From 2 to 4 September 2026, the Royal Academy of Music hosted the international conference Women and Musical Histories, 1789–1914, directed by Briony Cox-Williams and Emily Kilpatrick (Royal Academy of Music). More than fifty papers, lecture-recitals, performances and discussions considered the part women played in nineteenth-century musical culture and in shaping its historical record.

The event went beyond restoring neglected composers to the established canon. It asked how that canon had been formed, what assumptions sustained it and why some musical lives were documented while others disappeared. Composers and performers remained central, but attention also turned to women’s work as teachers, patrons, collectors, editors, scholars and advocates.

The Academy’s support for emerging scholarship began before the main event. On Friday 19 June 2026, it hosted the associated Women and (Musical) Histories: Early Career Researcher Day. Early-career work also had a prominent place in September. The opening day combined research presentations with practical discussions of publishing and professional development before concluding with performances of music by Mary Dickinson-Auner. Scholarship and performance were treated as complementary forms of enquiry from the outset.

The geographical range of the programme was striking. Papers followed careers and networks extending from Britain and continental Europe to the Americas, Asia and Australia. Several contributions showed how easily transnational lives can be distorted when musical history is organised according to separate national traditions. Reflecting afterwards on her research into Gilda Ruta, Elisa Rumici (Hochschule für Musik Freiburg) wrote that being surrounded by others asking difficult questions about the canon gave her ‘a lot of positive energy and a real sense of support’.

Adriana Festeu (Royal Academy of Music) identified caring responsibilities as a ‘red thread’ running through many of the papers. Women’s professional work was repeatedly interrupted by care for children, husbands, parents or students. Yet interruption did not imply a lack of ambition. Patterns of stopping and returning instead revealed the conditions under which many women maintained creative careers, often alongside responsibilities omitted from conventional accounts of professional achievement.

Music was not treated merely as an illustration of historical research. Lecture-recitals brought figures such as Chiquinha Gonzaga, Josephine Lang, Sophie Menter and Ethel Smyth into the discussion through sound. The concert Women of the Nineteenth-Century Academy included works and arrangements by Agnes Zimmermann, Cecile Hartog, Clara Macirone, Oliveria Prescott and Evangeline Livens. In the keynote address, ‘Writing Herself into History: Lehmann, Prescott, Smyth and White’, Sophie Fuller (Emeritus Professor of Gender and Music, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance) examined how four musicians used writing to claim a place within late-nineteenth-century British musical life.

Hearing this repertoire made a real difference to how its creators were understood. Eleonora Perretta (Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles) described performance as ‘a method of historical enquiry in itself’, rather than simply a means of presenting findings. Festeu felt that it made the women and their work ‘present through sound’. Chloe Knibbs (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire) was particularly struck by hearing several pieces by the same composer, which allowed a distinctive creative voice to emerge. For her, the care and quality of the performances offered an ‘antidote’ to the continued marginalisation of this music.

An exhibition drawn from the Academy’s Museum and Collections carried these questions beyond the formal sessions. Displays throughout the building illuminated women’s work as conductors, composers, singers and creators of professional networks. The setting was especially resonant. The Academy’s history contains both evidence of women’s achievements and reminders of the inequalities they faced.

The experience was also shaped by an open and supportive atmosphere. Receptions and conversations between sessions gave delegates time to exchange ideas, and several of these informal discussions suggested the beginnings of new partnerships. Such contact mattered in a field where researchers can often feel that they are working in isolation.

The closing round-table therefore looked towards future action. Alessandra Barabaschi (Independent Scholar) observed that networks have always influenced whose musical lives survive in the historical record. Sustaining the community formed at the Academy was, she suggested, ‘not merely enjoyable, but historiographically necessary’. Ideas arising from the discussion included future international meetings, shared resources and projects connecting historical research with the work of contemporary composers and performers.

A pressing question remained: what happens after rediscovery? Repertoire brought back to attention must not simply return to the archive. It needs editions, recordings and sustained performance, as well as a place in teaching and mainstream concert programmes. Knibbs argued that music by women should no longer be regarded as a financially risky addition, but valued for enriching programmes and helping classical music evolve. She proposed performances shaped by specialist historical research and paired with new commissions from living composers.

The conference created more than a record of past achievement. It brought together a community determined to change how musical history is understood and put into practice. Its work will matter only if the repertoire continues to be heard and the connections formed at the Academy are allowed to grow.

Stacy Olive Jarvis is a PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham whose work focuses on women’s musical agency, cultural memory and transnational networks in the long nineteenth century.