The early 20th century in Vienna saw an extraordinary flowering of talent and creativity in music, literature and visual art, as well as in philosophy and psychology. This period is particularly known for the networks of personal and professional relationships that linked creative people in different fields, such as the painter Gustav Klimt, the composer Arnold Schoenberg and the writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Until recently, however, the contribution of women to Vienna’s artistic life, has largely been ignored. This lecture shows how research into the lives and musical creativity of some of Vienna’s outstanding women musicians can help us to rethink Vienna’s artistic networks, enlarging our understanding of this extraordinary period, as well as rediscovering some fascinating lives and some exceptional music.
Dr Carola Darwin combines a career as an opera and concert singer with research and writing about music. She teaches musicology at the Royal College of Music in London and recently published chapters in The Routledge Companion to Women and Musical Leadership: The Nineteenth Century and Beyond (Routledge 2024) and Elizabeth Maconchy in Context (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2026). Her research into the Viennese composer Johanna Müller-Hermann was part of BBC Radio 3’s Forgotten Women Composers project and was the basis for a recent Composer of the Week on Müller-Hermann, for which Carola was also interviewed. In 2019 she was awarded an Arts Council grant to commission a new work by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, setting texts about evolution and the environment ,which she premièred at the Oxford Lieder Festival. Carola is currently writing a book – The Other Voice: Women Musicians in Alma Mahler’s Vienna, to be published by Equinox. Her CD of songs by Viennese composers Johanna Müller-Hermann and Mathilde Kralik (recorded with pianist Marie-Noëlle Kendal) is due to be released in 2026.