Hidden Women and Silenced Scores

[french frank]

The indefatigable Andrew's updating of the FoR3 website's 'Now iPlaying' feature attracted me to listen to a complete programme for the first time in ages:

"Leah Broad, one of Radio 3’s New Generation Thinkers and a music historian, explores why the music of three 20th-century women composers, much loved at the time, is so little heard today. Looking at issues of style, gender, nationality and genre, she hears from those who knew Avril Coleridge Taylor, Doreen Carwithen and Dorothy Howell well, and uncovers the sometimes shocking stories of how their music was silenced."

If I have a criticism of this [repeated] programme I don't think treating them as a group (and dotting about from one to the other) served any of them as well as it might have done. But giving them 15 minutes each wouldn't have been much better. However, it was a documentary rather than a music programme - and as such was very interesting - but I would welcome a bit more of the music as clearly there are researchers in the field uncovering more and more.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013xsm

[smittims]

I listened carefully to this programme, as I have always believed that it's a fallacy to claim that women composers were 'silenced' just because they were women. Music is neglected and forgotten for a host of reasons unconnected with the sex of the composer, and there are heaps of neglected and fogotten male composers, as she partly admitted. And when Avril Coleridge-Taylor said categorically in an interview that being a woman didn't hinder her career in any way she interrupted it (on her own admission) to say 'well, women are supposed to say that'. Not convincing.

She didn't explain how her theory accounted for the success of Debbie Wiseman and Judith Weir compared with the neglect of Arnold Cooke and Bernard van Dieren's music. Also, the amount of giggling on her part all the way through deterred me from taking seriously her proposals.

I suspect that the angle of the woman downtrodden by the wicked patriarcy was emphasised to give the porgramme more topical appeal. There's been a TV documentary on the same subject and it surfaces on 'Woman's Hour ' occasionally.

[french frank]

I have always believed that it's a fallacy to claim that women composers were 'silenced' just because they were women.

That's quite a generalisation . You mention two women who have 'made it' and two men who didn't: I don't think that illustrates a rule. I'd certainly heard of Dorothy Carwithen (just - though more to the point, I didn't know a great deal about her music), I don't think Dorothy Howell had entered my consciousness (but, again, her music certainly hadn't). Avril Coleridge-Taylor was completely new to me.

But the major point being made was precisely, as per Wiseman and Weir, that their music was admired during their lifetimes. I suspect that many men will share your view, however: many of them will possibly find men's football more interesting too.

[smittims]

Yes, inevitably I was generalising, as there are so many different cases and different reasons. I think the programme would have been better had she stuck to her original line of enquiry about composers who were once famous and whose music then fell out of fashion before being revived. Here too there are plenty of male examples: Monteverdi, Haydn, Granville Bantock, York Bowen all turned into back-numbers,and for different reasons.

[french frank]

Here too there are plenty of male examples: Monteverdi, Haydn, Granville Bantock, York Bowen all turned into back-numbers,and for different reasons.

And every one better known to me. I don't have any recordings of Bantock but a number of the other three, even in my (very) modest collection. Haydn? Monteverdi? Hardly in the same 'forgotten' category, surely? There are also complaints that Schubert isn't performed often enough - especially at the Proms: that also doesn't make him a forgotten composer. Even one of your favourites, van Dieren, doesn't come into the category of unpublished, unrecorded.

I do agree that the programme could have been better, though I don't think including the myriad of little-known male composers would have been quite what she had in mind!

[Ein Heldenleben]

There’s nothing more chastening than going through the list of composers on IMSLP and recognising very few names. I reckon I would spot more than most partly because many are composers of obscure piano exercises like Kalbrenner and Kullak . A market that scarcely exists today. I have to say that quite a few “rediscovered” both 19th and 20th cent female and male composers have barely been worth the effort. There were of their time - produced decent enough salon music , ok-ish piano music especially- one or two have been featured on Composer Of The Week recently. But they are just not going to displace Chopin , Schumann or even Mendelssohn in the recital room.

[smittims]

Natalie Wheen used to dig out some rarities on her programme, but sometimes ended with 'well, that can go back on the shelf for a long time'.

What sorts out the men from the boys (oops!) is, I think, the ability to create memorable thematic ideas.This can ensure the survival of 'one-hit wonders' such as Cecile Chaminade, Hamish MacCunn and Max Bruch.

[french frank]

What sorts out the men from the boys (oops!)

Personally, I have no difficulty with the phrase!

the ability to create memorable thematic ideas.This can ensure the survival of 'one-hit wonders' such as Cecile Chaminade, Hamish MacCunn and Max Bruch.

It's still worth digging out the barely-known names.There's unlikely to be a Beethoven or a Mozart among them but arguably, as few composers reach that point anyway, it's the trickier question, not of 'How well do they compare with what I know? but 'how well do they compare wth what I don't know? In the cliché: "The best is enemy of the good".

[Serial_Apologist]

Personally, I have no difficulty with the phrase!



It's still worth digging out the barely-known names.There's unlikely to be a Beethoven or a Mozart among them but arguably, as few composers reach that point anyway, it's the trickier question, not of 'How well do they compare with what I know? but 'how well do they compare with what I don't know? In the cliché: "The best is enemy of the good".

Well now I'm completely foxed!

Surely the fact that conservative modern composers like Valerie Wiseman and Judith Weir are better known than their aforementioned forbears owes a lot to Second Generation Feminism, wouldn't one say? In the historical past women would have had little chance of entering the domain of musical composition unless associated a priori with male composers, viz Alma Mahler, Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann; and even there they would have had to be at least in the best-known category by dint of personality in every sense - strong personality etc., for which they could well have been condemned for "trying to be/pretending to be men" - the jibe thrown at lesbians as well, of course.

[french frank]

Well now I'm completely foxed!

I don't quite remember what I meant by that except rather than comparing them with all the composers who are well-known, how would they score against all the other unknowns/forgottens? In other words it was a hypothetical.

Surely the fact that conservative modern composers like Valerie Wiseman and Judith Weir are better known than their aforementioned forbears owes a lot to Second Generation Feminism, wouldn't one say? In the historical past women would have had little chance of entering the domain of musical composition unless associated a priori with male composers, viz Alma Mahler, Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann...

Well, changes in social attitudes certain account for the higher profile deliberately given to modern women composers, and contribute towards a level playing field for all. But they can't actually change the social attitudes prevailing in the past; and perhaps 'making allowances' for the difficulties women composers had in earlier times has more to do with sociology than musicology or musical appreciation.

[Serial_Apologist]

I see the sociology, the musicology, the music itself and its receptivity as all inextricably intertwined. Not in the sense that any category or perspective becomes the prime determinant but that they all interact, for all time.

[french frank]

I see the sociology, the musicology, the music itself and its receptivity as all inextricably intertwined. Not in the sense that any category or perspective becomes the prime determinant but that they all interact, for all time.

Yes, as I agree that it applies to the past it would be inconsistent to deny that it was an ongoing process . It's just that it may be easier to discern what happened in the past.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, as I agree that it applies to the past it would be inconsistent to deny that it was an ongoing process . It's just that it may be easier to discern what happened in the past.

Indeed - as Edgard Varèse once famously said, "Contrary to the artist being ahead of his time [sic] most people are far behind their's"

[Bryn]

Indeed - as Edgard Varèse once famously said, "Contrary to the artist being ahead of his time [sic] most people are far behind their's"

Funnily enough, I cited the very same quote on a Facebook group about Zappa, earlier today.