composeress

English

Etymology

From composer +‎ -ess.

Noun

composeress (plural composeresses)

1. (dated) A female composer.
   • 1874 June 5, The Orchestra. A Weekly Review: Musical, Dramatic, and Literary., volume XXII, number 558, London, page 152, column 3:

     By the way, another Russian composer, or composeress, named Ella Adajewsky, has had a work of hers successfully produced at the Opéra Comique, Vienna.

   • 1880 May 28, Musical Courier, volume I, number 17, New York, N.Y., page 237, column 1:

     Altogether, this set of songs will, no doubt, make for the composeress a good and endurable name among cultivated musicians.

   • 1894 May 26, The Era, volume 56, number 2,905, page 12, column 1:

     The performance was given by members of the Leamington Opera Company, under the direction of Miss Lizzie St. Quinten and the author and composeress.

   • 1913 May, K.E.E., “The Creative Spirit in Women’s Music”, in Percy A[lfred] Scholes, editor, The Music Student, volume X, number 9, page 334, column 1:

     Can it be that the impassioned appeal of the Folk-tune Party has fallen on deaf ears, and that the intelligent public which reads these pages has never troubled to become acquainted with the music of the Composeresses of Milking Songs, Weaving Songs, Spinning Songs, Cradle Songs, of Lyke-wake Dirges, of laments for Heroes, of all the Love Songs addressed to the male sex? Or can it be that the Intelligent Public has taken for granted that these were composed by men?

   • 1917 July 28, W. Francis Gates, “Notes and Half-Notes”, in The Graphic, volume 51, number 5, page 34, column 1:

     For instance, through my hands there went a piece of music by one of the prominent “composeresses” in this part of the world and in the very first measure was a serious error in the simplest feature of musical construction, which a student in the first three months of musical study ought not to have made.

   • 1919, Ethel Smyth, Impressions That Remained: Memoirs, volume I, London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], page 237:

     Well, he began by telling me that songs had as a rule a bad sale—but that no composeress had ever succeeded, barring Frau Schumann and Fraulein Mendelssohn, whose songs had been published together with those of their husband and brother respectively.

   • 1971 July 8, A. E. P., “Jubilee of Women Musicians”, in The Daily Telegraph, number 36131, page 13, column 3:

     SIXTY years ago when the Society of Women Musicians was formed, composeresses had virtually no chance of being taken seriously, while lady instrumentalists were discriminated against in orchestras and in any case were largely restricted to playing violin and piano.

   • 1982, Nicolas Slonimsky, “Onward to 2000”, in Cole Gagne, Tracy Caras, Soundpieces: Interviews With American Composers, Metuchen, N.J., London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., →ISBN, page xv:

     My favorite avant-garde composeress almost solved all questions about Beethoven, musicological and psychological, by summoning his disembodied spirit at a stance held in London on October 3, 1968.

   • 1985, Denis Gifford, The Golden Age of Radio: An Illustrated Companion, B.T. Batsford, →ISBN, page 116, column 1:

     Hilda Tablet / The gifted composeress and fictitious subject of the Third Programme’s burlesque biography The Private Life of Hilda Tablet, first broadcast (of many) 24 May 1954.

   • 1985, Steve Race, “I Love You, Jean Baillie Welsh. You Too, Ethel”, in You Can’t Be Serious: A Look at the Bizarre Side of Life, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, →ISBN, page 47:

     ‘One has to feel very well to be glad to see you, Ethel,’ remarked a friend on opening the front door and finding Dame Ethel Smyth planted firmly outside. Although I never had the privilege of meeting that formidable composeress I feel I know her after learning of that pained welcome.