Abstract
Women composers are too often overlooked. Ignorance of the " geysers of sound " by Alice Mary Smith, an English composer of the 19th century, or of the poignant melodies of an adagio composed by the American Amy Beach is a fairly recent omission from the history of music. Indeed, many female composers were admired in their own lifetime : in the 17th century, the first French woman to compose an opera, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, received genuine recognition from the king, with financial backing, access to publishing and glowing reviews in the press. At the beginning of the 19th century, Sophie Gail's opera Les Deux Jaloux was performed 315 times on the Opéra-Comique stage. So many forgotten works, sometimes hidden, little known, poorly transmitted or jealously guarded, deserve to be included in our " discothèque intime ". The promotion of these artists depends above all on easy access to their names, and on knowing where to find their works : this is the purpose of the work of Présences compositrices, which not only collects data, but also verifies, sorts and classifies them, in order to add new masterpieces to our musical programming.
