大象传媒

Soprano Ilona Domnich performs live with the 大象传媒 Concert Orchestra and conductor Jane Glover on International Women's Day 2018.

Johanna M眉ller-Hermann was an Austrian composer and pedagogue. Originally a primary school teacher, she gave up this career after marriage and retrained in musical composition. She became especially known for her orchestral music, chamber music and songs, and her use of subtle chromatic harmonies.

M眉ller-Hermann studied composition under Alexander Zemlinsky and Josef Foerster, and took over as a theory and composition tutor at the New Vienna Conservatory in 1918 after Foerster left the post. Yet despite teaching there for more than 20 years, she is relatively unknown today and there are only a handful of recordings of her work.

Dr Carola Darwin, who has been researching M眉ller-Hermann's life and music on behalf of the 大象传媒/AHRC's Forgotten Women Composers project, puts the composer's achievements in the context of Vienna's wider pre-war cultural life. "The contribution of women to Vienna鈥檚 creative life at this period has been largely forgotten as the result of Nazi ideology, as well as the general destruction of the Second World War," she says.

"Johanna M眉ller-Hermann鈥檚 works deserve a much wider hearing, not only because of their intrinsic quality, but also because they were an integral part of the Vienna鈥檚 extraordinary creative flowering."

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