ELFRIDA ANDRÉE - SWEDEN
BORN 19 FEBRUARY
Elfrida Andrée was born on 19 February 1841 in Visby and died on 11 January 1929 in Gothenburg. She was the first woman in Sweden to graduate as an organist (1857−60) and to become a cathedral organist; she became organist of Gothenburg Cathedral in 1867 and remained so until she died. She studied composition with Ludvig Norman at the educational institution of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music (1860).
As a composer of chamber music and symphonic works, she was a female pioneer in Sweden, and the same goes for her activity as an orchestral conductor. Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in 1879, Litteris et Artibus award in 1895, Idun ‘Women’s Academy’ fellowship in 1908.
Andrée's two organ symphonies are still performed today. Her other compositions included the opera Fritiofs saga (1899, libretto by Selma Lagerlöf), several works for orchestra including two symphonies, a piano quartet in A minor (1870) and a piano quintet in E minor (published in 1865), a piano trio in G minor (1887) (and another published posthumously in C minor), a string quartet in D minor from 1861 and another in A major, pieces for violin (including sonatas in E flat and B flat major) and for piano, two Swedish masses, an 1879 choral ballade "Snöfrid", and lieder.
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Sommarminnen från Bjurslätt by Elfrida Andrée
BORN 19 FEBRUARY
Grace Mary Williams was a Welsh composer, generally regarded as Wales's most notable female composer. She learned piano and violin and developed her musical skills early, playing piano trios with her father and her brother Glyn, and accompanying her father's choir. At the County School she began to develop her interest in composition under the guidance of the music teacher Miss Rhyda Jones, and in 1923 she won the Morfydd Owen scholarship to Cardiff University where she studied under Professor David Evans.
In 1926 she proceeded to the Royal College of Music, London, where she was taught by Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams. In 1930 she was awarded a travelling scholarship, and chose to study with Egon Wellesz in Vienna, where she remained till 1931, attending the opera "almost every night". From 1932 she taught in London. During the Second World War, the students were evacuated to Grantham in Lincolnshire, where she composed some of her earliest works, including the Sinfonia Concertante for piano and orchestra, and her First Symphony.
During and after the war, Williams suffered from depression and other stress-related health problems. In 1949, she became the first British woman to score a feature film, with Blue Scar. In 1960–61 she wrote her only opera, The Parlour, which was not performed until 1966. In the 1967 New Year's Honours, she turned down an offer of the OBE for her services to music.
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