathematics and music. When she sang at the wedding of Henri IV of France and Maria de' Medici in 1600, the king is said to have called her the best singer in France.

By 1614 she was the highest-paid musician at the Medici court, working as a singer, teacher and composer. Her Primo libro delle musiche (1618) contains 36 songs, and La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina (1625) is widely considered the oldest surviving opera by a woman.

Listen on SpotifyApple Music

Start with: “The Wreckers: Overture”First female composer made a dame

Ethel Smyth studied at the Leipzig Conservatory, where she met Dvořák, Grieg and Tchaikovsky, and through friends got to know Clara Schumann and Brahms. Back in England she wrote large-scale works at a time when few women did, including the Mass in D and the opera The Wreckers (1906), often called one of the most important English operas between Purcell and Britten.

She was also a militant suffragette who wrote The March of the Women (1911), the movement's anthem, and served two months in Holloway Prison in 1912. In 1922 she became the first female composer to be made a dame.

Listen on SpotifyApple MusicRelated: 10 of the greatest British composers

Start with: “String Quartet No. 1”

Elizabeth Maconchy was born in Broxbourne, England, to Irish parents and spent formative years in Dublin. At 16 she went to the Royal College of Music to study with Ralph Vaughan Williams, and her breakthrough came in 1930 when her suite The Land was played at the BBC Proms.

She wrote more than 200 works, but her greatest achievement is her cycle of 13 string quartets, written between 1932 and 1983. In 1959 she became the first woman to chair the Composers' Guild of Great Britain, and she was made a dame in 1987. Her daughter Nicola LeFanu is also a composer.

Listen on SpotifyApple Music

Start with: “Concerto for String Orchestra”

Born in Łódź, Grażyna Bacewicz studied at the Warsaw Conservatory and then with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. She was also a fine violinist who studied with Carl Flesch and led the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1936 to 1938, until a car accident in 1954 made her give up performing for composition.

Strings are at the heart of her music: seven violin concertos, seven string quartets and five violin sonatas. Her Concerto for String Orchestra (1948) is her best-known work, full of energy and bite, and her Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion (1958) won a prize at UNESCO's International Rostrum of Composers.

Listen on SpotifyApple MusicRelated: 9 of the greatest Polish composers

Start with: “Vespro della beata vergine”

Chiara Margarita Cozzolani was the youngest daughter of a wealthy Milanese merchant family. In 1620 she took her vows at the Benedictine convent of Santa Radegonda in Milan, whose nuns were famous across the city for their music, and she later served as its prioress and abbess.

She published four collections of music between 1640 and 1650, including the Concerti sacri (1642) and her Vespers music. Her first book was lost in 1945. As abbess she defended the nuns' music when Archbishop Alfonso Litta tried to restrict it. Her name disappears from the convent records after 1676.

Listen on SpotifyApple Music

Start with: “Switched-On Bach”🏆 3 Grammy Awards

Wendy Carlos studied physics and music at Brown University and composition at Columbia. She worked closely with Robert Moog on the development of his synthesizer, and her 1968 album Switched-On Bach, Bach's music played on the Moog, became a surprise hit and won three Grammy Awards.

She went on to score Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Shining (1980) and Disney's Tron (1982). Carlos had begun living as a woman by 1968 and spoke publicly about being transgender in 1979, and she is the first transgender person to win a Grammy.

Listen on SpotifyApple MusicRelated: 21 of the most famous LGBTQ+ composers

Start with: “Nocturne in B-flat major”

Born in Warsaw in 1789, Maria Szymanowska was one of the first professional virtuoso pianists. She began her concert career in 1815, toured England, France, Germany, Italy and Belgium, and was one of the first pianists to play from memory in public, a decade before Liszt and Clara Schumann.

She wrote about 100 works, mostly for piano, including the first concert études and nocturnes written in Poland, music that points toward the young Chopin. Hummel and John Field dedicated pieces to her, and her salon in St. Petersburg drew leading artists and writers. She died there in a cholera epidemic in 1831.

Listen on SpotifyApple MusicRelated: 9 of the greatest Polish composers

Start with: “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 1”🏆 Grawemeyer Award

Joan Tower was born in New Rochelle, New York, and moved to Bolivia at nine, where local festivals gave her a lifelong love of rhythm. Her orchestral breakthrough was Sequoia (1981), and in 1990 she became the first woman to win the Grawemeyer Award, for Silver Ladders. She has taught at Bard College since 1972.

Her best-known work is Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, a reply to Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, dedicated to "women who are adventurous and take risks." Her orchestral piece Made in America and its recording with the Nashville Symphony won three Grammy Awards in 2008.

Listen on SpotifyApple Music

Start with: “Blond Eckbert”First woman Master of the Music

Born in Cambridge to Scottish parents, Judith Weir studied with John Tavener while still at school and with Robin Holloway at King's College, Cambridge. Her music often tells stories, drawing on folk tales, medieval history and Scottish tradition.

She is best known for her operas, including King Harald's Saga (1979), A Night at the Chinese Opera (1987), The Vanishing Bridegroom (1990) and Blond Eckbert (1994). In 2014 she became the first woman appointed Master of the Queen's Music, a royal post she held until 2024.

Listen on SpotifyApple Music

Start with: “Harp Concertino”Only woman in Les Six

Born Marcelle Germaine Taillefesse, she changed her surname to spite her father, who refused to support her music studies. At the Paris Conservatoire she met Poulenc, Milhaud and Honegger, and she became the only woman in Les Six, the group of French composers who turned away from Wagner and Impressionism in the 1920s.

Her 1920s works include her First Piano Concerto, the Harp Concertino and the ballet Le marchand d'oiseaux, the most performed ballet of the Ballets suédois. She also wrote more than 30 film scores and kept composing until her death at 91, outliving the rest of Les Six.

Listen on SpotifyApple MusicRelated: 13 of the greatest French composers

Start with: “Symphony No. 3 in G minor”

Louise Farrenc took piano lessons from Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Nepomuk Hummel and, since women were barred from composition classes at the Paris Conservatoire, studied privately with Anton Reicha. In 1842 she became professor of piano at the Conservatoire, the only woman to hold such a post there in the 19th century.

She was paid less than the men until her Nonet triumphed at its premiere with the violinist Joseph Joachim, after which she demanded and won equal pay. She wrote three symphonies, the third premiered in 1849, and her chamber music is generally thought to be her finest work.

Listen on SpotifyApple Music

Start with: “Viola Sonata”

Born in Harrow, Rebecca Clarke studied at the Royal Academy of Music and then at the Royal College of Music, where she was Charles Villiers Stanford's first female composition student. At his suggestion she switched to the viola, and in 1913 she joined the Queen's Hall Orchestra, one of the first women in a professional London orchestra.

Her Viola Sonata tied for first place in Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge's 1919 competition with a work by Ernest Bloch, and she followed it with a Piano Trio (1921). She largely stopped composing after marrying the pianist James Friskin in 1944, and her music was forgotten until a radio broadcast revived interest in 1976.

Listen on SpotifyApple Music

Start with: “At the Speed of Stillness”

Charlotte Bray studied cello and composition at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and then with Mark-Anthony Turnage at the Royal College of Music. She won the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize in 2010, and her music has been played by The Royal Opera, the London Sinfonietta, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

Her orchestral piece At the Speed of Stillness was commissioned for the BBC Proms in 2012. Her chamber opera Entanglement (2015) tells the story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman executed in Britain.

Listen on SpotifyApple Music

Start with: “Sonata duodecima, Op. 16”First published sonatas by a woman

Isabella Leonarda came from a prominent family in Novara and entered the Ursuline convent of the Collegio di Sant'Orsola there at 16, staying for the rest of her life. She taught music to the other nuns and eventually became mother superior. In her lifetime she was known as "the muse of Novara."

She wrote about 200 works, mostly motets, masses and other sacred music, published over 60 years. Her Op. 16 sonatas of 1693 were the first instrumental sonatas published by a woman, and they include the Sonata duodecima for violin and continuo.

Listen on SpotifyApple Music

Start with: “String Quartet 1931”First woman composer awarded a Guggenheim

Ruth Crawford studied at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago and became one of the leading American modernists. In 1930 she was the first female composer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship, which took her to Berlin and Paris, where she wrote her String Quartet (1931), now regarded as one of the finest modernist quartets.

She used the "dissonant counterpoint" developed by her teacher and later husband, Charles Seeger, and was one of the first composers to apply serial methods to more than pitch. After 1935 she turned to American folk music, transcribing songs for the Library of Congress with John and Alan Lomax and writing American Folk Songs for Children (1948).

Listen on SpotifyApple Music

Start with: “Masked Ball (Eyes Wide Shut)”

Jocelyn Pook studied viola at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and played and recorded with Massive Attack, PJ Harvey, Peter Gabriel and The Communards. She also co-founded the chamber group Electra Strings.

Stanley Kubrick heard her album Deluge and asked her to score Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Its "Masked Ball" uses a fragment of Orthodox liturgy played backward, and the score earned a Golden Globe nomination. Her later film scores include The Merchant of Venice (2004), Brick Lane (2007) and The Wife (2017), and she has won a BAFTA and an Olivier Award.

Listen on SpotifyApple Music