Why do we hear so little music by women composers?

[MrGongGong]

I've never met a woman yet who doesn't like dolling-up.

You need to get out more.

[amateur51]

- Exactly. As Alpie pointed out, there are many women who have written superb works (I would add Rebecca Saunders, Kaija Saariaho, Katherine Norman, Chaya Czernowin, Liza Lim. Joanna Baille, Olga Neuwirth, Tansy Davies, Iris ter Schiphorst, Hilda Parades, Natasha Barrett .... ) but they're rarely performed and even more rarely broadcast. And, because many of them write in an idiom that the "common or garden classical Music fan" doesn't much care for (if anything, is actively hostile to) , it is left to us "unorthodoxists" to promote their cause.

Yes - as simple as that.

And among the 'unorthodoxists' you'd hope to find BBC Radio 3 leading the way.

[Dave2002]

But the point of the anecdote that began the talk was that a member of the listening public DID express a desire for a piece by a woman composer - it was the people at Classic FM who did not even notice, and played the much-better-known, similarly-titled work by a male composer instead.

(Wouldn't have happened at Radio 3...)

Surely that was just incompetence!

[Richard Barrett]

Returning to the OP, isn't it clear that systematic sexism infects almost every corner of cultural and intellectual life (to name only these) in our societies? What more needs to be said?

[Sir Velo]

Actually this issue was raised on Radio 3 during its last season of programmes from The Sage, Gateshead. IIRC the Sound and Music Chief Exec, Susanna Eastman announced that she would be commissioning more works from women than before and that, she would need compelling reasons for not going with a female over a male composer.

One way of establishing whether women composers are underrepresented on Radio 3 would be to total up the number of compositions by female composers as a ratio vs male composers and then compare that with their representation on Radio 3.

[Sir Velo]

Returning to the OP, isn't it clear that systematic sexism infects almost every corner of cultural and intellectual life (to name only these) in our societies? What more needs to be said?

Not sure I agree with that entirely. Just as an example, as regular listeners to Radio 4's In Our Time will have noted, at least 50% of guests (i.e. academics) have been women.

[Serial_Apologist]

Actually this issue was raised on Radio 3 during its last season of programmes from The Sage, Gateshead. IIRC the Sound and Music Chief Exec, Susanna Eastman announced that she would be commissioning more works from women than before and that, she would need compelling reasons for not going with a female over a male composer.

One way of establishing whether women composers are underrepresented on Radio 3 would be to total up the number of compositions by female composers as a ratio vs male composers and then compare that with their representation on Radio 3.

Yes but as your #36 implies, the number of compositions in toto by female composers is in all probability much smaller than that of males through no "fault" of their own; and to recognise this as down to unreconstructed gender roles is not necessarily sexist.

[ahinton]

Returning to the OP, isn't it clear that systematic sexism infects almost every corner of cultural and intellectual life (to name only these) in our societies? What more needs to be said?

That it shouldn't - and as loudly and often as possible until it demonstrably no longer does so!

[french frank]

One way of establishing whether women composers are underrepresented on Radio 3 would be to total up the number of compositions by female composers as a ratio vs male composers and then compare that with their representation on Radio 3.

I think the question of chronology would matter when it comes to classical music. There is no dispute that the enormous majority of classical composers whose works are now well-known/performed/broadcast are by men because of the centuries of social bias against women. In terms of women composers, now known and composing now, the balance is improving.

But I presume you weren't meaning the underrepresentation of women composers considered as a percentage of total classical output? One can't change the past, but one could establish a particular date after which the works by women composers should be better represented? I wonder what date that would be - when women at least began to be recognised as artistic equals ...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Since women are, allegedly, able to multi-task very effectively, and since perhaps pre-20th cenury women also had this ability, surely they should have been able to compose and also bear and bring up children.

I don't want to make sexist presumptions, Dave, but could I hazard a guess that you are of the male persuasion?

[Serial_Apologist]

I think the question of chronology would matter when it comes to classical music. There is no dispute that the enormous majority of classical composers whose works are now well-known/performed/broadcast are by men because of the centuries of social bias against women. In terms of women composers, now known and composing now, the balance is improving.

But I presume you weren't meaning the underrepresentation of women composers considered as a percentage of total classical output? One can't change the past, but one could establish a particular date after which the works by women composers should be better represented? I wonder what date that would be - when women at least began to be recognised as artistic equals ...

I would like to think that would have been with the arrival of Dame Ethel Smyth as a reputable composer on a par, at some stage during the 1890s.

[Serial_Apologist]

I don't want to make sexist presumptions, Dave, but could I hazard a guess that you are of the male persuasion?

[Dave2002]

I don't want to make sexist presumptions, Dave, but could I hazard a guess that you are of the male persuasion?

Should I admit that? In any case, what is the "male persuasion"? I guess you mean "male"!

[amateur51]

I don't want to make sexist presumptions, Dave, but could I hazard a guess that you are of the male persuasion?

Give that man a goldfish!