Pauline Viardot (1821 – 1910), Elsa Barraine (1910–1999), Rita Strohl (1865–1941), Clara Faisst (1872–1948), Luisa-Adolpha Le Beau (1850–1927), Margarete Schweikert (1887–1957) – these six names have two things in common above all: they are great female composers who left behind an extensive oeuvre of songs (and not only that) - and who hardly ever appear in concert programmes, neither during their lifetime nor today, and some of whom receive far too little or hardly any attention in the music world. In order to change this, the 46. Stuttgarter Meisterklasse für Lied in February 2025 is dedicated exclusively to these six female Art song composers, their lives, their work and their influence. The two lecturers of the course, the award-winning lied pianist Anne Le Bozec and the musicologist Prof. Dr Natasha Loges, have been campaigning for equal recognition and acceptance of female composers in musical life for many years.

A special focus of the course was on the French composer Pauline Viardot, who, born in 1821 and died in 1910, lived through almost an entire century. Between 1863 and 1870, Pauline Viardot lived in Baden-Baden, where she made a decisive contribution to the development of the town into a cultural centre of the time. Pauline Viardot composed until old age: Over a period of more than six decades, she wrote around 250 compositions in various genres, with songs for one or more voices with piano accompaniment taking up most of the space. Natasha Loges, who will soon be publishing a major Viardot monograph, was a specialist on site to provide an introduction to the life and work of Pauline Viardot. Particular attention was paid to Pauline Viardot's Mörike settings, the majority of which are still unpublished (in some cases unperformed).

HER*HITS - Liedkomponistinnen. Gesucht, gehört, gefeiert

22 June 2025 at the IHWA was all about female Art song composers! Under the title ‘Her*Hits’, there were three concerts, a lecture and a round table discussion in the Chamber Music Hall of the HMDK Stuttgart. The aim of the event was to bring female Art song composers, who are still on the fringes of musical attention today, out of their shadowy existence and help them gain more visibility.

This was not about the quota of women in the concert programme, but simply about publicising outstanding music that deserves to be performed - so that one day it will be taken for granted that works by female and male composers are performed equally in concert. Because there is truly more than enough repertoire here, as this day once again impressively demonstrated! Students from the Lied classes at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, the Nuremberg University of Music, the Mozarteum University Salzburg and the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart performed the three concerts, in which there were 20 female composers to discover.

The role model and source of ideas for this day was the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media - first and foremost the heads of the Lied classes there, Prof Jan Philip Schulze and Anastasia Grishutina, as well as junior professor Dr Maria Behrendt, who organised an extensive artistic-scientific symposium and song festival under the same title from 11 to 13 June, with a large number of other female composers on the programme. The programme of the symposium can be found HERE.