The Women Composer Question in the 21st Century (original) (raw)
Related papers
Composing the ‘Woman’ Composer
Musicology Australia, 2011
There was a time, not so long ago, when the names of women composers were virtually unknown. Second-wave feminism in the 1970s marks a dynamic moment when this begins to change. A women's music history is gradually assembled and establishes the fact that music composition is not solely a male domain. It shows that women are not only present but are worthy of celebration in that domain. 1 Pendle's annotated bibliography on women's music, compiled in the first decade of the twenty-first century, attests to this fact. Its verdict is that women's music has blossomed into a thriving field of knowledge. 2 Earlier than Pendle, Wood observes that women composers 'have become more visible, more accomplished, and more numerous'. 3 But, as some researchers are also warning, it is still too early to be complacent: women's music destined for the concert hall struggles to be heard. 4 Musicological work on women's music therefore remains an ongoing necessity: it 1 Prior to 1970, as McClary notes, very little was known about women in music history. After that time, research 'turned up far more than anyone could have anticipated'. See Susan McClary, 'Reshaping a Discipline: Musicology and Feminism in the 1990s', Feminist Studies 9/2 (Summer 1993), 399-423. Another important source that provides an overview of this work is: Elizabeth Wood, 'Women in Music', Signs 6/2 (Winter 1980), 283-97.
The Liberation of Women Composers: Overcoming a History Sexism in the Classical Music World
Few women composers from before the twentieth century are household names or remembered for any significant contribution to classical music. Exceptions include the first internationally acknowledged composer, Hildegard Von Bingen, and internationally recognized nineteenth century composer and pianist Clara Schumann. This paper begins by exploring the factors that prevented women from pursuing careers in composition before the twentieth century and by presenting many striking examples of women, such as Fanny Mendelssohn, who had similar musical educational backgrounds as their brothers but were barred from composing as soon as they married. Indeed, it was almost impossible for women to have careers in music or any other field once they married unless they had supportive husbands and families. Thus, I provide a historiographical approach to the history of music composition. The heart of the paper explores pioneering women composers of the twentieth century and their struggle to be heard and gain recognition in a predominately sexist field. This includes the numerous women involved in writing and creating film music that were often uncredited in the final product. Lastly, I explore the lives of prominent current classical music women composers, such as Joan Tower and Missy Mazzoli, and the unique contributions they make to the classical music world. I also explore the obstacles women composers studying in today’s classical conservatories and music departments still face. In recent years, enlightening articles and publications have helped erode private and public barriers to women in the classical composition world. Despite recent progress, there is much work still needed to achieve gender equality in the classical music composition field and beyond.
The Woman Composer Question: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives
Kapralova Society Journal, 2006
Through a conspiracy of silence on the part of music historians, coupled with the gender-biased writings of philosophers, music critics and music educators of the past, the age-old myth has been perpetuated that the gift of musical creativity is granted only to males. This article examines some of these writings in order to demonstrate their relationship to both the limited content of music education for women throughout most of the Romantic era--specifically, the lack of adequate instruction in theoretical subjects--and the nineteenth-century double standard in music criticism, which allowed critics to evaluate a woman's compositions in terms of the extent to which they were thought to conform to prevailing stereotypes of ideal femininity.
2019
I confess I enjoyed accentuating the character, perhaps as a provocation!" Thus Isabelle Aboulker, a renowned contemporary French composer, justified setting a viciously misogynistic text by Jean de la Fontaine in her song "La femme noyée" (The Drowned Woman). Her comment demonstrates a deliberate strategy for proactively and provocatively engaging with her own problematic cultural history through composition. This is just one of many approaches that contemporary female composers take to the negotiation of gender in their work. This dissertation addresses Aboulker's approach, together with those of Libby Larsen, Caroline Shaw, Pamela Z, and other composers and composer-performers of the current generation to the composition of art songs and vocal music in the twenty-first century. Engaging with musical-textual interpretation, performance studies, and emerging theories of collaborative musicianship, I develop an approach to their work that takes account of both creative musical acts and the social and historical place of the composers in question. My research addresses three central issues in feminist musicological scholarship through the analysis of both notated music and live and recorded performances of art song: first, the relationships and tensions between iii poetic text and musical composition; second, the focus of female bodies in performance as a site for the construction of meaning; and third, the category of the "female composer" as a marked and often derogatory term. Using a variety of examples by women composers with diverse compositional styles, I offer fresh insight into the multifaceted musical experiences of women in performance and composition. My work draws on interdisciplinary methodologies both to destabilize traditional hermeneutic interpretation and to develop a new set of tools for a feminist understanding of musical works by women. Ultimately, I argue, the conventional focus on musical text as the primary object of study is a detriment to more dynamic areas of cultural production. Drawing attention away from the "text," I focus instead on the women and on female body as conduits of composition, performance, listening, and understanding. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has been a collaborative effort in every sense. I am deeply indebted to my teachers, subjects, colleagues, and family for their invaluable assistance in completing this research. I want to express my most special and deepest thanks to my advisor and mentor, Rebecca Cypess, whose enthusiasm for my preliminary research launched this entire project. I thank her for her thoughtful questions, her skilled editing, and her deep commitment to me and my work. She has the uncanny ability to help me articulate my own ideas more clearly than I ever could alone, and I am so grateful. As a mentor, she has been instrumental in helping shape my entire identity as a musicologist, and heartily supported all my academic endeavors. This dissertation would not exist without her; I am a better scholar for studying with her, and I am a better person for knowing her. I also want to thank the members of my committee for their thoughtful insight into this project. I am grateful to Eduardo Herrera, who encouraged me from my very first year of study to pursue the projects I cared about and provided me with invaluable resources to do so through coursework and discussion; his mentorship has been indispensable. I extend my thanks to Nancy Rao, who helped me enormously to shape and refine the goals and purposes of this research. I am especially grateful to Nina Eidsheim, who graciously agreed to be my outside reader. Her career and writings have influenced me greatly, and her thoughtful insight into my own research was a true gift. I must also express my gratitude to the composers who selflessly agreed to share their work and experiences with me as part of this project: to Isabelle Aboulker, for welcoming me into her home and providing me with the most expert vocal coaching I've ever received; to Caroline Shaw, for her candor, openness, and generosity in sharing her thoughts and her work, v including unpublished manuscripts and private recordings (and also for knowing where to find good coffee); and to Pamela Z, for granting me a most enlightening and moving interview. Many members of the faculty at Rutgers University have assisted me massively with this work. I extend my thanks to Chris Doll, who in his seminars taught me to be a more critical reader, and provided wonderful feedback on the earliest version of my Isabelle Aboulker case study. I am also grateful to the musicology professors with whom I took coursework during my time at Rutgers, for sharing their knowledge and encouraging my independent thought, especially Doug Johnson, Floyd Grave, and Rufus Hallmark. I am grateful to Steve Kemper for his contributions to my case study on Pamela Z, and to Jonathan Sauceda, Performing Arts Librarian, and Kayo Denda, Librarian for Women's Gender and Sexuality studies for their constant support of my research. I started my academic career as a vocal performance major at the University of Connecticut, where I received my Bachelor's and Master's degrees; I was encouraged and prepared for my leap into musicology by the stellar faculty who supported me. I owe a tremendous debt to Alain Frogley, Peter Kaminsky, and Eric Rice, for the education they provided me, and for encouraging me on this path. I owe special thanks to Connie Rock, who as my most excellent voice teacher and mentor provided me with numerous opportunities and made sure I would never stop singing. My colleagues and classmates at Rutgers have been instrumental in helping me to complete the dissertation. With their friendship and support, I have felt a strong sense of belonging, and that is an enormous help during the often isolated period of dissertation-writing. I am grateful in particular to my quals cohort, Mike Ford and Michael Goetjen, for reading the earliest versions of this project. I am thankful to Lynette Bowring for providing an excellent example and answering all my questions. I must also express my thanks to Taylor Meyers for vi suggesting so much wonderful literature for my bibliography, and to Rachel Horner for her supportive presence at my defense. This dissertation was aided by the direct contribution of a number of remarkable individuals. Mark Leuning beautifully translated and transcribed my interview with Isabelle Aboulker, and Valentine Baron served as my interpreter during our meeting, despite my best attempts to improve my French. I am grateful to William Lewis and Frederique Added of the Franco-American Vocal Academy for introducing me to Mme. Aboulker ten years ago, and for encouraging my research today. I extend my deep gratitude to Denise Von Glahn, for her important scholarship on Libby Larsen, and for taking the time to discuss that work with me. I am also very thankful to Lucy Dhegrae, founder of the Resonant Bodies Festival, for speaking with me at length about her work, and for curating the phenomenal 2018 New York Festival, where I conducted my performance analyses for both Caroline Shaw and Pamela Z. This work could not have been completed if not for the gracious and unconditional support of my family; I have been blessed with an embarrassment of riches. I am grateful to the whole Binaco family for their encouragement of my educational pursuits, and to the Lansang family for welcoming me so readily into their lives as I began my PhD program, and also for all the babysitting. I am thankful for the Zrenda family for raising me and empowering me to pursue my interests as just one of a myriad of overachieving children. I am especially grateful to my beloved, departed grandparents: Dorothy Zrenda, for being a model to us all, and Stephen Zrenda, who during his lifetime worked to instill in me both a passion for music, which stuck fast, and a sense of pragmatism, which, despite his efforts, stuck less well. I extend my deepest and most heartfelt thanks to my husband, Michael, who has been my sounding board, my biggest cheerleader, and my help in all things great and small; his support of my doctoral study and his input on this dissertation cannot be overstated. I am also grateful to my daughter, Cecilia, whose vii energy and enthusiasm for life is deeply inspiring; I have gleaned a surprising amount of perspective from a two-year-old. Finally, I offer my most profound gratitude to my mother, Laurie Zrenda, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. There is, of course, no way to sufficiently thank her for the many gifts she has bestowed upon me, and the unconditional love she has provided. Her generosity knows no bounds, and she has supported me physically, financially, and emotionally in ways I could never repay. This work was possible because of all she provided, and I will remain eternally grateful. viii DEDICATION To my mother, Laurie, who taught me that with love all things are easy.
This article reports from a two-phase study that involved an analysis of the extant literature followed by a three-part survey answered by seventy-one women composers. Through these theoretical and empirical data, the authors explore the relationship between gender and music’s symbolic and cultural capital. Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus is employed to understand the gendered experiences of the female composers who participated in the survey. The article suggests that these female composers have different investments in gender but that, overall, they reinforce the male habitus given that the female habitus occupies a subordinate position in relation to that of the male. The findings of the study also suggest a connection between contemporary feminism and the attitudes towards gender held by the participants. The article concludes that female composers classify themselves, and others, according to gendered norms and that these perpetuate the social order in music in which the male norm dominates.
Creating a career as a woman composer: Implications for music in higher education
Recent decades have seen gender and feminist research emerge as major fields of enquiry in musicology and to a far lesser extent, music education. While these fields have increased awareness of the issues confronting women and other marginalised groups, the pedagogical practices and curricular design that might support aspiring women composers are in urgent need of attention. This article reports from an international survey of women composers (n=225), who in western art music continue to experience a masculine bias that has its roots in the past. The findings in the survey were focused on income, work and learning, relationships and networks, and gender. Numerous composers surveyed noted the under-representation of music composed by women in their higher education curricula. They also described their unpreparedness for a career in music. The article explores the issue of gender in music composition and makes practical recommendations for a more gender balanced music curriculum in higher education.
Hiding gender: How female composers manage gender identity
Journal of Vocational Behavior, 2018
The gendered nature of careers in music composition has attracted scholarly attention for some 25 years, but the strategies employed by female composers to manage their identity remain largely unaddressed. We report on a qualitative study in which we investigated the careers and identities of female art music composers. Phase 1 involved an in-depth survey, which attracted 225 responses. This was followed in Phase 2 by 27 semi-structured interviews. The data highlight the persistent marginalization of female composers, as a result of which the female gender is viewed as a career disadvantage. The intersection of gender and age is a contributing factor. To lessen the impact of their gender, women employed the passing tactics of concealment and fabrication. Many women repeated previously unsuccessful tactics because of the severity of the image discrepancy and the deficit of viable alternative strategies. Findings are discussed in relation to these tactics, which are usually associated as identity management techniques for invisible, rather than visible stigmatized identities.
The Woman Composer Question: Four Case Studies from the Romantic Era
Ed. D, dissertation, University of Toronto, 1992
This dissertation traces the social myth of woman's innate creative inferiority in music through its many transformations: from its roots in Romantic philosophy, through the writings of turn-of-the-century critics, to past and present psychological theories of musical creativity. The case studies of four exceptionally gifted women composers from the Romantic era (Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Clara Schumann, Dame Ethel Smyth and Amy Beach), which form the central part of this investigation, make clear that the dearth of eminent women composers is due not to any innate deficiency in the female mind, but to ideological and institutional constraints directly linked to the social construction of gender. Such barriers include the role that women have been expected to play in society, the prejudices they have encountered in attempting to establish themselves in the male-dominated field of composition, the critical double standard, and psychological obstacles resulting from the internalization of negative societal attitudes toward women's creative potential.