Nocturnes in classical music are known for their dreamy moods and quiet introspection.

The most famous were written by canonical composers like John Field, Chopin, and Debussy.

However, many women composers outside the traditional canon have also crafted stunning nocturnes, and they deserve to be listened to, too.

Today, we’re looking at nocturnes by ten women composers written between the 1820s and the 1920s.

Maria Szymanowska (1789 – 1831)

Nocturne in B-flat Major (ca. 1825)

Maria Szymanowska was born Maria Wołowska in Warsaw, Poland, in 1789.

Maria Szymanowska

We don’t know much about her early years, but we do know that she studied with Józef Elsner, who taught Chopin. In fact, her work has often been compared to Chopin’s, although she was born twenty years before him.

She made her Warsaw and Paris debuts in 1810, with her career really taking off in the late 1810s and 1820s.

Tragically, she died during a cholera epidemic in St. Petersburg in 1831.

Szymanowska wrote around a hundred works for piano. Her best-known is her Nocturne in B-flat Major, which Szymanowska scholar Sławomir Dobrzański calls “her most mature piano composition.”

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805 – 1847)

Nocturne in G-minor (1838)

Fanny Mendelssohn was born in 1805, four years before her famous brother Felix. Just like him, she was a jaw-droppingly talented musical prodigy. By fourteen, she could play all twenty-four of the preludes from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.

Fanny Mendelssohn

However, unlike her brother, she was not permitted to become a professional musician due to her gender and elevated social station. A family friend once wrote:

Had she been a poor man’s daughter, she must have become known to the world by the side of Madame Schumann and Madame Pleyel as a female pianist of the highest class.

This didn’t keep her from composing, even if she was discouraged from publishing. She wrote over 450 pieces of music.

Shortly before her death, she decided she wanted to start publishing her works, but due to her early death, it would fall to later generations to promote her music.

Fanny wrote her G-minor nocturne in 1838 in the style of a Venetian boat song.

Clara Wieck Schumann (1819 – 1896)

Nocturne Op. 6 no. 2 in F major (1836)

Clara Wieck was born in September 1819 to piano teacher Friedrich Wieck and his wife, singer Mariane.

Friedrich wanted to turn Clara into a piano virtuoso who could serve as an advertisement for him and his methods. Consequently, Clara was forced to practice for hours every day as a child.

Clara Wieck at 16 years old

She made her debut at the Gewandhaus concert hall in Leipzig at the age of nine, and when she was twelve, she and her father began touring across Europe.

In addition to performing, she also composed, just like the other great male pianists of her generation. In 1836, the year she turned seventeen, she wrote this stunning nocturne.

The day before her 21st birthday, Clara Wieck defied her father’s wishes and married composer Robert Schumann.

Louise Farrenc (1804 – 1875)

Nocturne in E-Flat Major, Op. 49 (ca. 1860)

Louise Farrenc was born Jeanne-Louise Dumont into a family of Parisian sculptors in 1804.

From an early age, it was clear that she was musically talented. However, she couldn’t enroll at the Paris Conservatoire because women instrumentalists and composers weren’t allowed to study formally there.

Louise Farrenc

Instead, she studied with composition professor Anton Reicha independently. (Reicha was a friend of Beethoven‘s, who also taught Berlioz and Liszt.)

In 1821, she married music publisher Aristide Farrenc. Many women of her generation retired when they married, but Farrenc did not; she continued her professional life working as a pianist, teacher, and composer.

Her fame continued to grow and, in a full-circle moment, in 1842 she was named as a professor at the Paris Conservatoire. After the successful premiere of her Nonet for string quartet and wind quintet at the Conservatoire, she demanded – and finally received – equal pay to her male colleagues.

She died in Paris in 1875.

Mélanie Chasselon (1845 – 1923)

Nocturne (1873)

Like many women composers in the history of music, we don’t know much about Mélanie Chasselon (yet!).

She was born in 1845 in Ligny-en-Barrois in northeast France. She was the organist and choirmaster at a church in her hometown. Beyond that, we know very little about her biography.

Her music was published by the Heugel music publishing company, based in Paris.

Hopefully in time, music historians will uncover more about her life and other works, because this nocturne is wistfully beautiful.

Rebecca Clarke (1886 – 1979)

Nocturne (ca. 1907)

Rebecca Clarke was born just outside of London in 1886. She became interested in music after her brother started taking violin lessons from their father.

Rebecca Clarke

She studied at the Royal Academy of Music in 1903, dropped out briefly after a professor proposed to her, then enrolled in the Royal College of Music.

She ended up becoming a professional orchestral violist to support herself. She also composed. This ethereal nocturne for two violins and piano dates from this early part of her career.

Lili Boulanger (1893 – 1918)

Nocturne (1911)

Lili Boulanger was an extraordinary child prodigy. She started going to classes at the Paris Conservatoire with her older sister Nadia when she was only five years old.

Lili Boulanger

Unfortunately, her health was very poor. In 1912, she competed in the prestigious Prix de Rome competition, but had to drop out because she became too sick to continue.

She tried again in 1913. Her persistence paid off: her cantata Faust et Hélène won the competition, making her the first woman to win the Prix de Rome. Read more from “The Sisters of the Prix de Rome – Nadia and Lili Boulanger”.

Her health deteriorated during World War I. She died of intestinal tuberculosis in 1918 at the age of twenty-four.

Her devastating early death marks one of the most painful what-ifs in classical music history.

Dora Pejačević (1885 – 1923)

Two Nocturnes, op. 50 (1918)

Dora Pejačević was born to a noble family in Budapest in 1885, with a Croatian father and a Hungarian mother.

She was well-educated, well-read, and famously independent, holding strong opinions about a wide variety of social, political, and economic issues.

Dora Pejačević

She once wrote in a letter:

It’s true that I don’t align with members of my social class; in everything, I seek substance and value, and neither norms nor traditions nor lineage can blind me with sand in my eyes…

Pejačević began composing at the age of twelve, but because of her gender and social station, she never took regular lessons from a professional teacher and was mostly self-taught.

She worked as a medic in World War I, and wrote these two nocturnes toward the end of the war.

Pejačević died a few years later in 1923, shortly after giving birth to a son.

Amy Beach (1867 – 1944)

Nocturne, Op. 107 (1924)

Amy Beach was the first famous American composer. She was born Amy Cheney in 1867 in New Hampshire and became an astonishing child prodigy, beginning to compose at the age of just four.

Like several other women on this list, because of her gender and social station, she wasn’t permitted to study composition formally. However, she did take private lessons with tutors out of Boston, and she spent countless hours teaching herself out of textbooks.

Amy Beach

In 1885, when she was eighteen, she married a doctor named Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, who was over twice her age. Despite the age difference, she wrote later in life that their marriage was a happy one.

At the time, it would have been embarrassing for such a well-established older man to have a wife who made a living by appearing on the stage, so she focused on composition instead.

In 1896, the Boston Symphony performed her Gaelic Symphony, which was the first symphony by a woman performed by a major American orchestra.

Her husband died in 1910, and she never remarried. Instead, she embraced her career as a composer and piano soloist.

This nocturne dates from the later part of her career. It is written in a traditional romantic idiom, but also experiments with more modern, complicated harmonies.

Cécile Chaminade (1857 – 1944)

Nocturne in B major Op. 165 (1925)

Cécile Chaminade was born just outside Paris in 1857.

At the age of ten, it was recommended that she attend the Paris Conservatoire. However, like so many of the other women on this list, she studied music privately instead.

Cécile Chaminade

She eventually became famous for writing charming salon pieces and chamber music, and these works were hugely popular and financially successful. In fact, Chaminade Clubs were formed all around the world!

Twentieth-century critics have dismissed her works and salon pieces generally, in no small part because of sexism, but there’s no denying that this gently charming nocturne is worth listening to and loving.

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