Women composers

[MrGongGong]

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/06/sound-and-music-susanna-eastburn-we-need-more-women-composers-talent-not-tokenism

[french frank]

The point about 'unconscious bias' is good. Does it contribute to the view that 'I've listened to what female composers have written - without any preconceived ideas - and I just don't like the stuff I've heard'? 'When you hear 'little known' women composers you understand why they're little known'? 'Yes, so-and-so's piece was good, but not as good as (male) X's.'

I liked the R3 initiative that they were to start recording more pieces composed by women in order to shape a canon which, down the centuries, has been influenced by customs that introduce bias.

[Richard Barrett]

"At every single stage of development, from GCSE onwards, the gap between male and female applications widened – from 50% at GCSE level, to the 35% female applicants to our summer school, to the 25% female applicants to Sound and Music’s various professional artist development programmes (...) this week, to mark International Women’s Day, Sound and Music are announcing that by March 2020, at least 50% of the composers we work with will identify as women."

It's a beautiful aim, but how is it actually going to happen? People doing GCSE music now are hardly going to be entering higher education by 2020, let alone producing music on a level which would compare with what's being made across all age groups.

[greenilex]

Do you think there may be "desert rose" women composers working separately from the established music pathways you mention?

I am thinking of minorities, immigrants and farmers among others, who probably didn't go to choir school but may be talented and have achieved a high level of musical literacy.

[Richard Barrett]

Do you think there may be "desert rose" women composers working separately from the established music pathways you mention?

Certainly. But they often don't get noticed by the institutions whatever their gender.

[teamsaint]

Something that I noticed was that when composition is included in formal music courses,( A level, BA, ) that the perceived need to achieve high marks at any given moment( other perhaps than 1st year undergraduate) means a tendency towards risk averse choices. Composition might tend to be a choice rather more loaded with risk than other areas, EG essay based, modules.
I don't know if this affects gender balance, but it is an issue in any case, IMO.

[MrGongGong]

Composition might tend to be a choice rather more loaded with risk than other areas, EG essay based, modules.
.

This research does suggest that to some extent

http://www.ism.org/blog/music-a-level-composing-research-into-teacher-attitudes

[teamsaint]

This research does suggest that to some extent

http://www.ism.org/blog/music-a-leve...cher-attitudes

Very interesting. Thanks.

I do know of a case where an A level student took the composition module. Having had top grades in composition at GCSE and AS, the student received an unexpectedly very low grade in the final A level, on a piece that had been produced under the usual guidance by a very strong, well established music department in a school with high academic reputation. If they had perceived a high risk of a very low grade, they would certainly have encouraged a substantial reworking.

Fortunately, the student concerned still got the overall grade required for University entrance, but I do know it put them off composition when making module choices.
Disappointing really. An opportunity at degree level to "drop" marks in one or two modules, ( assuming a pass mark is achieved, perhaps) to encourage risk taking, might be good ?

[MrGongGong]

Very interesting. Thanks.

I do know of a case where an A level student took the composition module. Having had top grades in composition at GCSE and AS, the student received an unexpectedly very low grade in the final A level, on a piece that had been produced under the usual guidance by a very strong, well established music department in a school with high academic reputation. If they had perceived a high risk of a very low grade, they would certainly have encouraged a substantial reworking.

Fortunately, the student concerned still got the overall grade required for University entrance, but I do know it put them off composition when making module choices.
Disappointing really. An opportunity at degree level to "drop" marks in one or two modules, ( assuming a pass mark is achieved, perhaps) to encourage risk taking, might be good ?

What often happens in my experience is that music departments in schools will play the "game" of focussing on areas of courses which have an easy to understand making scheme sometimes even not doing any work in others at all

It's a bit like what Atul Gawande spoke of in a Reith Lecture

.I’m curious about how we guard against unintended consequences of the measurable displacing the important.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

AFAIK, all "A"-level Music courses include a compulsory composition component. This can cover many areas which students (or their teachers) can choose from, including "traditional" Bachian four-part Chorlae harmonization and two-part "contrapuntal" writing, or "free" composition in any style suited to the student's skills and tastes.

The trouble with this is that whilst the "traditional" skills have established "rules" and procedures that can be clearly "marked": errors can be spotted and penalised. With "free" composition, such guidelines are not appropriate - and, if an Examiner doesn't "like" an original piece of writing, or is unaware of procedures used in the "style" the student has chosen to write in, s/he might be inclined to "mark it down". In some cases, to try and avoid this potential unfairness, "free" composition is given specific guidelines as to the sort of harmonic, rhythmic, textural etc variety that a composition might include. But, again, if an Examiner is marking a piece in a style unfamiliar to them, then they use those guidelines instead as a "checklist" of features that have to be there: a Mark Scheme, in fact - and if the specific features suggested aren't immediately in evidence, the marks aren't given. This might well be the cause of the low mark given to the "A"-level student ts cites.

There are great difficulties assessing "A"-level work - I would never consider becoming an Exam marker - the range of skills, knowledge, and understanding are way beyond what would be fair for the student. Any individual marker receives a batch of exam papers from different schools, and s/he is expected to be able to have detailed knowledge of so vast a selection of Musics, that it would be easy - and frequently inevitable - for the students to know more about the topic they're writing about than the exam marker.

And then there's the inaccurate analyses provided by the Exam. Boards themselves, where a writer, hurried for time, includes an erroneous statement (such as misreading the transposition of a Horn part in a Shostakovich Symphony). An attentive student might notice the error - but if they have a marker who is an expert in the Broadway Musical from 1930 - 50, but who doesn't know about such transpositions, then the student's correction of the textbook error will not be appreciated. Does the student deliberately write something that they know to be wrong just in case their work is marked by somebody who doesn't?

(AND - if a subject area doesn't attract a sufficient number of kids who want to study at Exam. level, the subject doesn't run beyond year 9. Teachers' services are dispensed with, and so the subject isn't ever offered again. The creative subject areas are always the first to suffer: the "do it as a hobby and do proper subjects for your Exams" syndrome.)

[MrGongGong]

AFAIK, all "A"-level Music courses include a compulsory composition component.

They don't, they all (AFAIK)include the elements you describe but that's not composition any more than the kind of harmonising exercises folk do in theory exams.
There is a real problem with the status of composition in music education and it's quite likely that it will vanish all together.

There have been some interesting projects recently trying to deal with some of these issues like this one http://www.soundandmusic.org/sites/d...%20VERSION.pdf

[jayne lee wilson]

Alexandra Coghlan has a Specialists Guide To....Historical Female Composers ... in March 2017 Gramophone, a wide selection from Caccini to Strozzi, Lutyens to Clarke, all the way back to the 9th Century Constantinople Abbess, Kassia....

Might keep you busy on Qobuz for quite a while.....

[Dave2002]

Perhaps only marginally relevant, but I was amused to read that regarding a performance competition Prokofiev wanted to demonstrate his skill as a pianist by playing a concerto he had written. This was his first piano concerto. Some of his grounds for so doing were that the judges/jury would not know the piece, so would not be able to decide that he had played it incorrectly, or not! In the end they let him, providing that he had the work published. He still won, though perhaps somewhat begrudgingly by the awarding panel.

I think that is a brilliant piece.

I can see some merit in having "standards" for attainment in composition, but also where there are truly innovative ideas surely there should be ways of letting these emerge. Using established "yardsticks" may not be appropriate for truly new music.

[Richard Barrett]

I can see some merit in having "standards" for attainment in composition, but also where there are truly innovative ideas surely there should be ways of letting these emerge. Using established "yardsticks" may not be appropriate for truly new music.

This is a bit tangential too, but it strikes me that in these days of shrinking cultural budgets very many young artists, composers for example, have increasingly adopted strategies from advertising in promoting their work in a "crowded marketplace", which requires having an easily describable (eg. in terms of influences and existing genres) "product", and/or having a promotional angle which is nothing to do with the music - a situation which militates precisely against innovative work being recognised or produced.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I can see some merit in having "standards" for attainment in composition, but also where there are truly innovative ideas surely there should be ways of letting these emerge. Using established "yardsticks" may not be appropriate for truly new music.

The students who were following "A"-level Art courses as well as Music were always horrified at the mistrust of individuality shown by Exam. Boards in Composition expectations. (For that matter, English Lit "A"-level students were appalled at the infantilism of the "Analysis" side of their Music studies - with nothing of the close-reading, or wider aesthetic discussion that made their Literature studies so vital for them.) Remember, the "standards" are for the benefit of the Examiners, not the students - "what can we assess?" is at the root of much that is decided should be taught - the Atul Gawande quotation that MrGG posted.

(I love the Prok 1st Pno Conc, too.)