THE EXTENSIVE LITANYof this book’s myriad problems is complicated by the fact that there is so little space in a review of this sort and the text itself is so amateurish. The aimless nature and flimsy discursive style of Dr Leah Broad’s text in the first hundred pages undermines any confidence the reader might have in what she has to say in the next three hundred or so.
Such a weakness is positively tragic in light of the book’s ostensible focus on resurrecting public attention to four forgotten female composers, an aim with which reasonably open-minded readers will be in sympathy.
Broad’s unwillingness to grapple with the actual music of her four subjects extends in equal measure to her discussion of the music of composers from the canon, which reads like copy from drive-time radio. We are informed regarding Ethel Smyth’s formation under the influence of music from the great Romantics, that “from as this”.
