Quartet: How Four Women Challenged the Musical World

Quartet has been recognised with the Royal Philharmonic Society Storytelling Award and was shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2023, and for good reason. Leah Broad's stunning debut offers a captivating look at the lives, loves, adventures, and trailblazing musical careers of four extraordinary women. It's been praised as "fabulous" by the Sunday Times, "a rare gift" by the Financial Times, and "passionate... vivid... timely" by the Telegraph, among many other accolades.

The book introduces us to:

• Ethel Smyth (b.1858): A pioneering queer Victorian composer renowned for her operas, she was also a larger-than-life socialite, intrepid traveller, and dedicated Suffragette.
• Rebecca Clarke (b.1886): This talented violist and Pre-Raphaelite beauty was among the first women employed by a professional orchestra and later celebrated for her modernist experiments.
• Dorothy Howell (b.1898): A prodigy who rose to fame at the 1919 Proms, her reputation as the 'English Strauss' never diminished her modesty; in retirement, she privately tended Elgar's grave.
• Doreen Carwithen (b.1922): One of Britain's first female film composers, she scored Elizabeth II's coronation film, yet her success concealed a twenty-year affair with her married composition tutor.

In their own time, these women were celebrities, composing some of the century's most popular music and pioneering creative careers. However, today, they have become spectral figures, surviving only as muses or footnotes to male contemporaries such as Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Britten – until now. Leah Broad's magnificent group biography brings these forgotten voices back to life, recounting stories of rebellion, heartbreak, and ambition, and celebrating their musical masterpieces. Quartet illuminates a panoramic sweep of British history across two World Wars, forever revolutionising the established canon.