Five Lives in Music (Electronic book text)

Representing a historical cross-section of performance and training in Western music since the seventeenth century, Five Lives in Music brings to light the private and performance lives of five remarkable women musicians and composers: Duchess Sophie-Elisabeth of Braunschweig-Lueneburg, Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, Josephine Lang, Maria Bach, and Ann Schein. Elegantly guiding readers through the Thirty Years War in central Europe, elite courts in Germany, urban salons in Paris, Nazi control of Germany and Austria, and American musical life today, as well as personal experiences of marriage, motherhood, and widowhood, Cecelia Hopkins Porter provides valuable insight about the culture in which each woman was active. Throughout the lively and focused portraits of these five women, Porter finds common threads, both personal and contextual, that extend to a larger discussion of the lives and careers of female composers and performers throughout centuries of music history.