Why are Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann missing from the classical canon?

Historians point to the expectations of the time, and they still argue about how to read the story. The gap itself is clear: few works by women composers are part of the standard classical repertoire, and in the Concise Oxford History of Music, for example, Clara Schumann is one of the only women composers mentioned. In the 1880s music critics even argued that women lacked the innate creativity to compose good music, because of a supposed biological predisposition.

Fanny Mendelssohn composed over 450 pieces, including a string quartet, a piano trio, four cantatas and over 250 lieder, most unpublished in her lifetime. In 1820 her father wrote that music might become her brother Felix's profession but, for her, "can and must be only an ornament". Felix supported her privately but was wary of her publishing under her own name, and six of her songs appeared under his. In 1842 Queen Victoria told Felix she would sing him her favourite of his songs, and he had to confess it was by Fanny. In 1846 she published a collection as her Op. 1, under her married name, without consulting him.

Clara Schumann was a different case: she had a 61-year concert career, changed the piano recital by lessening purely virtuosic works, and was the main breadwinner for her family. Yet she wrote that she had given up the idea of creative talent: "a woman must not desire to compose". Most of her music was never played by anyone else and was largely forgotten until the 1970s.

How to weigh this is debated. Richard Taruskin called Fanny's life compelling proof that women's failure to "compete" as composers came from social prejudice and patriarchal mores. Marian Wilson Kimber notes that Fanny's diaries do not support her often-reported longing for a professional career, and that the tale of the "suppressed" composer resembles prevailing models of the "Great Composer".