Writers and scholars define the period of first-wave feminism in the Western world in various ways. For some the first ‘wave’ grew out of the demands for equality from women during the French Revolution, for others it had its roots in the Women’s Rights Convention in New York, United States, in 1848. However, it is generally agreed that the period 1880–1920 saw the height of feminist activity from a wide variety of women in Britain, Europe, and the United States.1

Women organized together to demand rights to employment and education, and most agreed that the right to suffrage, being able to vote and take part in political power, was fundamentally important. By 1920, certain women in Canada, Germany, Russia, the UK, and the United States, had been granted the right to vote. But full suffrage was not granted to women in the UK until 1928, in France not until 1944, and Italy not until 1945, for example.2

The last years of the nineteenth century saw many high-profile performances in Britain, Europe, and the USA of complex, large-scale musical works composed by women. In 1890, for example, a distinctive four-movement orchestral Serenade by the British composer Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) was performed at the Crystal Palace in London. In 1895 La Montagne, a drame lyrique in four acts and five tableaux by the French composer Augusta Holmès (1847–1903), her fourth opera, was premiered at the Paris Opéra while the ‘Gaelic’ Symphony by the American composer Amy Beach (1867–1944) was first heard in Boston’s Music Hall the following year, 1896. The ‘Gaelic’ Symphony went on to be widely performed in Europe and the United States, and was critically well received, with one reviewer of the premiere praising it as ‘high-reaching, dignified and virile’.1

In Chapter 1, Sophie Fuller considers the musical landscape which composers working in the earlier twentieth century inhabited. From the early days of the twentieth century, when women were expected to concentrate upon song and small-scale piano works, to the wider opportunities which opened up during the interwar period, Fuller considers a range of composers, including Cécile Chaminade, Maude Valérie White, Louise Adolpha Le Beau, Ethel Smyth, Adela Maddison, Poldowski (Irene Wieniawska), Marguerite Canal, Jeanne Leleu, Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Elsa Barraine, Germaine Tailleferre, and Alma Mahler.