Women composers

[RichardB]

One thing I deplore, as it shows no sign of going away, is the repeated fallacy that women composers' music is or was neglected solely because they were women.

Surely you're aware of the fact that, historically, women have been neglected in very many areas of human endeavour, apart from music. While of course composers of any gender might be neglected for all kinds of reasons, including more or less arbitrary ones, women don't in a more general sense have equal opportunities to men, so it would be strange if this didn't also apply to musical composition, don't you think?

[smittims]

I don't see it like that, Richard. The best women singers, pianists ad other instrumentalists, novelists, poets, painters and sculptors have produced work which can stand with that of their male contemporaries, but for some reason it doesn't happen with composers , and I'm sorry to say, conductors. I don't know why this is; I wish it were otherwise. But claiming that they didn't do so purely because of male oppression is unconvincing in my view. I suspect that the claim is made because the BBC promotes programmes about women's achievements in other fields and Radio 3 management are asked, 'well, what are you doing in this line?' .It's too easily assumed that if a woman composer's music is neglected it must be because the men deliberately quashed it; it couldn't just be because it wasn't good enough. And yet, when I hear that music, I have to conclude that, in most cases, that was so.

[PatrickMurtha]

I don't see it like that, Richard. The best women singers, pianists ad other instrumentalists, novelists, poets, painters and sculptors have produced work which can stand with that of their male contemporaries, but for some reason it doesn't happen with composers , and I'm sorry to say, conductors. I don't know why this is; I wish it were otherwise. But claiming that they didn't do so purely because of male oppression is unconvincing in my view. I suspect that the claim is made because the BBC promotes programmes about women's achievements in other fields and Radio 3 management are asked, 'well, what are you doing in this line?' .It's too easily assumed that if a woman composer's music is neglected it must be because the men deliberately quashed it; it couldn't just be because it wasn't good enough. And yet, when I hear that music, I have to conclude that, in most cases, that was so.

George Walker, in his excellent autobiography Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist, is very careful to differentiate between times when he felt encountered discrimination based on his race, and times when people just maybe didn’t like his compositions or his idiom, which is astringent and advanced.

I am glad to see any music revived, although occasionally “the pickings are slim”, as they say. But I do think that sometimes claims are made which just can’t be sustained.

[Serial_Apologist]

I don't see it like that, Richard. The best women singers, pianists ad other instrumentalists, novelists, poets, painters and sculptors have produced work which can stand with that of their male contemporaries, but for some reason it doesn't happen with composers , and I'm sorry to say, conductors. I don't know why this is; I wish it were otherwise. But claiming that they didn't do so purely because of male oppression is unconvincing in my view. I suspect that the claim is made because the BBC promotes programmes about women's achievements in other fields and Radio 3 management are asked, 'well, what are you doing in this line?' .It's too easily assumed that if a woman composer's music is neglected it must be because the men deliberately quashed it; it couldn't just be because it wasn't good enough. And yet, when I hear that music, I have to conclude that, in most cases, that was so.

I think that, as in so many other areas of endeavour, in order to be paid attention, for a long, long time women composers had to betray some extra special features or outstanding characteristics not so much required of male composers. The fact that this is not or may not be so much a factor in how women composers are comparatively judged is in part to be welcomed, but also may be accounted for by virtue of a general tendency for originality and innovativeness to be downplayed in new music as promoted and then presented on mainstream radio programmes.

[french frank]

But claiming that they didn't do so purely because of male oppression is unconvincing in my view […] It's too easily assumed that if a woman composer's music is neglected it must be because the men deliberately quashed it

You don't even have to posit male oppression or women being elbowed out as a deliberate act. It was simply that the channels and opportunities open to men weren't open to women; more, perhaps, that they were easily overlooked and 'knew their place'.

[Serial_Apologist]

Just now listening to this week's Composer of the Week - Johana Senfter, German, 1879-1961, thanks very much to Radio 3 introducing us to an otherwise strangely missed and substantial figure of the 20th century, a woman strongly deserving of attention, to go by what is now revealed. This is a first for me. Anyone fascinated by the borderline between post-Wagnerian Late Romanticism and the Expressionism of the Second Viennese School alongside composers close in spirit should not be missing this.