Elisabeth Kuyper

Elisabeth Johanna Lamina Kuyper (13 September 1877 – 26 February 1953) was a Dutch Romantic composer and conductor. Life Elisabeth Kuyper was born in Amsterdam, the eldest of three children. At the age of twelve, she began the formal study of music at the Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Toonkunst with Antoon Averkamp, Louis Coenen, and Daniel de Lange. She began composing at an early age, including a piano sonata and a prelude and fugue, which she performed for her diploma examination in 1895, and a one-act opera that was performed in Amsterdam in 1895. She moved to Berlin in 1896 to continue her composition studies with Heinrich Barth and Leopold Carl Wolff at the Hochschule für Musik, completing her studies there in 1900. Because of the challenges Kuyper faced during her career, she became strongly connected with the women’s liberation movement of the period. Other than possible soloist performances, professional opportunities for female musicians were extremely limited, as no major orchestras of the time employed female musicians. Kuyper took great effort to bring change this situation. In 1908 she formed a women’s choir at the . In 1910 she formed and conducted the Berlin Wome