That in a nutshell is why this book, which profiles the creative output and personal lives of a selection of women composers who have significantly shaped Australia’s music history, is such a welcome – and overdue – publication. The contribution of these composers to Australian culture is certainly under-documented, particularly outside the academy. But this is due not only to what Appleby aptly refers to as ‘Australia’s cultural amnesia when it comes to music’. Composition has not historically been considered an appropriate profession for women; hence it was only fairly recently that the female of the species had the encouragement and opportunities to acquire the necessary education to create music, and to gain recognition for it.

Biologically deterministic arguments have long been advanced to justify the denial of women’s creative and intellectual abilities. The foundations of this attitude were laid as far back as Aristotle, and built upon by famous philosophers of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, including Descartes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. The notion persisted into the twentieth century and beyond, and was epitomised in 1880 by American journalist and author George Upton. He believed that, because of her innate inability to limit her emotions ‘within the rigid laws of harmony and counterpoint’, a woman could interpret but not create music. This was a ‘cold-blooded operation, possible only to the sterner and more obdurate nature of man’.

In her Preface, Appleby acknowledges the problematic nature in this day and age of dedicating a book to women composers, when ‘most composers agree the time for critiquing gender equity has long passed’. As she points out, this could either be seen as ‘insulting or essential’. I would argue for the latter interpretation, for four principal reasons. First, as Upton’s comment demonstrates, women have struggled to be taken seriously in a traditionally male domain. Second, their life experiences have been different from men’s, particularly because relationships and parenthood have typically been more determinative conditions. Third, the history of women’s contributions must be adequately acknowledged and documented before it can be argued that there is real gender equity. And last but not least, we do need to celebrate the achievements of Australian women composers who have written music infinitely more superior and profound than that of Percy Grainger, who one might be forgiven for thinking is the only Australian composer that ever existed. Therefore, Appleby’s aim to address this ‘silence surrounding the role of women in Australian composition’ is laudable. But I find slightly curious her subsequent comment that the book’s position ‘is not overtly feminist, beyond what emerges in the stories of the women interviewed’, though this may have been included in an attempt to placate those readers who are fearful of aspects of feminism.

It must have been a difficult task to decide which composers to include and exclude, but Appleby adeptly justifies her choices. She focuses on twenty composers and incorporates additional ‘emerging voices’ in a separate chapter near the end. The selection is not definitive, she writes, but includes women who have made or are making ‘outstanding and original contributions to Australia’s classical music scene’. It provides ‘a sample of three generations of women and their various compositional styles’.

No less difficult is the task of adequately communicating the essence of each of the twenty composers in one relatively slim volume. Here, Appleby displays an expertise probably honed by her years as a journalist. She writes engagingly, achieving a fine balance between conveying information about the women’s personal lives and their music. She has skilfully chosen direct quotes, many from her own interviews with the women, that best express their personalities. Peggy Glanville-Hicks’s ‘biting wit’, for example, is expressed in a quote from her review of a concert featuring the theremin, an electronic instrument: ‘In fast passages precision departs entirely and a swooping sound reminiscent of an air-raid siren is the mournful result.’ Of Alban Berg’s Chamber Concerto, Glanville-Hicks wrote that it was ‘a taxing [item] for a fresh audience, and an endurance test for a tired one’. Right from the beginning of the chapter about Ros Bandt, the reader is drawn in to read more about an interesting character. Bandt is quoted as saying that her music ‘has a really ballsy sonorousness’, and that if ‘the sound wasn’t good enough to have a bath in’, she wasn’t interested.

The selection of examples of the composers’ music, similarly efficacious, demonstrates both the originality of each composer’s work and the broad range of styles represented in the work of the group as a whole. Appleby alludes to Elvis Costello’s renowned quote that ‘writing about music is the same as dancing about architecture – it’s a really stupid thing to do’. It is not easy to write about music, and it can also be a challenge to do so without resorting to potentially alienating technical language. This must be resisted if the author’s intention is to reach an audience beyond those with a degree in music or a penchant for music analysis. But Appleby mostly succeeds in giving a sense of the music without getting bogged down in analysis. She also manages throughout the book to display no judgement about either the women’s individual characters or their musical output – an impressive accomplishment, particularly given her background as a music critic.

The well-balanced structure of the book adds to its accessibility. It is divided chronologically into three sections: The Trail Blazers (1900–50), the Feminist Era (1950–80), and the Third Wave (1980–2010). Each section is prefaced by an introduction that illuminates the context of the era and sets the scene for what is to come. The initial paragraphs of the composer-focused chapters that follow are worthy of mention. Without fail, they whet the reader’s appetite to know more about the composers. This is achieved through judiciously chosen direct quotes, or by describing an event that immediately situates the reader within the composer’s individual story. The example already mentioned from the chapter on Ros Bandt is a case in point, as is the reference to a stand-off between Richard Gill and Moya Henderson that occurs when Gill wants to make cuts to Henderson’s opera Lindy. Fittingly, the book ends with a Coda.

Appleby’s desire is that Women of Note should help retain the ‘basic bricks on which Australian music culture can be built’, and to inspire people to ‘seek out the music with open ears’. The book achieves these aims, being the product of thorough research expressed in engaging writing that is enlightening without being didactic. Appleby is to be congratulated, along with the West Australian Department of Culture and the Arts and Fremantle Press, which were insightful enough to consider this project ‘worth the effort’.