The rediscovery of music by women and composers of color continues with David Allen’s survey in The New York Times of the life and works of the 19th-century French composer Louise Farrenc:
As is so often the case in these rediscoveries, the composers’ music doesn’t necessarily reflect their ethnic backgrounds or presumed gender characteristics.
Farrenc (1804-75) began her composing career writing piano showpieces and miniatures, which would have been thought appropriate for a woman of her era. In time, she turned to larger-scaled, more complex and turbulent pieces – three symphonies, two concert overtures, a widely praised Nonet and other chamber works – that even blinkered critics of the time recognized as comparable in quality and character to the music of male contemporaries such as Mendelssohn and Schumann.
Letter V 