I was catching up on old New Yorkers recently – perhaps you too have that guilt-inducing pile of colorful colors sitting on a table somewhere in your home – and came across an article about birdsong that I had ear-marked. The article, dated October 21, 2024, was written by Rivka Galchen and titled “Pecking Order: Language is said to make us human.  What if birds talk too?”

In it, Sonia Kleindorfer, director of a center for bird research in Austria says that as an undergraduate she was taught “male songbirds sing, females don’t, and if females sing it’s an error,” building on an attitude that “females are drab, inconspicuous, and quiet.” Some years later, after she had earned a PhD and was working in Australia, she discovered, much to her surprise, that she “heard all these females singing songs as complex as the male songs.”

Imagine that.

Kleindorfer went on to study “bird vocalizations that were either underappreciated or unknown.” She is speaking my language, or rather, singing my song. I had become enamored with the music – and honestly, with the person too – of French composer Mel Bonis during that time of exploration known as the pandemic. As people hear more of her music, she seems to be having something of a moment these days, and Mel(anie) has led me down paths where I discovered many unappreciated, mostly unknown female voices. Drab and inconspicuous they are not.

Upon hearing the first piano quartet by Bonis, Camille Saint-Saens exclaimed: “I would never have believed that a woman could be capable of writing something of this kind. She knows all the tricks of our trade.” Is there a compliment in there?

I went to a concert this past spring that included the Trio in G minor, Op. 11 by Cecile Chaminade. My expectations were low, because I had played her pleasant piano piece “Scarf Dance” as a child, so of course I knew all I needed about her music, right? How exciting it was to be so spectacularly wrong. We wouldn’t judge all of Beethoven’s output by his piano Bagatelles, after all.

It was impossible not to ask after the concert why this work by a twenty-four-year-old Chaminade isn’t listed with the trios of Brahms and Beethoven. Why had the esteemed Beaux Art Trio recorded the relatively obscure works of Turina and Granados, but not the trios of Farrenc and Chaminade?  Why all those recordings of trios by Robert and Felix, but not Clara and Fanny?

Thanks to the deep-diving work being done by the Boulanger Initiative, a D.C.-based organization founded in 2019 by organist Joy-Lelani Garbutt and violinist Laura Colgate, light is being shed on music long-relegated to drawers and dustbins. Works for every imaginable chamber music grouping can be found in the BI database, searchable by instrumentation, publisher, country, time period, and just about any other parameter you can think of. The staff at Boulanger Initiative advocate for women and all gender-marginalized composers, promoting their music through performance, education, research, consulting, and commissions. They’ve created curricula for the classroom and advised organizations on repertoire which changes the conversation and redefines the canon.

The conversation has changed in the last decade or two. We all have access to an expanded bank of information, thanks to Boulanger Initiative, as well as materials now available from such places as Edition Silvertrust, The Philomel Project, and Hildegarde Publishing Company. But in our current landscape where such conversations are often squashed, it’s a good time to explore for yourself some of those inconspicuous corners of the chamber music repertoire and allow 50% of the world’s birds to sing in your own music-making. Prepare to be surprised as you wander down this path.

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Here are just a few suggestions to get you started:

Mel Bonis (1858-1937) – Sonata for Violin and Piano

Mel Bonis – Sonata for Flute and Piano

Mel Bonis  – Piano Quartets, Op. 69 and Op. 124

Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) – Piano Quintet No. 1, Op. 30

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847) – Piano Trio, Op. 11

Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944) – Piano Trio, Op. 11 in G Minor

Emilie Mayer (1812-1883) – too many works to name here

Ethel Smythe (1858-1944) – String Quintet, Op. 1

Sonya Subbaya Sutton wrote a short book about Mel Bonis: “Difficult Women…Legends Revised: Music and Stories from the Life of Mel Bonis”

Order Sonya’s book