Leeds musicians recreate ‘forgotten’ female composers’ work

Musicians have recreated a selection of once-popular works by female composers whose pieces have been forgotten over time.

Leeds Conservatoire students used sheet music in the city’s Museums and Galleries collection to recreate the work.

The project, marking Women’s History Month, aims to bring the music to life for modern audiences.

Kitty Ross, the galleries’ curator of social history, said: “For many years now, the pieces of music they created to express themselves existed only on paper, forgotten over the passage of time and never recorded or shared with a modern audience.”

Seven composers feature including Virginia Gabriel, who found success with her popular ballads in the 19th century.

Charlotte Allington Barnard composed more than 100 songs, ballads and hymns and in the 1860s and became the most commercially successful ballad composer managed by publishers Boosey’s.

Other artists featured include Annie Jessie Fortescue Harrison, also known as Lady Hill, who composed a number of piano pieces and American pianist and composer Clara Gottschalk Peterson.

Kitty Ross said said each of the women were “incredibly talented”.

She added: “They were also united by the tenacity and determination they showed in overcoming some of the barriers that the women of their respective eras would have faced in becoming recognised, popular and successful.”

Patsy Gilbert, from the Leeds Conservatoire, said crediting historic female voices in music was important for the next generation of musicians.

It provided, she said, “inspirational messages to anyone who can’t see themselves, or their experiences being acknowledged in the music industry”.