Leah Broad’s magnificent group biography resurrects the forgotten voices of four extraordinary women, recounting lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrating their musical masterpieces. Listen to Leah Broad as she introduces us to each of the subjects of Quartet in turn.

Introducing the musicians in Leah Broad’s Quartet: How Four Women Challenged the Musical World.

Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell, Doreen Carwithen. In their time, these women were celebrities. They composed some of the century’s most popular music and pioneered creative careers; but today, they are ghostly presences, surviving only as muses and footnotes to male contemporaries like Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten – until now.

Ethel Smyth (b.1858): Famed for her operas, this trailblazing queer Victorian composer was a larger-than-life socialite, intrepid traveller and committed Suffragette.

Rebecca Clarke (b.1886): This talented violist and Pre-Raphaelite beauty was one of the first women ever hired by a professional orchestra, later celebrated for her modernist experimentation.

Dorothy Howell (b.1898): A prodigy who shot to fame at the 1919 Proms, her reputation as the ‘English Strauss’ never dented her modesty; on retirement, she tended Elgar’s grave alone.

Doreen Carwithen (b.1922): One of Britain’s first woman film composers who scored Elizabeth II’s coronation film, her success hid a 20-year affair with her married composition tutor.

Quartet is out now in paperback.