Music by Women
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 9:32 pmI mentioned recently that I made a long soapboxy post and then didn’t post it due to a flaw in the thinking I was doing while standing on the soapbox. Leaving argument aside, I’ve recently been reminded — three times — that there are still people out there who don’t acknowledge that women can be great. At just about anything, except perhaps pole dancing.
And I’m afraid that while we call this a post-feminist age, it is no more post-feminist than it is post-racist, even in the West. One facet of it not being quite post-feminist yet, daaaaarlings, is that we still don’t remember women of genius the way we remember men. Female composers get perhaps the shortest shrift of all. It occurred to me that I have never, as far as I know, heard the music of a single female composer working before circa 1960.
Now comes my confession: with the exception of a few (often histrionic) pieces that I love, by and large I don’t appreciate classical music all that much. I just don’t connect with a lot of it. So for that reason, too, I haven’t gone out of my way to listen to classical and post-classical works by women.
But now I find myself really wanting to know the music that women wrote way back when. So I’ve started off with Clara Schumann (nee Clara Wieck; married to Robert Schumann), who seems to be the best-known woman composer of the 19th century. In her own time she was famous both as a virtuoso pianist and a composer. I randomly began with her Pianoconcerto in A minor, Op. 7.
1st movement
2nd movement
3rd movement
Am I a music critic? I am not. All I can say is, I find this music complex, deeply nuanced, and inventive, with a magisterial power of communicating emotional tone. The first movement in particular changes feeling so often and so fluidly that listening to it is like being a secret ear in a ballroom full of people, picking up the vibes of different hearts and minds. Does it thrill me? In places, yes. But I’m trying not to judge this by the thrill factor, given that Motley Crue thrills me too — I’m trying to be objective. Maybe I’m not qualified to make such an assessment, but I can’t see how this music is inferior to that of the great male composers, or why it shouldn’t be as much studied and performed and lauded.
Various questions are swirling in my head and the soapbox beckons, but for now I think I’ll just keep poking around and discovering music by women.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:56 am
I know classic sense of music it was a man’s sport. That said too some of these instriments particularly in the bass section still falls mainly into a “Mandom” due to size and weight.
November 4th, 2009 at 10:52 am
The ANU did a project maybe 20 years ago whre tehy record a multidisk set of major Aussie women composers. I was stupid and didn’t buy it because it didn’t include the composers I knew (and I was miffed they were left out) and I do regret my then-sulk. There’s now a website (and it still doesn’t have the composers I knew – it’s like there are two camps of suport for women composers and some support one group, some another and only Mirrie Hill is in both!). Anyhow, there’s a website here: http://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/guides/women-composers
Don’t know if it helps. (I want to read that long post, when you’re ready to write it, but some things take extra thinking-through.)
November 5th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Colin – a tuba weighs 10-18kg. A two-year-old child weighs 12-20 kg. I hereby submit that all carrying of two-year olds (and up) should henceforth be a Mandom and be done by men. (And all carrying of 30 litre water pots on top of the head, too.)
November 5th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Gillian – see, I don’t know any Australian women composers. But then, I don’t think I know any Australian male composer — not counting modern musos — either… Miriam Hyde’s name sounds vaguely familiar. I have to admit, I’ve yet to hear a contemporary classical (sorry for the oxymoron) piece by man, woman or beast that I really enjoy. I like catchy melodies and obvious beats — or else really ambient stuff. Don’t like persistent discords and weird spacing. I dig the scherzo from Glanville-Hicks’s Etruscan Concerto very much, and her Gymnopedies here. And wow, the samples from Transposed Heads are rather intriguing.
Could it be that the numbers of female composers grew at the same time as “classical” music got bloody difficult to listen to, so that now they simply share their obscurity with male peers?
November 6th, 2009 at 4:46 am
I don’t know about carrying 30lt of water on my head. but carrying 2 year olds and up i thought was a mandom thing.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:49 am
You might want to discuss that with mothers…around the world…
November 7th, 2009 at 5:31 am
i might but i wont.
November 8th, 2009 at 5:41 am
Few men would…
November 8th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
I think you should both listen to random music from that website. Not only am I less miffed (my composers *are* there, but hidden – and one of them was in love with stuff that was comforting listening, if that reassures at all – my father used to call them ‘Light Classics’) but there are playable excerpts for quite a few. I love this new age of musical extracts online – we can make up our own minds about music!
Contemplating lovely sounds is much better than dwelling on the other, which is that one of my near relatives had to carry a 3 year old child up many stairs three days after a caesarian. I could get quite emotional about the issues of who does what and whether they ought to, I think.
November 13th, 2009 at 6:27 am
Oh, there’s a lot more there than I realised… as for your relative, I could get emotional about that too. (I’m surprised she was out of hospital — but perhaps I shouldn’t be.)