It’s tempting perhaps to chalk up the lack of famous lady composers to just plain ole sexism, but considering that there were so many talented women working in professional music in other ways, and composition being something pretty much gender neutral as it’s mental work, and it’s theoretically perfectly respectable for a woman to compose in her own home, although maybe on par with a woman suddenly deciding to cobble her own shoes, it doesn’t feel right at a second glance. So where the ladies at? The clue here is that there’s a more women composers at the ends of 1600-1850, and not a lot of ladies in the middle. I’ll leave the hard stuff like musicology and music samples to /u/erus, and just talk about social stuff. Also this is mostly about opera, but as opera was considered the pinnacle of composing in the 18th century (or at least the hardest thing to do), having opera under your belt is a good marker of how successful or well-respected a composer was at the time.

In the early days of opera, when it was a courtly entertainment, musical women had a pretty good social status. Take for example composer Francesca Caccini. She’s fully musically trained as a child by her father, performs in courts as a singer, and is a well respected professional court musician. Music at this time is regarded as a “craft,” not an “art,” so she’s closer to a seamstress than an artist, but she’s still very respectable. There were other women involved in early opera, but she’s one specifically remembered for her composing, the rest are more singers. She dies sometime after the 1640s. This is, very tidily for us, when public commercial opera starts going in Venice. The women (and men for that matter) who are involved in opera now get a big slide down in social status, as they’re no longer court musicians, and tromping the boards brings them down to the status of actresses, who have a low social status, like maybe a step above a prostitute. Women in opera (and to some degree men) are considered to be open to “sexual side work” until proven otherwise, into the 1800s. We still see a little overlap in singer-composers in early opera, but that’s starting to go away too, and nothing like it was in court opera. So by the 1700s opera singers are going to be either part time court or church musicians/part time commercial opera singers, or wholly commercial singers. Singers and composers are now also separated.

Add into this a rise in the conservatory system, which is sex segregated, and starts churning out a big chunk of the musical talent working in church, courts, and opera for the next 100 years or so. Formal music education starts to be more competitive and desirable, over traditional family or personal apprenticeship education (which is more open to women.) The Naples conservatories, at this time churning out the top (or at least most fashionable and desirable) compositional talent, are for boys. The Venice musical conservatory for girls, Ospedale della Pietà, did turn out some female composers who had success, but they all stayed on the “respectable” side of music, either court music or staying working in the conservatory, but (to my knowledge) none of them tried to do anything commercial. (Most of the girls of the conservatory either stayed in the conservatory, went to a convent, or got married. They were apparently considered pretty desirable as wives!)

So from the late 17th century through the early 19th century you don’t get any women composers to speak of, but we know there were lots and lots of female singers, so what gives there, why are women willing to sing but not compose? There's a rough cost/benefit balance to consider. The potential money you could make as leading female singer in an opera was maybe 4 or 5 times what the composer would make for that same opera. We can sort infer that women were willing to lose some virtue for a certain amount of money, and composing ain't cutting the mustard there. Men composing in commercial music also had the hopes of attracting a permanent post as a court musician (like as Kappelmeister in the German courts) through their music, women wouldn’t have this hope. A woman in opera had to get as much money as she could while she was in her active singing years, which would end in her 40s or 50s, and then hope she had enough saved to live on because she was pretty much done in music, although some did marry after their opera careers, or taught singing.

In the mid 19th century (the Romantic period) we start to see more women composers. Music is now moving away from it’s “craft” status and firmly into the realm of The Arts, where it now happily lives. At this period we’re also seeing both a big rise in the social status of musicians, including both singers and composers, making music a much much more respectable profession. This is made tangible in the “front door” status issue. Traditionally when opera singers (or other musicians) came to a house party to perform, they were made to come in through the back door, like any other hired help, and they often didn’t get to eat dinner with the guests but ate with the servants in their dining room. When they came into the drawing room to perform they were often separated by a little cord or velvet rope, just to make it even clearer! G. B. Rubini, a famous tenor who lived through the social transition, was given the full back-door treatment at a house (rather unfashionable house I must say) in the 1840s, and he just about came unglued because he was so insulted. He almost walked out but the other singers prevailed upon him to stay because they needed the money, so he performed. This is interesting because at the start of his career he would have gotten this treatment without question! The conservatory system also started to crumble in the 1770s, by the Napoleonic wars it’s really not much of a threat, nothing like the near-monopoly on Italian compositional talent that it once was. The old school of musical apprenticeships, family teaching, and autodidactism+raw talent is more viable.

So, by 1850 or so music is a respectable serious art for respectable serious artists, and now you see pretty respectable women as composers, even married women like Clara Schumann, who both performed music publicly and composed, pretty much unthinkable for a respectable married woman in the 18th century!

Another thought I had while writing this -- could women get their music out there under a totes masc non de plume maybe, like women writers sometimes did? Basically no way. She just couldn’t swing the conducting element and keep her ladyness a secret. Composers were expected to conduct their music at operas and concerts. Music publishing was in its infancy until the later half of the 19th century. Music was a performance art in this time, sheet music was understood as perhaps a sketch or outline of the music, not music in and of itself. (I know Martha Feldman (cited below) has a more elegant way of explaining this but I’m blanking right now, sorry!) People, if they bought sheet music (it wasn’t a common thing to purchase in the 18th c.), would usually hear it first somewhere and then buy a copy of something nice that they wanted to play at home. You just couldn’t throw sheet music out there anonymously in the 18th century, no one would buy it, no one would publish it.

But let’s not put the 18th century women down for the count on composing just yet, because until this point I’ve ignored the relatively large amount of basic compositional knowledge needed to perform music in that period. Opera singers were expected to ornament and vary their big arias every night of the performance to keep the crowd interested, and tasteful ornamenting and improvised variation takes a good deal of compositional knowledge and talent. Some women did have their ornaments written for them, there’s tales of opera singers (usually in these tales they are women) who couldn’t read music, and composers would have to play it out for them at rehearsals so they could memorize it. I doubt those singers were composing in their head as they sang, but then again you never know, Dolly Parton can’t read music and she’s a great composer. But the great divas of the 18th and early 19th centuries? They certainly had some compositional chops, in addition to singing talent. And almost all did it without the benefit of conservatory training, unlike the boys.

For basic primers to the social status of musicians, try The Gilded Stage: A Social History of Opera by Daniel Snowman or Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a Profession by John Rosselli. For the demands of aria improvisation on singers, check out Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italy by Martha Feldman, specifically Chapter 2.