Women Composers' Thread/International Women's Day 2015 on R3

[Beef Oven!]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/programm...les/2015/03/08

I asked, who is suggesting that?

[french frank]

That's entirely up to you!

Nothing stopping you exploring the output of women composers like anybody else, if gender is that important a factor to you.

Doesn't matter a scap to me, ferney ... at least when it comes to music!

Can't you see how myopic that is as a response? The point was that you have to go out and explore women composers' work - if you can find it. If not, well, it doesn't matter because the best is only going to be like men's music. The classical music scene is not unlike this thread: overwhelmingly dominated by men. And most other threads are men talking about men. And when women have to press to get their voices heard they're branded as 'strident feminists'.

For goodness' sake, is it too much to expect (most) men to take music seriously enough to recognise that they're missing a lot of good music?

And also for goodness' sake, keep all the anti-women jokes for the Current favourite jokes thread.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Yes, it's good to explore women's music - and programmes investigating the marginalisation of women composers in the past are relevant. But my gripe is that we have a day devoted to women composers on 8th March (as we did in the 1970s(?) and then it's all "back to normal" for the next 40 years.

[Flosshilde]

"back to normal"

Yes - days devoted to male composers. That's why there needs to be a day (at least) devoted to women - so that people can hear music that's been sidelined & perhaps begin to realise that the is much good, interesting music that's been hidden & start to programme it.

(oh, and we're not talking about women's music, which sounds too much like women's films, but music by women. It doesn't belong to them, or appeal only to them - it belongs to us all)

[french frank]

That's why there needs to be a day (at least)

Of course. One small step for women, another small step for R3.

Realistically, no one would expect the entire classical canon to change overnight, now that 'women composers' have been acknowledged. It is, after all, only one small step in the right direction; and for the entire sex - as opposed to the slightly larger steps that have been taken recently to promote individual men composers.

It's quite reasonable to talk about Radio 3's marking of IWD and celebrating women composers. It isn't reasonable to make any sort of 'fuss' about it, as if women have unfairly been given 'more than men' during this week. But, Prima la Musica.

[P. G. Tipps]

Can't you see how myopic that is as a response? The point was that you have to go out and explore women composers' work - if you can find it. If not, well, it doesn't matter because the best is only going to be like men's music. The classical music scene is not unlike this thread: overwhelmingly dominated by men. And most other threads are men talking about men. And when women have to press to get their voices heard they're branded as 'strident feminists'.

For goodness' sake, is it too much to expect (most) men to take music seriously enough to recognise that they're missing a lot of good music?

And also for goodness' sake, keep all the anti-women jokes for the Current favourite jokes thread.

What a strange post ...

Firstly I'm not aware I posted any 'anti-women' jokes though I can enjoy a bit of teasing even when directed at myself. I certainly don't take myself or anyone else here too seriously!

As it happens, I have just listened to a marvellous account of Bruckner 8 (1st Version) by the NZSO conducted by Simone Young. Simply wonderful.

I understand that Young is female but her gender never crossed my mind. Excellence is to be admired and applauded whether the conductor is male or female.

Anyone can easily purchase works by women composers online with a few clicks of a mouse or its laptop/tablet/smartfone equivalent. It's that easy!

These are the perfectly valid and only points I have been making all along, so I can only assume you have completely failed to understand my posts?

[french frank]

What a strange post ...

The comment addressed to you about myopia referred to the quote from you in my post:

Nothing stopping you exploring the output of women composers like anybody else, if gender is that important a factor to you.

Doesn't matter a scap to me,

THAT is myopic. I'll explain it further if you can't see it.

The rest referred to other posters , some making jokes, others making a fuss.

[Serial_Apologist]

Of course. One small step for women, another small step for R3.

Realistically, no one would expect the entire classical canon to change overnight, now that 'women composers' have been acknowledged. It is, after all, only one small step in the right direction; and for the entire sex - as opposed to the slightly larger steps that have been taken recently to promote individual men composers.

It's quite reasonable to talk about Radio 3's marking of IWD and celebrating women composers. It isn't reasonable to make any sort of 'fuss' about it, as if women have unfairly been given 'more than men' during this week. But, Prima la Musica.

I am nevertheless surprised to see no mention whatsoever in the Radio Times blurb of that day of Elizabeth Lutyens, not only one of the very first outside the Schoenberg circle to take up 12-tone composition but, in that, a huge example setter to composers of the 1950s Goehr/Maxwell Davies/Birtwistle generation, not to mention being a women composer.

"I work in conditions like Victoria Station. I've had to work for twenty years in the midst of my young children. Whom do the children always come to with their problems? Who has to keep the place clean in spite of the shortage of domestic help?" [] "I would love a large sound-proof room with a secretary and a housekeeper. There's your answer to why there are so few women artists. In the end you simply have to decide that you can't composer or that you have to do it in whatever circumstances you can".

(Elizabeth Lutyens, in British Composers in Interview, Murray Schaffer, Faber and Faber, London, 1963, P107).

[ahinton]

I think you might be missing the point. Lutyens, Williams, Musgrave, Tower, Beach and other's music is 'important' but does not get considered as such. Much less 'important' music is considered ahead of these composers. Let's say that in the absence of any other explanation, we can conclude that it is endemic sexism that causes this 'anomaly'.

That is just the point. In the absence of any better knowledge, some might even be tempted to assume that the music of women composers is for the most part sidelined for no better "reason" than that there's so much more music by men than there is by women. The very fact that one could not tell merely by listening whether a piece of music is by a woman or a man further gives the lie to any attempt to justify such sidelining.

[ahinton]

Spot on!

Women, like men, should be judged entirely on ability.

Everything else, like gender, big noses, stick-out ears, or whatever, is completely irrelevant!

But the problem here is that opportunities to "judge" them at all on any grounds whatsoever is usually gravely restricted by woeful lack of due exposure! How many chances does one have to hear a work by Lutosławski and how few to hear one by his compatriot and slightly elder contemporary Bacewicz (of whose music, incidentally, he thought very highly)? How much more difficult does this vast difference therefore make it to be able to "judge" those two composers evenly?

[french frank]

I am nevertheless surprised to see no mention whatsoever in the Radio Times blurb of that day

In the days when I used to buy Radio Times, there never seemed to be anyone who knew even the basics about classical music (not even the 'classical music writer'), still less about the uninhabited outback.

[ahinton]

Can't you see how myopic that is as a response? The point was that you have to go out and explore women composers' work - if you can find it. If not, well, it doesn't matter because the best is only going to be like men's music. The classical music scene is not unlike this thread: overwhelmingly dominated by men. And most other threads are men talking about men. And when women have to press to get their voices heard they're branded as 'strident feminists'.

For goodness' sake, is it too much to expect (most) men to take music seriously enough to recognise that they're missing a lot of good music?

And also for goodness' sake, keep all the anti-women jokes for the Current favourite jokes thread.

Loud cheers for all of that! OK, there might be at least some mileage in arguments that some of the finest women composers are reasonably well represented on CD today, although that was far from the case even 15 or 20 years ago, but how often is music by such women broadcst on major national public radio or television and how often is it publicly performed (other than, once again, a little more than it was 15 or 20 years ago).

It's not at all about the fact that the music itself is by women composers; it is (at least in part) about the fact that it is all too often marginalised (i.e. insufficiently often performed, recorded and broadcast) just because it happens to be by women.

As to the notion that Szymanowska, C. Schumann, Farrenc, A. Mahler, (Lili) Boulanger, Bacewicz, Maconchy, Musgrave, Beamish, Bingham, Saariaho, Weir et al were/are all "strident feminists" is about as patently absurd as it can get; even Dame Ethel was not quite that!

[french frank]

Quite, but could we get back to being a bit more focused on women composers and their music. Rather than just talking about women in general?

[doversoul1]

Quite, but could we get back to being a bit more focused on women composers and their music. Rather than just talking about women in general?

I have been asking this from the beginning of this thread. Beyond listing their names and works, is there really anything to talk about ‘women composers and their music*’that is distinct from the music composed by men? I am genuinely curious.

If anyone is going to answer, please do so in your own words and not by posting links.

*I take it by this you mean not their personal circumstances or employment (or lack of) opportunities but music itself, or have I got it wrong?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I am nevertheless surprised to see no mention whatsoever in the Radio Times blurb of that day of Elizabeth Lutyens, not only one of the very first outside the Schoenberg circle to take up 12-tone composition but, in that, a huge example setter to composers of the 1950s Goehr/Maxwell Davies/Birtwistle generation, not to mention being a women composer.

Ah, but there's the rub. Elizabeth Lutyens is probably being sidelined because her compositions are perceived by the R3 impressarios to be too challenging for their Breakfast/Essential Classics/In Tune/Saturday Classics preferred audience.

And, Flossie, by "Back to Normal", I meant just what you said. To have 39 years and 364 days of music by male composers, followed by one day of music by women composers - it's not okay.