Mabel Daniels
Mabel Daniels (1878-1971) Active in music from an early age, Mabel Daniels was a magna cum laude graduate of Radcliffe College. While a student she was a soloist in the Glee Club and composed two operettas that were performed by her fellow students. After graduation, she studied composition with George W. Chadwick in Boston who encouraged her to study with Ludwig Thuille in Munich, Germany . Once in Munich she attempted to enroll in a score-reading class given by Director Stavenhagen. No woman had ever been admitted to his class. She entered the classroom to play her audition where thirty male students waited in judgment of her keyboard skills. "You could have heard a pin drop, the place was so still. . . . Just as I took my seat before the keyboard, I heard one of the men smother a laugh. That settled it! I was bound to do or die, and with a calmness quite unnatural I played the bars set before me without a mistake. Nobody laughed when I ...