The protagonist of Nina Berberova’s 1936 novella The Accompanist is a young pianist, Sonechka Antonovskaya. She is a recent conservatory graduate, hired by a glamorous, wealthy soprano to rehearse at her home and accompany her on stage in concert tours. The round-the-clock nature of the young musician’s employment soon necessitates a move into the singer’s apartment. As Sonechka narrates: ‘I became a member of the family, I was Maria Nikolaevna’s principal audience and at the same time – her servant.’ The pianist finds herself catering to her employer’s domestic and emotional needs, as well as tending to their artistic collaboration. The story begins in St Petersburg in 1919 but the account of the pianist’s life resonates beyond those historical and geographic boundaries and transcends fiction. Sonechka’s initial plan to support herself by teaching piano, just as her mother and grandmother had, alludes to how such labour was perceived as ‘women’s work’ across Russia, Europe and the United States by the early 1900s. In Berberova’s novel, references to the narrator’s practice routines, the partnership with the star soloist and audience perceptions of the pianist’s role show that the author was sensitive to the realities of the accompanist’s profession. Berberova’s book is fiction, but by drawing attention to the feminisation of the accompanist’s role – highlighting the expectation that the young female pianist should act as a caring, domestic figure and presenting her as a musician of secondary importance to the soloist – the author creates a world that resonates with the gendered, biased environment encountered by at least one Irish twentieth-century woman musician.

In this chapter I discuss Rhoda Coghill’s multifaceted career and reception history as a pianist. Coghill (1903–2000) published a handful of scores (including arrangements), saw one major composition of her own performed (the 1923 rhapsody Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, for solo tenor, chorus and orchestra), and, beyond the world of music, authored two acclaimed poetry collections.