They were considered to be the fairer, weaker, and inferior sex, an object to be written about, painted, and talked about. In the collective consciousness women were associated with salons and morning visits, needlepoint and flower arranging, as well as playing the piano.

• Were women not intellectuals?

• Did they not possess even a spark of talent?

• Did they not create?

• Did they not perceive their art as their vocation?

• And if they did, how did they cope with the patriarchal society that sanctified only the works of men?

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Love of the Sirens attempts to answer these questions through the stories of Barbara Strozzi, Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Amy Beach, Florence Price, and fifteen other women composers. Over a period spanning 800 years, from the twelfth century to the present day, all of them created but were absented from the bookshelves of history and their voice was unheard.

Each chapter reveals the composer’s life story against the backdrop of the period in which she lived, the home she grew up in, her personal relationships, her loves and disillusionments, and her daily struggle along the road to recognition as an independent professional.

Love of the Sirens is the first book to be published in the “Women Creating Culture” series.

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Edith Zack, who has a PhD in musicology, is a lecturer, researcher, and author. Her articles on the shaping of the woman’s image in opera and composition in Western history have been published in international journals. She specializes in women creators against the backdrop of the reciprocal relations between governmental and gender systems, their place in society, their power, roles, and their representation in culture.

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Love of the Sirens was translated into English and into Korean.