Luise Adolpha Le Beau

[Richard Moss]

Thank yo tuatara442442 for the Beau symphony upload.  Look forward to listening to it during the week.

Best wishes

Richard

[Mark Thomas]

Sounds pretty much like my impression of the Concert Overture, then. Thanks for the review, Ilja.

[Alan Howe]

I hardly dare mention it, but we've been here before. So, is this a case of another female composer possibly being promoted above countless worthy (superior?) male composers? Why, for example, is the BBC promoting Le Beau above, say, Thieriot (to take a vastly superior composer)?

[Mark Thomas]

Surely it can't be a question of ticking boxes and meeting quotas? Can it?

[Alan Howe]

Surely not!

[Ilja]

While I don't think that the exploration of the music created by one half of humanity is by any means unnecessary, in this case we're noticing that the canon is still in the process of being compiled. Unfortunately I feel that Le Beau just doesn't measure up to female contemporaries such as Chaminade, Munktell, Kralik or Netzel (to sum up a random assemblage): people whose music shows individuality and more than a little daring, even if it doesn't always land. It's all too restrained, safe and non-committal, and the good ideas are flushed away because of a lack of true exploration. There is something deep down, but it just doesn't come to fruition. In that way, it feels like much Spohr's less inspired works (and there's a lot of that) to me. And it doesn't sound much more advanced, to be honest.

[Alan Howe]

the music created by one half of humanity

I understand the point you're making, but the reality is that, in respect of the composers we cover here at UC, the music composed by women must amount to a very small percentage of the total.

[eschiss1]

I am curious what CotW holds in 2025, though. Later this month has two brief choral works by Vitols/Wihtol among other things, anyway...

[Ilja]

the music created by one half of humanity

I understand the point you're making, but the reality is that, in respect of the composers we cover here at UC, the music composed by women must amount to a very small percentage of the total.

That's true, and we need to acknowledge that the reason for that is mainly due to social circumstances of the time, which hindered that half of humanity to fulfill their artistic potential. In addition, 19th-century female composers usually came from privileged backgrounds, and as a result their work tended to be of a rather conservative nature (although there are exceptions; e.g., Chaminade). So not only is there not a lot of music, let alone in "big" orchestral genres, it is often not very artistically advanced. The third complication is that for a long time, the few female composers that received any attention did so because of their relationship to more famous male counterparts: I'm referring to Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn in particular.*

What we can do here, I feel, is give this music an honest review and try, through the modest means we have, to push those composers whose talent deserves it. And while low in terms of numbers, they are there - see the ones I mentioned above. Personally, I feel that Kralik's symphony (not received with much enthusiasm here, but all of you are just plain wrong) can compete with anything written at the time, Charlotte Sohy's piano music is sensational, and Cécile Chaminade was an incredible talent.

*While Clara Schumann's piano concerto is not bad at all, it's also nothing special compared with what must have been hundreds of roughly contemporary German concertos.

[Alan Howe]

It's not a great roster, though, is it? Let's just be honest - and, as Ilja says, let's simply welcome what's good among the compositions by female composers.

[Ilja]

Unfortunately Le Beau's music isn't it, though.

[Alan Howe]

No, quite.

[Double-A]

I understand the point you're making, but the reality is that, in respect of the composers we cover here at UC, the music composed by women must amount to a very small percentage of the total.

Isn't this a reason to pay special attention to it?  I'd say that the gender balance among members of this forum is just about as lopsided as the gender balance among the composers we are dealing with.  Which makes it easy to believe that there may very well be some subconscious old fashioned prejudice in play.

As to the specific case of Luise Le Beau:  I agree with the judgement here, based not on the symphony but on several other pieces I have listened to.

I have heard music that got big praise on this forum that turned out just as dull as this symphony when I checked it out (Moszkowski for example).  Yes, we should not promote someone's music because of a composers gender or background.  But we should also be cautious about not doing the opposite.

[Ilja]

Solid point. (and that's from someone who adores the Moszkowski symphony and counts the minutes until Toccata release it)

[Alan Howe]

To return to le Beau's Symphony, it was hardly worth the effort. Very small beer indeed - not because it's by a woman, but because it just doesn't stand up. As a 25-minute symphony it's dwarfed by Bizet's in C major, to name just one of comparable length.