A01=Susan Tomes
Author_Susan Tomes
Category=AVM
Category=AVP
Category=AVRG1
Category=DNBF
Category=JBSF1
Clara Schumann
Classical music
Classical piano
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Fanny Mendelssohn
Female pianists
Hazel Scott
Helene de Montgeroult
History of music
Leopoldine Wittgenstein
Maria Szymanowska
Musicology
Nina Simone
Women pianists
Product details
- ISBN 9780300281101
- Dimensions: 127 x 197mm
- Publication Date: 13 May 2025
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Women are an essential part of the history of the piano—but how many women pianists can you name?
Throughout most of the piano’s history, women pianists lacked access to formal training and were excluded from male-dominated performance spaces. Even the modern piano’s keys were designed without consideration of women’s typically smaller hands. Yet despite their music being largely confined to the domestic sphere, women continued to play, perform, and compose on their own terms.
Celebrated pianist and author Susan Tomes traces fifty such women across the piano’s history. Including now-famous names such as Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn, Tomes also highlights overlooked women: from Hélène de Montgeroult, whose playing saved her life during the French Revolution, to Leopoldine Wittgenstein, influential Viennese salonnière, and Hazel Scott, the first Black performer in the United States to have a nationally syndicated TV show.
From Maria Szymanowska to Nina Simone, and including interviews with women performing today, this is a much-needed corrective to our understanding of the piano—and a timely testament to women’s musical lives.
Throughout most of the piano’s history, women pianists lacked access to formal training and were excluded from male-dominated performance spaces. Even the modern piano’s keys were designed without consideration of women’s typically smaller hands. Yet despite their music being largely confined to the domestic sphere, women continued to play, perform, and compose on their own terms.
Celebrated pianist and author Susan Tomes traces fifty such women across the piano’s history. Including now-famous names such as Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn, Tomes also highlights overlooked women: from Hélène de Montgeroult, whose playing saved her life during the French Revolution, to Leopoldine Wittgenstein, influential Viennese salonnière, and Hazel Scott, the first Black performer in the United States to have a nationally syndicated TV show.
From Maria Szymanowska to Nina Simone, and including interviews with women performing today, this is a much-needed corrective to our understanding of the piano—and a timely testament to women’s musical lives.
Susan Tomes is a concert pianist and writer. Renowned both as a soloist and as the pianist of Domus and the Florestan Trio, she is the author of seven books, including Speaking the Piano, Beyond the Notes, and The Piano: A History in 100 Pieces.
