International Women's Day: Tuesday 8 March

[doversoul1]

Host: if there is more appropriate place for this, please move it.

(Where has the year gone‼?)

Through the Night
To celebrate International Women's Day, Catriona Young presents music by women through the ages.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072hxtm

Composer of the Week
Barbara Strozzi. (1619 – 1677)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072hw4k

Lunchtime Concert
International Women's Day: live from the Royal College of Music, the Albany Trio perform works by Judith Bingham and Judith Weir, plus Rebecca Clarke's Piano Trio.

Judith Bingham: The Orchid and Its Hunters (world premiere)
Judith Weir: O Viridissima
Rebecca Clarke: Piano Trio.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072hy94

Afrernoon on 3
Katie Derham presents a week of Afternoon on 3 featuring female composers in the run up to International Women's Day tomorrow. Today's programme includes music by Judith Bingham, Grace Williams and Lili Boulanger, featuring conductors Marin Alsop and Jessica Cottis. Plus the world premiere performance of Three Nocturnes by Vaughan Williams, and Nielsen's Symphony no.4. (Episode 1 of 3)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072hw4s

Radio3 in Concert
Live from the BBC's Maida Vale Studios. Music by contemporary women composers: Jessica Cottis conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Grace Rossiter conducts the BBC Singers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072hzt7

The Essay
In the week of International Women's Day, five women tell us about their lives in music including what, and who, inspires them. Today, the mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly talks about her career, her family, and the inspirational characters she has played.(Episode 1 of 5)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072hwj6

To begin with:
Record Review this Sunday
1045
As part of Radio 3's focus on International Women's Day, Helen Wallace joins Andrew to discuss a batch of discs by women composers including works by Elena Langer, Galina Grigorjeva and Pauline Viardot.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072hc90

Early Music Show
Francesca Caccini: La liberazione di Ruggiero

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072hs53

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for the advance notice, dovers.

[Flosshilde]

Isn't this a bit political?

[ahinton]

Isn't this a bit political?

FF - who, on reliable authority, is, I believe a woman - will doubtless be as well able as anyone to confirm or deny this.

[P. G. Tipps]

Isn't this a bit political?

Well, it's undeniably a bit sexist ...

[MrGongGong]

Well, it's undeniably a bit sexist ...

You are Nigel Tufnel and I claim my £100

[doversoul1]

Isn't this a bit political?

Well, all music is said to be (you know by whom ) political, so this shouldn’t be anything different. I welcome any excuse for R3 to be free from the usual Top Twenty and to let us hear something different.

[french frank]

Fundamentally, it's about being introduced to music/composers that YOU may not have heard before.

Host: if there is more appropriate place for this, please move it.

Let it stay here since the programmes come under various categories, and let those who aren't interested be the ones to go somewhere else. No more hijacking of this thread, please.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well, all music is said to be (you know by whom ) political, so this shouldn’t be anything different. I welcome any excuse for R3 to be free from the usual Top Twenty and to let us hear something different.

I wish (as I did last year) that there was some representation of the more adventurous of contemporary women composers as well as the safer MOR representatives. Some Rebecca Saunders, Liza Lim, Chaya Czernowin, Claudia Molitor (just to name four) to balance the suggestion that women stopped being adventurous after 1950 ...

[Richard Barrett]

I wish (as I did last year) that there was some representation of the more adventurous of contemporary women composers as well as the safer MOR representatives.

It's amazing really... given that the music of Strozzi, Caccini etc. is fairly typical music of its time, rather than historically important in the sense that contemporaries like Byrd, Monteverdi and Schütz were (as opposed to being historically important in being composed by women), whereas since the late 20th century women composers are producing work which is just as original and (albeit within a relatively small constituency) just as highly valued as their male counterparts, not just more traditionally score-based composers like the ones you mention but also more innovative ones such as Eliane Radigue, Ellen Fullman, Pauline Oliveros and so on. Highlighting people like that would be a lot more relevant (because looking to the future and not the past) for International Women's Day than yet more of the same pieces by musically run-of-the-mill 17th century composers (much as I personally love that whole repertoire). And the two Judiths - isn't that a too-obvious choice of established MOR composers from the UK? Or is it just me regarding their music as not very interesting?

[french frank]

It's amazing really... given that the music of Strozzi, Caccini etc. is fairly typical music of its time, rather than historically important in the sense that contemporaries like Byrd, Monteverdi and Schütz were (as opposed to being historically important in being composed by women), whereas since the late 20th century women composers are producing work which is just as original and (albeit within a relatively small constituency) just as highly valued as their male counterparts, not just more traditionally score-based composers like the ones you mention but also more innovative ones such as Eliane Radigue, Ellen Fullman, Pauline Oliveros and so on. Highlighting people like that would be a lot more relevant (because looking to the future and not the past) for International Women's Day than yet more of the same pieces by musically run-of-the-mill 17th century composers (much as I personally love that whole repertoire). And the two Judiths - isn't that a too-obvious choice of established MOR composers from the UK? Or is it just me regarding their music as not very interesting?

Apart from anything else, it seems evident that any initiatives to promote women/women composers should focus especially on the present - and future - where attitudes can be changed.

[Richard Barrett]

Apart from anything else, it seems evident that any initiatives to promote women/women composers should focus especially on the present - and future - where attitudes can be changed.

Exactly!

[ahinton]

Apart from anything else, it seems evident that any initiatives to promote women/women composers should focus especially on the present - and future - where attitudes can be changed.

Of course that makes good sense, though as the relevance of such composers whom some might think of as MOR is surely as part of a wide conspectus of contemporary women composers, it would be better that their work be included among that of quite different ones rather than assuming that choosing some of it might be thought of as "too-obvious"...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Of course that makes good sense, though as the relevance of such composers whom some might think of as MOR is surely as part of a wide conspectus of contemporary women composers, it would be better that their work be included among that of quite different ones rather than assuming that choosing some of it might be thought of as "too-obvious"...

Indeed - but precisely because it isn't being featured as part of such an inclusion, (being instead featured to the exclusion of those "quite different ones") it rather gives weight to the "just being chosen because they're the obvious names" (at the BBC at any rate).

Which is a great, great pity and a lost opportunity - there is a lot of very exciting Music being featured during the week: a little more courage would have maintained this throughout.

[aeolium]

Apart from anything else, it seems evident that any initiatives to promote women/women composers should focus especially on the present - and future - where attitudes can be changed.

Why? Such attitudes today are surely far more progressive than they were in previous centuries, when women found it hard to get accepted as legitimate artists in any field of art. Is it seriously suggested that the relative neglect in concerts and broadcasting of contemporary women composers is because they are women? Isn't it more likely that such neglect of the more innovative composers is for the same reason as there is relative neglect, in concerts and broadcasts, of more innovative male composers - i.e. the fear that the music is too "difficult"?

Simply to dismiss women composers of previous centuries on the grounds that they are just run-of-the-mill and unable to compete with the most well-known male composers is recycling the patronising attitudes that saw them neglected in their own time. If we don't ever hear this music, how can we tell whether there is anything interesting or individual in it that is worth recovering?