Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music by Anna Beer – review

This meticulously researched book honours eight female composers who defied the odds and thrived in a man’s world

In the introduction to her new book, Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music, Anna Beer informs us that she will not present us with “a catalogue of injustice and despair”. It would have been “all too easy,” she writes, “to represent every female composer’s life as a futile struggle against impossible odds.” Rather, she wants to “celebrate the achievements” of eight women who, despite considerable practical and ideological restraints, did compose music for public consumption, starting with Francesca Caccini at the start of the 17th century and ending with Elizabeth Maconchy who died in 1994.

Large orchestral works, so crucial for the development of a composer’s reputation, were usually off limits

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