International Women's Day: Tuesday 8 March

[Serial_Apologist]

But how might it account for the decline of the woman composer in the 19th century when composition can mostly be done at home whereas performance mostly can't? (or am I missing something here?)...

If you're (say) a novelist you would be dealing more-or-less solely with a publisher, whereas being a composer means you are much more out in the world, networking on many levels? Without men as intercessioners, how would this have been seen?

[ahinton]

If you're (say) a novelist you would be dealing more-or-less solely with a publisher, whereas being a composer means you are much more out in the world, networking on many levels? Without men as intercessioners, how would this have been seen?

Well, that's true, but the actual writing would still mainly be possible to do at home (in the case of both the author and the composer) and the amount of networking necessary might not in reality have been so very much greater for the composer as for the author (although it's arguably greater today in both professions than would have been the case in the 19th century).

[Richard Barrett]

being a composer means you are much more out in the world

Indeed so, rehearsing and attending performances even if not directly participating in them: it would be very odd to stay at home instead of doing that, unless one is just writing music and sticking it in a drawer, but I guess it may be that numbers of women (and men) did that, and we've never heard of them for that very reason. The point concerns the visibility of women composers, not whether women were composing music.

[doversoul1]

One of the reasons for the decline of women composers may be something to do with the development of the concept of the clear division between public and private. Somewhere along the way, as the western nations became more intent upon nation building (colonising the new world rather than fighting amongst themselves) the military, equal men, became all the important public figures, whereas women were pushed back into the domestic / private world. Unlike novels which were intended for a private pleasure, music to be regarded with any importance, it needed to be a public event for which the central figure / the composer had to be a man. Even for domestic music making, unless it was entirely private (family only), the host would have chosen the music composed by known / male composers.

Or something to the effect. I’m afraid I can’t present the reference but the concept of public / private division is an established theory somewhere. Its link to music and composers is just my guess.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes - and there was also the widespread conservative/puritanical moral backlash in Europe after the French Revolution, and particularly after Waterloo. Whilst Napoleon himself retracted many of the rights and liberties that women had won for themselves during the Revolution, and anything resembling social reform was - at best - disapproved of after 1815. This can be seen in the change of the "Nation's Hero" in Britain from the sexually active Nelson to the repressed and repressive Wellington. The more liberal attitudes of the 1790s and 1800s - in which Jane Austen could first declare her work to be "by a lady" and then under her own name - were replaced in the 1820s and 30s by the work of George Sand, George Eliot, and the Bell Brothers.

The need to avoid ideas that might disrupt the social fabric (as revealed also in Beethoven's post-Metternich conversation books) play a significant part in the repression of women's persuing anything other than what was (/is!) considered their traditional/"natural" "duties" - except as amateurs, dilettantes ... or "freaks".

And what is particularly pernicious and insidious is that these attitudes were not just adopted by nasty, vindictive men in positions of power, but taken for granted by all but the fringes of political thought. (I'm reading Bleak House, the only novel IIRC by Dickens in which he attempted writing in the persona of a woman. The casual assumptions with which he expected his readers to accept as profound and universal truths are truly jaw-dropping.)

[P. G. Tipps]

Yes, that's true. But the entirety of their artistic production could be carried out within the home.

The moment a woman artist is out in the world, sexual availability (welcomed or enforced) comes into play

You're obsessed with sex and gender.

What makes you think "man artists" are any different?

What's your view of female 'groupies', for instance?

[Flosshilde]

Unlike novels which were intended for a private pleasure, music to be regarded with any importance, it needed to be a public event

I would dispute that division. Novels (& other literature) were a 'public event' once they were published. They could only be private if they were circulated among a few people in manuscript form. For them to be published the author had to negotiate with a publisher. In that respect I don't think there was any difference between music and literature (or indeed any other art form). Music could be 'private' if it was for, say, piano &/or voice & not published.

Where I would agree with you is in the development of the concept of public versus private performance. When public concerts became more prominent it perhaps became more difficult for women to get their music performed; when the most music was heard in a domestic setting it would have been easier.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Where I would agree with you is in the development of the concept of public versus private performance. When public concerts became more prominent it perhaps became more difficult for women to get their music performed; when the most music was heard in a domestic setting it would have been easier.

Well, except that most Music in the Nineteenth Century was "privately performed" - or, more accurately, "domestically performed". Orchestral works would become known through piano (and piano duet) versions - in the same way that novels would be read in private/domestic conditions. It is with the change from an emphasis on such domestic activity to one on professional orchestral performance at the end of the Nineteenth Century (and the concurrent growth of recorded Music) that Women composers start to re-emerge.

[Flosshilde]

Well, yes, but for the piano arrangements to be available the orchestral versions would have to have been published. They were made publicly available, rather than privately circulated.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well, yes, but for the piano arrangements to be available the orchestral versions would have to have been published. They were made publicly available, rather than privately circulated.

[jean]

You're obsessed with sex and gender...

It seems you failed to notice the thread title, Tippsy.

[Nick Armstrong]

It seems you failed to notice the thread title, Tippsy.

[Bryn]

It seems you failed to notice the thread title, Tippsy.

Yeh, but that was yesterday.

[jean]

I think Tippsy lives mostly in the past, so that shouldn't bother him.

[Bryn]

I think Tippsy lives mostly in the past, so that shouldn't bother him.