Discussion about female composers before 20th century

[soderlund]

Hi,
I am looking for piano music written by women, preferably written by 19th century composers or earlier. I am thinking about doing a concert with music by only female composers for my exam at the end of the year, and perhaps to do something bigger of it and write a paper on part of the subject for my bachelor. The whole thing is very vaguely planned as it is now, but any help with suggestions are appreciated.

I also want to throw some thoughts out for discussion. I found an old thread on the subject whether women have the ability to compose as well as men. I thought the debate was very twisted but all the more entertaining, but anyhow I decided to make a new topic instead of reviving a thread that's been dead for six years and is probably better off that way.

I have a hypothesis that since women had an overall harder time to succeed as musicians and not to mention as composers back then, the women who did manage to compose and get their works published must have been extremely talented individuals. Sadly, it seems their music is neglected today. My experience when I have listened to for example Romantic music by female composers is that it is just as good and often better than that of many male composers, but still the male composers are played more often. One explanation that has occurred to me is that the standard repertoire was probably formed mostly by men, which would have been more willing to play music by other men.
Still, I can't help to think that the females that did manage to compose music in those times must have been more talented than the average male composer. I will try to explain what I mean by that outrageous comment.
I think that the average-talented 19th century male composer is not remembered today. The ones that are still played are the truly brilliant ones, while for every Tchaikovsky you can find 500 not so good composers that nobody plays anymore. But to become a published female composer at that time, you had to be all the more extraordinary. I read about Clara Schumann's life, for example, and is completely awed. I mean how many of us would have the energy and dedication (or talent) to manage to write music in the midst of her extremely busy life? My thinking leads me to the conclusion that a female composer at that time must have been a talented person, and it would be worth to explore the music because so few women could manage to compose in that society - that is, the person behind the music must be more interesting then.
This means, that neglected music by women would often turn out to be true gems. To my experience, it is true 

I think that a very important thing to remember in this kind of debate is to stay away from biological explanations why women did not compose as much, in the old thread there were all kinds of comments about brain sizes etc. The brain's structure and connection to compositional skills is VERY poorly understood, so these can hardly be counted as real arguments. For example, neanderthals had larger brains and larger relative brain sizes than Homo sapiens. They were as far as I know not able to compose more advanced stone tools and even less able to compose something like Amy Beach's Piano concerto.
What I wrote above was meant to refer to individuals only, not to women in general or men in general. Female individuals who composed must have been more interesting composers because of the obstacles that society put in the way for female individuals.

[indianajo]

Don't forget Amy Beach.  Turn of the century anyway, if not 19th century. She is getting some deserved airplay, now.  I can't believe all the middling talent baroque composers (male I presume) the classical stations are dredging up now.  Not a melody in a bushel.  18th century Muzak, I judge it.