On women and composing

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think it operates at a subconscious level - like so much commmunication.
(No cop-out intended, but I have to leave for a concert - more tomorrow, maybe).

Hope the concert is a success - and I might have less time to devote to the forum over the next ten days or so (some festival or other in West Yorkshire).

But what I cannot understand is how the Music of a male composer can communicate a "feminine" sensuality unless it involves preconceptions (I won't say "stereotypes") about what constitutes "femininity" (and, for that matter, "masculinity"); preconceptions that the Music itself contradicts - contradicts in that men can experience and express these features of "femininity" in their Music. If a male composer (Dallapiccola, Feldman, Sciarrino, Furrer, Bach) can write Music of such delicacy, tenderness and sensuality, then these are human characteristics, not specifically "feminine" ones (and if a woman - Lutyens, Neuwirth, Tansy Davis - can write Music expressing forcefulness, anger, dynamism, aggression; then it is a flawed idea of gender roles that describes such Music as "masculine"). This is why I find the two words "useless" - they don't work when faced with the sounds of the Music itself, and limit human characteristics to one or other sex, reinforcing gender stereotypes that I think are dangerous.

[ahinton]

Hope the concert is a success - and I might have less time to devote to the forum over the next ten days or so (some festival or other in West Yorkshire).

But what I cannot understand is how the Music of a male composer can communicate a "feminine" sensuality unless it involves preconceptions (I won't say "stereotypes") about what constitutes "femininity" (and, for that matter, "masculinity"); preconceptions that the Music itself contradicts - contradicts in that men can experience and express these features of "femininity" in their Music. If a male composer (Dallapiccola, Feldman, Sciarrino, Furrer, Bach) can write Music of such delicacy, tenderness and sensuality, then these are human characteristics, not specifically "feminine" ones (and if a woman - Lutyens, Neuwirth, Tansy Davis - can write Music expressing forcefulness, anger, dynamism, aggression; then it is a flawed idea of gender roles that describes such Music as "masculine"). This is why I find the two words "useless" - they don't work when faced with the sounds of the Music itself, and limit human characteristics to one or other sex, reinforcing gender stereotypes that I think are dangerous.

Again, I cannot agree more - principally because, quite simply, I do not understand and cannot bring myself to understand the alternative viewpoint, however persuasively or by whom it might be expressed. I just do not "get" this "women's music" thing and suspect that quite a few, if not most or all, women composers probably wouldn't "get" it either.....

[jean]

Don't you mean you couldn't?

[kea]

But also important to recognise, that composers, especially women, do not operate in a gender neutral environment, and this will likely affect their work, to some extent, at some point.

I think this is a point to keep in mind. Gender is not neutral; it's a shell game set up so that men always win. With composers a consequence of this I've noticed is that the reception of almost every female composer is framed in terms of relationship to a man, or several men. This often ends up being a way to diminish the 'composer' part of her for the benefit of the 'woman' part, because of the way musicological narratives prize individuality and originality.* (Exceptions, like Lili Boulanger, have their fragility/weakness/femininity played up as much as possible—or, like Elisabeth Lutyens, invariably have someone around to point out how unfeminine and non-stereotypical they are.) This extends also to lifetime reception, especially in the 20th/21st centuries. An interesting aspect of this is that women are judged more harshly for being taught/influenced by male composers than men are for being taught/influenced by female ones; actually, male students of female composers are sometimes critically viewed as surpassing their teachers. I've never heard of this happening for a female composer.

In terms of affecting the music written by female composers, the weight of tradition and male power tends to ensure there is often not very much of it, but I can think of very few classical composers whose music embodies a specifically female experience—partly since classical composers tend to be from highly privileged backgrounds and someone like Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre would have been very far removed from the struggles of the typical woman. Even Galina Ustvolskaya (who comes closest, I think) writes with elements of repudiation suggesting an antagonistic but extant relationship to men's music. I think any stylistic differences between "male" and "female" music would have to be intentional, though—eg Robert Simpson definitely tried to write masculine** music that avoided all those girly emotions (it clearly didn't work ).

* This is part of the game of course. Men decide that the main characteristics of great composers are individuality and originality, decide women don't have any of that stuff, then ask "why are there no great female composers?"
** "cosmic", "universal", "uncompromising" and such words being invariably code for "masculine" in my experience

[jean]

...I can think of very few classical composers whose music embodies a specifically female experience—partly since classical composers tend to be from highly privileged backgrounds and someone like Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre would have been very far removed from the struggles of the typical woman...

The class argument is related, again very familiar (though not one I've heard so much recently) - all 'classical' music is irredeemably aristocratic or at least bourgeois. Male composers were no closer to the struggles of the typical person of either sex than their few female counterparts were - and even if they were sometimes little more than drudges themselves, they were composing to please patrons who really could not care less about anyone's struggles.

...I just do not "get" this "women's music" thing and suspect that quite a few, if not most or all, women composers probably wouldn't "get" it either.....

But if they didn't, there'd always be someone to point out that they were victims of false consciousness.

.

[ahinton]

Don't you mean you couldn't?

Couldn't or cannot? Is there really a material difference? Couldn't would presumably be in response to having been asked to and cannot might be regardless of whether or not I were asked to - so might "don't" do for you to cover either eventuality or any other possible ditto?

[Beef Oven!]

https://illinois.edu/blog/view/25/76120

[ahinton]

https://illinois.edu/blog/view/25/76120

I wonder what Ms Cameron might make of that?(!)...

[ahinton]

But if they didn't, there'd always be someone to point out that they were victims of false consciousness.

Of that I sadly have little doubt, but that would no more oblige them to take any notice than it would necessarily be true!

For the record and for the avoidance of doubt, I am not seeking to claim that there are no such differences - merely that there is not as yet any scientific proof of them and, until or unless there ever is such, those who claim that there are those differences are merely indulging in speculation, in some cases to assure themselves and others that they are right because they think that such differences exist.

[P. G. Tipps]

Thanks, teamsaint. I hadn't expected any support here for my tentative theory that there are masculine and feminine manifestations of creativity in music, just as there are in other arts, and that these would be as equally likely to manifest in music by male composers as female ones just by virtue of the historical reality that it has largely been men who have been transmitted to the historical record as offering new directions. Indeed ahinton who suddenly appears to have recanted cited Faure alongside Debussy in this light; had the discussion been more open to the idea one could have gone on to find other composers' work in which characteristics suggestive in both directions at different stages or in different works might have provided a basis for a new thread. I don't se anything "old fashioned" in these views - quite the contrary, as outside such fringe areas as Rock Against Sexism at the end of the 1970s and in particular Maggie Nicols's initiatives in the community music field, to my knowledge there aren't that many places where they've been discussed even superficially.

Anyway maybe I'm just p*ssed off rather at the moment 'cos for OT reasons Jeremy C doesn't seem to be making a very good fist of his opportunity right now, and Uncle Ken ain't exactly helping.

Jeremy C's "minder" Tom W., ever-smirking in the background, is patiently awaiting his own likely opportunity, S_A. 'Uncle Ken' is ... well, just being 'Uncle Ken'? However, no more politics!

Your post is most refreshing as it seems to me imbued with simple common sense. I don't know whether women compose differently from men (as how women think and compose will always remain a complete mystery to men and, of course, vice-versa) but what I do know for certain is that males and females are different both physically and emotionally and, consequently, often have quite different outlooks and interests in life. 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus' is clearly gross hyperbole but, like many such things, there is undeniably at least a grain of truth in the phrase.

I find it hard to believe that gender differences would not be reflected in creative and emotional art forms like music.Why should music be somehow magically divorced from the rest of life?

Vive la différence!

[ahinton]

I think this is a point to keep in mind. Gender is not neutral; it's a shell game set up so that men always win.

Gender is merely a game? Wow! That's news to me!...

With composers a consequence of this I've noticed is that the reception of almost every female composer is framed in terms of relationship to a man, or several men.

Whilst this might well have been shamefully true in the past, rather more women composers are at work today and we have opportunities to hear far more of their music as well as of past women composers' music, so I suspect that such "reception" be largely confined to those men who choose to try to perpetuate such antediluvian "thinking" simply because that cannot or will not face facts.

This often ends up being a way to diminish the 'composer' part of her for the benefit of the 'woman' part, because of the way musicological narratives prize individuality and originality.*

It might well do so when it occurs but, as I have just suggested, I do not see much evidence of its prevalence today. As to those "musicological narratives", there is such a thing as "feminist musicology" (about which I prefer to say nothing beyond pointing up that it's been an academic growth industry for some time) but, leaving that on one side for the moment, what makes you imply (in your footnote that reads "This is part of the game of course. Men decide that the main characteristics of great composers are individuality and originality, decide women don't have any of that stuff, then ask "why are there no great female composers?") that women are incapable of individuality or originality? Where is the evidence for that? If some men have actually taken it upon themselves to believe this (and, after all, some of them are less individual and original in any case!), one might ask why and for what purpose? Presumably to play this gender "game" of which you now write more clearly in identifying that gender itself is not a game but that some men have devised a game around gender and play it in ways that they believe suits them when they think that it suits them.

Exceptions, like Lili Boulanger, have their fragility/weakness/femininity played up as much as possible—or, like Elisabeth Lutyens, invariably have someone around to point out how unfeminine and non-stereotypical they are.

Boulanger is not really an "exception" in this, although she was a most remarkable composer; however, where is the identifiable "fragility/weakness/femininty" in her music? I've always found the best of it rather powerful, personally. There was certainly fragility and weakness in her physically and, of course, this sadly led to her very early demise, but that's quite another matter. As to the kind of comments that you write of as having been directed at Lutyens, they tell us - as usual - far more about those who made them than they do about her or her music.

This extends also to lifetime reception, especially in the 20th/21st centuries. An interesting aspect of this is that women are judged more harshly for being taught/influenced by male composers than men are for being taught/influenced by female ones; actually, male students of female composers are sometimes critically viewed as surpassing their teachers. I've never heard of this happening for a female composer.

I've never heard of any of this happening at all, actually, although if you've experienced or otherwise encountered it, I will of course take your word for it. Having done so, however, reception and other behaviour that effectively aims to express negativity towards all women composers simply because of their gender is, as you say, no more than part of a mere "game" that happens still to be played by certain males who appear to have little better to do, but the fact that some of them continue to do this irrespective of reality does not confer factually based status upon it!

In terms of affecting the music written by female composers, the weight of tradition and male power tends to ensure there is often not very much of it

How does such a "tradition" succeed in continuing to function - as once it might more reasonably have been thought to do - in a 21st century world in which there is immense diversity of musics being composed by both men and women?

I can think of very few classical composers whose music embodies a specifically female experience

Well, we can certainly agree on that!

partly since classical composers tend to be from highly privileged backgrounds and someone like Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre would have been very far removed from the struggles of the typical woman

Not all of them are, especially today!

Even Galina Ustvolskaya (who comes closest, I think) writes with elements of repudiation suggesting an antagonistic but extant relationship to men's music.

If that's what she feels, the behaviour of some male composers might well make this quite understandable, but being able to express this in words is one thing whereas doing so in music is quite another.

I think any stylistic differences between "male" and "female" music would have to be intentional, though—eg Robert Simpson definitely tried to write masculine music that avoided all those girly emotions (it clearly didn't work )..."cosmic", "universal", "uncompromising" and such words being invariably code for "masculine" in my experience

Poor Robert Simpson really is coming in for some rough treatment here, n'est-ce pas?! Where is your evidence that he did anything of the kind? Did he ever declare such an intention? - and, even if he did, where's the evidence that he succeeded at this? (nowhere, presuably, as even you appear not to believe that he did!). Pity is, however, that he's in no position to answer back; if he were, he might throw a copy of a score of his final work, the second string quintet, at you with a view to putting such a idea where it rightfully belongs. Did you know, by the way, that his second wife was a realtive (I cannot now recall which) of a woman composer? (and her name, Angela Musgrave, should give away the identity of the composer to whom I refer here).

You put forward many interesting thoughts here, but each sentence seems to me to be imbued with an underlying sense of overbearing male prejudice (I don't mean yours, of course!) which, like those particular barbed comments about Lutyens, tell us more about those who try to cling to such prejudice than it does (or indeed can) about the nature and content of the music of women composers.

[ahinton]

[delete: duplicate]

[ahinton]

Jeremy C's "minder" Tom W., ever-smirking in the background, is patiently awaiting his own likely opportunity, S_A. 'Uncle Ken' is ... well, just being 'Uncle Ken'? However, no more politics!

Indeed! Do I really care what Jeremy Clarkson's minder (not that I'd realised that he had one) is doing? As to Dr Livingstone, why not just let him be presumed? He's good at that. Anyway, as you say, enough of all this!

Your post is most refreshing as it seems to me imbued with simple common sense.

Whilst we've come to expect good sense from S_A, those of us who've been here long enough, as well as on the predecessor forum, will doubtless remember some contentious cut-and-(non-Simpsonic!)-thrust about "common sense" and, as we know in any case, good sense isn't especially common!

I don't know whether women compose differently from men (as how women think and compose will always remain a complete mystery to men and, of course, vice-versa) but what I do know for certain is that males and females are different both physically and emotionally and, consequently, often have quite different outlooks and interests in life. 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus' is clearly gross hyperbole but, like many such things, there is undeniably at least a grain of truth in the phrase.

It is indeed - and an even more gross over-simplification, for soundbite purposes. However, were the ways in which women compose a complete mystery to men and vice versa, what would that say about musicology, analysis, &c. down the ages? Not a lot, methinks!

I find it hard to believe that gender differences would not be reflected in creative and emotional art forms like music. Why should music be somehow magically divorced from the rest of life?

For the most part it isn't, of course - but what makes you surmise that the reflection in music of such gender differences is so much greater and more prevalent than any other differences in the music of any composers, male or female, when everyone's makeup is different (and no, I don't mean that kind of make-up!).There are such vast differences between the music of one woman and that of another, just as there are between the music of one man and another; trying to "simplify" all this to gender difference alone is little more than a reductio ad absurdum exercise predicted upon an assumption that all women (or at the very least all women composers) are broadly identical physically and emotionally.

Furthermore, if women composers' work is more predicated/dependent upon the expressions of emotions experiences by women and men's work ditto upon those that they experience (which most mercifully is not the case, for a variety of reasons), the sheer divisiveness within musical expression would be almost unbearable, would it not? - so much so, in fact, that the very act of musical creation would find itself in dire need of the compositional equivalent of a Schengen agreement, methinks! Let's not forget that both men and women composers write for men and women performers and men and women listeners.

Vive la différence!

Vive les différences, surely?(!). Or, better still, VIVE LA FRANCE!!!

[Pabmusic]

This has been very interesting to read. There is no doubt that the societal mores of previous generations made life almost intolerable for female composers.

Amy Beach was a good (bad) example. She was born Amy Cheney and made her public debut at the age of seven. She appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the age of 16 in March, 1885, playing Chopin's Concerto. In the same year she married Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, who was older than her father. He made her promise to limit her public appearances to no more than two a year, which effectively ended her career as a pianist. Instead she turned to composition. Almost all her compositions were thus published under the name ‘Mrs H. H. A. Beach’ – underlining the fact that marriage had robbed her not only of a career as a performer, but had consigned even her name to history.

However, there's one thing that (I think) has not been discussed. Autism. There is a growing number of studies suggesting a clear link between autism (particularly Asperger's Syndrome) and creativity. The most recent is this: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0813222253.htm But that is just one of very many. It has been seriously quipped that 90% of all artistic, scientific and technological advances have been down to people with mild autism.

Because music is in fact a 'mathematical' discipline, it is a skill comparable to the disciplines of - say - Isaac Newton, Paul Dirac, Alan Turing and Steve Jobs (to limit myself to those no longer with us) who are all prime candidates for 'aspies'. Retrospective 'diagnoses' have been done on several composers (Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, Satie and Bartok to my knowledge) and written accounts suggest very clearly they were all mildly autistic.

Now, if I'm anywhere near right about this, Asperger's (or autism in general) affects one male in 40, but only one female in 200. Thus it's mainly a male thing. The reason why this should be is itself a fascinating subject. Part of it is likely to be the fact that males are more recent, more changed, than females. Sexual reproduction seems to have begun when some organisms mutated into 'males'. Those that don't use sex, but clone themselves - aphids, for instance - are in effect all females.

It's an incredibly involved subject (and we'd need Ali G's cousin to chip in, because I'm no expert) but there might be a predisposition towards a disproportionally high number of males becoming composers.

[ahinton]

This has been very interesting to read. There is no doubt that the societal mores of previous generations made life almost intolerable for female composers.

Amy Beach was a good (bad) example. She was born Amy Cheney and made her public debut at the age of seven. She appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the age of 16 in March, 1885, playing Chopin's Concerto. In the same year she married Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, who was older than her father. He made her promise to limit her public appearances to no more than two a year, which effectively ended her career as a pianist. Instead she turned to composition. Almost all her compositions were thus published under the name ‘Mrs H. H. A. Beach’ – underlining the fact that marriage had robbed her not only of a career as a performer, but had consigned even her name to history.

However, there's one thing that (I think) has not been discussed. Autism. There is a growing number of studies suggesting a clear link between autism (particularly Asperger's Syndrome) and creativity. The most recent is this: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0813222253.htm But that is just one of very many. It has been seriously quipped that 90% of all artistic, scientific and technological advances have been down to people with mild autism.

Because music is in fact a 'mathematical' discipline, it is a skill comparable to the disciplines of - say - Isaac Newton, Paul Dirac, Alan Turing and Steve Jobs (to limit myself to those no longer with us) who are all prime candidates for 'aspies'. Retrospective 'diagnoses' have been done on several composers (Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, Satie and Bartok to my knowledge) and written accounts suggest very clearly they were all mildly autistic.

Now, if I'm anywhere near right about this, Asperger's (or autism in general) affects one male in 40, but only one female in 200. Thus it's mainly a male thing. The reason why this should be is itself a fascinating subject. Part of it is likely to be the fact that males are more recent, more changed, than females. Sexual reproduction seems to have begun when some organisms mutated into 'males'. Those that don't use sex, but clone themselves - aphids, for instance - are in effect all females.

It's an incredibly involved subject (and we'd need Ali G's cousin to chip in, because I'm no expert) but there might be a predisposition towards a disproportionally high number of males becoming composers.

Interesting points. The case of Amy Beach (as she is now alost universally called, I imagine) was indeed appalling; even Clara Schumann and Alma Mahler didn't have to put up with that!

The autism aspect of it all provides much food for thought, the trouble associated with it perhaps being that, once a cure is found for it and used in treatment of patients with it, the ultimate social losses of such successful treatment might well outweight the benefits!

Ah, yes, Ali G; Baron Cohen of wherever it is - but it would indeed be most interesting if it is ever discovered that, as autism is reckoned to affect some 5 times as many men as it affects women, it accordingly provides a possible explanation (aside from and in addition to the past social one) for the existence of so many more male composers than female ones.