Letters to Clara: A Contemporary Composer’s Homage to a Woman Pioneer

My 2018 chamber work, Letters to Clara for septet explores intertextuality in composition, using quotation, homage and referential works to craft a contemporary musical piece that incorporates the music of a pioneering woman composer. I compare the historical with the present, exploring my own compositional homage to a key historical female figure in classical music, Clara Wieck-Schumann. The resulting chamber work, commissioned by the Australia Ensemble (Sydney) functions as a “letter” to Clara, using her own musical material in a multi-movement chamber suite that explores her life, her domestic concerns and her contributions to musical history. The subject matter underlines the impetus for this publication in its exploration of what has developed for women composers over the subsequent 150-plus years, and reminds us of the situation for pre-twentieth century women, barred from public life by social conventions of the time.