The Routledge Handbook of Women's Work in Music

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF
WOMEN’S WORK IN MUSIC
The Routledge Handbook of Women’s Work in Music presents a unique collection of core research
by academics and music practitioners from around the world, engaging with an extraordinarily
wide range of topics on women’s contributions to Western and Eastern art music, popular
music, world music, music education, ethnomusicology as well as in the music industries.
The handbook falls into six parts. Part I serves as an introduction to the rich variety of
subject matter the reader can expect to encounter in the handbook as a whole. Part II focuses
on what might be termed the more traditional strand of feminist musicology – research which
highlights the work of historical and/or neglected composers. Part III explores topics concerned
with feminist aesthetics and music creation and Part IV focuses on questions addressing the
performance and reception of music and musicians. The narrative of the handbook shifts in Part
V to focus on opportunities and leadership in the music professions from a Western perspective.
The final section of the handbook (Part VI) provides new frames of context for women’s
positions as workers, educators, patrons, activists and promoters of music.
This is a key reference work for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in
music and gender.
Rhiannon Mathias is a lecturer and music fellow at Bangor University, UK, and director of
the International Conferences on Women’s Work in Music (2017, 2019, 2021, Bangor
University).
ROUTLEDGE MUSIC HANDBOOKS
Routledge Music Handbooks are comprehensive, must-have surveys of a core sub-discipline that
address landmarks in the field, but also map out the emerging critical terrain and are aimed at the
library market. Handbooks introduce fundamental topics and ideas, delineate the diversity and
complexity of the subject and stimulate dialogue among scholars and students approaching the
topic from divergent backgrounds. Handbooks should define the current state of theory and
research in the field and create a foundation for future scholarship and study.
Routledge Handbook to Luigi Nono and Musical Thought

Jonathan Impett
The Routledge Handbook to Music under German Occupation, 1938–1945

Propaganda, Myth and Reality
Edited by David Fanning, Erik Levi
The Routledge Handbook of Music Signification

Edited by Esti Sheinberg, William P. Dougherty
The Routledge Handbook to Sociology of Music Education

Edited by Ruth Wright, Geir Johansen, Panagiotis A. Kanellopoulos, Patrick Schmidt
The Routledge Handbook of Women’s Work in Music

Edited by Rhiannon Mathias
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Music-

Handbooks/book-series/RMH
See also Routledge Music Companions: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Music-Companions/
book-series/MUSCOMP’
THE ROUTLEDGE
HANDBOOK OF WOMEN’S
WORK IN MUSIC
Edited by Rhiannon Mathias

Cover image: © Getty Images
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Rhiannon Mathias; individual chapters, the
contributors
The right of Rhiannon Mathias to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and
of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
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and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-19209-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-16204-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-20108-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080
Typeset in Bembo
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
CONTENTS
List of figures x
List of contributors xiii
Editor’s introduction 1
PART I
Challenging gender inequalities 7
1 Grace, Betty, Maude and Me: 30 years of fighting for women

composers 9
Sophie Fuller
2 ‘Where are we now?’: teaching and studying women composers post-

Citron 19
Susan Wollenberg
3 ‘Because I’m a girl’: exploring experiences, practices and challenges

relating to gender and sexuality for female musicians in popular music
higher education 26
Helen Elizabeth Davies
4 Composer, mother 36
Emily Doolittle
5 ‘The Algerian woman is very strong’: music, identity and gender in

Algerian London 43
Stephen Wilford
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Contents
6 In search of the field: reflections on an ethnomusicological project in India 53

Valentine Harding
7 Women’s work in ethnomusicology: alternative spaces 62

Christina Homer
PART II
(Re)Discoveries 71
8 A brief historical and sociological examination of twentieth-century

Arab women composers and performers in Egypt 73
Zaina Shihabi
9 The rise and rise of women in Australian composition 82

Sally Macarthur
10 Women composers and the Proms: the first 100 years (1895–1994) 91
Susan Clauson-Elliott
11 Chasing María Teresa Lara: an autoethnographic account of trying to

recuperate the story of a ‘lost’ woman composer 106
Claudia Chibici-Revneanu
12 The artistic path and achievement of Polish composer Ewa Synowiec 114
Joanna Schiller-Rydzewska
13 Composer, performer, teacher: Jeanne Barbillion (1895–1992) and the

Scholar cantorum, Paris 124
Eva M. Maschke
14 How Theocritus sang: Eleanor Everest Freer’s Sonnets from the

Portuguese 136
Elisabeth Honn Hoegberg
15 A life in fragments: Morfydd Owen (1891–1918) 146

Rhian Davies
PART III
Aesthetics and music creation 157
16 Overcoming the ‘male gaze’ of music: towards renewed compositional

strategies 159
Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi
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Contents
17 Voices, sounds and herstories: constructing feminist research in

experimental music 167
Isabel Nogueira
18 Invisible canons: a reflective commentary on the formation of my

personal canon of women composers 177
Angela Elizabeth Slater
19 Storytelling in autoethnography – The Poetess 187

Lucy Hollingworth
20 Chen Yi: trauma, myths, and representation 198

J. Michele Edwards
21 Considering autonomy and collaboration in three concerti by Jennifer

Higdon 209
Laura Dallman
22 Decoding the riddle: the tea-party scene in Unsuk Chin’s Alice in

Wonderland 219
Ji Yeon Lee
23 Kate Bush’s uncanny harmonic language 228

David Forrest
PART IV
Performance and reception 239
24 Notions of virtuosity, female accomplishment, and the violin as

forbidden instrument in early-mid nineteenth-century England 241
Bella Powell
25 Visitors from ‘the merry town by the Danube’: Viennese ladies’

orchestras, public image and variety shows in Finland from
1870 to 1914 250
Nuppu Koivisto
26 Women song composers and the London Ballad Concerts 260

Maren Bagge
27 Sara González: a different song about women 271

Ivette Janet Céspedes Gómez
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Contents
28 Changing roles of women in the gospel music performance space in

Ghana 280
Grace Takyi Donkor
29 Māori women at the forefront of Aotearoa/New Zealand music in the

mid 1980s and early 1990s 289
Maree Sheehan
30 The stereotypical image and body representation of Taiwanese female

musicians 298
Li-ming Pan
PART V
Opportunities and leadership in the music professions 307
31 Climb every mountain 309

Jessica Duchen
32 Celebrating women composers on BBC Radio 3 318

Edwina Wolstencroft
33 Contested spaces: gender dynamics in independent radio stations in

London 328
Miia Laine
34 ‘And her voice is a backwards record’: the gendering of phonograph

technology 338
Karlyn King
35 Cracks in the glass ceiling: women conductors, new trends, old

challenges 347
Carolyn Watson
36 Personal reflections on professional experience of women’s

liturgical leadership as musicians in the Roman Catholic Church 356
Frances Novillo
37 Re-mapping and connecting bodies of women musicians 365

Gabriela Sanchez Diaz
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Contents
PART VI
New perspectives on women’s work in music 375
38 Materiality, editorship and canonisation in Wang Duanshu’s Collection

of Elegance (1667) 377
Yuemin He
39 Mary Carlisle Howe (1882-1964) and Adella Prentiss Hughes

(1869–1950): creating an arts culture in America, one woman at a time 388
Jennifer Cable
40 Louise Hanson-Dyer (1884-1962): patroness of music publishing 397

Elina G. Hamilton
41 Lady Llanover and the Swedish connection: a Welsh musical legacy 407
Lia Lonnert and Helen Davies Mikkelborg
42 The women musicians of the British ethical movement, 1887–1927 419

Jessica Beck
43 The role of women in Irish music institutions in the early twentieth

century 429
Kirstie Alison Muldoon
44 The Beedle-Carter correspondence: an analysis of the cultural work

undertaken by Maureen Beedle to promote Elliott Carter’s music in
the UK and Europe 437
Helen C. Thomas
Index 448
ix
FIGURES
1.1 Women Composers at the Proms 1996–2019 14

7.1 Gender Balance of UK Ethnomusicologists 67
10.1 Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944) and her Proms 92
10.2 The Proms of Maude Valérie White (1855–1937) 92
10.3 Liza Lehmann (1862–1918) and her Proms 93
10.4 Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) and her Proms 94
10.5 Guy d’Hardelot (1858–1936) and her Proms 95
10.6 The Proms of Ethel Barns (1874–1948) 96
10.7 The Proms of Teresa del Riego (1876–1968) 96
10.8 Frances Allitsen (1848–1912) and her Proms 97
10.9 The Proms of Elisabeth Lutyens (1906–1983) and Elizabeth Maconchy
(1907–1994) highlighting the difference between the two in the 1960s and
1970s 100
10.10 Thea Musgrave (b.1928) and her Proms 101
10.11 Judith Weir (b.1954) and her Proms 101
10.12 Nicola LeFanu, Alison Bauld, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (top), Diana Burrell,
Elena Firsova, Sofia Gubaidulina (bottom) 102
10.13 Proms gender statistics 103
12.1 Ewa Synowiec, Muzyka i mózg / Music and Brain (1982) 120
13.1 First Page of Barbillion’s Piano Trio – with official dedication 125
13.2 Title page of Jeanne Barbillion’s Professional Portfolio 130
13.3 Published Works Composed Before 1935 131
13.4 Unpublished Works 132
14.1 Cover illustration of Freer’s Sonnets 139
14.2 Freer, ‘I thought once how Theocritus had sung’ 141
14.3 Reduction of bars 1–8, 9–17 142
14.4 Reduction of bars 18–22, bars 23–24, bars 25–30, bars 31–38 143
15.1 Morfydd Owen photographed at the Adelphi Studios, London, in 1913 148
18.1 Works by Female Composers in ABRSM Syllabi, 1999–2020 179
19.1 Piano Part from The Poetess, ‘You Were Right’ (full score, p. 22) 190
19.2 The Poetess, Static Piano Chords in ‘I Stare At The Wall’ (full score, p. 27) 191
x
Figures
19.3 Original Manuscript of the Poem ‘Still Life’ 192

19.4 The Poetess, Instrumental Parts in ‘Still Life’ (full score, pp. 64–65) 193
20.1a Chinese Myths Cantata, movement 1 ‘Pan Gu Creates Heaven and Earth’,
bars 1-3, ‘chaos’ motive 200
20.1b Movement 1, bars 7-9, contrabassoon, variation of ‘chaos’ motive 200
20.2 Chinese Myths Cantata, movement 2, ‘Nü Wa Creates Human Beings’,
formal structure with Golden Section 202
20.3 Chinese Myths Cantata, ‘Nü Wa Creates Human Beings’, opening,
zhuihu part 203
20.4a Chinese Myths Cantata, movement 2, ‘Changing Faces’ of Nü Wa: b. 1,
Yangqin, pitches reordered to chromatic segment: B C C♯ D (0123) 203
20.4b Movement 2, bars 43-45, 49-51, zhuihu mirrored by E♭ clarinet (0123),
then echo with rhythmic augmentation and extension 203
20.4c Movement 2, bars 53-55, zhuihu, reordered to chromatic segment: B C
D♭ D (0123) 204
20.4d Movement 2, bars 98-99, voice 1, reordered to chromatic segment: G A♭
A B♭ (0123) 204
20.5 Chinese Myths Cantata, movement 2, woodblock solo, bars 62-67 205
20.6 Chinese Myths Cantata, movement 2, bars 93-95, Piccolo 1 & 2, E♭
clarinet, Sounding B♭ B C (012), a Subset of the Main Set (0123) 206
21.1 Higdon, Violin Concerto, First Movement, Violin Solo, bars 94-95 212
21.2 Higdon, Concerto 4-3, first movement, bars 39-42 213
22.1 Organisation of the Opera Alice in Wonderland in Comparison with that of
the Novel 220
22.2 Organisation of the ‘Mad-Tea Party’ Scene 222
23.1 ‘Moments of Pleasure’, Chorus (1:18-1:26) 229
23.2 Terminology Chart for Select Chromatic Progressions 229
23.3 ‘Babooshka’, Verse (0:33-39 and 1:31-37) 231
23.4 ‘Moving’, end of Chorus (1:17-1:31) 232
23.5 ‘The Saxophone Song’ (0:55-1:13) 232
23.6a ‘Feel It’, Verse 1, Phrase 2 (0:11-0:37) 233
23.6b ‘Feel It’, Verse 2, Phrase 4 (0:37-1:08)] 233
23.7 ‘Wuthering Heights’, beginning of Verse 1 (0:06-0:23) 234
25.1 Gustav Richter’s Ladies’ Orchestra performing at the Prater Amusement
Park in Vienna (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 67.416C) 251
25.2 ‘An Evening at the Restaurant Princess’ (En afton på Princess) 254
26.1 Programme of the London Ballad Concert (10 December 1890) 263
26.2 Composers with more than two performances at the London Ballad
Concerts in period 1 (seasons 1 to 28) and period 2 (seasons 29 to 48) 264
26.3 Front cover of an 1880s edition of ‘Always Alone’ by Henriette 266
37.1 Bones in the Right Hand and Wrist by Holly Fischer 366
38.1 Possible source texts of the Collection of Elegance 381
40.1 Flier for l’Oiseau-Lyre Press advertising the complete works of François
Couperin 398
40.2 Limited editions in l’Oiseau-Lyre Press 1936 catalogue 400
41.1 Augusta Hall, Lady Llanover 408
xi
Figures
41.2 First page of Handel’s Concerto for the Welsh harp 410
41.3 Adolf Sjödén with his Erard and hybrid Welsh harp 413
41.4 ‘The Welsh March’ 414
42.1 Front page of the programme for the Concert of Compositions by Women
Composers, 24 January 1915 422
44.1a Michael Boxall, Maureen Beedle 438
44.1b Helen Carter, Elliott Carter 439
44.2 Agents in the production of In Sleep, in Thunder 441
44.3 1984 advert featuring Carter’s In Sleep, in Thunder 444
xii
CONTRIBUTORS
Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi, originally from Finland, was educated in composition and
philosophy in Bergen, Berlin, New York and Helsinki. She is currently a PhD candidate
in philosophical aesthetics at the University of Helsinki. Her joint disciplines of music and
philosophy are expressed in her compositions, essay writing, research and her teaching. These
joint interests have led her to consider issues of cultural politics and gender equality. Her
compositions often critically explore the western canon by drawing lines between historical
context and today’s world.
Maren Bagge studied mathematics and musicology in Hanover and Oldenburg (Germany)
and is currently working as a Research Assistant at the Hanover University of Music, Drama
and Media and the Forschungszentrum Musik und Gender. In 2020, she finished her
dissertation on popular English songs in the long nineteenth century, focussing on songs by
women composers. She is involved in musicological and practical collaborations, including
lecture-recitals or exhibitions and an interdisciplinary editorial-project on ‘Identity and
Networks, Mobility and Cultural Transfer in Music-Related Activities of Women’.
Her current research interests include musical networks, Lied and gender as well as
music-historiography and exhibitions.
Jessica Beck completed an AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award at the Royal

Northern College of Music in partnership with Conway Hall Ethical Society (London),
supervised by Professor Barbara Kelly and Professor David Amigoni. Her research was based
on the archives at Conway Hall. Her final thesis was submitted in 2019, titled ‘The Women
Musicians of South Place Ethical Society, 1887-1927’. Jessica was subsequently awarded an
Innovation Placement with the BBC Philharmonic funded by the North West Consortium
Doctoral Training Partnership, during which she researched the history of women connected
to the orchestra, and now works for Trilateral Research.
Jennifer Cable is a professor of music at the University of Richmond (USA) where she
coordinates the Vocal Studies Program. Her current research considers the role of women
amateur musicians on early twentieth-century American arts culture, and the positive impact of
Traditional Chinese Medicine pillar Qigong on freeing the voice. A Qigong instructor, Jennifer
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Contributors
has shared Qigong in classes and conferences in the USA and abroad, introducing other
musicians to this mindful practice. Jennifer is also a certified teacher for the Koru Mindfulness
Program and is involved in campus outreach centered on mindfulness and meditation.
Ivette Janet Céspedes Gómez is a doctoral student in Music at the Federal University of Rio
de Janeiro (UFRJ). She has a musicology degree from the University of Arts, Havana (2015),
and a Master’s in Management of the Historical-Documentary Heritage of Music from the
University of Havana (2017). She worked as musicologist at the Lyceum Mozartiano, Havana
(2014-17), and as a specialist in the music archive at the National Museum of Music, Havana
(2015-17). She was awarded First Prize ‘Argeliers León’ for music research in Cuba (2015) and
has recently served as Assistant Editor of the Revista Brasileira de Música (2018–19).
Claudia Chibici-Revneanu (Austria) is lecturer of Intercultural Development and

Management at the Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores (ENES, UNAM) in León,
Mexico. She holds a PhD in Cultural Policy Studies from the University of Warwick and is a
member of the Mexican research program SNI. Claudia Chibici-Revneanu has published
books chapters and articles in national and international journals and, as a mezzo-soprano,
combines her research projects with conference-concerts on women composers. In 2017, she
received the UNAM’s prestigious Sor Juana Inés de Cruz award, and the London-based
publisher Jacaranda released her first novel, Of Murder, Muses and Me.
Susan Clauson-Elliott gained an Open University MA in Music degree in 2017. Her

dissertation title was ‘Women Composers at the Proms, and Opportunities, Support for, and
Awareness of, Women Composers Today’ She started playing violin at the age of seven and
became a Junior Exhibitioner at Guildhall School of Music and Drama. After getting married, she
played regularly in The Old Barn Orchestra, an amateur orchestra for Maidstone and Medway.
She gained her Grade 8 Singing in her 50s, and sings with a chamber choir, choral society and the
Open University Chapel Choir.
Laura Dallman (Rorick) focuses largely on orchestral music and performance in America after
1930. Her primary research considers accessibility within symphonic institutions and orchestral
works by Aaron Copland, Michael Daugherty and Jennifer Higdon. Her recent chapter in
Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Song Cycles (2021) examines Higdon’s song
cycle Civil Words. Dr. Dallman is a Lecturer of Music History at the University of Florida.
She received a BM in piano from Ball State University (2007) and a MA and PhD in Musicology
from Indiana University (2009, 2017). She has given conference presentations in the USA,
Ireland, England and Wales.
Helen Elizabeth Davies has a PhD in Music from the University of Liverpool. She is
currently the subject leader of Popular Music Contexts at the Liverpool Institute for Performing
Arts (LIPA), and a member of IASPM Journal editorial board. Her key research interests are
gender and sexuality, music education, music and visual creativity and ethnographic research.
As well as researching the role of gender in the experiences and practices of young musicians in
vocational popular music higher education, she has recently contributed to UK Music’s
research into diversity in the music industry.
Rhian Davies’ research has restored several composers to the repertoire, notably Morfydd
Owen, the subject of her doctorate. She has presented documentaries on Owen for BBC2 and
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Contributors
S4C, and produced a pictorial biography of the composer, Never So Pure A Sight (1994). The
programme that she devised to mark Owen’s centenary in 2018 included the installation of two
blue plaques and a performance of Nocturne at the BBC Proms. Rhian’s work on behalf of
Welsh music as a historian and broadcaster, and as Artistic Director of the Gregynog Festival
since 2006, has been recognised through honorary membership of the Gorsedd y Beirdd and a
fellowship from Bangor University.
Grace Takyi Donkor is an assistant lecturer at the Department of Music, School of

Performing Arts at the University of Ghana where she lectures on Ghanaian and African
popular musical arts and indigenous music traditions in Ghana. Her research interests include
gender issues in Ghanaian popular music, indigenous performance practices and gospel music.
She is particularly interested in the performance practices of female popular musicians and
their various modes of representation. She co-authored an article that interrogates the concept
of gospel highlife music in both Ghana and Nigeria. Currently, she is a PhD student at the
Department of Music, University of Ghana.
Emily Doolittle is a Canadian-born Glasgow-based composer and researcher. Her music has
been described as ‘masterful’ (Musical Toronto), ‘eloquent and effective’ and ‘the piece that
grabbed me by the heart’ (The WholeNote). Recent activities include the premiere of Redbird,
commissioned and performed by the Vancouver Symphony (2019), performances of her chamber
opera, Jan Tait and the Bear, by Ensemble Thing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the Made in
Scotland Showcase (2018), and the premiere of Bowheads, commissioned by Chamber Music
Scotland for the Kapten Trio (2019). She is an Athenaeum Research Fellow and Lecturer in
Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Jessica Duchen is a music critic, author and librettist based in London and has become a noted
campaigner for gender equality in the music field. She was classical music correspondent for the
Independent from 2004 to 2016 and contributes to magazines and newspapers including BBC
Music Magazine and the Sunday Times. Her libretti include extensive work with composer
Roxanna Panufnik, notably Silver Birch, commissioned by Garsington Opera and shortlisted for
an International Opera Award in 2018. Among her books are biographies of Korngold and
Fauré and seven novels on music-related topics. Her narrated concerts have been performed at
leading UK concert halls and festivals.
J. Michele Edwards, musicologist and conductor, is professor emerita of music at Macalester

College, and focuses her research on women musicians, especially since 1930. She is co-author of
Chen Yi, published by the University of Illinois Press (2020). Her conducting encompasses musical
theatre, large choral-orchestral repertoire and professional orchestras. Frequently commissioning and
conducting premieres, Edwards is committed to programming compositions by women. An active
scholar, Edwards has contributed dozens of articles, especially about American and Japanese women,
to MGG, Grove Dictionary of American Music, and New Grove Dictionary. Since 2017, she has presented
papers about Chen Yi’s music for AMS, SAM, and FT&M14.
David Forrest serves as associate professor of music theory at Texas Tech University. He has
presented research across Europe and the USA, predominantly on popular music, music theory
pedagogy, and the music of Benjamin Britten. Dr. Forrest’s work has been published in Music
Theory Spectrum, Music Theory Online, and College Music Symposium. He serves as lead editor and
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Contributors
contributing author to Essays on Benjamin Britten from a Centenary Symposium. In 2020 he was
elected President of the Texas Society for Music Theory.
Sophie Fuller’s interests centre around gender, sexuality and music-making in Britain in the
nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Author of The Pandora Guide to Women
Composers (1994), she has published widely on women composers and musicians as well as
editing two collections of essays: Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity (with Lloyd
Whitesell, 2002) and The Idea of Music in Victorian Fiction (with Nicky Losseff, 2004). With
Jenny Doctor, she edited Music, Life, and Changing Times: Selected Correspondence between British
Composers Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams, 1927–77 (2020). She is MMus Programme
Leader at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Drama, London.
Elina G. Hamilton is assistant professor at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa. Hamilton’s

primary research explores the history of music theory in fourteenth-century England but
expands to Western music in Japan and women’s work in music. Her recent publications have
appeared in Studi musicali, Notes, Musica Disciplina, and other edited volumes. Prior to joining
the faculty at the University of Hawai’i, Hamilton taught courses at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. She received her PhD and Master’s
degrees from Bangor University in Wales, UK.
Valentine Harding is an independent researcher in ethnomusicology. She comes from

a multi-disciplinary background in mental health, counselling and psychotherapy, and
early years music. She holds an MSc in Intercultural Psychotherapy from University
College London (2002) and an MMus in Ethnomusicology from Goldsmiths College
(2009). Her special interest is the music of Bengal (West Bengal and Bangladesh). She has
a long-term association, since 1971, with this area in other contexts as well such as health
and social care. She currently works as a volunteer with the Swadhinata Trust in east
London on an oral history project documenting the history of Bengali music and
musicians in the UK.
Yuemin He completed her doctorate in Music at Newcastle University in June 2020. Her
PhD thesis focuses on early modern gender, identity and self-fashioning in songwriting. Apart
from her own research specialism, Yuemin is also interested in literary and musical print culture
in early modern England, especially the parallels in the corresponding historical period of
late imperial China and feels passionate about music scholarship English-Chinese translation.
By music practice, Yuemin is classically trained in singing and piano. Upon finishing her
PhD in the UK, she returned to China and is currently teaching vocal and A-Level music at
Wycombe Abbey International School, Changzhou.
Elisabeth Honn Hoegberg is associate professor and chair of music and theatre at the
University of Indianapolis, where she teaches music theory, counterpoint and keyboard. Her
research interests include historical theory and pedagogy and late nineteenth-century operetta,
specialising in the music of Emmanuel Chabrier. She is an active solo and collaborative
musician and has appeared with the American Pianists Association, the Indianapolis Chamber
Orchestra and the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra.
Lucy Hollingworth is a composer, musicologist and writer based in Scotland. She writes
instrumental music for soloists and ensembles, with a particular interest in the string quartet as
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Contributors
a genre and has had recent commissions from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Sound
Scotland and Glasgow New Music Expedition. She has also created large-scale work
for music and the spoken word. Her research interests include women composers,
autoethnography, and analysis, and as a creative writer she writes poetry and life story. Her
PhD is a feminist creative autobiography. She teaches at the Open University and the Royal
Conservatoire of Scotland.
Christina Homer is an ethnomusicologist specialising in material culture and museum

collections. Her doctoral thesis, ‘Situating Crossley-Holland’s Collection of Ancient Mexican
Musical Instruments’, investigated the ethics of owning and interpreting decontextualised
musical artefacts, and suggested strategies for the fair and responsible future use of the collection.
Her PhD (Bangor University, 2020) was funded by an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award,
working with Storiel Museum. Christina undertook her master’s studies in Ethnomusicology at
the University of Manchester, and her BA (Hons) in Music with Visual Arts Practices was
awarded by Dartington College of Arts.
Karlyn King is a popular music academic, lecturer and researcher who teaches all over the UK.
She leads on modules such as Artist Development and PR, Sound and Culture and Popular
Music Debates with a special interest in popular music history and cultural studies. She is
currently working on a PhD at University of Birmingham exploring the enduring format of
vinyl and is a regular panel speaker and conference presenter on all things vinyl including a
recent event with British rock act, IDLES.
Nuppu Koivisto is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of the Arts
History Forum, Helsinki. She gained her doctorate on ladies’ orchestras in late nineteenth-
century Finland in 2019 at the University of Helsinki. Along with her studies of European
history and aesthetics at the University of Helsinki, Koivisto has as worked as a research assistant
in the project ‘Rethinking “Finnish” Music History’ (Sibelius Academy). Koivisto is currently
involved in a research project on historical Finnish women composers together with Professor
Susanna Välimäki. Koivisto’s research interests focus on women and music in nineteenth-
century Eastern Europe.
Miia Laine is an audio producer, arts worker and educator from Berlin who is based in
Helsinki. With a Politics BA from Freie Universität Berlin and an MA in Music in
Development from SOAS, her work in radio and the wider arts seeks to critically examine
and redress existing power dynamics. From 2015-18 Miia was the station manager of SOAS
Radio, an online student radio in central London. Inspired by her time at the station and
conversations within the network of online radio stations in London, her MA thesis focused on
gender dynamics in radio (2016).
Ji Yeon Lee is an assistant professor of music theory at the University of Houston. She studied
at Seoul National University and the University of Munich and received her PhD from the
City University of New York, Graduate Center. Her primary research focus is analysis of opera
from the Romantic to the present era. Her publications include ‘Climax Structure in Verismo
Opera’ (Music Theory Online), and ‘A Critical Survey of Musical Dynamism from Bel Canto to
Verismo Opera’ (Opera Journal). She is currently working on two book projects, on climaxes in
verismo opera and musical-dramatic forms in Wagner’s Die Walküre.
xvii
Contributors
Lia Lonnert has a PhD in music education research from Malmö Academy of Music as well as
having a Master’s degree in musicology from Linnaeus University. She was educated both as a
harpist and as a harp teacher at Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Utrecht, Netherlands, and
at Malmö Academy of Music, Sweden. As a researcher, her main interests are epistemological
issues of music performance and education, and music history. She is currently undertaking
research on the nineteenth-century Swedish harp virtuoso Adolf Sjödén with harpist and
scholar Helen Davis Mikkelborg.
Sally Macarthur is associate professor of Musicology whose research draws on Deleuzian

philosophy to investigate recent music mostly in the western classical tradition. She is the author
of Towards a Twenty-First-Century Feminist Politics of Music (2010), and co-editor of Music’s
Immanent Future: The Deleuzian Turn in Music Studies (2016). Her earlier books, Feminist
Aesthetics in Music (2002) and Musics and Feminisms (1999), continue to be widely cited. She has
been a chief investigator on an international study of women in music with findings published
in six journals, including Musicology Australia and the British Journal of Music Education. She is
Director of Academic Program for the Bachelor of Music and Master of Creative Music
Therapy programs at Western Sydney University.
Eva M. Maschke obtained her doctorate in a bi-national supervision from the Universities of
Hamburg and Southampton in 2015. After three postdoctorate years in Heidelberg and
Mannheim, she now works as an upper secondary school teacher in Hamburg. She has
publications in Musica disciplina, Music & letters, Notes and Studi Musicali, and has written several
reviews for Plainsong & Medieval Music, Die Musikforschung, Die Tonkunst and Jahrbuch Musik und
Gender.
Helen Davies Mikkelborg studied harp in her native Wales with Ann Griffiths. Her
professional life has taken her all over the world, including orchestral and teaching posts in
Ireland and Sweden She now lives in Copenhagen where her work is mainly in the field
of contemporary improvised music, folk music and researching eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century harp music found in libraries and archives in Scandinavia. She is currently engaged in a
research project on the nineteenth-century Swedish harp virtuoso Adolf Sjödén with the harpist
and scholar Lia Lonnert.
Kirstie Alison Muldoon holds a master’s in musicology, a bachelor of music degree from
Maynooth University, and a Higher Diploma in Arts in Music Education from the Leinster
School of Music & Drama, Griffith College Dublin. Kirstie is an experienced piano,
musicianship and early education educator and has taught music programmes in a number of
music schools and organisations in Ireland. She has been involved in a number of music and
drama initiatives over the course of her career and has presented her research on women
and music in Ireland at national and international conferences.
Isabel Nogueira is a Brazilian composer, performer and musicologist. She has a degree in
piano (Brazil) and a PhD in Musicology (Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain), and is
currently a Professor at the Federal University at Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where she
coordinates the university’s Research Group, Sonic: Gender, Body and Music. She has
published widely on music and gender, sound creation and artistic research. She was a mentor at
the women artists residence at Concha Project (2019), and a mentor for musical production at
RS Music Lab Project – both sponsored by Natura Musical, Brazil. She has released several
xviii
Contributors
albums of experimental music by netlabels from Brazil, Italy, Peru and the United States:
https://isabelnogueira.com.br
Frances Novillo now works full-time in chaplaincy, following a successful career of over
20 years leading liturgical music in Catholic schools and parishes in the Diocese of
Westminster, and across the country at Diocesan, national and international events, for
which she was awarded ARSCM in 2016.
Li-ming Pan is an assistant professor of Musicology at Taipei National University of the Arts
in Taiwan. She received her PhD from the University of Nottingham in the UK. Her doctoral
thesis examined the female musicians’ stereotype in Taiwan and how this image affects these
women’s life and career. Her recent research has focused on female musicians during the past
100 years in Taiwanese history. Li-ming’s other research interests include Asian women and
culture, feminist musicology, Western art music in Asian countries as well as body image
and subjectivity.
Bella Powell is an associate lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of York,
where she teaches in the areas of music and gender, and music education. Her research focuses
on issues around gender and music in the nineteenth century. She is in the final stages of a PhD
thesis at the University of York (supported by a Sir Jack Lyons Research Scholarship)
investigating the informal social prohibition on women violinists in England during the
eighteenth and early-mid-nineteenth centuries.
Gabriela Sanchez Diaz (Body Mapping Educator, MMus, MGS) is an accomplished

professional percussionist who has trained and performed in Canada and Mexico. She holds
graduate degrees in music (University of Ottawa) and gender studies (Memorial University of
Newfoundland) and wrote the workbook ‘Connecting Bodies: Music Performance,
Femininity, and Body Mapping’, a guide for female musicians to look deeply into social
interactions. She teaches Body Mapping privately and online. Gabriela has presented about
Body Mapping in Canada, the USA, Latin America and the UK. Recently, she has been
appointed to teach Body Mapping at the School of Music at Memorial University.
Joanna Schiller-Rydzewska is a professor at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk (October

2021), and was previously a professor in the Department of Art at the University of Warmia and
Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland. She is a graduate of Composition and Theory of the Music Faculty in
the Academy of Music in Gdańsk, and completed her doctoral dissertation ‘Augustyn Bloch – his
Life and Works’ in 2008 at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music, Warsaw (presently the
Fryderyk Chopin University of Music). Her research interests include Polish modern music,
especially the achievements of Gdańsk composers, and she is the author of two books, numerous
articles (c. 40) and reviews in local press.
Maree Sheehan is a senior lecturer in Te Ara Poutama, the Faculty of Māori and Indigenous
Development at Auckland University of Technology (AUT). Having arrived at AUT as a
lecturer in 2009, she has also been a post-graduate lecturer in Art & Design at AUT since 2018.
Her PhD (2020), ‘The Sound of Identity – Interpreting the Multi-Dimensionality of Wāhine
Māori through Audio-Portraiture’ included an exhibition titled ‘Ōtairongo’, which is currently
on display as part of the Toi Tu Toi Ora exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery, and which was a
winner at the Best New Zealand Design Awards 2020.
xix
Contributors
Zaina Shihabi is an independent researcher and educator. After completing her doctoral
studies in the UK, Zaina entered the world of International Baccalaureate (IB) education in
order to gain valuable experience in schools. She is currently the Principal, Diploma
Programme Coordinator and an English and Theory of Knowledge educator in an
international school in Malaysia. Her PhD thesis is an inter- and transdisciplinary historical
investigation of the position of women composers and songwriters in A-Level music syllabi
provided by leading Examination Boards in England between 1980 and 2016. Zaina’s other
research interests include educational neuroscience, research structures and approaches, and
teaching and learning.
Angela Elizabeth Slater is a UK-based composer, director of Illuminate Women’s Music, and
composition tutor at Cardiff University. She has an interest in musically mapping different
aspects of the natural world into the fabric of her music. Recent significant achievements
include being selected to become a 2020 Tanglewood Composition Fellow, a Britten-Pears
Young Artist through which Angela worked with Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and
Michael Gandolfi, developing Soaring in Stasis which received its premiere at 2018 Aldeburgh
Festival. Angela was the New England Philharmonic’s 2018 call for scores winner resulting in
the world-premiere of Roil in Stillness in April 2019.
Helen C. Thomas worked in the Repertoire Promotion Department at Oxford University

Press from 1987–96. After a career break for family reasons, she completed an MA in ‘Music
since 1900’ at Liverpool Hope University, and a PhD in ‘Metaphors of Temporality in Avant
Garde Music of the 1960s’ at Lancaster University. Subsequently, she has worked as a lecturer
and researcher at the universities of Lancaster, Liverpool Hope, Newcastle and Liverpool whilst
maintaining a freelance career as an oboist and, more recently, conductor. Since 2016, she has
been Artistic Coordinator for the School of the Arts at the University of Liverpool.
Carolyn Watson, major prizewinner at the 2012 Emmerich Kálmán International Operetta
Conducting Competition in Budapest, was a Fellow of the American Academy of Conducting
at Aspen Music Festival where she studied with David Zinman. She has conducted orchestras
throughout Europe, Australia and the USA. US conducting credits include Austin Symphony,
Dallas Opera, Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra, Kansas City Ballet, Lyric Opera of Kansas City
and World Youth Symphony Orchestra. From 2013-15 Carolyn held the position of Music
Director of the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra and she holds a PhD in Performance
(Conducting) from the University of Sydney: www.carolyn-watson.com
Stephen Wilford is an academic at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Wolfson

College Cambridge. His research focuses upon the musics of Algeria, from the country’s
Andalusi traditions to the contemporary Franco-Algerian hip hop scene. His work sits at the
intersection of ethnomusicology, sound studies, music history and popular music studies. He is
currently a member of the team working on the ERC-funded research project ‘Past and Present
Musical Encounters Across the Strait of Gibraltar’. He is an executive committee member of
the British Forum for Ethnomusicology and member of the Royal Anthropological Institute’s
Ethnomusicology-Ethnochoreology Committee.
Susan Wollenberg was until September 2016 professor of music at the University of Oxford
and fellow and tutor of Lady Margaret Hall, where she is now Emeritus Fellow. She edited the
conference proceedings ‘Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn Bartholdy) and her Circle’ (Oxford,
xx
Contributors
2005: Nineteenth-Century Music Review 2007), and contributed a chapter to the conference
proceedings of the International Ethel Smyth Symposium (Detmold, 2008). She co-edited,
with Aisling Kenny, Women and the Nineteenth-Century Lied (2015); she has contributed a
chapter to the forthcoming Clara Schumann Studies (ed. Joe Davies), and is co-editing, with
Matthew Head, the Cambridge Companion to Women Composers.
Edwina Wolstencroft studied music at Exeter University and joined the BBC upon
graduation. She worked in a number of roles across a range of radio networks, eventually
becoming an Editor at BBC Radio 3. She’s passionate about women’s rights in all aspects and in
2014 decided to proactively put that interest at the service of women in music, instigating a
permanent change at BBC Radio 3 by increasing the number of women composers broadcast
daily. She was included in BBC Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’ Power List 2018 and the 2019
Northern Power Women List.
xxi
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
It is through work that woman has been able, to a large extent, to close the gap separating her
from the male; work alone can guarantee her concrete freedom (Beauvoir 2010, p. 737)
The study of women in music is now a well-established discipline within academia – en-
lightening thinking and broadening horizons in music research, teaching and practice. Even so,
it is worth stressing just how recently this research area has come into existence. In her preface
to Women and music: a history, Karin Pendle noted that ‘even a decade ago, Women and Music
could not have been written, for serious, thorough, reliable sources on women musicians were
too few in number…’ (1991, p. x). I recall thinking at the time that her Women and Music
seemed to issue a direct challenge to the absolute authority of the student ‘bible’, Grout’s A
History of Western Music, which contained scant reference to women musicians in its early
editions (1960; 1973; 1980; 1988). Research by Pendle (1991), McClary (1991) and Citron
(1993) raised new questions about how music history was narrated in relation to gender and,
since that time, a great deal of excellent work, encompassing a broad range of subjects and
different methodologies, has been undertaken by scholars. The discipline’s scope of enquiry
continues to expand today.
Women’s absence from accounts of music history before the end of the twentieth century is
surely connected to a deeply engrained notion within Western culture – something which
stretches back to the Ancient Greeks, if not before – that women should silently confine
themselves to their domestic chores (see Beard 2017): their ‘women’s work’. In contrast, ‘the
work of men’, as Simone de Beauvoir shrewdly observed in 1949, is the ‘representation of the
world, like the world itself’, described ‘from their own point of view, which they confound as
the absolute truth’ (2010, p. 166). And yet today, some 70 years after the publication of The
Second Sex, and in the wake of second and third-wave feminist activism, women are still
perceived as interlopers or gate-crashers in their chosen professions. Are we perhaps all guilty of
internalising varying degrees of patriarchal prejudices to the extent that we simply cannot see
clearly? Of course, there are some instances where it is better not to see things right in front of
you. Ruth Bader Ginsburg chose the symphony orchestra to make a point about how un-
conscious bias can have serious consequences:
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-101 1
Editor’s introduction
When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought
they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent
person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the
people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony or-
chestras (Ginsburg 2014).
Arising primarily from the First International Conference on Women’s Work in Music (Bangor
University, September 2017), this handbook covers an extraordinarily wide range of topics on
women’s contributions (both historical and present-day) to Western and Eastern art music,
popular music, world music, music education, ethnomusicology as well as in the music in-
dustries. The reader should be aware that women’s ‘work’ is defined in a number of different
ways in this volume, and that chapters contained within the book’s six themed parts move
freely between general and specific topics.
Part I: Challenging Gender Inequalities (chapters 1–7) serves as an introduction to the
rich variety of subject matter readers can expect in the book as a whole. A prismatic approach
has been taken with the choice of topics in this first section, allowing the theme of gender
inequality to be considered from a number of different angles and directions. The section
opens with a chapter by Sophie Fuller, author of the ground-breaking Pandora Guide to
Women Composers (1994), in which she provides a personal, insider’s account of the huge
effort undertaken by scholars and performers to recover a ‘lost tradition’ of women com-
posers. In ‘Where are we now?: teaching and studying women composers post-Citron’
(chapter 2), Susan Wollenberg considers the alarming silences and omissions in music
scholarship with regard to women composers of art music that still exist, and in chapter 3,
Helen Elizabeth Davies’ investigation of practices in popular music higher education includes
interviews with young female musicians who acknowledge that they are treated differently as
vocalists, guitarists or drummers in bands ‘because they are girls’. The notion that music is
not, somehow, work for women is considered from a different angle by composer and mother
Emily Doolittle (chapter 4). Doolittle deftly illustrates the lack of awareness and under-
standing of the need for child-care provision, and challenges concert organisers and pro-
moters, commissioners and colleagues to rethink and upgrade on an issue that should be a
matter of course in the twenty-first century.
Reflecting broadening trends in research, the next three chapters in this section all engage
with issues of inequity for women musicians from very different ethnic and working per-
spectives. In ‘Music, Identity and Gender in Algerian London’ (chapter 5), Stephen Wilford
considers the complex ways in which professional female musicians actively negotiate and
challenge traditional gender boundaries in Algerian musical traditions and spaces (such as the
exclusively male ‘café’). The negotiation of different gender and identity spaces is also a key
theme in Valentine Harding’s chapter on her experiences as an ethnomusicological fieldworker
researching the music of the Bauls in West Bengal, India. Part 1 ends with a chapter by
Christina Homer in which she considers the alternative spaces women have had to negotiate in
order to undertake vital ethnomusicological work, with particular focus on the ‘foremother of
public ethnomusicology’, Jean Jenkins (1922–90).
Part II: (Re)Discoveries (chapters 8–15) focuses on what might be termed the more
traditional strand of feminist musicology – research which highlights composers who have been
underacknowledged and/or neglected. The section opens with a chapter by Zaina Shihabi,
who brings light to the fascinating but under-researched topic of twentieth-century Arab
women composers in the Middle East, and in ‘The rise and rise of women in Australian
composition’ (chapter 9), Sally Macarthur introduces a new concept of temporality to
2
reimagine the music of six twentieth-century Australian compositional pioneers. According to

Macarthur, discrimination continues to be an issue for women composers in Australia when it
comes to having their works programmed and performed, an issue which also lies at the heart of
Susan Clauson-Elliott’s critical survey of women composers in the first 100 years of the BBC’s
Proms (chapter 10). Noting great disparities and fluctuations in the number of pieces by fea-
tured women composers, Clauson-Elliott considers key personnel involved in the Proms, its
changing politics and the patterns of programming used by this very British institution.
Subsequent chapters in Part II all focus on aspects of the work of individual historic
composers, while sometimes also revealing that the stimulus for research can often come
from new and surprising encounters. In chapter 11, Claudia Chibici-Revneanu takes
readers on a reconnaissance mission in her search for the ‘lost’ Mexican composer Maria
Teresa Lara (1904–84) and, in a Colette-like twist, asks whether Maria Teresa was, in fact,
the (unacknowledged) composer of ‘Noche de Ronda’ and ‘Adiós Nicanor’, songs widely
credited to her brother, the celebrated bolero composer and singer Augustin Lara. Joanna
Schiller-Rydzewska (chapter 12) explores the life and work of the unconventional Polish
avant-garde composer Ewa Synowiec (1942–2021), whose fascinating and unexpected
oeuvre encompasses serial pieces as well as graphic scores. And following the discovery of
an award-winning Piano Trio by French composer Jeanne Barbillion (1895–1992) in a
‘help-yourself’ cardboard box of old scores, Eva M. Maschke (chapter 13) painstakingly
pieces together information about this little-known composer, laying the foundations for
a much-needed reassessment of Barbillion’s contribution to French musical life. In
chapter 14, Elisabeth Honn Hoegberg analyses American composer Eleanor Everest Freer’s
harmonic innovations in her Sonnets from the Portuguese (1920), arguing that Freer’s musical
originality has, thus far, been discounted, and the section concludes with Rhian Davies’
thoughtful reassessment of the remarkable contribution of Morfydd Owen (1891–1918)
to Welsh music.
Chapters in Part III: Aesthetics and Music Creation (chapters 16–23) raise questions
such as ‘how is one to compose as a woman?’, as well as offering new interpretations of the
work of contemporary female composers and sound-artists. In chapter 16, composer and
scholar Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi argues that the ‘male gaze’ is just a prevalent in music
aesthetics as it is in the visual arts, and puts forward five compositional strategies which
challenge the aesthetic of the autonomous musical work in favour of a recognition of ‘the
composer as a social, gendered being’. Compositional practices are explored further in Isabel
Nogueira’s ‘Voices, sounds and herstories’ (chapter 17), where the author conducts a series of
interviews with four leading female sound-artists in the current experimental music scene in
Brazil: interviewees are asked ‘is there a feminine expression in sound production?’ and
whether they collaborate with other female composers in their work – and their answers
are illuminating.
Angela Elizabeth Slater revisits issues of canonisation in chapter 18 when she considers the
lack of women composers in the curriculum through the lens of her own experience of sec-
ondary and higher education in the UK. Noting an alarming disparity between male and female
composers in curricula in general, Slater reveals how the formation of a ‘personal canon of
female composers’ proved to be a liberating experience of the utmost necessity in terms of her
own compositional development. Lucy Hollingworth (chapter 19) also identifies the im-
portance of having a personal canon when she charts the creation, performance and reception of
her music theatre work, The Poetess (2016) – framing her own experiences as a composer in the
broader context of other women composers.
3
The ensuing four chapters in this section adopt different methods to examine particular
pieces. In chapter 20, J. Michele Edwards analyses Chen Yi’s intricate musical characterisation
of the Chinese goddess and shape shifter Nǔ Wa in the second movement of her Chinese Myths
Cantata (1996), while Laura Dallman (chapter 21) considers Jennifer Higdon’s collaborative
approach to composition with detailed focus on Higdon’s Percussion Concerto (2005), Violin
Concerto (2008) and Concerto 4-3 (2007). Ji Yeon Lee (chapter 22) sits in on the Mad Tea-Party
scene in Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland (2007), and reveals how the notion of Time is used as
a governing principle overseeing the nonsense and word-play in text and music. Part III
concludes with a chapter by David Forrest in which he analyses Kate Bush’s harmonic language
in ‘Wuthering Heights’, ‘Babooshka’ and ‘Feel It’, placing these songs in the broader context of
the study of harmonic practice in popular music.
Part IV: Performance and Reception (chapters 24–30) opens with a chapter by Bella
Powell which explores the broken path for female violinists and girls wishing to learn to
play the ‘forbidden’ violin in early to late nineteenth-century England. As Powell argues,
violin performance was accompanied by a host of ‘correct’ conventions denoting behaviour
and performance etiquette for ‘lady’ violinists, notions that were further muddled by
nineteenth-century notions of male soloists’ virtuosity. Gender, performance and reception
is a central concern for Nuppu Koivisto in her chapter on the touring Viennese ladies’
orchestras which were part of the variety show culture that flourished in late nineteenth-
century Finland (chapter 25). Part of a broader trend for ladies’ orchestras in Europe during
the belle époque era, Koivisto explores the way that these orchestras negotiated complexities
of gender stereotypes and popular culture spaces by deliberately promoting their all-female
line-up as a ‘exotic’ novelty act. Maren Bagge also considers gender and the marketplace in
her survey of the London Ballad Concerts, a series founded in the 1860s by the publisher
John Boosey (chapter 26). Primarily designed as a platform to promote the sales of ballad
sheet music, these concerts included a sizable number of performances of songs by women
composers, widely held to be specialists in the genre of the ‘feminine’, drawing-room
ballad. Bagge analyses original concert programmes, and considers the marketing strategies
and performance circumstances of two featured ballads, ‘Always Alone’ by Henriette and
‘The Donovans’ by Alicia Adélaïde Needham.
The four remaining chapters in Part IV each offer insights on women as solo performers in
global popular and classical music spheres. In chapter 27, Ivette Janet Céspedes Gómez ex-
amines the way in which the iconic singer-songwriter Sara González (1951–2012), a pioneer in
the nueva trova scene in Cuba, challenged traditional gendered stereotypes by presenting a new
vision of the emancipated woman in her songs of the 1970s. After tracing the history of
Ghanaian popular music, Grace Takyi Donkor (chapter 28) considers how female performers
have come to dominate the gospel music scene in Ghana today, and in 'Mā ori women at the
forefront of Aotearoa/New Zealand music in the mid 1980s and early 1990s', Maree Sheehan
reflects on how female singer-songwriters have forged a distinct identity through the popular
Māori waiata (song). Part IV concludes with a chapter by Li-ming Pan in which she interviews
several successful Taiwanese female performers about the distinctly gendered marketing stra-
tegies that are used to promote their careers.
In Part V (chapters 31–37), the focus moves to Opportunities and Leadership in the
Music Professions. Author and music writer Jessica Duchen (chapter 31) celebrates the many
recent initiatives within the music industry that have helped to challenge unconscious gender
bias, but makes it clear that there are still ‘mountains to climb’ for women working in the music
profession. In ‘Celebrating women composers on BBC Radio 3’ (chapter 32), Edwina
Wolstencroft provides readers with an insider’s account of the evolution and impact of her
4
International Women’s Day project, while, staying on air, Miia Laine examines the gendered
experiences and attitudes of women and men working in three spaces (offices, studios and clubs)
within London’s independent radio stations (chapter 33).
Shifting the record stylus, Karlyn King considers the heavily gendered listening and col-
lecting practices in today’s vinyl record culture (chapter 34), and Carolyn Watson sees many
‘cracks in the glass ceiling’ in her survey of new opportunities for women conductors of
professional orchestras (chapter 35). The section concludes with two chapters which provide
very different contexts for women’s work in music. Frances Novillo’s chapter contains in-
terviews with female liturgical musicians, who detail their experiences of working in the
Roman Catholic Church, and in chapter 37, Gabriela Sanchez Diaz discusses her experience
of the somatic method of Body Mapping and presents findings from interviews with women
musicians about their perceptions of gender, bodily experiences, musical performance and
Body Mapping.
The final section of the handbook – Part VI: New Perspectives on Women’s Work in
Music (chapters 38–44) – provides new frames of context for women’s historic contributions as
music editors, promoters, publishers, patrons and educators. In chapter 38, Yuemin He offers a
fresh evaluation on the nature of women’s authorship and editing in early Chinese music prints
when she considers both the female-authored songs contained in the Collection of Elegance
(1667), and the editorial principles and strategies used by the collection’s female editor, Wang
Dunashu. Jennifer Cable (chapter 39) explores the legacy of two remarkable women – Mary
Carlisle Howe (1882–1964) and Adella Prentis Hughes (1869–1950) – whose tireless work
helped to found a lasting musical infrastructure in the USA.
Elina G. Hamilton (chapter 40) reflects on the contributions of Australian music pub-
lisher, Louise Hanson-Dyer (1884–1962), founder of l’Oiseau-Lyre Press and publisher
to a number of Australian women composers, and in chapter 41, Lia Lonnert and Helen
Davies Mikkelborg discuss the legacy of Welsh patron of music, Lady Llanover (1802–93),
and her encounter with the Swedish harpist Adolf Sjödén. Jessica Beck (chapter 42) con-
siders the work and music of the women who played an important, hitherto overlooked,
role in the British Ethical Movement during the years 1887 to 1927, and Kirsite Alison
Muldoon (chapter 43) explores the essential work of three women – Annie Wilson Patterson
(1865–1939), May (Mary) Cosgrave (c. 1885–1974) and Joan Burke (c. 1893–1978) –
in establishing key Irish music institutions at the start of the twentieth century. Finally, in
‘The Beedle-Carter correspondence’, Helen C. Thomas examines a collection of previously
unpublished letters that brings to light the cultural work of Maureen Beedle (1936–2011)
in her role as promoter of the music of Elliott Carter.
It is my hope that readers will find the dazzling multiplicity of voices and first-rate research
contained in this handbook stimulating, enriching and enlightening. My thanks go to all the
contributors for their patience during the editing process, and for recognising the enormous
critical and cultural value of women’s work in music.
Rhiannon Mathias
June 2021
References
Beard, M., 2017. Women & power: a manifesto. London: Profile Books Limited.
Beauvoir, S. de., 2010. The second sex, trans. C. Borde & S. Malovany-Chevallier. London: Random
House. Originally published in French as Le deuxième sexe in Paris, 1949.
5
Citron, M.J., 1993. Gender and the musical canon. Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
Fuller, S., 1994. The Pandora guide to women composers: Britain and the United States, 1629-Present. London:
Pandora Press.
Ginsberg, R.B., 2014. Interview with ELLE magazine. Republished as: Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsberg
in her own words. ELLE magazine, 21 September 2020. Available from: https://www.elle.com/
culture/career-politics/interviews/a14788/supreme-court-justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg/
McClary, S., 1991. Feminine endings: music, gender, and sexuality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Pendle, K., ed., 1991. Women and music: a history. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
6
PART I
Challenging gender inequalities

1
GRACE, BETTY, MAUDE AND ME:
30 YEARS OF FIGHTING FOR
WOMEN COMPOSERS
Sophie Fuller
Grace, Betty and Maude, the three women of my title, have played an important part in my life.
These women were all British – although Grace Williams was Welsh, Elizabeth (‘Betty’)
Maconchy had Irish ancestry and Maude Valérie White was born in Dieppe to a thoroughly
cosmopolitan family. I did not know any of these three women personally (although I did once
briefly meet Maconchy in the early 1990s), but I have spent the past few decades researching
and evaluating their lives and music. At times, I feel that I know them well enough to call them
fondly by their first names, but in my writings, I usually respectfully refer to them by their
surnames. All three women encroached on an area deemed by most of their contemporaries to
be the preserve of men. In studying them and their music, I myself was venturing into an area of
feminist scholarship that was regarded at this time as irrelevant and of little value to the field of
musicology.
I will start with some personal history. In the summer of 1977, as a teenage flautist, I took
part in the Orchestral Summer School at Coleg Harlech, north Wales. The only piece of music
I remember from a week of intense rehearsing and bonfires on the beach, was Grace Williams’s
Penillion of 1955. I knew nothing about the composer except that she was Welsh and, unusually
for my youthful experience of classical music, a woman. I returned to England, to my local
youth orchestras and a world of male composers. Fast forward a decade to the mid-1980s. I was
in my early 20s – a politically engaged feminist who had recently graduated from London
University with a degree in Russian and a life-long love of all kinds of music. I was living in
Brixton, not quite knowing what to do with myself, and ended up spending much of my time
busking on my flute at Charing Cross underground station and composing a Stabat Mater on the
out-of-tune house piano.
Eventually, I decided to go back to college and study music, with the ambition of becoming
a composer. I chose London University’s King’s College, where the people who interviewed
me were apparently convinced that, with a degree in Russian, I had to be working for MI5, and
where I was able to study composition with the composers Nicola LeFanu and her husband,
David Lumsdaine. I was introduced to musicology by inspiring, male scholars such as Kofi
Agawu and Arnold Whittall, and I enjoyed creating music: playing my flute, setting Russian
texts and composing a lament for a friend who had died of AIDS. But I was always a ques
tioning and scholarly person and was quickly bitten by the musicology bug, wanting to find out
about musicians and the issues they faced.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-1 9
Sophie Fuller
As a music student, I was drawn to British music-making, particularly during the interwar
period. For my undergraduate dissertation, I researched an innovative London concert series
from the 1930s that promoted contemporary music. One of the unusual things about the
Macnaghten-Lemare concert series was that it was organised by women musicians.1 Two of the
composers who featured most frequently in the concerts were Williams and Maconchy. It was
at this time that I first heard Maconchy’s First String Quartet (1933), a life-changing experience
that raised a whole series of questions. Why didn’t I know that Maconchy wrote a series of 13
string quartets, and why weren’t they available as recordings or taught on undergraduate music
programmes? Exploring these questions set me on the path I have travelled for over 30 years – a
path on which I have uncovered a wealth of little-known music created by women and tried to
unpick the complex webs of their careers, reception and, all too often, their neglect.
Revising my ambition of ‘becoming a composer’, I embarked on a doctoral thesis, initially
with the idea of investigating the generation of British women composers who came to pro
minence in the 1930s – including Dorothy Gow (1893–1982), Imogen Holst (1907–84), Phyllis
Tate (1911–87) as well as Maconchy and Williams. With what they clearly saw as my best
interests at heart, most of the King’s musicologists did their best to dissuade me from this topic:
‘Researching women in music is an academic fast lane to nowhere’ was one memorable
comment. My invaluable supervisor was Nicola LeFanu, Maconchy’s daughter, and a composer
rather than a musicologist. Ever questioning, I began to wonder if these women of the 1930s
were really Britain’s first professional women composers? And what made a composer a
‘professional’ rather than an ‘amateur’?
As a voracious reader of women’s literature and biography, I knew of one British woman of
an earlier generation – the ubiquitous Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) – who, in her 70s, had fallen in
love with Virginia Woolf: Woolf described being the object of Smyth’s affection as ‘like being
caught by a giant crab’ (Woolf, cited in Bell 1976, p. 151). Smyth was also a prolific writer of
memoirs, all of which I avidly read, and in which she portrays herself as a lone trailblazer in her
work as a woman composer. Unconvinced, I decided to go to original sources and spent much
of the first year of my doctoral research reading through every copy of the Musical Times from
1880 to 1920, searching for names of women composers. The 1930s were forgotten, as I
developed an ever-growing list of earlier women who had published music or whose work had
been heard at a variety of concerts and venues. Certain names appeared more than others and I
began to piece together a fascinating picture of women who had often been household names
during their lifetimes but were, by the end of the century, little more than footnotes to the
history of music making in Britain – if they were remembered at all. I also began to track down
their music.
Many of the women whose names recurred most frequently in the press were primarily
songwriters and, in their day, these songs were performed at public concerts ranging from the
Monday Popular Concerts of highbrow chamber music to the Ballad Concerts run by pub
lishers such as Boosey & Co. They were also sung round the family piano and were a mainstay
of the late Victorian and Edwardian middle-class musical salon or the aristocratic ‘At Home’.
This was a fascinating and underexplored space for music making for those who were not
welcome in the public musical mainstream, particularly women.2 But I quickly discovered that
as the twentieth century progressed, Victorian and Edwardian British song began to be regarded
as a problematic, even embarrassing genre: critic Frank Howes, for example, described all late
Victorian song as ‘debased and sentimentalised’ (1964, p. 435). I began to wonder whether it
was a just a coincidence that so many songs of this period had been written by women. Indeed,
song writing was even regarded as a ‘feminine’ pursuit. I discovered a North American
composer, Alfred William Rawlings (1860–1924), who published songs under a female
10
Grace, Betty, Maude and Me
pseudonym, ‘Florence Fare’, as well as the British composer Edward St Quentin (dates un
known) who published songs as Edith Fortescue.
There were practical reasons why Victorian women embraced careers as songwriters,
including the comparative ease with which songs could be performed, and the fact that song
writing was one of the few potentially profitable forms of composition. But other reasons can
also be suggested. For centuries, whether on the opera stage or in the private drawing room,
the most accepted way for women to express themselves musically was as singers, something
that associated them on a fundamental level with song. Victorian women were socialised to
communicate feelings and develop their emotions in ways that would have been regarded as
inappropriate for men. In song, women found a genre which was capable of a direct and
crystallised expression in music of feeling, ideas and emotions. Smyth once accused men of
being afraid of melody (1928, p. 13), and a comparison of Hubert Parry’s songs with those
written by his contemporary Maude Valérie White demonstrates that the centrality of a
memorable and immediately attractive melody, something that aids the process of commu
nication, was a characteristic of White’s songs to an extent not found in Parry’s work.
Banfield has suggested that, in his songs, ‘Parry’s public manner gets the better of his private
feeling’ (1985, p. 25). On the contrary, White’s best music was a direct expression of her most
private feelings. Perhaps, as a woman, she simply had no public manner behind which to
hide.3
White was born in 1855, the daughter of a merchant whose main business was in Chile. Her
father died when she was 11 and she grew up in Wolverhampton and London, eventually
persuading her mother to let her study at the Royal Academy of Music, London. In 1879, while
a student, White won the coveted Mendelssohn prize for composition and continued to study
and compose, achieving early critical successes with songs performed by leading singers at
prestigious London venues. Like many women, however, White was insecure about her
abilities as a composer.4 In the early 1880s, she took lessons with Robert Fuchs in Vienna, who,
like her Royal Academy teacher, George Macfarren, tried to persuade her to compose
something other than vocal music. In her memoirs, White describes how impossible she found
this, vividly illuminating the lack of belief in her own capabilities that so many women of the
time internalised:
Again I tried and again I failed. This time my failure was accompanied by such ap
palling depression that I felt as if I wanted to wipe music right out of my life.… I felt
that even in a world of microbes I only deserved a rickety back seat. I wasted some
weeks trying to compose a concerto, and at last I felt as if every scrap of music in me
were dead (White 1914, p. 264).
Encouraged by an old friend who advised her not to ‘maim her talent’, White decided to stop
trying ‘to compose things that I felt were utterly beyond me’. This had fortunate results:
No sooner did I feel that no one expected me to write sonatas or concertos than I
began to compose again with the greatest ease. The relief of finding that I could still
write was a real joy. Instead of feeling that mentally I was developing into the
equivalent of something rather more stodgy than a half-boiled suet pudding, I began
to feel like a gay and cheerful soufflé (ibid., p. 265).
White was probably the best known and certainly one of the most highly regarded British
songwriters in the 1890s, but by the time of her death in 1937, she, and her music, had largely
11
Sophie Fuller
been forgotten. She played little part in later scholarship on the so-called English Musical
Renaissance, generally regarded as the period from about 1880 to 1914, the period of her
greatest popularity. Historian Percy Young, for example, dismissed White as a composer whose
‘limited technical accomplishment gave no more than adequately processed drawing-room
songs’ (1967, p. 539). White’s continued neglect was brought home to me vividly in 1993
when I came across an article on unusual wall coverings in a copy of the interior design ma
gazine Elle Decoration:
If paint is too plain, but you can’t find the wallpaper you want – think lateral. Cover
your walls with brown paper for the ultimate cheap, chic backdrop or for the armchair
traveller, pin up your maps. Nothing is sacrosanct... (‘Off the Wall’ 1993, p. 50).
The first proposal was to use old sheet music, material which the author was quick to point out
can always be picked up very cheaply. The piece of music used to illustrate the article, the first
thing to meet the reader’s eye, was a copy of White’s ‘How Do I Love Thee?’, an Elizabeth
Barrett Browning setting from 1885. I had already been researching White’s music and life for
several years, slowly piecing together her story and discovering her striking musical voice. That
for others this voice was silent, worthy only of providing cut-price wallpaper, seemed a bitterly
appropriate metaphor for the place of White and her contemporaries within the history of
British music.
At around this time, an editor for Pandora Press asked me to compile a guide to women
composers. I was slightly dubious for two reasons: first, wasn’t this simply adding the names of
women to those of men, without questioning the reasons why they were silenced and un
known? And second, the danger of creating an alternative canon of women; who would I
choose to include? But I could not resist the chance to tell the stories of the American and
British women, including White, I had been discovering. The Pandora Guide (1994) was aimed
primarily at the general reader, and featured 102 composers of classical music, listed alphabe
tically and ranging chronologically from Mary Dering (c.1629–1704) to Priti Paintal (b. 1960).
Each entry aimed to give an idea of the composer’s musical output as well as her background,
education and wider context. I also provided an introduction which examined some of the
issues around the neglect and silencing of so many of these women.
Of course, European and American scholars had been compiling lists, dictionaries and guides
to women composers for a long time before my Guide and others appeared. In the 1880s, for
example, Stratton published ‘Women in Relation to Musical Art’, which explored some of the
reasons why women were not better known as composers and included an appendix listing over
380 names (Stratton 1882–83, pp. 115–146), and there were other notable publications.5 In the
same year as my Guide was published, The New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers (Sadie and
Samuel 1994) appeared. Unlike my Guide, which was single authored and only covered women
from the UK and the USA, the New Grove Dictionary drew on the work of many different
scholars and covered the world (although mainly Europe, the USA and Australasia). I provided
entries on 15 British women, ranging from Amanda Aldridge to Phyllis Tate.
My Guide and the New Grove Dictionary were part of an outpouring of scholarship in the late
1980s and early 1990s, rediscovering and celebrating women as composers. Building on the
work of early pioneers, such as the American scholar Sophie Drinker (1948),6 this time saw the
publication of important volumes such as Women Making Music: the Western art tradition (Bowers
and Tick 1986) and Women & Music: a history (Pendle 1991). The work on women composers
contained in volumes such as these was expanded into several, noteworthy monographs on the
lives and work of individual women, such as Ruth Crawford Seeger (Tick 1997) or Francesca
12
Caccini (Cusick 2009). At this time, feminist scholars also started questioning some of the values
and assumptions that had been long held in music scholarship, including those about the ex
periences and reception of women as composers, leading to a vibrant and dynamic strand of
musicology (McClary 1991, Citron 1993, Solie 1993).
At much the same time, scholars started publishing guides to music by women, with ex
amples including Garvey Jackson’s guide to music manuscripts and printed editions (1994) and
Walker-Hill’s guide to piano music by women of colour (1992). In addition, anthologies of the
music itself began to appear, perhaps most notably the eight volumes of Women Composers: music
through the ages (Glickman and Schleifer 1996–2006), which provided selected works that had
been edited by scholars who also included contextual information.7 Back in 1988, Glickman
had founded the Hildegard Publishing Company with the mission ‘to seek out and publish
compositions by women composers’.8 Two years earlier, a similar enterprise – Furore Verlag –
had been founded by Renate Matthei in Germany.
Other organisations formed to promote and support the work of living women composers
included the American-based League of Women Composers (founded 1975), which later
became the International Alliance of Women in Music (IAWM). In the UK, a Society of
Women Musicians had been founded in 1911, although it was later disbanded in 1972.9 In
1987, the UK’s Women in Music was formed by a group of scholars and composers, including
myself and Nicola LeFanu. In that year, LeFanu published a call to arms, ‘Master Musician: An
Impregnable Taboo’, which uncovered the shocking statistics around the lack of grants and
performances given to women composers. As LeFanu stated: ‘… it is still the case in 1987 that
in the musical world it’s the men who call the tune. But it’s not necessarily men who write the
best tunes’ (1987, p. 8).
So, what impact did all this material and advocacy have on performances of women’s music?
Were the voices of historical women still doomed to act as cut-price wallpaper? In the 1990s,
recordings of music by women composers were still frustratingly rare, but one of the first labels to
specialise in recording music by women composers was the American label Leonarda
Productions, founded by Marnie Hall in 1979 (see Jezic 1994, p. 239). In 1991, Renate
Eggebrecht founded the German label Troubadisc, which was to issue groundbreaking recordings
of music by women such as Smyth, Tailleferre and Fanny Hensel. In the UK, Cuban-born
conductor and composer Odaline de la Martinez (b.1949) promoted performances and recordings
of music by women with her ensemble Lontano (founded 1976) and associated label Lorelt
(founded 1992). One of the composers that Martinez championed was Smyth, issuing a recording
of The Wreckers in 1994 and then a recording of Smyth’s orchestral works in 1996.10 More
recently, Martinez has worked with the pioneering Retrospect Opera to produce recordings of
Smyth’s operas, The Boatswain’s Mate (1913–14) in 2016 and Fete Galante (1923) in 2019.11
The Wreckers was a live recording of a concert performance, conducted by Martinez, given at
the Proms in 1994. The Proms are renowned for including either first performances or music
not previously heard in the UK, and the series has also traditionally thrown a spotlight on
British composers (Doctor and Wright 2007). So, how have women composers fared at the
Proms since the 1990s? (see Figure 1.1). In 1996, two years after the publication of my Guide,
not a note of music created by a woman was heard at the Proms. For the next nine years the
percentage hovered somewhere between 2% and 5%, before 2006 – the tenth anniversary of
‘no-women-composers year’ – when, once again, no music by a woman was programmed.
Since then, percentages seem to have gradually improved. In 2019, 18% of music heard had
been created by a woman. When making these calculations, it is perhaps necessary to recognise
that, historically, women have simply not had the same access to professional training as their
male contemporaries. But even when only living composers are counted, the figures do not
13
Sophie Fuller
Year Total Women Percentage Total Living Percentage

Composers Living Women
Composers (substantial
(substantial works from
works from 2018)
2018)
2019 160 29 18% 9 2 22%

2018 133 21 15% 14 5 36%
2017 120 9 8% 36 8 22%
2016 111 8 7% 38 7 18%

2015 116 12 10% 30 11 37%
2014 124 8 6% 35 8 23%
2013 130 7 5% 31 5 16%

2012 151 14 9% 56 14 25%
2011 112 7 6% 33 5 15%
2010 146 7 4% 38 5 13%

2009 128 6 5% 39 6 15%
2008 117 6 5% 28 4 14%
2007 118 5 4%
2006 105 0 0%
1996 108 0 0%
Figure 1.1 Women Composers at the Proms 1996–2019. 12
reach equity. The record year of 2015 still only provided a figure of 37% for living women
composers. The outpouring of women-centred scholarship in the 1990s did not make much
impact on the programming of this one festival.
I completed my doctorate in 1998 and, after working briefly for Women in Music, took up an
academic position at the University of Reading, moving after about ten years to my current place of
work – Trinity Laban Conservatoire. Recently, I have, with Jenny Doctor, transcribed and edited
the remarkable 50-year correspondence of Maconchy and Williams as a two-volume edition
(2019). These composers, who first met at the Royal College of Music, remained close throughout
their lives, and their letters are a treasure trove of thoughts, opinions and ideas. The early letters,
from the late 1920s and the 1930s, brim with youthful confidence, but the post-war years were not
easy for either composer as they settled into comparatively isolated lives – Maconchy in Essex and
Williams in Barry, south Wales. Both struggled with feelings of self-doubt, but underlying the self-
doubt was a constant core of determination. In January 1959, Maconchy wrote:
I have this very uncomfortable feeling … that the Zeitgeist has left us behind – & that
however good our music may be (& I’m pretty sure that it’s better than a lot of what
the Zeitgeist is so engrossed with now!) it will just be left to be decently buried.
14
One doesn’t seem able to stop writing it, though: and I suppose to do that would be
the worst of all! Do you keep on hard, anyhow: & I intend to, too, as long as I can
(Maconchy in Fuller and Doctor 2019, vol. 1, p. 174).
Although neither woman ever articulated it, it seems to me that many of their dispirited feelings
can be traced back to their position as women composers trying to be heard in the male-
dominated musical post-war world. After the war ended, women were expected to give way to
men returning home and go back meekly to looking after their houses and their families.
Women who insisted on public careers were seen as taking work away from men and the
position of women as wives, mothers and homemakers was subtly but consistently reinforced.
Maconchy and Williams demonstrate a complex awareness of their position as ‘women com
posers’ in their correspondence. It was not something they discussed very often, but what the
letters do show quite clearly is the expectations and assumptions that both composers faced
(from others and from themselves) because they were women: that Maconchy would have to
arrange her husband’s meals to be provided when she was away on Composer’s Guild business;
that Williams would look after her elderly parents; or that, in Williams’s opinion, there was
something unappealing about a first opera written by a woman of 60.
So, what has changed in our understanding of composers who were women since I pub
lished my Guide? It is certainly the case that basic knowledge about the careers of a wide variety
of women composers is now available, thanks in part to internet access. A large amount of the
music itself is also easily available – not least through the wonders of YouTube. But we all
know that this is not enough. Challenging the status quo and questioning the accepted canons
of traditional culture takes time and effort. Harnessing the power of social media is perhaps one
way to do it. A few years ago, 17-year-old Jessy McCabe noticed that out of 63 composers on
the new Edexcel A-level syllabus there were no women. McCabe’s online petition, which
attracted nearly 4,000 signatures, demanded that the exam board reconsider. Scholars and
musicians wrote a letter to the press, offering to supply the names of women who could be
easily included on the syllabus, and the issue was taken up by the mainstream media. To their
credit, Edexcel backed down and revised their syllabus.
The end of the second decade of the twenty-first century has seen a variety of individuals
and institutions agitating for greater inclusion of women’s voices in the music that is pro
grammed and performed in the UK. Examples include Elizabeth de Brito’s online radio show
The Daffodil Perspective, which is ‘the first gender balanced, racially equitable and inclusive
classical radio show in the world’. Some individuals, such as keyboard player Diana Ambache,
have been working to promote women’s music for decades. Her Ambache Chamber Orchestra
has programmed a wide variety of music by women. Her website, Women of Note, provides
vital information about music created by women, and she has recently set up the Ambache
Charitable Trust, ‘active in raising the profile of women composers by funding people who
promote their music to the widest possible circle’. A recently established initiative providing
online information is Re:Dress Women Composers Project from the Oxford Centre for Life
Writing, which aims to provide ‘access to a whole new repertoire of music by women, …
accessible to everyone from school children to managers of professional orchestra’.13
In the 2018–19 academic year, Trinity Laban Conservatoire took the decision, suggested by
Head of Orchestral Studies, Jonathan Tilbrook, that at least 50% (by duration) of music played
by the conservatoire’s larger ensembles should be by women. We named the initiative Venus
Blazing, after the title of a violin concerto by Deirdre Gribben, a member of Trinity Laban’s
composition department. In that year, the conservatoire programmed 171 musical works by
women, representing a 300% increase on the previous year.14 Venus Blazing continues as an
15
Sophie Fuller
important aspect of the conservatoire’s philosophy and Trinity Laban was one of over 250
organizations to sign up to the PRS Foundation’s Keychange initiative, which encouraged
‘festivals and music organisations to achieve a 50:50 gender balance by 2022’ (PRS Foundation
2017). The mainstream classical music industry has certainly been alerted to the fact that it is not
actually very hard to include the work of women in its programming. For the past few years, for
example, BBC Radio 3 has broadcast only music by women on International Women’s Day.
So, how do we move forward? How do we continue creating opportunities for women?
How do we make sure that the work of women composers from the past is not dismissed simply
because they were women? I do not believe that publishing a book such as The Pandora Guide
can suddenly change hearts and minds. In 2016, the cultural historian Anna Beer published
Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music telling the stories of seven women.
That such a book still seems necessary is perhaps slightly depressing, but information is always
power. In many cases over the past two centuries, women composers took very different career
paths to their male contemporaries, engaging with different performance spaces and other kinds
of music. Telling their stories and refusing to dismiss their achievements keeps these women
alive and is a vital step towards letting their musical voices be heard again. Power is never easily
relinquished. We need to continue to be vigilant and to keep on challenging the status quo.
Perhaps above all we need to learn from those who went before us.
Grace, Betty and Maude all believed in themselves as composers. What I have learned, above
all, from these three remarkable women, is the lesson of never giving up, of finding that steely
core of self-belief. Smyth once wrote, ‘I must fight because I want women to turn their minds
to big and difficult jobs; not just to go on hugging the shore, afraid to put out to sea’ (1940,
p. 210). So, let us refuse to do what others think we ought to do and, like Maude White, find
our inner ‘gay and cheerful soufflé’. In the words of Maconchy, writing to Williams in 1974,
‘It’s amazing that we go on going on, I think – but don’t let’s stop!’ (Fuller and Doctor 2019,
vol. 2, p. 437).
Organisations dedicated to women in music
• Ambache Charitable Trust (ACT): http://www.ambachecharitabletrust.org/

• Furore Verlag: https://furore-verlag.de/
• Hildegard Publishing Company: http://www.hildegard.com/
• International Alliance of Women Composers: https://iawm.org/
• Lontano: http://www.lontano.co.uk/
• Performing Rights Society (PRS) Foundation, Keychange: https://keychange.eu
• Re:Dress: https://centreforwomencomposers.com/about-2
• The Daffodil Perspective: https://thedaffodilperspective.com/about/
• Troubadisc: https://www.troubadisc.de/
• Women in Music (UK): http://www.womeninmusic.org.uk/
• Women of Note: http://www.womenofnote.co.uk/
• Venus Blazing: https://www.trinitylaban.ac.uk/creative-innovation/venus-blazing
Notes
1 I later reworked this dissertation as ‘“Putting the BBC and T. Beecham to shame”: the Macnaghten-
Lemare Concerts 1931–1937’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, vol. 138/2 (2013), pp. 377-414.
16
2 Phyllis Weliver and I are working on an online project entitled ‘Sounding the Salon’, part of a con
sortium of online material entitled Sounding Victorian. Available at: http://www.soundingvictorian.org.
3 For more on White, see Fuller, ‘Chapter 4: Maude Valérie White’ in ‘Women Composers during the
British Musical Renaissance, 1880-1918’, PhD thesis (King’s College, London University, 1998).
4 One of the best known examples of a woman’s diffidence about composing is probably Clara
Schumann’s 1839 diary entry at the age of 20: ‘I once believed that I had creative talent, but I have
given up this idea; a woman must not wish to compose – there never was one able to do it. Am I
intended to be the one?’. Quoted in Nancy B. Reich, Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman, pbk
ed., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 228–229.
5 See, for example, Otto Ebel, Women Composers: A Biographical Handbook of Women’s Work in Music
(Brooklyn, NY: F.H. Chandler, 1902), Arthur Elson, Woman’s Work in Music (Boston: L.C. Page,
1904) and Aaron Cohen, International Encyclopedia of Women Composers (USA: R.R. Bowker, 1981).
6 See also R.A. Solie, ‘Women’s History and Music History: The Feminist Historiography of Sophie
Drinker’ Journal of Women’s History, vol. 5/2 (1993), pp. 8–31.
7 In volume 7 (2003) of this series, I provided essays and edited editions of songs by Frances Allitsen, Liza
Lehmann, Adela Maddison and Maude Valérie White, and for volume 8 (2006), I contributed an essay
on Ethel Barns and an edition of the ‘Elegie’ from her Violin Sonata No. 4.
8 See the Hidegard Publishing Company website, available at: https://www.hildegard.com/index.php
9 On the Society of Women Musicians, see Fuller, ‘The Society of Women Musicians’, British Library
website: https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-music/articles/the-society-of-women-musicians. The
Society of Women Musicians has been discussed in detail by Laura Seddon in her book British
Composers and Instrumental Chamber Music in the Early Twentieth Century (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
10 Smyth, The Wreckers, Huddersfield Choral Society, BBC Philharmonic, Odaline de la Martinez
(Conifer: 75605 51250 2, 1994) and Smyth, Serenade in D; Concerto for violin, horn & orchestra performed
by Sophie Langdon (violin), Richard Watkins (horn), BBC Philharmonic and Odaline de la Martinez
(Chandos: CHAN9449, 1996).
11 For more on Retrospect Opera and these two recordings, see: http://www.retrospectopera.org.uk/
index.html.
12 Created with figures compiled by Jenny Fowler of Women in Music (UK), available from: http://
www.womeninmusic.org.uk/proms-survey.htm
13 For links to these organisations’ websites, see ‘Organisations dedicated to women in music’ at the end
of this chapter.
14 With thanks to Trinity Laban’s Marketing and Communications department for these statistics.
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Smyth, E., 1940. What happened next. London: Longmans, Green & Co.
Solie, R., ed., 1993. Musicology and difference: gender and sexuality in music scholarship. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Stratton, S.S., 1882–83. Woman in relation to musical art. Proceedings of the Musical Association, 3, 115–146.
Tick, J., 1997. Ruth Crawford Seeger: a composer’s search for American music. New York & Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Walker-Hill, H., 1992. Piano music by black women composers: a catalog of solo and ensemble works. New York:
Greenwood Press.
White, M.V., 1914. Friends and memories. London: Edward Arnold.
Young, P.M., 1967. A history of British music. London: Ernest Benn.
18
2
‘WHERE ARE WE NOW?’:
TEACHING AND STUDYING
WOMEN COMPOSERS
POST-CITRON
Susan Wollenberg
2.1 Introduction
What follows here arose partly from the feeling brought on by having completed over four
decades of university teaching, during which I had witnessed the increasing recognition of
women composers, that this was a time for reflection on how things had changed over those
decades. The title of my chapter and its agenda broadly respond to Marcia Citron’s reflections on
the subject in ‘Women and the Western Art Canon: Where Are We Now?’ (2007), which was
published in Notes, the journal of the Music Library Association. Citron, whose pioneering work
has helped to inspire so much of what has developed in the area of women’s studies in music, was
concerned to emphasize the importance of continuing the work of rescue and restoration that had
characterised our efforts in this area. Citron’s reflections stemmed from the perception that during
the almost 15 years that had elapsed since the publication of her Gender and the Musical Canon in
1993, the ‘current status of key concepts of the study’ of the topic showed ‘noticeable change’
(ibid., p. 209). Some dozen years on from her Notes article, I consider afresh here the implications
of Citron’s title question. My approach derives additionally from a variety of other sources: the
first of these is long-standing, the others more recent, and I will enlarge on them below. By its
nature, some of what I present is bound to be rather personal. I hope it will chime in, though,
with some perceptions and preoccupations that we share.
The first and abiding trigger for what follows is my own involvement in teaching and studying
the subject of women composers at the University of Oxford. This dates back to the late 1980s
(when I was already a third of the way through my university teaching career). And what
triggered the beginnings of my involvement was primarily the appearance on BBC Radio 3 in
August 1988, almost certainly for the first time ever, of two women as ‘Composers of the Week’:
Fanny Hensel and Clara Schumann. This was billed, thought-provokingly, as ‘An exploration of
the compositions of two remarkable nineteenth-century ladies – Felix Mendelssohn’s sister and
Robert Schumann’s wife’.1 It constituted for me (and doubtless for many other listeners) a re-
velation as the week’s programmes unfolded. It is significant that the foregrounding of these
composers’ lives and works, in a highly regarded weekly broadcast series, was conceived in the
wake of some significant musicological literature then recently published and breaking new
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-2 19
Susan Wollenberg
ground at the time. The biography of Clara Schumann by Nancy Reich (1985), together with the
edition by Marcia Citron of Fanny Hensel’s letters (1987), as well as the release of some pio-
neering recordings of their music, transformed our knowledge of those two composers.
By the early 1990s, I was able to introduce, for the first time ever at the Faculty of Music in
Oxford, courses of Studies in Women Composers – originally as a finals option, subsequently
filtering through, gratifyingly at the suggestion of my colleagues, first as a core topic for first-
year undergraduates, then vaulting the fence to become a postgraduate seminar course.
Throughout – from the start – the students were enthusiastic and my colleagues supportive.
The changing musicological climate helped not only in the sustained presence of women’s
studies on our syllabuses that became assured for me by the Faculty year after year, through to
my final year in full-time post, but also in the increasing adoption of women composers and
their music within other Faculty courses that would previously have been devoid of them.
As an aside, we might note that when I was appointed originally on the team of some dozen
lecturers in the 1970s, I was not only the sole female among them but also the first woman ever
to join the Faculty of Music in Oxford as a University Lecturer. In her seminal article on
professionalism and the musical canon, Marcia Citron concluded that ‘musicology’s values,
categories, pioneers, leading practitioners and, most important, its epistemology about music
itself … [had] been male-defined’, and that reconfiguration of the traditional framework was
needed to do justice to women’s contribution (1990, p. 114). The disparity in Oxford operated
at student level also. In my year as an undergraduate in the late 1960s, there were 30 students
doing Music across the University, only six of whom were women, reflecting the fact that there
were only five women’s colleges at that time, co-existing with some 30 men’s colleges in the
University. Today, all the colleges have gone mixed and the undergraduate cohort in Music
typically numbers over 70 students, tending to divide equally.
2.2 Contexts for the study of women composers

The second trigger for this chapter is a case that went viral and lent some notoriety to the anti-
hero of the story. This was Jessy McCabe’s petition in 2015 (attracting more than 3,000 sig-
natures) in the wake of her correspondence with the Chief Examiner for Music on the board of
the Edexcel A-level syllabus she was following at her school. In response to her email to him
observing that the board’s anthology of music prescribed for study featured 63 male composers
and no females, he wrote: ‘Given that women composers were not prominent in the western
classical tradition (or others for that matter) there would be very few females that could be
included’ (cited in Khomami 2015). Jessy won her case for the inclusion of women composers
in the syllabus. She went on to study Music at St Hugh’s College, Oxford.
A notable landmark in the development of studies in music was the appearance of the
20-volume New Grove Dictionary of Music in 1980 (hereafter NG), sporting the qualifier ‘New’
for the first time ever in that dictionary’s century-long existence, to loud fanfares. A quieter, but
in many ways more significant, debut was made by another landmark event in 1994. This was
the publication of the New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers (NGDWC), edited by Sadie
and Samuel (1994) – a much slimmer affair in just one volume, but packed with entries on some
900 figures – which served to highlight the insufficiency of the 1980 NG in this area. To take
just one example: in 1980, Karl-Heinz Köhler added a few lines on Fanny Hensel in the NG
article to the effect that ‘her historical importance consists in her having provided … much
essential source material for the biography of Felix’ (Köhler 1980, p. 134). Marcia Citron’s
article dedicated to Fanny Hensel in NGDWC, acknowledging her in her own right, was
subsequently imported into the second (29-volume) edition of the main Grove dictionary, in
20
‘Where are we now?’: teaching and studying
2001 and online (NG2). That the Hensel entry has now been revised and considerably ex-
panded indicates the welcome growth of research and critical writing on this figure, as on so
many others, in the intervening years.2
Women as a category had to wait until 2001 for their own entry in the main Grove dic-
tionary. Among questions we did not think to ask ourselves at the time of the first edition in
1980 – why was there no article on ‘Women in Music’ in New Grove? If some wit wanted to
retort: ‘Well … there was none on “Men in Music”’, the answer, of course, should have been
‘but so much of the whole dictionary was about men in music!’ In 2001, with New Grove in its
second edition repairing the original omission by the inclusion of the new entry on ‘Women in
Music’ contributed by Judith Tick, Margaret Ericson and Ellen Koskoff (2001), this could seem
to have signalled that the dawn of the present century might mark the dissipation of the notable
absence and silence of women in music in the past that has become widely acknowledged in
recent studies. However, the case of Jessy McCabe and the Chief Examiner clearly shows the
situation to have remained shaky.
2.3 Gender and genre

Where the 1980 NG article on ‘Lied’ told the history of this genre during what might be called
the ‘golden age’ of the German Lied as that of an entirely male production, thus completely
overlooking thousands of Lieder by women, the second edition, together with Grove Music
Online, added a couple of names to section IV, ‘The Romantic Lied’, thereby ‘stirring women
in’ a little with the inclusion of Fanny Hensel and Clara Schumann.3 The two composers were
awarded a few lines each at the end of the sections on Felix Mendelssohn and Robert
Schumann. To give a flavour of those added lines, I will quote first in its entirety the meagre
provision of commentary on Fanny Hensel. In view of its wording, it is particularly ironic to
find this addendum inserted at the end of the section on Felix Mendelssohn’s lieder:
More than a mere footnote to the songwriting achievements of Mendelssohn are the
lieder of his sister, whose roughly 300 songs show a considerable creative personality;
indeed it is arguable that Fanny Mendelssohn was temperamentally better suited than
her brother to explore the passionate and dramatic aspects of the medium (Sams and
Johnson 2001/2011).
The latter assertion is disappointing, as well as tantalising, since no further enlightenment on her
songs is offered.
Second, and equally disconcertingly, on Clara Schumann it is claimed (without any sup-
porting evidence) that ‘If she is not the equal of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel as a song composer,
it is probably because the lied interested her less than instrumental forms’ (ibid.). The com-
mentary on Clara Schumann then proceeds to prioritise Robert Schumann’s song production
without any further illumination on hers:
Certainly the study of Schumann’s songs would have been easier if Clara had made an
annotated performing edition of his lieder, which she regularly accompanied; un-
fortunately, many of their secrets (particularly as regards tempos) died with her and
Brahms’ (ibid.).
It seems that in the area of gender and genre, as represented in the core reference literature, we
need to fashion new histories in the wake of developments in women’s studies in music – as was
21
Susan Wollenberg
discussed at the Hamburg conference on music and gender in May 2016 (see Wollenberg
2016). And, as with other broad areas within the narratives of music history, ideally this need
would be built in systematically to future projects.
2.4 Women composers and stylistic categories

Reviewing (for the journal Nineteenth-Century Music Review) the digital version of a major
encyclopaedia of music only recently transferred online, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart
(MGG), whose content, like that of Grove, is subject to an ongoing programme of updating of
articles imported from the print edition, I noted the scope for more inclusivity regarding the
contribution of women composers across a whole spectrum of broad areas of history
(Wollenberg 2019). Perception of the paucity of their presence in some of the as yet not
updated MGG articles served to highlight the gratifying extent to which our awareness of
women’s contribution has increased, as well as the need to repair past injustice. As I put it in my
review:
The representation of a previously neglected area of scholarship such as the study of

women composers raises questions beyond the entries on the women themselves.
Their inclusion in core areas of the ‘mainstream’, for example in entries on genres,
forms, style categories and places, is of equal importance (ibid., p. 493).
A comparable picture to that presented by NG on Lied emerges from the dictionary entries on
style categories. While the desirability of using the traditional period labels for musical re-
pertoire has been much debated, these labels are clearly a part of the historiographical record,
and for that reason if no other they retain a measure of relevance. Together with the various
sub-categories linked to them (such as ‘Sturm und Drang’), they have maintained a continuing
presence in the online reference literature. In a paper delivered at the conference on women
and the enlightenment (in Wollenberg 2018), I pondered the applicability of such labels to the
work of women composers in late eighteenth-century Austria and England and concluded that
a redefinition of the ‘Classical’ style might more readily embrace women’s contribution.4
As it stands, in the Grove entry on ‘Classical’, Daniel Heartz and Bruce Alan Brown in-
troduce the topic with the observation that:
[B]y the 1830s ‘classical’ music was coming increasingly to be identified specifically
with the ‘Viennese classics’ composed by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and it is to
these that the term-complex usually refers when encountered without further qua-
lification in more recent writings on music (Heartz and Brown 2001).
The remainder of the section on Viennese Classicism then centres on those three composers,
with their music providing the source of the stylistic definitions offered (ibid.). A comparable
scenario is represented by MGG.
2.5 Analysing women’s music

Delivering a paper on Chaminade’s Sonata for Piano Solo, Op. 21, at the 2009 conference
‘L’Analyse musicale aujourd’hui’ held at the University of Strasbourg, I found that among some
40 papers in the impressively packed schedule, mine was the only contribution that treated music
by a woman composer (Wollenberg 2009). Almost a decade later, at the splendid ‘EUROMac 9’
22
conference (9th European Music Analysis Conference, University of Strasbourg, 28 June–1 July
2017), I attended a paper on Mendelssohn’s musical education and its influence on his works
(‘Mendelssohn’s Music Learning’), from which you would not have known that he had a
composing sister. When in the question time I pointed out that someone else was learning
alongside Felix, and that was his sister Fanny – the speaker simply replied: ‘Ah, but her exercises in
composition haven’t survived!’ There were, in fact, some extant exercises, and in any case – in
both her early and her more mature compositions – the influences shaping her work can be traced
to Zelter’s teaching.
From 1993 onwards, with Citron’s Gender and the Musical Canon providing an inspiring
guide to us in our exploration, joined from 1994 onwards by NGDWC, which for all its
shortcomings was also an enormously supportive resource, we experienced the sense of living in
exciting times for the subject of women composers.5 Our studies were underpinned by a
number of fundamental considerations. Angles we pursued included placing more emphasis on
familial and social/institutional factors in studying women composers’ lives; cultivating a
willingness to recognise the powerful but dangerous area represented by ‘victim history’, and,
related to that area, the pattern of musicological neglect; and nurturing an openness to the
overturning of expectations – where did those come from, ingrained and embedded in our
consciousness as they seemed to be? – for instance, that women would tackle only small-scale
forms. We pondered such attitudes as were represented in the assumption encountered by
Elizabeth Maconchy, who, in 1983, recalled that:
[…] the publishers weren’t interested [in works by women]. They were all men, of
course, and tended to think women composers capable of only the odd song or two
(Maconchy, cited in Beer 2016).
These and other strands in the reception history of women’s music (notably the prevalence of a
‘gendered’ vein of critical writing on their compositions) informed our early efforts at analysing
their work. As a growing number of studies and editions of their music appeared in print we
found reinforcement of this kind of contextually inflected approach. For example, Camilla Cai,
introducing her edition of Hensel’s previously unpublished ‘Songs for Piano’ (with, in the
background, Felix Mendelssohn’s discouragement of his sister’s urge to publish under her own
name), observed that Hensel’s situation meant that she would not have had the impetus to
revise her work, nor felt the need to add provision of more detailed performance indications,
that might have arisen had she enjoyed regular opportunities to see her music through the press
(Cai 1994, p. 22).
2.6 Conclusion
Returning finally to Citron’s question, ‘Where are we now?’, and asking it again at this distance
of time: my answer would be that certainly we have travelled further in this important mission,
but with still a considerable way to go for the future. It is fair to say that over the past few
decades, women composers have emerged into the light after long neglect. And with improved
opportunities, more are constantly appearing in the new generation as well as being brought to
our notice from past generations. Awareness of the existence of role models is (and has been,
historically) a meaningful element in women’s compositional aspirations. To close, I will just
mention here one example, that of the composer Ailsa Dixon (1932–2017), whose daughter,
Josie, contacted me by chance when I was preparing the conference paper from which this
chapter developed. She wrote as follows:
23
Susan Wollenberg
I am sorting through the musical archive left by my mother, Ailsa Dixon, whose work
has received new attention recently, as part of the Five15 project giving a voice to
women composers across the UK. Just weeks before she died, her anthem, ‘These
things shall be’, which had been lying in manuscript for 30 years, was premiered in
London in July; as a result of some of the surrounding publicity, there has been
new interest in some of her other unperformed work, including a sonata for piano
duet (4 hands), currently in rehearsal. Before this latest renewal of interest, a number
of works were performed in the 1980s (by Ian Partridge, Lynne Dawson and the
Brindisi quartet amongst others) but since she never had an agent and was more
interested in devoting her time to composition than self-promotion, she remains
among the ranks of women composers whose work has been comparatively neglected
(Josie Dixon, personal communication, 29 August 2017).6
Josie Dixon’s hope was that her mother’s work might be studied, becoming the subject of
scholarly investigation. Collectively, we continue to owe a debt of that kind to the women
composers whose lives and music inspire us.
Notes
1 BBC Radio 3, ‘Composers of the Week: Fanny Hensel and Clara Schumann’, 15-19 August 1988.
2 Thus, for instance, in Fanny Hensel’s bicentenary year it was possible to report: ‘With the achievement
of such desiderata as a thematic catalogue, editions of the music, biographies and other studies, Fanny
Hensel has begun to acquire that kind of breadth of representation in the literature that allows a picture
of her to form more fully’ (Wollenberg 2005). Since then, the magisterial biography by Larry Todd
(2010) has vastly enhanced Hensel’s presence in the literature and Todd’s work has inspired new
research. See also Mace Christian’s revised Grove entry on Fanny Hensel (2018).
3 The notion referred to here of ‘add and stir’ coined by Karin Pendle (see Citron 2007, p. 210) has been
considered in this regard and its usefulness questioned by a number of writers. Introducing her book
Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and the Histories of Art (London: Routledge, 1988), Griselda
Pollock asked: ‘Is adding women to art history the same as producing feminist art history? Demanding
that women be considered not only changes what is studied and what becomes relevant to investigate
but it challenges the existing disciplines politically’ (p. 1). Pollock went on to declare that, ‘shifting the
paradigm of art history involves … much more than adding new materials – women and their history –
to existing categories and methods’ (p. 5).
4 Some impression of the difficulties potentially involved in pinning down the Classical style can be
gleaned from the attempt made by Georg Feder in his contribution on ‘Characteristic traits of Viennese
Classicism’ to the interdisciplinary volume of conference proceedings, The Classical Temper in Western
Europe: Papers from the annual symposium of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, eds. John Hardy &
Andrew McCredie (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983).
5 See the collaborative review of NGDWC in the Musical Times, vol. 136 (April 1995), pp. 194–196 by
seminar students from the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford. (The students’ work for the
Women Composers seminars has been characterised generally by an emphasis on team efforts and a
notably supportive atmosphere among them.)
6 Josie Dixon inserted in her email message (29 August 2017) the following link: http://
www.ailsadixon.co.uk/about.html, and added further: ‘A list of Ailsa Dixon’s principal works (there are
some others in manuscript in the archive) can be found here: http://www.ailsadixon.co.uk/works.html’.
References
Beer, A., 2016. Gloriously alive: making music in 1931 and 2016. Shadow of the Courtesan blog,
10 May. Available from: https://shadowofthecourtesan.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/gloriously-alive-
making-music-in-1931-and-2016/
24
Cai, C., ed., 1994. Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn): songs for pianoforte 1836–1837. Madison, WI: A–R
Editions.
Citron, M.J., 1987. The letters of Fanny Hensel to Felix Mendelssohn, collected, edited and translated with in-
troductory essays and notes. Stuyvesant, New York: Pendragon Press.
Citron, M.J., 1990. Gender, professionalism and the musical canon. Journal of Musicology, 8/1, 102–117.
Citron, M.J., 2007. Women and the Western Art Canon: where are we now? Notes, 64/2, 209–215.
Heartz, D. and Brown, B.A., 2001. Classical – the Viennese classical idiom. Grove Music Online: 10.1093/
gmo/9781561592630.article.05889
Khomami, N., 2015. A-level music to include female composers after student’s campaign. Guardian,
16 December: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/dec/16/a-level-music-female-
composers-students-campaign-jessy-mccabe-edexcel
Köhler, K.-H., 1980. ‘Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, [Hensel], Fanny’. In: S. Sadie, ed. New grove dictionary of
music and musicians, 12. London: Macmillan.
Mace Christian, A., 2018. Hensel (nee Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy), Fanny Cacilie. Grove Music Online:
10.1093/omo/9781561592630.013.3000000159
Pendle, K., ed., 1991. Women & music: a history. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Reich, N.B., 1985. Clara Schumann: the artist and the woman. London: Gollancz.
Sadie, J.A. and Samuel, R., eds., 1994. The new grove dictionary of women composers. London: Macmillan.
Sams, E. and Johnson, G., 2001/2011. Lied: IV – the romantic lied. Grove Music Online: 10.1093/gmo/
9781561592630.article.16611. The entry was first published in print and online in 2001 and updated
in 2011.
Tick, J., Ericson, M., and Koskoff, E., 2001. Women in music. Grove Music Online: 10.1093/gmo/97815
61592630.article.52554
Todd, L.R., 2010. Fanny Hensel: the other Mendelssohn. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wollenberg, S., 2005. “Master of her art”: Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn Bartholdy), 1805–1847.
Ad Parnassum: A Journal of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Instrumental Music, 3/6, October, 33–44.
Wollenberg, S., 2009. New paths to analysis: the case of women composers. Paper presented at ‘L’Analyse
musicale aujourd’hui’, University of Strasbourg, 19-21 November. Available from: http://www.sfam.org/
StrasbourgProgrammeStrasbourg2009.pdf
Wollenberg, S., 2016. Rethinking genre. Paper delivered at the conference ‘Lexikographie, Gender und
Musikgeschichtsschreibung’ held at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hamburg, May.
Wollenberg, S., 2018. Did women have a classical style? Paper delivered at the conference ‘Aufklärung!
Musik und Geschlecht im 18. Jahrhundert’ at Universität Hamburg, May.
Wollenberg, S., 2019. Digital resource review: MGG online. Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 16/3,
491–500.
25
3
‘BECAUSE I’M A GIRL’:
EXPLORING EXPERIENCES,
PRACTICES AND CHALLENGES
RELATING TO GENDER AND
SEXUALITY FOR FEMALE
MUSICIANS IN POPULAR MUSIC
HIGHER EDUCATION
3.1 Introduction
In the context of increasing awareness of, and engagement with, gender-related issues in both
the popular music industry and higher education, this chapter discusses experiences of young
female performers of popular music, either enrolled on, or recently graduated from, a vo-
cational popular music degree course. These young musicians represent an ideal participant
group for researching the relationships between popular music higher education and the
music industry. Their musical experiences and practices take place within a higher educa-
tional environment. However, as practising musicians on a vocational course, they are not
only preparing for a career in the music industry, they are already involved with it, not least
through their participation in local music scenes. Their perspectives can contribute to a
greater understanding of how gendered experiences and issues in popular music higher
education and the music industry are related. This chapter uses data generated from a pilot
study and therefore does not seek to provide solutions, rather to discuss experiences and
identify issues. It begins with a brief overview of gender in the music industry and popular
music higher education, then outlines the research project that generated the data. The
discussion then turns to experiences and issues relating to gender and sexuality for four female
musicians, focusing on instruments and technologies, music-making and group dynamics,
performance and songwriting, and persona and image.
26 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-3
‘Because I’m a girl’
3.2 Gender in the music industry and popular music higher education
Alongside the hegemonic status bestowed on ‘that which is perceived and produced as
“masculine”’ (Biddle and Jarman-Ivens 2007, p. 3), the music industry is also male-dominated
in terms of numbers. For example:
• Fewer females are involved in making successful chart music in the USA (Smith et al.
2018) and the UK (Youngs 2019)
• Significantly fewer women work in senior positions than in entry level roles in the UK
music industry (UK Music 2018)
• Only 17% of members of The Performing Rights Society for Music (PRS for Music 2017)
identify as female, and the live music industry is male dominated (Larsson 2017)
• Sexism and sexual harassment undermine the mental health of female musicians
(University of Westminster 2017)
Several decades of scholarly research confirm the entrenched nature of the issues, including
studies by Bayton (1998), Leonard (2007; 2016) and Lieb (2018). However, positive action is
taking place through various gender equality music initiatives, including those launched by
PRS Foundation (2019a; 2019b) and Help Musicians UK (2017), and the #MeToo movement
is resonating in the music industry (Abdurraqib 2018).
Given the issues outlined above, engaging with gender is ‘of major importance’ for courses
offering vocational popular music education (Whiteley 2015, p. 375), which, since the late
1990s, have increased in number from around 80 (Laing 1999) to around 1,500 in the UK (UK
Music 2016). However, as Hebert et al. (2017, p. 458) point out, ‘clear tensions and ethical
challenges’ face institutions that are ‘working towards equitable ends in and through music
education’ while seeking to ‘prepare students for an industry that endorses and perpetuates
sexism and even misogyny’. Furthermore, music higher education itself suffers from structural
gender inequalities (Bogdanovic 2015). As Whiteley (2015, p. 375) argues, popular music
higher education needs to not only prepare students for ‘the so-called “real world”’ of the music
industry, but also empower them to ‘confront and change the balance of power’ (ibid., p. 369).
Research with students in vocational popular music higher education, therefore, can illuminate
the perspectives and experiences of young musicians in relation to gender and sexuality, to
inform the equality agenda in both higher education and the music industry.
3.3 Young musicians, gender and sexuality research project

An ongoing research project supported by UK Music1 is exploring gender and sexuality in
relation to young performers of popular music aged 18–25 in education or early career,
investigating:
• How young musicians, currently working as or training to be professional performers of

popular music in the UK, construct and perform gender and sexuality in their musical
discourses and practices
• The issues and challenges relating to gender and sexuality experienced by these musicians
• How music education can address the issues and challenges
In 2017, I carried out a small-scale pilot study that included individual, face-to-face, semi-
structured interviews with seven musicians, conducted at the Liverpool Institute for Performing
27
Arts (LIPA), a UK higher education institution. Although gender inequality most obviously
disadvantages females, gender is relational and requires a holistic analytical approach (Nayak and
Kehily 2008, p. 4), as well as a pluralistic understanding that transcends binary gender models
(de Boise 2017, p. 34). On a practical level, an inclusive gender equality movement is essential
‘to change things from within, with input from those who currently hold the most power’
(Reed 2016). Therefore, it was important to include participants of a range of gender identities
in the pilot study, and this is central also to the developing research project.2 Due to the focus in
this volume being ‘women's work in music’, however, this chapter discusses the experiences of
four female participants: Georgia, Lise and Lucy, who were final year music undergraduates at
LIPA, and Kamilla, a LIPA music graduate in her early career.3 All are white, British or
Norwegian, and were in their early to mid-20s at the time of the interviews. The following
sections discuss some of their experiences and issues, beginning with those relating to musical
instruments and technologies.
3.4 Musical instruments and technologies

Researching gender and music education in UK schools, Green found singing is the musical
practice most strongly associated with femininity, due partly to its connection with the body and
lack of technology (1997, pp. 28–29). The female instrumentalist, in contrast, deviates from
patriarchal feminine norms through being perceived as ‘capable of using technology’ (ibid., p. 54).
Consequently, in ‘Western music culture, girls and women have historically been confined to the
role of vocalist, while boys and men have dominated the role of instrumentalist’ (Kearney 2017,
p. 119). This is illustrated by LIPA where, since opening in 1996, music students have been
predominantly male, most vocal students have been female, and most instrumentalists have been
male. In 2017–18, 44% of applications were from females and 56% from males. Applications from
instrumentalists comprised 16% female and 84% male, whereas applications from vocalists
comprised 76% female and 24% male. Places were awarded to 82 applicants, of which 38% were
female. Of the 37 students studying vocals, 65% were female; of the 45 students studying an
instrument, 16% were female. LIPA's music department aims for gender equality and diversity,
but also needs to create a balanced culture in terms of instruments and roles. Increasing the
proportion of female students results in the over-recruitment of vocalists, and imbalance is further
compounded by the relatively few applications from female instrumentalists.
The experiences of drummer Georgia and vocalist Lucy show some of the challenges arising
from the gendering of instruments and technologies. According to Smith (2013, p. 139), female
drummers realise their drummer identity in ‘a male-dominated and very masculine culture’.
Georgia recognised her minority status as a female drummer and felt her identity as a drummer
was often overlooked by her male peers: ‘They see me as the girl they know and they’re friends
with, but they forget that I’m a drummer’ (Georgia, personal interview, 23 March 2017). As
Smith points out, ‘the “female” identity … is often emphasized over “drummer” by those with
whom female drummers interact’ (2013, p. 149). This resulted in Georgia experiencing LIPA as
a ‘lads’ club’, which consequently led to missed opportunities: ‘All the lads would give each
other work’ (Georgia, op. cit.). Although Georgia also sought out homosocial musical colla-
boration, she was disadvantaged by the gender disparity among LIPA music students: ‘I’d
probably more so go to a woman than a man … [but] there are less women than men’ (ibid.).
Although, as a female vocalist, Lucy corresponded to the conventional stereotype, she did
not identify as a typical vocalist, and recalled reactions to her teenaged performances: ‘They
were always very shocked by my voice, because … I don’t sing like a stereotypical girl’ (Lucy,
personal interview, 24 March 2017). Kruse (1999, p. 90) notes that the voice ‘is a key terrain
28
upon which the gendered struggle over signification in popular music takes place’, with ‘female
singers who transgress the boundaries of what is considered “nice” singing’ often inciting
hostility. Lucy confounded expectations with her unconventional singing style and, as a student
at LIPA, her non-conformity continued. She often felt uncomfortable being grouped with
other vocalists, most of whom are female: ‘One of the only things that's really bothered me … is
the fact that most of the vocalists are female and you spend a lot time together as vocalists’
(Lucy, op. cit.). Like Georgia, Lucy's experience of being a musician and a music student were
negatively influenced by gender inequalities in relation to musical instruments and roles.
Technologies and technological expertise are also gendered, as ‘gear connotes mastery and
power, characteristics historically ascribed to men’ (Kearney 2017, p. 135). Although Georgia
felt ‘daunted’ by the technology associated with drumming, she recognised its growing im-
portance in the music industry and was ‘trying to stay ahead of the game’ (Georgia, op. cit.).
Those with a passion for the technologies associated with music-making are often referred to as
‘gearheads’ and, due to gender socialisation, the gearhead community is typically male (Kearney
2017, p. 147). In Georgia's experience,
a bunch of lads will talk about all their gear and stuff, but a bunch of women don’t
normally go ‘Oh look at all my gear’.… I’m not a gearhead at all. I know what I like
but I don’t talk about it too much (op. cit.).
Similarly, while Lucy was confident in music production, she recognised the tendency of males
to take more interest in the technical side of music: ‘I find that the boys here talk about guitar
pedals for ages … and I’m like “I’m not interested in this, this is such a boring boy con-
versation”’ (Lucy, op. cit.).
As Georgia and Lucy observe, gearhead culture is discursive as well as practical, and gearhead
discourse is often used ‘consciously or not – to marginalise or exclude women and to maintain
male homosociality’ (Kearney 2017, p. 148). While many female musicians engage readily with
technologies, have a high level of technological skill, and even identify as gearheads, the ex-
periences of Georgia and Lucy indicate a continuing tendency for technologies to be mascu-
linised. This tendency, combined with gender stereotyping in relation to musical instruments
and roles, that persists ‘despite women's greater access to musical training and instruments
during the last two decades’ (ibid., p. 119), shows there is still work to be done to achieve
gender equality in this area.
3.5 Music-making and group dynamics

The gendering of musical instruments and roles affects group dynamics within music-making
contexts. Green observes that ‘the much smaller number of girls who take up popular music
instruments … has several knock-on effects concerning the make-up and management of …
bands’ (2001, p. 77). These effects are also felt in curriculum-based group music-making. At
LIPA, instrumentalists have a weekly improvisation class, and Lise, a violinist, was often the
only female in her class. She would regularly opt out of the solo improvisation opportunities
offered to each student because, ‘if you’re put on the spot in front of eight or seven boys, it's
gonna be a lot more intimidating than if it's with a roomful of girls’ (Lise, personal interview, 3
April 2017).
In addition to tutor-led music making, LIPA students create their own musical projects,
often in the form of bands. Lise's band consisted of four females and one male, and she noted
differences between working in female and male dominated/led groups: ‘I find more playing
29
with girls … you discuss it amongst you, rather than the projects I’ve had with boys when it's
more like “you do this or that”’ (Lise, op. cit.). Although she felt she could have taken a
stronger leadership role as the project was ‘her band’, she felt more comfortable working
collaboratively: ‘I prefer creating it together and then just playing it’ (ibid.). She acknowledged
the relative time-inefficiency of this working method but welcomed the result: ‘Everyone is
doing unexpected things that I wouldn’t have thought of myself if I was to write out the
parts’ (ibid.).
Georgia made the following comparison with regards to gender and music-making: ‘If
you’re practising in a room with all lads and me, they’ll start noodling about and messing about,
whereas with women it's like – “this is what we need to do, let's go over it again”’ (Georgia, op.
cit.). She attributed this to the tendency among males to ‘show off’ more,
because they’re brought up to be a lad more, to be a show off. When a woman shows
off it seems to be a bit more ‘Oh, look at her full of herself’ but when a man does it, he
seems to get away with it a little bit more (ibid.).
Her point that ‘showing off’ seems more acceptable for males due to socialisation relates to
Lise's experience in a male-dominated improvisation class. Arguably, the ability to improvise
and ‘show off’ in group music-making is linked with higher levels of self-confidence and as-
sertiveness, that are socialised more strongly in males than females.
As a vocalist, most of whom at LIPA are female, Lucy felt uncomfortable spending most of
her time with other female students, as aforementioned. Due to her feeling that her health issues
were misunderstood – ‘from my perspective there's a lot of things women don’t know about
each other’ (Lucy, op. cit.) – she sometimes felt alienated from other women and was more
comfortable working in mixed sex groups. Nonetheless, in a similar way to the other inter-
viewees, she noted differences between the working relationships of males and females: ‘there's
a slight more confidence and need to show off from men than women’ (ibid.). Bayton's ob-
servation (1998, p. 90) that female bands tend to work in a more democratic way than male
bands coheres with the experiences of some, but not all, of the female participants in my
research. It is important to take account of all kinds of music-making relationships and the
complexities of group dynamics in relation to gender, as gender inequality is detrimental to the
music-making relationships of women in diverse ways.
3.6 Performance and songwriting

Live performance involves a range of elements, including setting, instrumentation, clothing,
interaction, physical gestures and playing style (Leonard 2007, p. 90). Although my research so
far has not involved in-depth analysis of performance, the comments of two participants show
how gender can shape performance and playing style, as well as experiences and perceptions of
performance. Lise described her performance style as ‘holding back a bit, not like a very
masculine way of going “hello this is me”’ (Lise, op. cit.). Similarly, Georgia perceived her
performance style as relatively reticent and collaborative, and therefore feminine: ‘I find men
tend to put a lot more flourishes to it and show off a little bit more, whereas women tend to
play for the song more’ (Georgia, op. cit.). The perception that a more reticent style of per-
formance, as well as the idea that female band instrumentalists are more likely to ‘play for the
song’ rather than use the performance as an opportunity to ‘show off’, align with gender norms
discussed earlier. Furthermore, Georgia experienced gendered attitudes to her role as drummer
both before and after performance. She reported the following scenario:
30
Like you get at gigs when you’re setting the drum kit up – ‘Are you with the band?’,
‘Is one of the band members your boyfriend?’ And then after the gig ‘Oh, you played
well, I didn’t expect you to be as good’ – so they’re saying you’re excelling despite
your gender, which I don’t like (ibid.).
Georgia also experienced a lack of recognition of her playing: ‘they congratulate the men but
just say hi to me as if they feel awkward about it and don’t really know what to say’ (ibid.). The
combination of relatively few women musicians in live music scenes and the masculinisation of
drumming in popular music culture resulted in a range of negative responses to Georgia's
performances. As Smith argues:
in being different, female drummers could be seen to have set themselves up as

outsiders to mainstream culture, and established their own social group that challenges
traditional notions of masculine and feminine (2013, p. 140).
Songwriting is an important part of the music curriculum at LIPA. According to Green's re-
search (1997), composition is the musical practice perceived as most disruptive to patriarchal
femininity, with girls considered ‘by both pupils and teachers to lack the necessary abilities for
composition – a lack which constitutes their femininity’ (Dibben 2002, p. 122). Musical pa-
triarchy, Green argues, involves the collusion of females, who consent in ‘subtle and often
unnoticeable ways, through willingness to conform, through reluctance to deviate, through
embarrassment and, extremely, fear’ (1997, p. 57). In relation to songwriting, Lise sometimes
felt constrained in terms of subject matter and approach, as she believed ‘it's less likely that you’ll
be taken seriously if you’re a girl.... I’m really scared of discussing anything important’ (Lise, op.
cit.). Although unsure whether this was due to gender or general feelings of insecurity, she was
fearful of expressing herself too explicitly: ‘even if I write a song about love I just kind of write
it really subtle... I think it's scary so I don’t really go into detail about it’ (ibid.). She had stopped
performing one of her songs due to feelings of shame about its subject matter: ‘I don’t like
singing it that much because … it's about cheating, when you’re the person the person is
cheating with … and that's not nice’ (ibid.). She recognised the difficulty of achieving a balance
between writing songs that listeners can relate to, and avoiding writing ‘shallow songs’, as
listeners ‘want something to think about’ (ibid.).
Kruse argues that ‘most popular songs sung by women [deal] with issues of romantic love’,
and cites Kate Bush as a ‘pioneering figure’ who ‘opened up new lyrical possibilities for female
singers’ (1999, p. 88). While Lise struggled to be as fearless a songwriter as her role model Joni
Mitchell, who she felt is ‘really not scared of saying anything’ (Lise, op. cit.), Lucy used her
songwriting and performance to tackle difficult topics: ‘I’m being quite open about all of my
health issues’ (Lucy, op. cit.). Her songwriting provided a means for her to explore her ex-
perience – ‘It just made more and more sense to think I should be talking about this’ (ibid.) –
and to raise awareness about female bodies and sexuality: ‘I think it's mad that not everyone
knows about this and I think music is such a great platform to be able to express things’ (ibid.).
These examples show that for some female performers and songwriters, their gender, and how
they feel this is perceived, can constrain and limit their freedom of expression, whereas for
others, songwriting and performance provide opportunities to express difficult emotions and
experiences. It is interesting to note, however, that Lucy performed her songs using an alter
ego, which is discussed in the following section.
31
3.7 Persona and image

In the context of the music industry, the ‘distribution, presentation and sharing of music are
becoming more visual’ (Holt 2011, p. 52), the importance of artist branding ‘has intensified
over time’ (Lieb 2018, p. 15), and ‘online impression management and relationship building’
are crucial (Baym 2012, p. 288). Music students at LIPA are aware of the importance of de-
veloping a musician persona that is represented and constructed in promotional material and
performance. For female musicians, however, constructing and performing a persona and image
have specifically gendered challenges, as images of women in popular music have been ‘sites of
scrutiny for decades’ (Kruse 1999, p. 91). Because females are more sexualised and objectified
than males, ‘female performers must … use sex to position themselves, while men have sex and
sexuality available to choose as just one option from a range of other position strategies’ (Lieb
2018, p. 110). Therefore, female musicians need to consider more carefully both their ap-
pearance and their approach to performing sexuality. Genre plays a significant role in the extent
to which performers are sexualised, as both genre and sociocultural conventions impose con-
straints on the personae that musicians perform (Auslander 2009, pp. 306–307). All the female
participants in my research experienced challenges associated with the relationship between
their musician identity and their gender and sexuality, within the context of their genre and/or
instrument.
Lise, a folk violinist and vocalist, did not feel that females in this genre are ‘pressured into
looking a certain way’ (Lise, op. cit.). Instead of feeling compelled to present a sexualised image,
female folk musicians ‘are very like comfortable … and they have a relaxed sense of fashion’
(ibid.). Even so, in her artwork, Lise used imagery with stereotypically feminine associations
that she felt were appropriate for her genre: ‘the image I’ve chosen for myself now is flowers
and all that, girly … my pose and my lips, even the writing, are very like pretty … It's kind of
country, folky, natural’ (ibid.). Similarly, although she felt her everyday image was not ‘very
girly’, she emphasized her femininity in performance: ‘when I’m performing, I like to wear a
dress … because I’m meaning something... people expect things from me’ (ibid.).
Kamilla, who also performed in a folk-related genre, enjoyed ‘dressing up’ for performance
in ways that expressed the mythical content of her band's music (Kamilla, personal interview, 29
March 2017). She wanted to ‘look good’, and perform her femininity and sexuality, but
without revealing too much of her body. She felt this was a complicated and difficult balance,
and found compliments relating to her music rather than her appearance easier to accept
without feeling conflict. As an undergraduate, she had felt pressured into using images of herself
in promotional material but, after graduating, her band used nature imagery in their artwork to
make them feel more of ‘a unit’ (ibid.).
Lucy's musician persona was an alter ego, or ‘second artist persona’ (Hess 2005), created to
explore, confront and raise awareness of a health condition that presented her with challenging
gender and sexual identity issues, arguably because the adoption of an alter ego can solve the
issue of performing material that poses a potential threat to the integrity of the performer's
identity (ibid.). In relation to image, Lucy presented an unconventional representation of
femininity, eschewing make-up and dressing in a quirky style rather than conforming to
feminine norms. This approach to self-presentation evolved from her upbringing in a town
where she felt she was ‘nothing like any of the girls there’ (Lucy, op. cit.). As Kearney argues,
however, ‘by connecting female performance with heterosexual feminine gender display, the
role of vocalist allows the status quo to be maintained’ (2017, p. 120).
In contrast, a female drummer confronts gender expectations whether her image conforms
to feminine norms or not: by adopting masculine dress, she aligns with the gendering of the
32
instrument but challenges expectations of female presentation; alternatively, dressing in a

conventionally feminine way challenges gender norms even more by reinforcing her female
identity in the context of a masculine role (Smith 2013, p. 139). Georgia recognised the dif-
ficulty of reconciling feminine gender and sexuality with musical expertise in a strongly mas-
culine context. Referring to comments on a drummers’ forum discussing the presumed lack of
musical ability of a female drummer wearing revealing clothing, she pointed out the perception
that, ‘if women show off their sexuality … it's to make up for something else. You can’t ever be
the two together’ (Georgia, op. cit.). In relation to her own image as a drummer, Georgia's
priority was to avoid distracting audiences from her playing with her appearance. Although she
did not feel pressured to dress sexily and was aware of her relatively obscured position ‘at the
back’, she sometimes felt overly aware of her appearance and movements: ‘It's a stupid thing but
I’m a bit self-conscious of it.… I don’t want people to look at that and not my drumming’
(ibid.). Female artists need to navigate a range of challenges in relation to image and persona
construction, due to gender stereotyping and sexualisation. While ‘the available range of
powerful images of women in popular music’ (Kruse 1999, p. 92) continues to broaden,
prevailing gender norms and expectations give females more to consider when presenting
themselves as musicians.
3.8 Conclusion
This chapter has discussed a range of experiences, practices and challenges relating to gender
and sexuality for young female musicians in popular music higher education and beyond. It has
argued that gender inequalities in relation to musical instruments, technologies and roles have a
range of negative impacts on their experiences, which can also affect group dynamics in music-
making relationships. In addition, gender norms and perceptions can affect musical performance
and constrain creativity; and gender stereotyping and sexualisation present a range of challenges
in relation to image and persona construction. As Minors et al. (2017, p. 465) point out, music
students have ‘already been exposed to messages about their gender from their parents,
schooling and wider society’, and they are aspiring to join an industry that ‘endorses and
perpetuates sexism’ (Hebert et al. 2017, p. 458). Addressing issues relating to gender and
sexuality in popular music higher education, therefore, is as challenging as it is crucial. Building
on relationships between popular music higher education and the music industry, through
organisations such as UK Music's Music Academic Partnership (MAP),4 further research can
illuminate the experiences of young musicians of a wider range of identities, and how issues can
be addressed in popular music higher education. Given the relationship between vocational
popular music higher education and the music industry, this would be a positive step towards
greater equality in both.
Notes
1 UK Music is an industry-funded body that represents the interests of the British music industry (UK
Music 2019a).
2 Two other publications arising from this research include data from participants of a wider range of
gender identities (Davies 2019a; 2019b).
3 Participants are anonymised at their own request.
4 MAP is a collaboration between educational institutions and the membership of UK Music (UK Music
2019b).
33
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35
4
COMPOSER, MOTHER
Emily Doolittle
When I started composing as an 18-year-old in 1990, I knew of few women composers. Those
I did know of either had their careers curtailed when they had kids (Clara Schumann, Alma
Mahler, Ruth Crawford Seeger), or they did not have kids (Pauline Oliveros, Meredith Monk,
and the few women composers I knew personally). I thought I might want to have kids one day
and found it scary entering into a field in which I knew no role models. But my need to
compose was immediate, and any possible kids were a long way off, so I quelled my concerns
and entered fully into my formation and career as a composer. I encountered occasional sexism
as a student and young composer – I do not think there is a woman composer who has not –
but mostly I received great support and encouragement. My way of participating in the new
music world was no different from that of my male contemporaries. I studied, I went to music
festivals, I lived abroad, I went to artist residencies, and most of all, I went to lots of concerts,
met people and talked about music late into the night, hatching plans for new musical projects
and adventures.2
It is 2019, and I am now a mother myself (with kids born in 2012 and 2015), and though my
commitment to composing is as strong as ever, I now understand first-hand some of the ways
that composers who are mothers intentionally and unintentionally get written out of new
music. In this chapter, I discuss some of the difficulties that composers who are mothers may
encounter, drawing on my own experiences and observations as well as those that have been
related to me by friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Stories that do not come from my own
experience have been retold with permission, with names and details omitted to avoid any
possible negative repercussions for those involved. Though focusing on barriers to composers
who are mothers may seem like a negative enterprise, the ultimate result is positive as it is only
by recognising these barriers that we can figure out how to overcome them. I conclude this
chapter by suggesting a number of measures we can take to improve the environment for
composers who are mothers. As it turns out, many of these measures may be beneficial for
composers coming from a variety of non-traditional circumstances, and indeed for the new
music community as a whole. With the right support, a major life transition, such as becoming a
mother, can become an artistically transformative experience, resulting in new kinds of crea-
tion, communication and community.
Though not all women become mothers, all women may find themselves affected by anti-
mother bias. It is still shockingly common to hear of women composers being passed over for
36 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-4
Composer, mother
opportunities or positions because it is assumed that they will get married, have kids and give up
composing, or of mentors refusing to write letters of recommendation for female students until
they know their reproductive plans. Younger women composers who do not have children
may find themselves the recipients of unsolicited advice to stay away from motherhood if they
want to be taken seriously as a composer: before having kids, I received such advice myself on
more than one occasion. Such advice may be well meaning – perhaps from an older mentor
wanting to help safeguard the younger composer’s career – but it has not occurred to the
advice-giver that it might be better to work to change the system which makes it hard for
composers who become mothers, rather than to try to limit the kinds of lives women com-
posers may envision for themselves. I am aware of women who as a result of such advice have
steered away from composition because they knew they wanted a family: some made it back to
composition eventually, while others headed down different career paths. I have also met
women, particularly from older generations, who wanted to have children but chose not to
because they were led to believe that having a family and a career would be impossible – which
indeed it might have been in certain times and places.
The difficulties associated with being a composer and a mother are, of course, compounded
once children actually come into the picture. Finding enough time to compose while earning
enough to pay for childcare – in such an underpaid field as composition – is impossible for many,
and grants seldom come with funding for childcare: I recently applied for a grant in which the
maximum allowable monthly subsistence rate was 30% less than we pay our babysitter per month.
Even if childcare is an allowable expense, some may hesitate to ask for it, worried that mentioning
children in an application may cause their work to be taken less seriously, or that their project may
be seen as too expensive because of the money requested for childcare. I have seen open-ended
grants for composers that suggest that the funding can be used for making a recording, com-
mission fees or childcare expenses. It is huge progress that childcare expenses are included at all,
and it is fantastic that more funding bodies are becoming aware of this need, but I do wonder
what applicants are supposed to do if they need to pay for childcare so they can, say, make a
recording. Presumably they could ask for both childcare expenses and recording costs, but as the
upper limit for the grant remains the same no matter what the breakdown of the budget,
composers who ask for childcare expenses are in effect limited to applying for funding for projects
which are smaller in scope than those who do not need to pay for childcare.3
Open discussion of parenting-related needs can lead to loss of opportunities. Shortly after my
first child was born, I was asked to serve on a prestigious and well-paying grant panel. When I
said, ‘yes, I just need to find a babysitter’, in the city where the panel was taking place, they said,
‘oh, we’ll ask someone else’. At the time, I had enough energy then to compose, take care of
my children and sit on the panel, but I did not have enough time and energy to take up a battle
against sexism on top of everything else, so I let it slide. Attending evening concerts – so
important both for musical nourishment and for networking – is difficult, and new music
concerts are even more likely than others to start late at night: for a performer’s perspective on
this, see McSweeney (2014). Residencies are often offered in increments of one month, a
prohibitively long period of time for most mothers of young children. Of course, parents of all
genders are affected by lack of time and the responsibilities of caregiving, but mothers are more
likely to be dealing with health challenges related to pregnancy or childbirth, more likely to
need to remain in physical proximity to their child because of breastfeeding, more likely to be
the primary caregiver and more likely to feel cultural pressure, both internalised and external, to
not spend time away from their kids.4
A few years away from concerts and residencies might not be such a problem if the new
music world were not so focused on ‘young composers’ (Doerrfeld 2013). Although young
37
Emily Doolittle
composer support schemes were initially developed to allow new voices to be heard, they have
now become the norm, making it harder for older composers who are not already well-
established to find a way in. The focus on young composers comes with an attendant as-
sumption that if someone has not ‘made it’ by 35, they never will (despite the existence of such
well-regarded late-blooming composers as Rameau, Scarlatti, Janáček and Scelsi). Women who
have kids in their late 20s or early 30s may miss out on the key years for participating in young
composer programmes, only to find that just as the kids are old enough for them to participate
more fully, they are excluded on the basis of age.5 Yet, having children older does not ne-
cessarily help either. The late 30s and early 40s are a notoriously difficult time for all composers:
‘young composer’ support has dried up, while one is not yet considered an ‘established com-
poser’ (Gervais 2016). Without kids, navigating this period can be difficult and requires a
renewed focus on developing ones career; with kids, the obstacles may seem insurmountable.
Even when there are not explicit age limits, the conditions of grants, and the calls for scores
and awards, often make it hard to return to active composition after a period of slowed pro-
ductivity. Shortly after my second child was born, I found myself unable to apply for a grant
because it required a piece relevant to my project proposal that I had written in the previous
two years. In the previous two years, I had finished a 45-minute chamber opera, a violin
concerto, two chamber pieces, a scientific paper, a book chapter, taught both privately and at a
college, started a new research position, and had a baby (in addition to parenting a pre-
schooler), so I had not been lazy – but I did not have a choral piece, which would have been
necessary for me to apply for the project I wanted to do.6 I have started asking to have an extra
year or two added to the date limit for my submission material if the time limit specified in the
grant encompasses one or both years after I had kids. Sometimes grants will allow this, either
informally or by making official changes to the rules, but I have also recently heard of a grant
specifically intended to encourage women composers that refused to budge on a two-year time
limit. There’s no inherent reason that composers who are the most continuously prolific should
be considered the most worthy. We recognise the importance of Varèse, Webern and
Ustvolskaya, whose output was small, and of Crawford Seeger, Knussen and Donatoni, who
had years when they did not compose. Yet composers who are steadily productive are most
likely to receive grants and support. A year or two without receiving grants can quickly
compound to make it difficult for a composer to get back into the funding circuit at all, as grants
may be awarded partially on a track record of having previously received grants.
On top of these structural problems, there’s the general tendency to dismiss moms as cul-
turally irrelevant. ‘Mom jeans’ are the quintessential anti-fashion, and the New York Times
recently told us we should be worrying about ‘mom hair’ too (Shapiro 2016). ‘Soccer moms’
represent suburban blandness. ‘Explain it so your mom would understand’ suggests moms are
slow-witted. ‘Mom-approved’ is safe, dull and smug. ‘Even your mom would like it’ describes
inoffensive and insipid art. People say these things humorously, even – perhaps especially –
moms themselves, but hearing this language over and over again predisposes us to think that
cultural contributions by artists who are mothers are embarrassing or irrelevant. Or worse than
irrelevant: the underlying message is that ‘mom’ stands in direct opposition to art that is incisive,
interesting and meaningful.
At the time of writing this, my kids are three and six and I feel fully back in my career as a
composer and researcher. But I recognise I have been very lucky. I have a supportive family,
and supportive and flexible employers (in both my past and current positions). I have many
wonderful, long-term collaborators, both with and without children, who are aware of the
difficulties that becoming a mother may pose for a composer and are happy to make any
necessary accommodations to allow me (and other composer-mothers) to continue to
38
Composer, mother
participate actively in the creation of new music. And we have savings which we are slowly
using up in paying for childcare. But a person should not have to be lucky to survive as both a
mother and an artist. If we are not working together to support all composers who are mothers,
many wonderful voices risk becoming lost.
The good news is that there are many steps we can all take so that motherhood does not
become a barrier to active participation in the new music world. In visual arts, writing and
theatre, there are already some great initiatives to be more inclusive of mothers (and of parents
generally), but in composition we are further behind, perhaps because women are already such
a minority and our position can feel so precarious.7 Here, I propose a number of measures that
can be taken in order to be more inclusive. Some are easy to incorporate, others more complex.
Not all are practical for every situation, but it is not necessary that everything be done in the
same way, or even that every event or opportunity be mother-friendly. We simply need a
variety of ways to engage with new music that reflects the diversity of people interested in
creating, performing and listening to new music.
If you present concerts, consider:

• Having some daytime new music concerts – not just greatest-hits programming, but with
the same programmes as evening concerts
• Performing programmes in both a standard concert context and in a more noise- and
wiggle-friendly context
• Making the dress rehearsal like a performance, and open to families
• Livestreaming concerts
• Performing in non-traditional venues (such as outdoors or in places that allow for
movement) which may be more accessible to families
• Having concerts in explicitly family friendly locations, with conveniences such as change
tables in the washrooms, ‘breastfeeding welcome’ signs, and an area where someone could
entertain children outside of the concert space
• Providing childcare – or if this is impractical, providing discounts on the ticket price for
those who have to pay for childcare to attend
• Letting people know which concerts they could bring a baby to and stand at the back and
leave if the baby starts to fuss, vs. which concerts would be disrupted if someone stepped
out. (Perhaps there could be a child-friendly rating system?)
• Having intermissions long enough to feed a baby or pump milk
• Letting the audience know when the intermission will be in case someone needs to arrange
to have a baby brought to them for feeding
• Including the timing of pieces in the programme so audience members can choose to come
in or leave for one piece
• Having post-concert dinners and receptions in baby-friendly locations (e.g. in pubs or
restaurants that allow children.)
• Reserving seats in the back, the balcony or boxes for people who may need to step in
and out
If you organise residencies, consider:

• Allowing people to attend residencies for shorter periods of time – perhaps in one week
increments, or even for just a few days at a time
• Allowing the possibility of coming back for several, short residency periods rather than one
long one
39
Emily Doolittle
• Allowing families to stay at residencies

• Providing childcare. This could be provided on-site or perhaps the residency could team
up with nearby day care centres or summer camps
• Providing stipends for babysitters, either at the residency, or to help with the costs of
leaving children at home with other family members or friends
• Reserving some spots specifically for people who are using the residency to refocus on
their work after some time away
If you run a funding organisation or hold a call for scores, consider:

• Giving people the opportunity to account for gaps in their resume
• Not seeing gaps in a resume as inherently negative
• Eliminating or lengthening time limits for the composition dates of pieces, or giving the
applicant the opportunity to explain if they do not have a relevant piece that has been
composed recently enough
• Eliminating age restrictions. (Experience restrictions, such as limiting a grant, award or
performance to someone who is still studying, or hasn’t had any performances by major
ensembles, can be a more equitable way of allowing new voices to be heard.)
• Searching for under-heard voices, including, but not limited to, young voices
• Giving grants specifically to people who are returning to composing after a gap. (Re-
emerging composer awards?)
• Including stipends to pay for childcare as part of grant funding. (Ideally, these would be in
addition to artistic expenses and provided automatically to those who need it after the grant
has been awarded.)
• Explicitly recognising the need for support after gaps rather than consciously or un-
consciously writing off composers who have taken time away
• Accepting high-quality computer-generated sound files, since returning composers may
not have access to good performances
If you commission composers, consider:

• Commissioning interesting composers who may be somewhat hidden from view (and not
just those who are able to maintain high public visibility.)
• Giving a long enough timescale for commissions that composers who are juggling com-
posing with caregiving responsibilities can still fit the piece into their schedule
All of us in the new music community, consider:

• Asking parents of all genders about their work AND about their children. (Do not just ask
men about their work and just ask women about their children. This still happens way too
often!)
• Continuing to invite your parent friends to do things – to attend concerts, to perform, to
write pieces. Let them tell you if now is not the right time. They will appreciate being
asked! And do not give up after a year or two. It can take many years before parents are
really able to participate fully in some aspects of musical life
• Recognising that the needs of all parents and families may be different. Ask individuals
what they may need to allow them to participate
• Performing, composing and/or commissioning pieces that can accommodate audiences
which include families (but that are not exclusively ‘children’s’ music.)
40
Composer, mother
• Asking about (and creating) provisions for children and families, whether or not you are a
mother (or even a parent). Especially in fields which are still male-dominated, like com-
position, progress may be made most rapidly if the people with the most social power are
actively advocating for change in the direction of family friendliness
• Lobbying for increased support for parents, including paid maternity leave and subsidised
high-quality childcare
• Lobbying for fair pay for artists
Even if these changes would only help composers who are mothers, that would be reason
enough to make them. But, in fact, they will help many composers participate more actively in
the new music world: fathers and non-binary parents; caregivers of all sorts; people dealing with
illness; disabled people; composers who have taken time out for any reason and composers with
any sort of non-traditional career trajectory. Even composers with a more traditional trajectory
may appreciate having more options for how they can participate in new music, without feeling
like if they take some time off, or try something differently, they will lose their career. Some of
these ideas may even help the music itself, as we come up with new solutions and find ways
to facilitate the expression of new kinds of voices and ideas. More than any specific structural
change we can make, however, I would suggest that the most important thing we can do is
move away from seeing motherhood as something inherently ‘negative for’ or ‘in competition
with’ the creation of music. The difficulties are obvious: increased time pressure; lack of sleep;
fragmented concentration; added expenses and the need to be always on call. But parenthood
also offers an amazing chance for a change of perspective, the development of new skills and a
refocusing on what is more important (Doolittle 2019).
I end with some questions about how we might reconceptualise motherhood as the powerful,
transformative experience that it is, something that may complicate our relationship with compo-
sition, but in enriching as well as challenging ways. Can the selflessness developed during late nights
with sleepless babies help us put self aside as we follow our music in unexpected directions? Might
learning to trust in the process even when the immediate results are unclear – as we do when gently
modelling behaviour we want, but do not yet see, in our toddlers – help us trust the process in
writing music at the boundaries of what we can imagine? Do the communication skills learned in
speaking gently, patiently and lovingly with our kids (even when we are feeling the exact opposite)
help in difficult rehearsal situations? Can time away be seen as offering a valuable change of per-
spective, rather than only as a distraction or obstacle to composition? Can increased demands on our
time encourage us to prioritise, and make room for the projects that are most important to us? If we
decide to create child-friendly art, could the limitations imposed by trying to make music that is
impervious to interruptions, or that takes place in flexible, child-friendly venues, open our minds to
new kinds of musical ideas? Might struggling to maintain the place of music in our lives lead us to
value it even more? Of course, I do not mean to suggest that one needs to be a mother (or parent) to
experience growth and development as a composer. But I do suggest that there are as many ways of
being a composer as there are people committed to the world of new music. Let us value the many,
varied paths people follow, and instead of intentionally or unintentionally keeping people out, think
of how we can make room for all who want to contribute.8
Notes
1 An earlier version of this chapter appeared in NewMusicBox, the web magazine of New Music USA
(Doolittle 2017).
41
Emily Doolittle
2 My studying days were primarily in the 1990s and early 2000s, when university costs were lower,
scholarships were more plentiful, music festivals were more open to work-study trades and it was easier
to get into concerts for free. I recognise that it is much more difficult now for many to access these
various forms of education.
3 These problems related to asking for funding to pay for childcare can easily be solved by making
childcare a separate expense that is awarded automatically (according to need) after the grant is re-
ceived, as some grants already do with disability-related expenses.
4 Of course, not all birth-giving parents identify as women or mothers, not all mothers have given birth,
not all mothers breastfeed and not all primary caregivers are mothers or women. But I do think there is
a specific way that the struggles of being a female composer in a still male-dominated field combine
with the cultural pressures on, and expectations of, mothers to interact with the challenges of being a
parent and artist. I write from my own experience but recognise that there are many other ways that
being a composer and becoming a parent may interact.
5 Of course, mothers are not the only composers negatively affected by age limits. A removal of age
limits would help anyone with a less traditional trajectory.
6 At around the same time, I received three grant rejections in a row from the same funding body, two
with the comment that the pieces I had composed in the previous two years were not relevant
enough to the project I was applying for, and, incredibly, one with the comment that the pieces I
had written in the previous two years were too closely related to the project I was applying for! Of
course, these kinds of arbitrary hoops are discouraging for any composer (and generally mean that
there is not enough funding, but the panel had to come up with some kind of reason), but they may
be especially discouraging for those whose productivity has been temporarily slowed by parenting
or other extra-musical life events.
7 Parents in the Performing Arts (http://www.pipacampaign.com) and The Sustainable Arts Foundation
(https://www.sustainableartsfoundation.org) are two such initiatives.
8 Thank you to all the composer-mothers who I have discussed these ideas with over the years, and
especially to Kala Pierson and Dalit Warshaw, whose input was formative in the writing of this chapter.
References
Doerrfeld, B., 2013. Ageism in composer opportunities. NewMusicBox, 5 June: https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/
ageism-in-composer-opportunities/
Doolittle, E., 2017. Composing and motherhood. NewMusicBox, 26 April: https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/
composing-and-motherhood/
Doolittle, E., 2019. How artists can benefit from having children. Scotsman, 9 August: https://
www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/edinburgh-festivals/how-artists-can-benefit-having-children-
emily-doolittle-1411204
Gervais, A., 2016. Some reflections on transitioning out of being a young composer. NewMusicBox, 4 September:
https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/some-reflections-on-transitioning-out-of-being-a-young-composer/
McSweeney, E., 2014. Is contemporary music ready for a baby boom. NewMusicBox, 12 March: https://
nmbx.newmusicusa.org/is-contemporary-music-ready-for-a-baby-boom/
Shapiro, B., 2016. Have ‘Mom Hair’? Here’s how to fix it. New York Times, 21 June: https://
www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/fashion/mom-hair-tips.html
42
5
‘THE ALGERIAN WOMAN IS
VERY STRONG’: MUSIC,
IDENTITY AND GENDER IN
ALGERIAN LONDON
Stephen Wilford
5.1 Gender and Algerian musics

Contemporary London is home to a relatively small but vibrant Algerian diaspora community
who live and work throughout the city and its surrounding areas.1 Many members of this
community arrived in the UK to study or work during the 1990s and 2000s, and while the
city’s Algerian population is predominantly male, there are a significant number of women
actively involved in the local Algerian music scene (Department for Communities and Local
Government Report 2009).2 In this chapter, I explore the musicking practices of these women,
seeking to understand how their musical lives are shaped by both a sense of shared Algerian
cultural identity and their daily activities within the city (Small 1998). Through case studies
drawn from my ethnographic fieldwork with the local Algerian community, I focus upon three
individuals whose musical activities attest to the energy and agency of Algerian women in the
city while revealing some of the challenges that they face.
Given the geographic size of Algeria, it is unsurprising to find that the country is home to a large
range of musical traditions, many of which have remained circumscribed by gender boundaries in
terms of performance and listening.3 Chaabi, a popular urban music that emerged from Algiers in the
early twentieth century, for example, remains discernibly ‘male’ in terms of both musicians and much
of its audience. Raï, perhaps the most internationally renowned Algerian musical style, is performed
predominantly by men today, although it began life in the city of Wahran (Oran) with female singers
performing in bars and nightclubs. The music’s salacious roots help to explain why it is still deemed
‘unsuitable’ for ‘respectable’ female performers by large sections of patriarchal Algerian society.4
Women have also played a significant role in the musics of other areas of the country, such as among
the Kel-Ahaggar society of the south-eastern Algerian Sahara and the northern Amazigh region of
Kabylia, where female musicianship was central to maintaining poetic, folk traditions and challenging
French colonial rule (Brandes 1990; Yelles 2003; Mahfoufi 2006; Slyomovics 2014). However, it is
within the Arab-Andalusi traditions found across northern Algeria that women have played the most
prominent role in both historical and contemporary contexts. Often associated with the legacy of
trans-Mediterranean migration after the Reconquista5 and the imagined history of inter-religious
tolerance in the shape of convivencia, Andalusi music is commonly understood as the preserve of the
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-5 43
Stephen Wilford
educated middle-classes, and, as such, is deemed ‘appropriate’ for women to perform.6 Female
musicians, such as Reinette L’Oranaise, became respected figures in postcolonial Algeria, while the
likes of Beihdja Rahal and Nassima Chaabane continue these traditions today.7 Nevertheless, even
within Andalusi circles, women have faced restrictions on the instruments and roles that they can
perform. Jonathan Glasser notes that women have often been prevented from taking on important
roles within ‘associations’ and have remained at the periphery of Andalusi musical culture, writing
that ‘although there are female musical authorities and aficionados in the Andalusi milieu … women
are clearly the marked category’ (Glasser 2016, p. 58).8 While Algerian female musicians in London
perform a range of musical traditions and styles, Andalusi plays a prominent role and features ex-
tensively in the following discussion.
It is not only playing or listening to particular musics that are constrained by gender
boundaries, but also the spaces in which these musics are encountered. One of the most dy-
namic spaces for musical production in Algeria is the local café, an ostensibly public space that
remains principally demarcated as male and, therefore, inaccessible to women. The Algerian
café has traditionally been a place of shared male musicking, and it was in such establishments
that Chaabi emerged in the heart of traditional Algiers. Rebecca Scales, discussing the emer-
gence of radio broadcasting in colonial Algeria, describes the café maures (Arab cafés) as ‘a
traditional site of Muslim male sociability and a gathering place for transient laborers’ (2010,
p. 395), which came under increasing surveillance as the French authorities recognised that this
was ‘where Algerian men gathered in groups to listen to the radio and where foreign propa-
ganda might reach a potentially unlimited number of listeners’ (ibid.). James McDougall
adds that:
In both urban and rural areas, cafes were vital and multifunctional spaces of Algerian
male sociability, both preserving social ties and exclusions, and … incubating a new
‘civil society’ where work, music, news, football and politics were all organised and
expressed (2017, p. 108).
Such descriptions accord with many of the small Algerian cafés that are spread across con-
temporary London, in which I undertook fieldwork over a four-year period (2011–15). These
cafés are spaces in which music, sport and politics feature heavily, and their patrons remain
almost exclusively male. A small café in Shepherd’s Bush, west London, was particularly popular
among the city’s network of amateur musicians, and while many of these musicians performed
alongside women in other contexts (at festivals or events), the café was not deemed an ap-
propriate place for female members of the local community. While recognising the cultural
conventions of sections of the local community, I felt a sense of personal discomfort at the
apparent exclusion of women from the spaces in which I was conducting research, and was,
therefore, pleased to discover a number of women at the heart of the city’s local Algerian music
scene. The rest of this chapter aims to elucidate and critically examine their stories, opinions and
experiences, and while I wholeheartedly acknowledge my own privileged position as a white
European man, I hope that I can offer a fair and honest representation of these subaltern women
(Spivak 1994).
5.2 Rachida
Rachida is a singer, musician and event organiser who moved to Britain in 1999 to study at
university and currently lives in north London. She works in finance and is an active performer
44
Music, identity, and gender in Algerian London
on the local Algerian music scene, while simultaneously coordinating events through
Culturama, her independent not-for-profit cultural organisation.9 She is well-known
throughout the local community and is a keen promoter of initiatives for women as well as
an active political campaigner. In the summer of 2013, she organised her first event under the
banner of Culturama, bringing the popular singer Hamidou to London to perform at a
nightclub in east London. Hamidou is famous as a wedding singer and appears regularly on
national television in Algeria but has little profile outside of Maghrebi society. It was un-
surprising, therefore, that the audience for his concert was almost exclusively Algerian, and
Rachida promoted the event among local diaspora networks. His audience represented a broad
demographic from the local community and the performance proved successful, drawing a large
enthusiastic crowd. However, Rachida recalls the issues that she encountered in her interactions
with some of the male audience members, stating that:
They fear a strong woman, Algerians. They wouldn’t even come near you. It’s very
interesting, a lot of people wouldn’t even approach me on the day of the gig because
they think ‘she’s going to be like this businesswoman’. If I was a man, they would
approach (Rachida, personal interview, 26 July 2013).
It is striking that Rachida perceived these individuals’ unwillingness to speak to her as a result of
the power dynamics at play when they positioned her as a ‘businesswoman’. In other words, she
was not deemed a helpless woman unworthy of attention, but rather as someone in a position of
power whose status in this context fed into masculine fears of a formidable or intimidating female
figure. There is, of course, nothing particularly unique in this male ‘fear of the feminine’ power
and agency (Kierski and Blazina 2009). However, we might suggest that the dynamics involved in
this encounter result from both the legacy of Algerian patriarchy and a sense of power loss among
a group of young men, who often live in precarious socio-economic conditions within London
and felt discomfort at engaging with a highly educated and influential Algerian woman.
Furthermore, it is notable that Rachida’s relationship with these men in the context of a musical
performance served to invert tropes of North African and Muslim female subservience and
powerlessness that commonly circulate within the ‘Western’ public sphere.
Rachida is certainly a strong character who is unafraid of voicing her opinions and has been
an advocate of gender equality. In March 2014, she organised an event to celebrate
International Women’s Day, comprising talks, film screenings and a number of musical per-
formances. She connects her own views on female empowerment and agency with her national
identity, claiming that Algerian women are often tenacious and independent:
I think the Algerian woman is very strong, she really imposes herself. Moroccan
women are not the same, and Tunisian women are not the same. Although they have
Andalusi singers, of course, but the Moroccan woman is known to be more docile,
more caring, more the mothering type (Rachida, op. cit.).
Here, Rachida juxtaposes Algerian female agency with that of women from other Maghrebi
nations, reinforcing the type of Algerian-Moroccan rivalry that frequently plays out at both the
governmental and personal levels. In Rachida’s view, the strength of Algerian women and the
opportunities that they are afforded are reflected in the large number of active female musicians,
and she adds that: ‘There are a lot of women musicians in Algeria. More so than anywhere else
in the Arab world. Algeria is one of the only countries where they have a massive number of
female musicians’ (ibid.).
45
Stephen Wilford
Rachida’s endorsement of Algerian women might be read as characteristic of the heightened

sense of nationalistic pride often evident among diaspora communities, typifying the desire to
support and promote one’s culture in a context in which social marginalisation occurs.
However, it is also necessary to acknowledge the role that nationalism has played in Algerian
society since independence from French colonial rule in 1962. The combination of the violent
war of independence against the French and the fitna (struggle) of civil conflict in 1990s Algeria
produced a government that has promoted Arabization and a sense of fiercely mono-cultural
nationalism. While Rachida, and many of those that I have worked with, have been critical of
this political nationalism, there is little doubt that it continues to shape much socio-political
discourse, both in Algeria and throughout the diaspora. Ranjana Khanna, in her study of
Algerian women, writes that ‘national cohesion is simultaneously sustained and broken down
through conceiving of a shared history’, adding that this ‘involves psychical investment in the
idea of ethical responsibility to the group’ (Khanna 2008, p. xiv). Therefore, while Rachida
describes the challenges she faces as an Algerian woman, she is also protective of Algerians and
Algerian culture, and wary of the recurrent stereotyping of women from North African and
Muslim communities as disempowered. Describing the way in which such narratives often play
out in the UK, she adds that ‘although a lot of people say that Algerian men don’t respect
women, that’s not true, or it’s not necessarily true’ (Rachida, op. cit.).
The status of Algerian female musicians is clearly complex, and while Rachida speaks of
empowerment and agency, she is also explicit about some of the challenges that she has faced.
As a member of the Al Andalus Caravan, the only Algerian Andalusi association based in the
city, she conducted an interview in July 2013 with El Watan, a leading Algerian newspaper
(Bsikri 2013). In the article, she spoke of the efforts that she and others were making to promote
Algerian culture in the UK through Andalusi music. It was widely available to readers in Algeria
and among diaspora communities, and this yielded certain pressures for Rachida. She re-
calls that:
My article came out in the newspaper. I lived quite a lot in Algeria … in conservative
places, where people are going to read the article. And I was thinking ‘what is my dad
going to think?’ But I wasn’t worried because it’s Andalusi. You are sitting down,
wearing a kaftan, which is traditional, and holding an instrument. It’s not Raï. You’re
not standing there with make-up and big nails and singing Raï or Variété. So, because
the music is classical, therefore it’s prestigious. Not everybody has access to it … My
dad would never have been happy for me to go on stage if it wasn’t Andalusi. If I said I
wanted to sing Raï, of course not. It’s impossible. We weren’t even allowed to listen
to it at home (Rachida, op. cit.).
The acceptance of women performing Andalusi stands in stark contrast to the almost exclusively
male Chaabi that is performed in small cafes throughout London. Rachida is clear that ‘Chaabi
music is not for women, it’s for men’, and adds that:
There are no female Chaabi singers. Some of them will sing a Chaabi song, but not on
stage. It’s just not for women. Because Chaabi is predominantly played in cafés, it’s a
male thing. I could sing it, but it would be very strange. There is one Andalusi artist,
her name is Nassima Chaâbane, she is the first female singer or musician to play the
mandol. The mandol is very much a male, Chaabi instrument. She broke the taboo and
I love it (ibid.).
46
Thus, while Rachida is keen to challenge conventions and is pleased to see a woman playing an
instrument traditionally used in Chaabi, she is also conscious of the pressure that she feels to
abide by Algerian cultural customs around music and gender.
5.3 Yasmine
The experiences of Yasmine, who was born in Algiers and studied in London before working
for a communications company, are somewhat similar to those of Rachida. Yasmine is also a
member of the Al Andalus Caravan, who were founded in 2011 by a conservatoire-trained
male musician. It is only since moving to London that Yasmine, who sings and plays ‘ud, began
learning and performing Andalusi. She explains that the Caravan offered a rare opportunity for
social interaction with other Algerians, particularly women:
I think that in certain areas people still meet in cafes and the cafes that are Algerian are
only male. It’s not a rule, but that’s what tends to happen. And so, for women, it’s not
as easy I think to meet with the community. So, it has to be through a channel like
music (Yasmine, personal interview, 1 March 2013).
Although she only began to perform relatively recently, Yasmine is aware of Andalusi’s position
within Algerian society and the role that women play in this tradition. She remembers being
encouraged to play and listen to Andalusi when she was growing up in Algeria:
My mother wanted to get me in to music classes with my sister, because we both

showed a clear interest in music. So, she thought it would be nice to embark on it and
learn the music. But we thought that was boring. You have to spend two years
learning the theory of music, and then learning the music, so it wasn’t very attractive
to us at the time. We didn’t follow up on that, which I regretted later on, but that’s
how it was. And then the Caravan came and rescued my dream (ibid.).
The Caravan has a significant female contingent and women often outnumber men at their
weekly rehearsals. Members of the group travel from across the city and surrounding areas in
order to attend rehearsals at a small church hall in Pimlico each Sunday afternoon. Yasmine has
noticed that when new members join the Caravan, it is often the women who persist with the
music longer than their male counterparts, reflecting that:
It just seems that women are more serious in general than men. And they stick more
to what they want to do than men. Maybe some people come with the impression
that it’s just going to be a chill out? Or maybe some people come to meet people, I
don’t know? But in any case, the new members are all female at the moment, and we
don’t know why (ibid.).
All of the Caravan’s members are Algerian, born either in North Africa or France, and they
perform s’ana, a school of Andalusi directly associated with the capital city of Algiers. However,
while Yasmine notes the role of the group in bringing the local community together, she is
reluctant to identify the Caravan as exclusively Algerian, arguing that:
[The ensemble] definitely gather the community from around London, but not all of
them. And we are not claiming to be an Algerian association…. We are following a
47
Stephen Wilford
specific school, but that doesn’t mean that the music we are playing is Algerian. And
the people who play it are not necessarily Algerian. It just happened that most of the
people are Algerian (ibid.).
It is interesting to note the contrast here with Rachida’s discussion of Algerian women.
Whereas Rachida relied upon notions of Algerian cultural unity to frame notions of power and
agency, Yasmine is keen to distance the Caravan from ideas of collective identity formed
around national belonging, even when this might reflect the realities of her own musical group.
On the one hand, this perhaps demonstrates the Caravan’s desire to reach a broader non-
Algerian public with their music, while on the other, it speaks to attempts to overcome some of
the restrictions placed upon Algerian female musicians. Unlike the city’s Algerian cafés, the
Caravan’s rehearsal room is a space in which male and female musicians play alongside one
another. Nevertheless, Yasmine, Rachida and the other female musicians of the Caravan all sing
and play stringed instruments, and members of the association (both male and female) stated that
it would be considered anomalous to see a female percussionist within an Andalusi ensemble.
5.4 Tia
While both Rachida and Yasmine are cognisant of, and to an extent adhere to, conventional
gender boundaries, others are less willing to comply with these expectations. Tia was born in
north-eastern France to Algerian parents and currently lives in London, and her experiences are,
therefore, quite different to those Algerians in the UK who were born in North Africa. She
completed a degree in music business and acts as an event promoter and agent for Algerian
musicians in the city. Like Yasmine, she initially found it difficult to meet other Algerian
women or to integrate into the local community. As someone born in France, she found herself
in the minority among Algerians in the UK, and was highly conscious of feeling marginalised
and othered, explaining that:
I don’t speak darija, I don’t practise Islam, I’m very unconventional.10 Bi-racial kids,
was never married. I am every Algerian parent’s nightmare! So, people don’t see me as
Algerian. For me Algerian is my identity. I don’t have to prove it by practising a
religion or speaking a language (Tia, personal interview, 16 May 2013).
While she remains mindful of this sense of difference, she is dismissive of any critics within the
local community who complain that she is failing to adhere to Algerian societal norms. This
sense of defiance and strength, she suggests, is also part of her identity as a woman and was
shaped from an early age by her mother:
[My mother] was very French. So yes, she was a Muslim woman, she fasted during
Ramadan, but that’s about as Muslim as she got … she was not traditional at all. She
was a woman that divorced, and back then, I was seen as an alien. ‘What, your parents
have divorced?’ This was just so unusual. She was one of the first Algerian women in
our community to drive. They were very traditional. She didn’t cover her head, but
then again, it’s not very Algerian to put a hijab on (ibid.).
Tia grew up within a diaspora community that had a significant number of second and third
generation Algerians, which is markedly different from the community in the UK, and she
describes moving to London and having to learn what it meant to be ‘Algerian’ in Britain.11
48
One aspect of this learning process was appreciating how gender is understood among Algerians
locally, and while this has often been challenging, she has been able to establish a career as a music
promoter and artist manager who works with male musicians. She reflects on her professional
relationship with these artists:
When you manage musicians, you have to give direction and manage, and you find
that sometimes as a woman … it’s not that they don’t like hearing it from a woman,
they don’t like hearing it full stop! Even if I was a man it would be an issue…. I have
to prove myself as a woman, but in a way, it works as well. I am a woman so they
know that it is going to be easier for them, I can talk to people in way that if I was a
man maybe I could not (ibid.).
Tia discerns the clear gender divisions that are maintained within certain public spaces and
contexts in Algerian societies, where married men and women are sometimes circumspect in
their interactions, but she believes that musicians are less concerned with such conventions as
they are likely, in her view, to have more liberal attitudes. This, she believes, provides her with
a greater sense of freedom in her interactions with the musicians that she manages than might be
possible for other women within the local community, and she claims that:
What sets them apart from the rest of the mass is that they’re musicians, so they’re
maybe a bit more open-minded.... So, seeing a woman drink or smoke, they wouldn’t
want it to be their wives, or girlfriends, or sisters. But I’m not their wife, not their
girlfriend, not their sister, so they accept it. They’re a bit more open-minded like this.
But it’s a strange thing to be managing Algerian men. To be managing any Algerian is
very difficult (ibid.).
While the idea of a woman publicly drinking or smoking may not seem abnormal within
contemporary London, for an Algerian woman to be undertaking such acts in the presence of
other members of the community can be read as intentionally subversive. Marnia Lazreg writes
that ‘an old attribute of masculinity, it has also become … a sign of liberation. To smoke is to
signify one’s status as an independent woman and to claim equality with men’ (Lazreg 1994,
p. 170). Thus, Tia’s choices and actions, and the way that she presents herself as a professional
woman managing the career of male musicians, is a statement of empowerment and agency on
her part. Like Yasmine, she has noted a growing desire among Algerian women in London to
connect with one another and develop a sense of shared community through music. In Tia’s
experience, social media has been particularly important in connecting women across the city
and enabling them to interact with one another. Through social media she has been able to
meet other Algerian women, and these virtual interactions have generated physical meetings at
music events:
What I found about my community is that the people who are outside the music, the
audience… are maybe women that I met on Facebook, and then we met outside of
Facebook and got on like a house on fire. And those people have a heart of gold. And
all they are interested in is the unity between women. Women, and then more
specifically Algerian women (Tia, op. cit.).
There are a number of similarities between Tia’s experiences and views and those of Rachida
and Yasmine, particularly around the desire to use music as a way of engaging with other
49
Stephen Wilford
Algerian women in the city. However, it is also clear that her life has been significantly shaped
by growing up within an Algerian community in France, rather than in the UK or North
Africa, and this highlights the diverse experiences of Algerian women in contemporary London.
5.5 Conclusions
Women have long played a central role in Algerian society, from fighting against French rule to
establishing careers as professional musicians. However, equality has not been forthcoming, and
after extensive public protests the Algerian Family Code was enacted in June 1984. The Code
severely curtailed the legal rights of women, effectively treating them as ‘minors’, and remains
part of patriarchal Algerian law. Zahia Smail Salhi writes that:
Although the authors of this Code claim it to be merely based on the teachings of
Shari’a law, it is clear from its text that its roots emanate from a tradition of patriarchy
and misogyny in Algeria, which was taken up in a particular way in the post-colonial
era (Salhi 2003, pp. 30–31).
Reflecting upon this postcolonial period, Lazreg adds that ‘Algeria provides an unusually in-
teresting example of the social, political and legal paradoxes that the citizenship model faces,
especially with regard to women’ (2000, p. 58). Such challenges and paradoxes have continued
to emerge in the experiences of women in both North Africa and throughout the transnational
diaspora.
The experiences of Rachida, Tia and Yasmine, as Algerian women and active musicians
within contemporary London, help us to understand and appreciate the complex ways in which
gender and music shape and mediate individual lives within the Algerian diaspora. Their stories
elucidate the ongoing negotiation between empowerment, agency and restriction for Algerian
women, and belie established tropes of North African Muslim women as oppressed and faceless.
This is not to suggest that they do not experience challenges and pressures, but rather to
highlight the ways in which they understand these issues and the mechanisms that they employ
to manage them. They are cognisant of the gendered boundaries that endure around Algerian
music and how their actions adhere to, or challenge, cultural conventions. Their stories also
show the different approaches that they take to their musical lives, and as such, serve to de-
construct essentialising, bounded notions of Algerian femininity. While each of them has
spoken of facing struggles to integrate into local Algerian networks, and voiced frustrations at
the limitations that have sometimes been placed upon them, they also share a desire for a strong
and vibrant Algerian community within the city and opportunities to interact with other
Algerian women. Their experiences give voice to the many ways in which Algerian women use
music to challenge social conventions and to forge new roles for female Algerian performers and
listeners in twenty-first century London.12
Notes
1 The size of the city’s Algerian population is difficult to gauge as some individuals live in London
without legal residency status. A 2009 official report claimed that 20,000–25,000 Algerians lived in
Britain, but the size of the population is now likely to be significantly larger.
2 While many of those living in London moved to the UK to study or work, a significant proportion of
the community elected to migrate during the fitna (struggle) of the 1990s, a bloody civil conflict that
engulfed their country.
3 Algeria is the tenth largest country in the world by geographic area, and the largest in both Africa.
50
4 The majority of the most famous Raï singers of the 1980s and 1990s were male and took on the
moniker Cheb (Kid). However, there were also some notable female performers during this period,
known as Cheba, including Cheba Fadela and Cheba Zahouania.
5 The Reconquista refers to the wars fought throughout the Iberian Peninsula between Christians and
Muslims (Moors) for centuries before the ‘reconquest’ of Granada in 1492, after which many Muslims
fled to North Africa.
6 Convivencia, meaning coexistence in Spanish, refers to the supposed peaceful society that existed in
historical Iberia, whereby Christians, Jews and Muslims lived alongside one another. In recent years,
scholars have challenged the ‘myth’ of Convivencia, and Ruth Davis writes that ‘the Enlightenment
myth prevails in wider scholarly and popular culture – not least among musicians – where, remerging
in various permutations and transformations, it has served as a strategy for a variety of often contra-
dictory social, political, and aesthetic goals’ (Davis 2015, p. xv).
7 ‘Reinette al-Wahraniyya’ (or ‘l’Oranise’ in French) was born Sultana Daoud into a Jewish family in 1918.
She was blind as a result of childhood illness and went on to become a highly revered performer of
Andalusi, Chaabi and Raï. Amnon Shiloah writes that ‘after she achieved remarkable success in
Algeria, she continued to be admired by her numerous fans in France for her expressive and poignant
art’ (2007, p. 438). She died in Paris in 1998.
8 The ‘association’ is a type of musical collective which teaches and performs Andalusi music in its
‘authentic’ historical forms. Glasser describes this as ‘the key institutional framework for the Andalusi
musical revival: the amateur association. Created as a vehicle for modernist pedagogy and public
performance at the beginning of the twentieth century, the association has been an important way for
amateur music-lovers to exercise their passion for Andalusi music while differentiating themselves from
the professional, often working-class shaykh’ (2016, pp. 18–19).
9 The City of London, also known as the ‘Square Mile’, is an independent city and county in the heart
of contemporary London, and traditionally home to the city’s finance and business sectors.
10 Darija is the vernacular form of Arabic spoken in Algeria and Morocco. It draws upon a number of
languages, including French and various Amazigh languages, and is almost unintelligible to speakers of
Fusha (standard Arabic).
11 Most Algerians living in the UK were born in North Africa, and it is only recently that a second
generation has started to emerge. This is very different from the French context, in which there has
been a long legacy of migration that has produced numerous generations of those of Algerian descent.
12 I would like to thank: Rachida, Tia and Yasmine for their interest in my research and for sharing their
stories with me; City, University of London and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
for their support, and, in particular, my supervisor Professor Stephen Cottrell and Professor Laudan
Nooshin; the University of Cambridge, Wolfson College Cambridge, and the European Research
Council (ERC), who fund our project ‘Past and Present Musical Encounters Across the Strait of
Gibraltar’ (MESG_758221); my colleagues Dr. Samuel Llano, Dr. Matthew Machin-Autenrieth, Dr.
Vanessa Paloma Elbaz and Eric Petzoldt; and finally, three amazing and inspiring women in my life –
my wife Rosie and our daughters, Molly and Lucy.
References
Brandes, E., 1990. The relation of women’s music to men’s music in southern Algeria. In: M. Herndon
and S. Ziegler, eds. Music, gender, and culture. Wilhelmshaven: Noetzel, 115–130.
Bsikri, M., 2013. Faire connaître la musique andalouse au royaume-uni est notre objectif. El watan,
14 July.
Davis, R.F., ed., 2015. Musical exodus: al-andalus and its Jewish diasporas. London: Rowman and Littlefield.
Department for Communities and Local Government Report. 2009. The Algerian Muslim community in
England: understanding Muslim ethnic communities. Available from: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.
gov.uk/20120920001108/http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/communities/pdf/1202
966.pdf.
Glasser, J., 2016. The lost paradise: Andalusi music in urban North Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Khanna, R., 2008. Algeria cuts: women and representation, 1830 to the present. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
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Kierski, W. and Blazina, C., 2009. The male fear of the feminine and its effects on counseling and
psychotherapy. The Journal of Men’s Studies, 17/2, 155–172.
Lazreg, M., 1994. The eloquence of silence: Algerian women in question. London & New York: Routledge.
Lazreg, M., 2000. Citizenship and gender in Algeria. In: S. Joseph, ed. Gender and citizenship in the Middle
East. New York: Syracuse University Press, 58–69.
Mahfoufi, M., 2006. Chants de femmes en kabylie: fêtes et rites au village. Algiers: Centre National de
Recherches Préhistoriques Anthropologiques et Historique (Ministère del la Culture).
McDougall, J., 2017. A history of Algeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Salhi, Z.S., 2003. Algerian women, citizenship and the ‘family code’. Gender and Development, 11/3,
27–35.
Scales, R., 2010. Subversive sound: transnational radio, Arabic recordings, and the dangers of listening in
French colonial Algeria, 1934-1939. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 52/2, 384–417.
Shiloah, A., 2007. Africa, North: musical traditions. In: M. Berenbaum and F. Skolnik, eds. Encyclopaedia
Judaica, 1. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 437–440.
Slyomovics, S., 2014. Algerian women’s būqūlah poetry: cultural politics, oral literature and anti-colonial
resistance. Journal of Arabic Literature, 45/2-3, 145–168.
Small, C., 1998. Musicking: the meanings of performing and listening. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Spivak, G.C., 1994. Can the subaltern speak? In: P. Williams and L. Chrisman, eds. Colonial discourse and
post-colonial theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 66–111.
Yelles, M., 2003. Le ‘arubi feminin au maghreb: tradition orale et poetique du detour. Insaniyat,
7/21, 37–53.
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6
IN SEARCH OF THE FIELD:
REFLECTIONS ON AN
ETHNOMUSICOLOGICAL
PROJECT IN INDIA
Valentine Harding
6.1 Introduction
Ethnomusicology has a branch within its discipline known as ‘applied ethnomusicology’, es-
tablished as an extension of, rather than in opposition to, the academic domain (Pettan and
Titon 2015, p. 30). This is an approach applying knowledge and understanding gained from the
study of ethnomusicology to practical work in the public sphere, aimed at positive social impact
in fields such as community development and social improvement, education, environmental
concerns and intangible cultural heritage (ibid., p. 4; Stock and Chiener 2008, p. 110). My own
contribution to Ethnomusicology falls very much into this category. I come from a background
of work in mental health, counselling, psychotherapy and Early Years Music. I am also a student
of North Indian Classical and Bengali music in London. At the age of 60, I studied for an
MMus in Ethnomusicology in order to gain a deeper understanding of cultural issues, and to use
that understanding in practical ways for positive social benefit. The research referred to in this
chapter should, therefore, be understood in this light. It is not academic research at doctoral or
post-doctoral level.
My fieldwork has been in two major parts. First, I researched the music of the Bauls of
Bengal in West Bengal, India, for my MMus dissertation. My choice of location was based on
the fact that I already knew this area from 1971, when I worked as a nurse in the Bangladesh
Refugee Camps, and I had subsequently maintained on-going contact with the area. Second, I
then researched issues relating to nurture, culture and creativity in children learning music in
London and in West Bengal. In 2012–13, I launched a project at the inner-city south London
SureStart Children's Centre (0–5 year olds), where I worked at the time, inviting families to
bring songs from their various different cultural backgrounds to a series of special sessions
designed for this purpose.1 The project involved 20 families from a total of 13 differing ethnic
backgrounds. A central theme throughout also considered the child's inner world and formation
of children's musical cultures, which they hold as a separate culture from that of their parents
and teachers (Campbell and Wiggins 2012, p. 102).
This project was followed by research in West Bengal with children learning individually at
home in folk traditions and at schools in rural areas. Children from both studies were from
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-6 53
Valentine Harding
lower socio-economic backgrounds within the context of their respective countries. This re-
search was supported by SEMPRE (Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research),
and my research findings have been published in the Oxford Handbook of Singing (Harding
2019). While in India, I sought to understand how current theories of fieldwork might apply to
my work. Barz and Cooley (2008, p. 22) explore approaches such as the fieldworker con-
fronting questions concerning who they are and what they signify to the people with whom
they work. Carol Babiracki also notes that the gender of a fieldworker makes a difference to
outcomes (2008, p. 167). I have, therefore, set out in this chapter to address these questions in
relation to my own fieldwork with Baul musicians in India.
6.2 An introduction to the Bauls of Bengal

Baul musicians in West Bengal and Bangladesh were originally itinerant, rural musicians who
travelled through towns and villages singing their spiritual songs for alms.2 Until the Partition of
India in 1947, the country today of Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal in India were one
province, Bengal. Baul musicians could be found throughout this region, drawn from both
Hindu and Muslim communities, and were well known for their opposition to caste and re-
ligious discrimination. Bauls are humanists and they believe that ‘the divine’ resides within the
human body and is not an external being or deity. To love and serve humanity is central to their
belief system. In 2008, UNESCO inscribed Baul songs in their list of the Intangible Cultural
Heritage of Humanity.3
Issues of identity are central to the philosophy of Bauls. One of the most influential ex-
ponents of this philosophy, Lalon Shah (1772–1890), composed many hundreds of songs on the
topics of equality, social and religious harmony, and esoteric practice. One of Lalon's most
famous songs is ‘shob lokhe koi, Lalon ki jat?’ (Everyone asks, what caste (or social group) is
Lalon?). Lalon's answer is that when we are born, there is no mark of caste or religion on our
bodies: we are all born human and we acquire identity from the society into which we are born.
Baul songs are often written in an enigmatic and metaphorical style. The songs are all in
Bengali language, and the music is characterised by its poignant and haunting melodies and
strong rhythms. A Baul group performing music typically consists of a lead vocalist who ac-
companies himself or herself on a single instrument, and who is also accompanied by a group of
instrumentalists. Instruments consist of:
• ektara (a single-stringed plucked percussive instrument)

• dotara (small lute with four strings)
• khamak (a two-stringed plucked percussive instrument with strings attached to an
outer drum)
• khol (a large ceramic drum)
• kartal (small cymbals)
• ghunur (ankle bells)
• duggi (a small drum)
• khanjoni (small drum with jangles)
Other accompaniment instruments include the Indian Harmonium, although it should be

emphasized that this is a more recent addition to a band and is not traditional: it is a heavy
instrument and would be an encumbrance for an itinerant band. Baul groups now may also be
seen with tabla (a classical instrument), and electronic keyboards may also feature in a modern
band. Bauls mostly perform in groups but, traditionally, and occasionally nowadays, a single
54
In search of the field
Baul may be seen singing and accompanying him/herself on an instrument or sometimes more
than one instrument. Musical performance is also frequently accompanied by dancing (see
Capwell 2011).
Although men are predominant, women are, in theory, seen as equal partners and are not
excluded from any section of musical endeavour. However, in the area of my research in West
Bengal, most female performers are vocalists and play ektara and kartal. Women, in my ex-
perience, are less likely to play the dotara, the khol or any other instrument, although there are
some isolated groups of female instrumentalists who perform together. Baul women may, in
fact, be very strong vocalists and also write their own compositions. In common with the
majority of female composers the world over, however, they compose against a backdrop of
male domination in this field.
In Baul philosophy, the female is highly prized as the gender that enables closeness to unity
with the divine. The female body is seen as self-perfected, and in Baul traditions of sexo-yogic
esoteric practice the task of the man is to become a woman, or at least more like a woman, and
the exchange of gender identity inherent in esoteric practice also includes notions of the female
becoming ‘male’ (Openshaw 2004, p. 219). In addition, menstrual fluid is also seen as valuable
and an essential substance, a notion that is at variance with conventional culture that sees
menstruation as polluting (ibid., p. 216). So, my experience as a female fieldworker was likely
to be different here from that of women working in more traditionally patriarchal communities.
6.3 Learning music and fieldwork relationships

Titon notes that ethnomusicology is a study concerned with ‘the origins, nature, and limits of
human knowledge concerning music in human life’, and that ethnomusicology attempts to
answer two questions – ‘What can we know about music, and how can we know it?’ (Titon
2008, p. 25). Theories of fieldwork methodology have traditionally considered the researcher's
position in terms of ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ in relation to the communities in which the individual
researcher works. However, Rice questions the rigidity of such boundaries, and brings in ar-
guments that the field is metaphorical, can, in fact, be anywhere, and that actual ontological
experience is not so bounded as to be located within a precise ‘field’ (Rice 2008, p. 47).
Ethnomusicologists participate in the musical cultures they study through learning and per-
forming the music of that culture, and many, like myself, are already participants in the musical
genre of their research before they begin research. Rice explains how, while researching
Bulgarian music, he narrowed the gap of this ‘insider/outsider’ dichotomy when it came to
learning music by ‘acting musically’, and found he fell into ‘a theoretical “no place”, neither an
insider nor an outsider’ (ibid., p. 51).
There is a difference between the actual musical experience and the social experience with
and around musicians. Although I, too, find I can, on some occasions, act musically and be
involved in a theoretical ‘no-place’, I am constantly reminded, particularly by my North Indian
Classical and Bengali music teacher in London, that what I do is out of the ordinary for a
Westerner, although my efforts are greatly appreciated. In the face of British imperialism, music
in India became a strong domain of national identity (Farrell 1997) and, from a political point of
view, I accept that my participation in this genre of music will never be other than that of the
‘outsider’.4 However, having said that, I would also add that a large part of my interest in
ethnomusicology is linked to my support for, and involvement in, multi-culturalism in the UK,
and so from that point of view, here in the UK, I consider myself an ‘insider’. However, I do
not act as a fieldworker all the time in the UK. My research field is really not very precise: I am
something of a nomad when it comes to fields.
55
Valentine Harding
The learning of music during fieldwork brings the researcher into a relationship of teacher/
student with research participants, a separate role from that of ethnographer, although that role
is also a part of fieldwork. My Baul host in West Bengal is my teacher, and I learn as well from
other musicians in the community. My learning is in folk tradition and is more fluid and
informal than that of training in classical tradition. In my experience, being welcomed into a
community as both a researcher and a learner creates very strong personal bonds, but also some
confusion on both sides over intent and purpose and the nature of the relationship. I remember
clearly feeling when I first stayed with the Baul community in West Bengal, that I had travelled
the world and arrived back home. This feeling was reinforced by my hosts, who told me all the
time that this was my home and that I was ‘one of them’. I rarely felt isolated. I had friends and
contacts in the area, and I had my grounding in North Indian and Bengali music from London,
although Baul music itself was a new genre for me. My own family from the UK also joined me
on several occasions and became included in my networks. The music had a strong emotional
impact on me, and the musical community around me reminded me of my own childhood
background of being brought up in a household where music was an everyday part of life.
Patterns of attachment and bonding in early childhood may easily become transferred into
reciprocal fieldwork relationships. On both sides, responses of love and care may become es-
tablished. Concepts of home are also significant in the Bengali spiritual tradition, and ‘home’
used variously as a metaphor for human life, the universe or the innermost soul (Banerjee and
Ray 2000). However, the question of who we are and what we signify to the people with whom we
work (Barz and Cooley 2008, p. 22) also has many implications in association with post-
colonialism. Being very much aware of post-colonial relationships, I have attempted to analyse
how the legacy of colonialism impacts on the fieldworker of white European origin, like
myself, researching in previously colonised countries.
Barz and Cooley comment on how:
[…] conscious attempts by some ethnomusicologists to distinguish themselves from

present and past colonial administrators, missionaries, tourists, and other ethno-
graphers only serve to highlight our connection, for better or worse, with this legacy
(ibid., p. 5).
Gilroy deepens this discussion by emphasising that Britain's refusal to accept the loss of empire
has produced ‘deluded patterns of historical reflection and self‑understanding’ (2004, p. 3).
Farrell, using perspectives from Edward Said, notes: ‘Indian music in the West has so often
functioned as the backdrop for exotic and romantic fantasies’ (1997, p. 3).5 It was important for
me to understand my own motivation and the psychology of my own involvement in Indian
music.
Bauls have become icons of Bengali culture and there are many exotic and romantic fantasies
about them, both within Bengali culture itself and outside of it, resulting in some degree of
cultural appropriation. An interest in Bauls, and their music and philosophy, draws a regular
flow of foreign and local visitors to Santiniketan, West Bengal, the area where I undertook
research. This area is something of a bubble and may not be typical of other areas where Bauls
live. Many Baul musicians have become professionalised and sing at pre-arranged concerts;
some travel abroad on the world music circuit. However, a popular image still remains of the
carefree Baul living anywhere, under the trees and stars, engulfed in an ecstatic experience of
music, whose livelihood depends solely on donations. Iconic status does not always bring the
benefits one might expect and may lead to the disempowerment of these musicians who are
mainly from lower socio-economic backgrounds. As Krakauer notes:
56
some performers suffer financially if deemed insufficiently authentic…. There may

also be a loss of respect paid to lower and working-class Bauls, who are individuals
struggling to make a living through musical performance, yet expected to be content
in their sufferings and indifferent to worldly gain (2015, p. 373).
The ethnographer Lisa described her need to clarify her position as a researcher in relation to
other foreigners when she researched issues for Baul women in Santiniketan (Knight 2011,
pp. 11–12). Knight mentions that many foreign visitors in the area may be people looking for
Bauls to book for foreign concert programmes, make recordings, or learn Baul songs and
spiritual or ritual practices. The tendency amongst Bauls in this area is to identify all foreigners
in this category (ibid.). Researchers, similarly, may be there to make recordings, learn songs and
to research spiritual practices, although not necessarily participating in those practices. The
distinction between researcher and tourist can be ambiguous. I, too, was anxious not to be
caught up in the misconceptions I observed around me, particularly on the issue of spirituality.
6.4 Gender issues

One's role as a female researcher may become linked into the roles and positions that women in
the participant community hold. During my visits to West Bengal, I became known by those
younger than myself as ‘Bhukti Ma’ (meaning devotional mother). This drew me further into
the notion of belonging, the imaginings of my hosts feeding in to my own fantasies about this
being home. Although appreciating the love and respect shown to me, I also realised that this
casts me in the role of a patron. It also gives me a spiritual title with which I do not identify. I
did not want to enter into a role that may have been assigned to white British women doing
charitable work during the colonial era. Since I had previously been involved in charitable work
in both West Bengal and Bangladesh, my hosts quite naturally easily identified me in this role.
The problems of clarifying my role as a researcher seemed to deepen as I went along. I wanted
to maintain my position as a student of music, acknowledging the superiority of the skilled
musicians around me, rather than being elevated to an authoritative position myself. In addi-
tion, that elevation tended to isolate me from any serious learning. When my host started asking
me for my blessings on his performances, I felt in an awkward position. I have found it hard to
know how to respond but rather than question this I respond by simply acknowledging the
request and saying, ‘I hope your concert goes well’.
Although there are many Baul female performers, theirs is a different world from that of the
men. Knight notes an increase in female performers in recent years, and also observes their
attempts to transcend the structures of society that dictate female behaviour (ibid., p. 185). She
observes the contradictions between the concept of the feminine being revered and the actual
role of women in real life. Many of the women in Knight's research were composing songs.
However, she concluded that these songs did not always challenge gender roles, rather they
were written to demonstrate theological competence and challenge other discriminations, while
reconfiguring gender roles and expectations was done through other means in daily life
(ibid., p. 138).
At one stage, I was drawn into giving singing lessons to the wife of a Baul singer. She was
considered by others not to have a very good voice and was excluded from singing for this
reason. Whenever we were alone together, she would drop her household tasks and request a
singing lesson from me, which I gave her to the best of my ability. The lesson could extend for
some time, depending how long the men were away, but I felt my time with her was valuable
and I learnt much from her about the position of women in this culture, serving the needs of
57
Valentine Harding
men. By refusing to accept the label she had been given as a woman who ‘can’t sing’ (I actively
encouraged her to think she could), and by readily prioritising her desire to learn music when the
opportunity presented itself, she was on her way towards creating a new path for herself.
6.5 Defining fieldwork roles, gender and performance

Stock and Chiener refer to the feminist deconstruction of ‘masculine’ fieldwork, which ‘saw
predatory masculine urges in the objectifying, collecting and controlling and valuing of
knowledge gained outside the house’ (2008, p. 110). Although attitudes towards fieldwork have
changed, there is a sense in which fieldwork and academic discourse does still require such an
approach. However, in the spirit of new perspectives, Barz discusses the process of fieldwork as
‘participation in the total cultural performance of field research’ and notes that it is ‘not what
they do and we observe; we are both engaged in it’. All those engaged in this process emerge as
‘actors in a social drama’ (Barz 2008, p. 206).
Judith Butler discusses the notion of cultural performance within her discourse on gender
performance. Following feminist thinkers such as de Beauvoir, she sets out to argue that
‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are not biologically fixed but culturally presupposed and argues
against concepts of stable gender identity (Butler 1990, p. 191). Butler notes that ‘as in other
ritual social dramas, the action of gender requires a performance that is repeated’ (ibid.). She
distinguishes between performance and performativity, highlighting the critical difference be-
tween gender performance in reality and theatre performance: the difference being that in the
performance of gender, the meaning of the performance is not established by the intention of
the actor (Salih and Butler 2004, p. 345). Butler continues to explain how cultural norms
condition and limit the ‘actor’, while also at play are the cultural norms of the ‘reception’,
which may be different from those of the actor's cultural norms (ibid.). This is directly relevant
to intercultural situations during fieldwork, and any understanding of cultural performance
cannot be complete without consideration of gender performance.
It follows that my being considered as a ‘mother’ in certain situations in India could, on a
superficial level, have little to do with my personality and actions and more to do with my
appearance as an older woman. Interestingly, in the same area of West Bengal, I have also been
asked on occasions whether I am male or female, depending on what clothes I am wearing.
Women from Western cultures travelling in India, either as researchers or in other capacities,
sometimes refer to the feeling that they are being related to as ‘token men’: in other words, they
may travel, go out, relate to others or participate in male culture without criticism, while their
South Asian female counterparts are not encouraged to participate in this way. In my ex-
perience, I was only a part-time ‘token man’: I felt accepted into a pattern of kinship as an older
woman. I could have refused to be known as ‘mother’, but it was not my intention to attempt
to work as a gender neutral or ‘masculine’ researcher. My natural inclinations were far more in
the line of building relationships, participating, helping to cook and clean when staying with
people, listening to problems and being supportive. In the social drama of fieldwork, was I,
throughout, performing a gender role here? A role that I, as a woman, have been conditioned
to perform?
Whether my sense of self was a performance or not, I felt that the fieldwork I performed
needed to come from myself as a female and my identity as a woman. Even if I had wanted to,
would I have ever been able to ‘objectify, collect, control’, fieldwork material? It would have
been a hard struggle, and a task that, ultimately, I would probably have failed to fulfil. I came
away in the end without having collected vast amounts of data but having built trusting re-
lationships. However, I would not claim these relationships as always equal. A need on the part
58
of the host community for foreign support and recognition will inevitably play a part in post-
colonial relationships, such as those I am describing.
But fieldwork and gender are elusive categories. The researcher constantly seeks to define
fieldwork as they go along. At times, I felt free to be the ‘token man’. The temptation for me
was to identify the more intrepid and adventurous aspects as actual ‘real fieldwork’. Titon
describes this as the ‘heroic quest’ (in this case for knowledge), based on the archetypal Western
heroic myth (2008, p. 39). I noted at one point in my fieldwork diary that I felt I was ‘doing
real fieldwork’ when I was being adventurous out in the countryside travelling on a motorbike
to remote villages, at one point crossing a river at night in an overloaded boat with no lights.
But recording singing and interviewing the young people I met was the actual work – and not
what was involved in getting there. However, romantic images persist. I showed a Bengali
friend a photo I had taken of my ‘fieldwork equipment’ – i.e. notebooks, pens, camera and
recorder, lined up on my bed, ready to leap into action – the equivalent of the ‘magic sword’
(Titon, ibid.). His response was, when he noticed I slept on a bed, that this was not proper
fieldwork and that I should have been sleeping on the floor!
A large amount of my time with Bauls has been, and still is, spent in social interaction:
listening to the problems of relationships within the Baul community and, with patrons (both
local and foreign), discussing the difficulties of a precarious life finding work as musicians and
the realities of disempowerment, as mentioned earlier. In the end, I have spent more time
trying to understand these issues than I have studying or experiencing the music. Music,
however, does not exist in isolation from the lives and human relationships of those who create
it, so perhaps it was inevitable that I spent a large amount of time listening to the story of
people's lives.
For the fieldworker, life in a different cultural setting is temporary and therefore perfor-
mances in fieldwork are short lived and not enduring. This is a different type of performance
from that of Butler's gender performance. However, the roles one enters into as a fieldworker
are not theatrical roles either, and are based on other personal identities, including that of
gender. Neither is the impact of colonialism part of a performance that can be entered into and
left behind. It is an ever-present legacy and understanding it does not start and finish with visits
to India or Bangladesh.
To what extent do fieldworkers act differently in the field than back at home, and to what
extent are notions of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ also a culturally based act? In the UK, I would not
allow myself to be called ‘mother’ all the time except by my own children. I would see it as
patronising, trapping me in a stereotypical single identity, when, in fact, my life is defined by
much more than my role as a mother. However, during fieldwork I allowed myself to be called
this, in spite of my ambivalence. I realised that my being known as ‘mother’ had a different
context and meaning from the way it might be interpreted in Western culture, and there was no
need to over-identify with this title.6 ‘Mother’ gave people around me a way of identifying me
within their own cultural context, and this had its advantages for me as well as disadvantages. I
know that my Baul hosts would not like to think of me as an ‘outsider’: philosophically, ‘others’
are one's own people, and one's own people are ‘others’ (Chandidas).7
Essentially, Baul philosophy is one of equality, although in social practice amongst Bauls this
might not always seem apparent. Amongst Baul musicians, there are both those who have
received a spiritual initiation and instruction in esoteric practice and those who have not. It is a
complex situation and it is not possible to describe it in more depth in this chapter. However, it
should be remembered that many Bauls do not live in bounded and isolated communities, and
many nowadays are very much connected to and influenced by a wider society.
59
Valentine Harding
As previously mentioned at the start of this chapter, issues of identity are central to the phi-
losophy of Bauls. This philosophy encourages a deconstruction of conventional identities of
gender, caste, social grouping and religion. Although differing in origin and philosophical
background, there is a common theme running through Baul philosophy and Western philo-
sophical theories of gender performance and theories of non-hierarchical fieldwork methodology:
these are all concerned with the rebalancing of power relationships and inequalities in society.
6.6 Conclusion
The performance of fieldwork is not an easy concept to grasp: we are never actually either ‘in’
or ‘out’ of the field. As described by Rice, the ontological experience of fieldwork cannot be
located within a precise area, and he has suggested renaming fieldwork as ‘life-experience
understandings’ (2008, p. 47). Stress and anxiety may be experienced when there is a disparity
between an inner sense of self and a gender or fieldwork role one may be expected to perform.
Furthermore, in fieldwork, the gender role is within an intercultural setting and the fieldwork
role is one in which the researcher may have their own established or emerging concept,
whereas the participant community may have another concept.
Stock and Chiener note that travelling abroad for ethnomusicological research is on the
wane, and home seen increasingly as a research location (2008, p. 110). They highlight one
reason for this being the post-colonial critique of traditional fieldwork research that may create
a neo-orientalist order that ‘rewards the researched in so far as they remain colourful, exotic,
pre-modern, different and other’ (ibid.). This is especially true for communities such as Bauls, as
I have highlighted in this chapter. For my part, I felt clear that, after an initial fieldwork trip
investigating Baul music and culture, I needed to link my research in Bengali music with
projects in London. I feel, in accordance with UNESCO's definition of intangible cultural
heritage, that the emphasis in study should not be solely concerned with the cultural mani-
festation itself. Rather, the emphasis should be on the wealth of knowledge and skills that is
transmitted through it, from one generation to the next, and transmitted through migration and
the intermingling of cultures. However, pitfalls are still present. The British inability to accept
the loss of empire still resonates today in our thinking in this country, with damaging con-
sequences. It is important that we understand this and work towards making changes that may
lead to a more realistic and less delusional outlook.
Notes
1 The SureStart programme for 0–5 year olds includes family welfare, health and preschool education.
SureStart is a national, UK programme that was initiated in 1998 under central government admin-
istration and is now controlled by Local Authorities (local government).
2 It should be noted that my research was in West Bengal, India, and not in Bangladesh.
3 See UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity List (2008), available from: https://
ich.unesco.org/en/RL/baul-songs-00107
4 Farrell describes the complex history of the growth of importance of North and South Indian classical
music as a symbol of national identity. Prior to Independence (1947) there were debates over the
question of the use of Western staff notation, Hindu nationalism and Muslim participation (classical
music having shared roots and traditions in both communities), and the highly contested use of the
Indian Harmonium (derived from the harmoniums of British missionaries).
5 See Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1979) and Culture and Imperialism (New York:
Vintage, 1993).
6 It is interesting to note that during my second period of fieldwork in India – researching children's
musical learning – I found it easier to identify my own role and purpose. I had fixed objectives and felt
60
clear that I was working in the field of ‘Applied Ethnomusicology’. Research participants saw me as a
children's music teacher, another archetypal female role that gave me a tangible identity. However, at
this stage of research, I was working with a wider range of communities that included other local folk
musicians and not only Baul musicians.
7 Chandidas (b. 1408) was a medieval Bengali poet known and celebrated for his humanism. Baul
philosophy today stems from sources such as this.
References
Babiracki, C.M., 2008. What's the difference? Reflections on gender and research in village India. In: G.
Barz and T.J. Cooley, eds. Shadows in the field: new perspectives for fieldwork in ethnomusicology. 2nd ed.,
New York: Oxford University Press, 167–182.
Banerjee, S. and Ray, R., eds., 2000. Homes in emptiness: anthology of Bangla stories. New Delhi: Srishti
Publishers & Distributors.
Barz, G., 2008. Confronting the field (note) in and out of the field. In: Barz and Cooley, eds. Shadows in
the field: new perspectives for fieldwork in ethnomusicology. New York: Oxford University Press, 206–223.
Barz, G. and Cooley, T.J. 2008. Casting shadows: fieldwork is dead! long live fieldwork!. In: Barz and
Cooley, eds. Shadows in the field: new perspectives for fieldwork in ethnomusicology. New York: Oxford
University Press, 3–24.
Butler, J., 1990. Gender trouble. New York & London: Routledge.
Campbell, P.S. and Wiggins, T., eds., 2012. The Oxford handbook of children's musical cultures. New York &
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Capwell, C., 2011. Sailing on the sea of love: the music of the Bauls of Bengal. Calcutta: Seagull Books.
Originally published in 1986 by Kent State University Press.
Farrell, G., 1997. Indian music and the West. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gilroy, P., 2004. After empire: melancholia or convivial culture? London: Routledge.
Harding, V., 2019. Children singing: nurture, culture and creativity. In: G. Welch, D. Howard, and J.
Nix, eds. The Oxford handbook of singing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 489–508.
Knight, L.I., 2011. Contradictory lives: Baul women in India and Bangladesh. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Krakauer, B., 2015. The ennobling of a ‘folk tradition’ and the disempowerment of the performers:
celebrations and appropriations of bāul-fakir identity in West Bengal. Ethnomusicology, 59/3, 355–379.
Openshaw, J., 2004. Seeking Bauls of Bengal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pettan, S. and Titon, J.F., eds., 2015. The Oxford handbook of applied ethnomusicology. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Rice, T., 2008. Toward a mediation of field methods and field experience in ethnomusicology. In: Barz
and Cooley, eds. Shadows in the field: new perspectives for fieldwork in ethnomusicology. New York: Oxford
Salih, S. and Butler, J., 2004. The Judith Butler reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Stock, J.P.J., and Chiener, C., 2008. Fieldwork at home: European and Asian perspectives. In: Barz and
Cooley, eds. Shadows in the field: new perspectives for fieldwork in ethnomusicology. New York: Oxford
Titon, J.T., 2008. Knowing fieldwork. In: Barz and Cooley, eds. Shadows in the field: new perspectives for
fieldwork in ethnomusicology. New York: Oxford University Press, 25–41.
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7
WOMEN’S WORK IN
ETHNOMUSICOLOGY:
ALTERNATIVE SPACES
Christina Homer
7.1 Introduction
There are now certainly many more women academics in ethnomusicology being published
than in earlier decades, and organology, in particular, is strongly populated by women – Hélène
La Rue, Veronica Doubleday, Margaret Kartomi and Sue Carole DeVale, to name a few.
However, historically, the contributions of women ethnomusicologists to the discipline have
tended to be overlooked in favour of the high-status, usually male, professors of prestigious
universities, who became the determinative minds and wrote the formative texts of the dis
cipline: examples include Alan P. Merriam, Charles Seeger, Mantle Hood et al. There are many
examples of female researchers and fieldworkers in anthropology and folklore studies, and this is
where the roots of ethnomusicology lie – but they are not lauded to the extent of male re
searchers: Lucy Broadwood did not have a House named after her (like Cecil Sharp); Ruth
Crawford Seeger did not give her name to an ethnomusicology prize (like Charles Seeger).
Song collecting, the recording and/or transcription of folk music, is a stalwart of ethno
musicological method. An early example of women’s work in song collecting is in late
eighteenth-century colonial India. Two women, in particular, amassed a large number of
transcriptions of Hindustani and Persian songs: Margaret Fowke and Sophia Plowden. Both
women were accomplished harpsichord players, and they would get the musicians to tune their
instruments to the harpsichord so they could ‘play along’, then transcribe the resulting
Westernised melodies (Schofield Butler 2018). In the early twentieth century, Frances
Densmore worked for the Smithsonian Institution to record thousands of Native American
songs. She is forever linked to the phonograph, the instrument of her success, through an iconic
photograph taken while she recorded Mountain Chief of the Blackfoot confederacy. Densmore
did a huge amount of work to preserve the variety of native music from that time, and to
further music research using technology.
In 1930s England, the English Folk Song and Dance Society was in its formative years. Some
of the significant women collectors were Lucy Broadwood, Maud Karpeles and Kate Lee. The
number of women and men involved in the formation of the society were approximately equal,
although the male contributors to the Society – including Vaughan Williams, Percy Grainger
and George Butterworth – are more widely known, perhaps due to their fame as composers.
Around the same time, the American Musicological Society was getting off the ground as the
62 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-7
Women’s work in ethnomusicology
New York Musicological Society. Ruth Crawford was a talented and lauded modernist
composer, active in the intellectual circles of 1920s and 30s New York, but was excluded from
membership to the Society due to her gender (Rao 1997, p. 374). She was also a folklorist who
was heavily involved in the mid-twentieth-century folk revival, having worked with John and
Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress (Tick 1997, p. 245), a passion she passed on to her
children, Peggy and Mike, and her stepson, Pete Seeger. Eventually, some members of the
New York Musicological Society formed the Society for Ethnomusicology; notable women
who contributed to this included Barbara Krader and Helen Heffron Roberts. Roberts held a
post at Yale University but also worked extensively with the not-for-profit organisation The
American Association for the Advancement of Science, of which anthropologist Margaret
Mead was later president. Mead worked as professor at several universities around the world but
was deemed primarily as a ‘museum anthropologist’ (Thomas 1980) due to her career at the
American Museum of Natural History.
The reasons for overlooking women’s contributions are multifarious, but, of course, many
reflect systemic inequality seen across institutions, such as women not being afforded the same
educational and professional opportunities as men. Historic inequalities are perpetuated by
focussing on the forefathers of the discipline such as those mentioned above. This brief
overview has given examples of women who operated in different spaces from their male
counterparts: at home, in the case of Margaret Fowke and Sophia Plowden; for government
administration, in the case of Frances Densmore; in unofficial capacity for Ruth Crawford; and
in museums, in the case of Margaret Mead. Ethnomusicologists have historically worked along
gender divides, and these divides often correspond to public and private spaces. Working in
alternative spaces has often been the only way for women to carry out their research. Female
ethnomusicologists have been omitted from the academy, and so operated in less exclusive
spaces.
7.2 Jean Jenkins: public ethnomusicologist

I would like to introduce a foremother of public ethnomusicology – Jean Jenkins, an ethno
musicologist whose contributions were disseminated in public rather than academic spaces. Her
work outside of the academy was valid ethnomusicological study, although has not attracted as
much as attention as men’s work in academia. Jenkins was born in the USA in 1922, grew up in
Arkansas and studied in Missouri, gaining a joint bachelor’s degree in anthropology and mu
sicology. After an exciting life as a member of the Communist Party and as a trade union
advocate, she moved to the UK in 1949 to avoid the growing menace of McCarthyism. She
enrolled on a PhD programme at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London
but left before finishing when she was offered an assistant curator job at the Horniman Museum
in 1954. Having outstayed her original visa, the threat of deportation from the UK galvanised
her marriage to Welsh trade unionist Clive Jenkins in 1955, allowing her to obtain British
citizenship. They divorced in 1961 but she kept her married name, perhaps to retain the status
of a married woman.
Jenkins’ contribution to the Horniman Museum began in earnest in 1960, when a new
musical instruments department was established there. Jenkins was appointed as the museum’s
Keeper of Musical Instruments and held this post until 1978. She supplemented her curatorial
work with broadcasting, mainly with the BBC, and after she left the Horniman, further de
veloped her broadcasting activities. She also occasionally worked for other museums – notably
the Royal Scottish Museum (now National Museum of Scotland) in Edinburgh. By the time
Jenkins died in 1990, her personal collection of musical instruments from around the world had
63
Christina Homer
been sold to the National Museum of Scotland. Her extensive collection of ethnographic field
recordings and her personal archive were bequeathed to the National Museum of Scotland after
her death.
In 1983, Jenkins curated an exhibition called ‘Man and Music’. This title uses man to denote
mankind, but Jenkins was primarily concerned with men’s music around the world – although
she never stipulated an intention to either study men’s or women’s music in particular. The
original suggestion for the exhibition’s title was ‘People and Music’, which Jenkins decided to
change to ‘Man and His Music’ and later ‘Man and Music’ (Drummond 1982). Jenkins’
curation of this exhibition demonstrates how her work was both public ethnomusicology and
different to the typical work carried out by men in ethnomusicology. Her work can be con
sidered a precursor to what is now given validity as applied ethnomusicology.
Public ethnomusicology is a subset of applied ethnomusicology. Applied ethnomusicology,
as defined by Titon in the Oxford Handbook on the subject is, broadly speaking, ‘Putting
ethnomusicological scholarship, knowledge and understanding to practical use’ (Titon 2015,
p. 4). The ethos is of reciprocity, ethical collaboration and community outreach or social
activism. Titon traces the early rumblings of applied ethnomusicology to the first half of the
twentieth century: for example, encompassing the work of scholars such as Alan Lomax and
Charles Seeger, who advocated the reservation of promotion of Native American music and the
importance of public school music programmes. However, this considers public ethnomusi
cology from an academic point of view, which, historically, only included male voices. Jenkins’
ethnomusicological research was as valid and as public, but came without the prestige of a
university post.
Titon discusses some problems with the term public ethnomusicology, including the separation
of the public and academic spheres of ethnomusicology. According to him, ethnomusicology
should encompass both spheres ( ibid.Titon Pettan 2015). For Jenkins, working four decades
earlier, the distinction between academic and public was vast. In her archive is a list she had
compiled of useful contacts in the field of ethnomusicological musical instrument research. She
probably wrote this in about 1980, and many of the names are very familiar today (Jenkins c.1980).
Prof Mark Slobin, Dept. of Music, Wesleyan Univ.

Prof Brian Silver, NELC, Harvard Univ.
Prof Rulan Pian, Dept of Far Eastern Languages, Harvard
Prof Dieter Christensen, Music Dept., Columbia Univers.
Prof David Liang, University of British Columbia
Prof Gerard Béhague, School of Music, Univ. of Texas
Prof Ralf Carriuolo, University of New Haven
Prof Frank Gillis, Archives of Traditional Music, Univ. of Indiana
Prof Harry Powers, Music Dept, Princeton University
Daniel Neuman, Music Dept, Dartmouth Univ
Prof Frederic Lieberman, School of Music, Univ. of Washington
Prof Robert Garfias, same address
Dr Roderic Knight, Oberlin Conservatory of Music
Prof Bruno Nettl, School of Music, University of Illinois
Prof Paul Berliner, Northwestern University
Prof Edward Bodnar, Georgetown University
Mrs Cynthia Hoover, Smithsonian Institute
Mr Laurence Libin, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Prof Leopold Pospisil, Peabody Museum
64
Greer Gardus, Université Québequois

Marie-France Ouellet, Montréal
Dr Arnold Perris, St Louis
The leaders of the field are male academics. The public, impactful roles were taken by women
(although there are only two on this list, and there are also male academics working in archives
and museums). This was not a scientific survey; Jenkins may have compiled a list of male
academics and purposefully left out the female ones. The archive also includes a large number of
letters between Jenkins and female colleagues working in other musical instrument departments
in museums, which indicates a pattern of men’s work in academia and women’s work in
museums – at least in Jenkins’ experience.
Jenkins’ ‘Man and Music’ was an ethnomusicological exhibition with many public outlets.
‘Man and Music’, in her own words, ‘shows man’s ingenuity, throughout the ages and
throughout the world, in finding the means to make music.... it offers the musical public a
chance of broader horizons’ (Jenkins c.1982). Ostensibly a display of musical instruments, the
exhibition also featured photographs, an audio-visual show, mannequins showing instruments
in their original context and, most importantly for Jenkins, ‘performances of some of the
outstanding traditional musicians from ten parts of the world’ (ibid.).
Many of the elements of ‘Man and Music’ were characteristic of ethnomusicological cur
atorial practice: from my study of ethnomusicology on display in European museums, tech
niques used by Jenkins are still exhibited today (Homer 2014). The importance of context is
crucial to understanding music in its culture, and this can be highlighted by musical instruments
with performers or mannequins showing costume, performance position and environment. In
‘Man and Music’, photographs and audio-visual recordings also displayed snapshots of Jenkins’
fieldwork visits. The live performances which accompanied the exhibition represented the shift
in ethnomusicological thinking from music-as-product to music-as-process: inert musical in
struments in a display case are material evidence of music, but the ephemeral human process of
performing music is the essence of musical culture. While arranging the exhibition, Jenkins
carried out several fieldwork trips around the world. She undertook a huge amount of field
work throughout her career, and her archive shows the immense passion she had for visiting
other countries, and the drive she had to collect and preserve music traditions which she feared
were under threat from globalisation and growing Western hegemony.
Titon states that ‘Applied ethnomusicologists like to interact … we feel a desire to give
something back in exchange for what we are learning’ (2015, p. 9), which is demonstrated
neatly in one of Jenkins’ fieldwork recordings. In 1970, Jenkins visited Zelfana in Algeria to
record some women singers. In one particular recording, Jenkins first offers a song of her own,
‘The Cold Coast of Greenland’, sung amongst the everyday noise of the village around her.
This was her tactic for making singers feel at ease, taking turns to exchange songs, showing a
reciprocal, collaborative relationship. She often tried to choose songs which used similar
techniques or modes to the music she was collecting.
Jenkins’ fieldwork trips associated with the ‘Man and Music’ exhibition included visits to
Java, India, northern Africa, the Ivory Coast and probably Mexico. One of the key facets of
Jenkins’ exhibition was the associated performances that were timed to coincide with
Edinburgh’s International Festival, held annually in August. Jenkins sought ensembles while she
was on her fieldwork trips and selected what she considered the best to show off as part of the
exhibition: ten ensembles in total, including from Northumberland and Scotland as well as
further afield (Jenkins c.1982). Her archive provides evidence of the vast amount of admin
istration she carried out to bring musicians to Edinburgh to perform.
65
Christina Homer
Reviews of the exhibition and performances were largely positive, although one reviewer was
not keen on the inaccessibility of the Javanese gamelan: it was described as ‘enthralling, dis
orientating and cruelly frustrating … how extraordinary of the Festival not to provide a hand-out’
(Grier c.1983). Simon Frith, now Emeritus Professor at Edinburgh University, provided a positive
review for a performance in Holland Park, London, which was associated with the Edinburgh
exhibition (Frith c.1983). The growing world music scene surely contributed to the popularity of
this exhibition – although ironically, one of Jenkins’ aims was to protect the heterogeneity of the
world’s traditions from the problem of globalisation. Frith’s review identified the issues concerning
ethnomusicologists in the early 1980s – in particular, the effects of globalisation, acculturation,
post-colonialism and multiculturalism, exemplified in the WOMAD-style festival in Holland Park.
Jenkins’ contributions to ethnomusicology were in the public eye – but how ethnomusico
logically rigorous were they? She herself eschewed the label ethnomusicologist. In a newspaper
interview, she identifies herself by her training as both an anthropologist and a musicologist (Savage
c.1983). In the decades following the coining of the term ethnomusicology, there was widespread
criticism of the analytical approaches to studying music from different cultures: that is, removing
them from their cultural context in order to study the music as a product in and of itself. Jenkins
herself pointed out that any musicologist can analyse any piece of music from any culture. It takes
anthropological training, however, to discover what the music means. Her rejection of ‘ethno
musicologist’ may reflect her opinion that all of the world’s music is valid for musicological re
search, and her anthropological training allowed her to carry this out. Her research methods are
key to both ethnomusicological and anthropological research: Jenkins undertook extensive eth
nographic fieldwork and she referred to herself as a participant-observer.
Jenkins published a number of works about musical instruments, which were largely
technical tomes for museum curators. These were criticised by some academics, which indicates
her ‘difficult position within the field [of ethnomusicology]’ (Dijkstra-Downie and Bicknell
2007, p. 96). She also disseminated her research via radio and her broadcasting work was well
received. We may compare her activity in this sphere with another ethnomusicologist who
broadcast his research on the radio. Peter Crossley-Holland, for example, first worked for the
BBC Third Programme, producing programmes about music cultures from Tibet, and was later
employed by Mantle Hood as Professor of Ethnomusicology at the newly formed Institute of
Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jenkins continued her work in
the more public spheres of museums and media, curation and broadcasting, rather than pursuing
the traditional academic course. We can only speculate as to why, but limited opportunities for
her gender may have been a factor. These outputs of broadcasting, public performance and
museum displays were, and are, legitimate ways to disseminate ethnomusicological research.
Jenkins should be credited for her contributions, even though she never had the title Professor.
Academic ethnomusicologists were impressed by Jenkins’ broadcasting work. There is a letter
from John Baily in her archive, congratulating her on her BBC radio programme on Afghan music:
Baily is now Emeritus Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, and founded the Afghan
Music Unit. John Blacking, the esteemed ethnomusicologist who worked at Queens University in
Belfast, corresponded with Jenkins over the formation of a society of UK ethnomusicologists,
similar to the Society for Ethnomusicology in the US. Jenkins was invited, demonstrating the
validity of her work in ethnomusicology, but declined for the reason that:
[I]t seems to me that organisations tend to be the prerogative of those who are in
terested in organisations per se and who thus waste a great deal of time, which none of
us who are actually working can afford to lose (Jenkins 1975).
66
Fortunately, the British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE) was founded anyway, and Jenkins
continued ethnomusicological research in her own way.
7.3 Ethnomusicology today: women’s work?

Is ethnomusicology itself ‘women’s work’ today? From my personal experience of conferences
and visits to universities, it appears that women are better represented in ethnomusicology than
in musicology, composition or performance. To see whether this may be borne of reality, I
reviewed the gender balance of ethnomusicologists listed on the websites of universities
identified by the British Forum for Ethnomusicology (2020) as providers of the study of eth
nomusicology in the UK: 19 institutions.1 The results, as outlined in Figure 7.1 below, con
firmed my suppositions.
Taking into account that the sample sizes for ethnomusicology are smaller than for other
areas of music research, this can be taken as an indication of a pattern for further research and
discussion. I limited my search to institutions listed on the BFE website, and these may not
include ethnomusicologists working in other departments, such as sociology. The BFE list only
refers to institutions offering the study of ethnomusicology as a discrete programme, or as a
specialism within a music degree. I judged gender by reading the university biographies of the
academics, which contained gendered pronouns.
Although this survey shows a positive image of ethnomusicology as balanced in terms of gender,
there are, of course, biases within music and academia in general which also play out in ethno
musicology. My review does not take account of which academics are early career, which are at
professorial level, which are full- or part-time, the extent of the ‘leaky pipeline’ and resulting pay
gaps. Academics working at universities are not the only measure of ethnomusicological influence:
the key literatures from the twentieth century are overwhelmingly authored by men, and the key
figures in the formation of the discipline are male. Nettl (1983, p. 334) posited that the androcentric
framework of Western anthropology (and thus, ethnomusicology) went unchallenged by both male
and female scholars, and Koskoff has examined this further (1987, 2014).
A survey of female ethnomusicologists working in museums was less straightforward to devise.
There are few ethnomusicology posts in museums at all: I found six posts in UK museums which
involved working with musical instruments in world cultures as a specialism.2 Of these six posts,
four are held by women. In 2016, Wiggins surveyed the article submissions to Ethnomusicology
Forum (the journal of the BFE) over the previous five years. In 2015, 52% of the members of the
BFE were male, and 48% female – almost exactly the same gender balance that I found among
UK ethnomusicologists. Wiggins found that fewer women were submitting articles to
Ethnomusicology Forum, but those who did had a slightly better success rate than the men (Wiggins
2016). This resulted in 55% of published articles by male authors, compared with 39% by female
authors (with the remainder being papers by multiple authors). Wiggins suggests that the gender
imbalance is due to the seniority of male academics, and thus their ability to devote greater
resources of time and money to research (ibid.).
Female Total Female Music Total Music

Ethnomusicologists Ethnomusicologists Academics (non- Academics (non-
ethnomusicology) ethnomusicology)
39 (47%) 83 114 (32%) 352
Figure 7.1 Gender Balance of UK Ethnomusicologists.
67
Christina Homer
Problems of gender inequality across the university music sector were brought to light in the
report on Gender and Equality in Music Higher Education (Bogdanovic 2015), produced by the
National Association for Music in Higher Education (NAMHE). Within and outside universities,
affective labour tends to be women’s work that translates to a greater proportion of women in
administrative roles, and a higher proportion of female academics holding pastoral or student
support roles. In music specifically, the perception persists that conducting and music technology
are male pursuits, and that research such as in ethnomusicology, dependent upon self-reflection
and the cultivation of fieldwork relationships, is typically female. The inequalities shown by
Wiggins’s article and the NAMHE report reflect the historical imbalance of women’s voices in
music scholarship. As a starting point to redress the balance, women’s work in spheres outside
traditional academia should be included in curricula as valid vehicles for ethnomusicological re
search. In the latter part of the twentieth century, alternative means of communicating research –
for example, performance practice and ethnographic film – have diversified academic media. As
we reassess what academia is and how we do it, we have an opportunity to redefine what an
academic is and work towards equality of all kinds.
Notes
1 The institutions are: University of Aberdeen; University of Birmingham; University of Cambridge; Cardiff
University; City University London; Durham University; Goldsmiths College, University of London;
King’s College London; Newcastle University; University of Nottingham; Open University; University of
Oxford; Queen’s University Belfast; Royal Holloway, University of London; SOAS, University of
London; University of Manchester; University of Sheffield; University of Southampton; University of
York (British Forum for Ethnomusicology 2020).
2 UK institutions with world musical instrument collections and a specialist curator: Horniman
Museum, London; Royal Academy of Music, London; Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art
Gallery, Exeter; Royal College of Music, London; School of Oriental and African Studies, London; St
Cecilia’s Hall, University of Edinburgh.
References
Bogdanovic, D., 2015. Gender and equality in music higher education. National Association for Music in
Higher Education. Available from: https://silo.tips/download/gender-and-equality-in-music-higher-
education.
British Forum for Ethnomusicology. 2020. Study ethnomusicology. Available from: https://bfe.org.uk/
study-ethnomusicology.
Dijkstra-Downie, S. and Bicknell, G., 2007. Jean Jenkins: an unsung ethnomusicologist. Journal of Museum
Ethnography, 19, 90–100.
Drummond, J., 1982. Man and his music (typewritten letter). Jean Jenkins archive, catalogue no.
NMSDWCJJA19.46. Edinburgh: Department of World Cultures, National Museum of Scotland.
Frith, S., c.1983. Ethnic is British, too (newspaper clipping). Jean Jenkins archive, catalogue no. NMSDW
CJJA19.55. Edinburgh: Department of World Cultures, National Museum of Scotland.
Grier, C., c.1983. Balinese playing in a limbo (newspaper clipping). Jean Jenkins archive, catalogue no.
Homer, C., 2014. Music in the museum: an ethnomusicological approach to the study of musical
instruments. Master’s thesis. University of Manchester.
Jenkins, J., 1975. Typewritten letter to Professor J. Blacking. Jean Jenkins archive, catalogue no.
Jenkins, J., c.1980. List of academics (handwritten text). Jean Jenkins archive, catalogue no. NMSDW
CJJA2.11. Edinburgh: Department of World Cultures, National Museum of Scotland.
68
Jenkins, J., c.1982. Introduction to ‘Man and Music’ festival exhibition (handwritten text). Jean Jenkins
archive, catalogue no. NMSDWCJJA19.8. Edinburgh: Department of World Cultures, National
Museum of Scotland.
Koskoff, E., 1987. Women and music in cross-cultural perspective. New York: Greenwood Press.
Koskoff, E., 2014. A feminist ethnomusicology: writings on music and gender. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Nettl, B., 1983. The study of ethnomusicology: twenty-nine issues and concepts. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Rao, N.Y., 1997. Partnership in modern music: Charles Seeger and Ruth Crawford, 1929-31. American
Music, 15/3, 352–380.
Savage, R., c.1983. Musical Mystery Tour (newspaper clipping). Jean Jenkins archive, catalogue no.
Schofield Butler, K., 2018. Sophia Plowden, Khanum Jan, and Hindustani airs. British Library Asian and
African Blogs. Available from: https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2018/06/sophia-plowden-
khanum-jan-and-hindustani-airs.html.
Thomas, D., 1980. Margaret Mead as a museum anthropologist. American Anthropologist, 18/2, 354–361.
Tick, J., 1997. Ruth Crawford Seeger: a composer’s search for American music. New York: Oxford University Press.
Titon, J.T., 2015. Applied ethnomusicology: a description and historical account. In: S. Pettan and J.T.
Titon, eds. The Oxford handbook of applied ethnomusicology. New York: Oxford University Press, 4–28.
Wiggins, T., 2016. Publishing in Ethnomusicology Forum: a retrospective. Ethnomusicology Forum, 25/3, 255–260.
69
PART II
(Re)Discoveries
8
A BRIEF HISTORICAL AND
SOCIOLOGICAL EXAMINATION
OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY ARAB
WOMEN COMPOSERS AND
PERFORMERS IN EGYPT
Zaina Shihabi
8.1 Introduction1
In 2006, an article in Al-Quds Al-Arabi, a popular independent daily Arabic newspaper, in-
cluded a headline that read ‘Samīra Sa’eed and Laṭīfa and Ġhada Rağab and Amal Wahby have
turned to composing’ (‘Āṭif 2006, p. 12). The article’s author, Muḥammad ‘Āṭif, reported that
the singer Samīra Sa’eed, although hesitant at first, decided to ‘courageously’ enter the largely
male-dominated field of composition because she is confident of her ability to create a ‘delicate’
tune which corresponds appropriately to her song. With singers Laṭīfa, Ġhada Rağab and Amal
Wahby confirming their intentions to turn to composition as well, several people voiced their
opinions in the article on woman’s ability to create music in general, and whether or not she
will be successful. Composer Farouq Al Sharnoubi weighed in on the discussion, claiming that:
The physiological formation of consciousness and awareness, which is responsible for

creativity and imagination, is different in women. Because composition relies on the
imagination, the fact that women had not previously entered the field of composition
suggests that women are limited in terms of their creative potential, unlike men (cited
in ‘Āṭif 2006).
He further adds that ‘there are physical differences between men and women, which are to the
benefit of men’. Finally, he claims that ‘if women had any merit or potential for success in this
field, history would reflect this; but it does not’ (ibid.).
Composer Amīr ‘Abd Al-Mağeed also gave his opinion on the matter, by explaining that
although it is possible that the talent of composition may be found in women, their nature
differs from men due to the differences in their ‘mission in life, which does not allow this talent
to grow’ (cited in ibid.). He added: ‘we must view the woman as an emotional and moody
being’, whose psychological state can be easily ‘shaken’ should she face any hardship. The man,
on the other hand, explains ‘Abd Al-Mağeed, – although he can also potentially suffer in this
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-8 73
Zaina Shihabi
way – is ‘quick to recover’, unlike the woman (ibid.). Musician Nādia Muṣṭafa, on the other
hand, argued that there is no difference between a man and a woman, ‘both of whom’, she
claims, ‘possess the ability to compose’ (ibid.). In support of her argument, she explains that she
herself has had composition attempts praised as ‘innovative’ by great composers such as
Muhammad Ṣulṭān and Ḥilmy Bakr. She then adds that in spite of this, the truth is that
composition is not suitable for women due to their nature, as it requires distinct cerebral
capabilities. She then adds that her statement is not meant to undervalue women in any way, as
she claims that when a woman concentrates her efforts on anything she wishes to achieve, she is
able to succeed just as well as a man and, at times, ‘even more than him’ (ibid.).
It is an argument as old as time, one that has circulated across the West and, evidently, the
Middle East. As I have noted (Shihabi 2019, p. 32): ‘Do women compose differently than men?
Do male composers possess some secret “genius” that women do not? Will women composers
ever be considered “great”? These questions among others have underlined and, in some ways,
have undermined the work of women in Western art composition for decades’, and have
evidently stood in the way of Arab women who have attempted to create music in the past. I
have also observed (ibid.) that, in the West,
academic articles that discuss and offer explanations that deal with, as Australian
academics Sally Macarthur et al. put it, ‘deterministic assumptions that there have been
no great women composers (and never will be) and that women’s music is inferior to
men’s music’ (2017, p. 79) date at least as far back as George Upton’s text Woman in
Music (1880) where he discusses the perplexing enigma of woman’s alleged inability to
create music even though he claims ‘all … musical elements [are] in her nature’
(Upton 1890, p. 19).
According to an article written for the UAE-based daily Arabic newspaper Al-Ittihad titled ‘What
is musical composition?’, musical composition is a ‘state of awareness of musical expressions and
impressions’ (Al-Ittihad 2015). The article defines the muʾalliff, or composer, as one who creates
‘serious music’, and who is ‘fully familiar with various musical sciences, such as harmony,
counterpart, musical distribution, etc.’. Moreover, a muʾalliff must also possess ingenuity and the
ability to ‘create’, which is ‘a gift of grace from God’ (ibid.). In reflection of this notion that
creativity is an otherworldly innate gift, I am reminded of the ostensibly mystifying concept of
‘ingenuity’ as described by French writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued that ‘women in
general possess no … genius’, claiming that the ‘celestial fire that emblazons and ignites the soul,
the inspiration that comes and devours … are always lacking’ (Rousseau, cited in Shiner 2001,
p. 121). American academic Camille Paglia declared in a recent ‘Munk Debate’2 on gender that
‘there is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper’, and that ‘women cluster at
the median point of the intelligence ranks; they do not produce great geniuses, nor do they
produce the morons, criminals, and mass murderers’ (Paglia 2015). Arguably, this belief in the
‘alleged inferiority and mediocrity of women’s creative abilities’ (Shihabi 2019, p. 33), their
supposedly disadvantageous nature, and their apparent destined ‘mission’ in life, has created
obstacles that have persisted through centuries and across cultures, preventing them from entry
into the field of musical composition.
8.2 Why this research?

This research was born out of my interest in the roles women have played historically in Arabic
music, which emerged as I completed a historical and sociological doctoral thesis surrounding
74
Historical and sociological examination
the changing position of women composers and songwriters in A-Level music curricula pro-
vided by examination boards in England (Shihabi 2019). I initially gave a talk surrounding Arab
women composers at Bangor University as part of a Liverpool Hope University panel for the First
International Conference on Women’s Work in Music which took place in September 2017, and
then as a speaker at the Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum (MECAMF) which took place
on 10 November 2017 at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
In the summer of 2017, I also met with renowned historian and ethnomusicologist Virginia
Danielson, author of the seminal 1997 text Voice of Egypt, in Abu Dhabi. All three of these meetings/
events were not only pivotal, but also vital to the growth and advancement of this research. I thank
all who asked questions that led me to eye-opening findings and challenged the work in ways that
have been instructive and crucial to its development.
8.3 Research questions and aims

To begin with, I conducted a literature review in order to familiarise myself with what pioneers in
this field have previously uncovered about women’s musical past in the Middle East. I found that
the existing knowledge and literature concerning Arabic music and women in Arabic music is
extensive; as Martin Stokes and Ruth Davis insightfully observe about their own research in their
1996 introduction for the very first special issue of Popular Music that was specifically dedicated to
Middle Eastern popular musics: this research did not then nor does it now exist ‘in a void’ (Stokes
and Davis 1996, p. 255). An abundant amount of research has been conducted on the subject of
‘Middle Eastern’ musics and topics, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, but the specific scho-
larship that has impacted my work significantly on this chapter includes Danielson’s The Voice of
Egypt (1997a) and several of her articles, Frédéric Lagrange’s 2009 article ‘Women in the Singing
Business, Women in Songs’, and Salwa El Shawan’s 1985 article ‘Western Music and Its
Practitioners in Egypt (ca. 1825–1985): The Integration of a New Musical Tradition in a
Changing Environment’. I have examined research conducted in and about Egypt due to, first, its
long and rich musical history, and second, the vast amount of literature available concerning
Egypt and Egyptian musicians.3
As I conclude this introductory section, and before I identify what will be discussed in this
chapter, I will clarify one final point: this research is still very much in its infancy, and I have
found that as I sought answers, many new questions developed before me, and several other
fruitful opportunities to take this research in a variety of different directions emerged. For the
purpose of specificity and clarity, however, there are three particular points this chapter dis-
cusses. This chapter includes (1) a brief review of scholarship written about the many roles
women played in the creation of Arabic music in early twentieth-century Egypt; (2) a brief
discussion surrounding the First National Congress of Arabic Music held in 1932 and the
influence of Western music on the Arab world; and (3) an argument that the creation of music
by women in the Arab world can be seen as a form of feminist protest in its own right.
8.4 A brief review of scholarship concerning women in music

Just as ‘the 1980s and 1990s are largely known to be the epoch of feminist musicology in the
West’ (Shihabi 2019, p. 39), in a similar fashion, literature concerning Middle Eastern music
and the role of women began to appear around the same time. It must be noted, however, that
the amount of scholarship concerning the latter was and remains far scarcer in comparison. In
the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, renowned scholar Virginia Danielson’s work on
legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthūm provided pioneering research. By undertaking
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Zaina Shihabi
studies that delved deeply into the position of women in music in early twentieth-century
Egypt, Danielson significantly transformed the field. In addition to Danielson’s pivotal work,
Salwa El Shawan Castelo-Branco’s ground-breaking historical research in the early 1980s,
concerning the development of al-Musiḳa al-’Arabiyyah (Arabic music) in twentieth-century
Cairo and the introduction of Western music instruction in Egypt in the mid-1800s, also
significantly contributed to the field. In addition to research from the 1980s and 1990s, research
from the early 2000s, including Lagrange’s 2009 article, has provided valuable insight into the
ṭaqṭūqa, a ‘strophic song in colloquial Arabic quickly composed and learned’ (Danielson 1997a,
p. 52). The ṭaqṭūqa was a genre mostly associated with professional women performers and
despite its association with ‘light entertainment’, it addressed serious societal issues. As Lagrange
notes (2009, p. 229):
Ṭaqaṭīq … addressed such serious themes as the reconstruction of family around the nuclear
model, the dangers of polygamy, the right to get acquainted to the bride or the groom
before marriage, the dangers of girls’ autonomy for a family’s wealth, the minimum age of
marriage, the way spouses should deal with their husbands’ misconduct, working women
and the women in the police and army. All those issues were debated through music, as a
new class of independent women gained power in the economy of music.
Although many of these themes were issues that impacted women, the lyrics themselves were, at
times, unfavourable towards feminist pursuits (see ibid.). I do note, however, that one must be
wary of anachronistic misjudgements as the position of women in the Arab world – and indeed
across the world – has changed significantly since the early twentieth century. Additionally, it was
during this time that the influential and revolutionary feminist Hudā Sha’arāwī – chair of the First
Arab Women’s Congress in Cairo and editor of the influential magazine L’Égyptienne (1925–40) –
reportedly removed her veil publicly in 1923. A few years later, in 1925, Sha’arāwī founded the
Egyptian Feminist Union (see Fernea and Bezirgan 1977; Beck and Keddie 1978; Keddie 1979;
Badran and Cooke 1990). Although I will not claim a direct link between the ṭaqṭūqa and Arab
feminism, the changing sociocultural climate at the time in response to al-nahḍa al-nisaʾiyya (the
women’s awakening) – in which ‘intellectual discussions regarding women, gender, family, love,
and marriage were widely debated throughout Greater Syria [and] Egypt’ (Saylor 2019, p. 8) –
and the themes discussed in the ṭaqaṭīq cannot be entirely separated nor can the similarities in
subject-matter be completely coincidental.
8.5 Scholarship concerning Arab women composers

I must declare, with apprehension, that I have not come across many academic sources that deal
specifically with Arab women as composers of music, and not just as performers of music created by
men. It is imperative to note, however, as Virginia Danielson explained to me after our meeting
in Abu Dhabi, that although the available research focuses on women singers rather than
composers, one needs to ‘bear in mind that, in the Arab world, historically, the boundary
between performance and composition is fluid. Certainly a “composer” is often recognised for a
work, but the performance itself involves quite a bit of invention’ (personal communication, 24
August 2017). In her seminal text The Voice of Egypt, Danielson discusses the relationship be-
tween performance and composition in Arabic music in more depth:
Arabic song historically involves not the replication of music but the reinterpretation of
familiar models…. ‘Composers handed down to the performers a skeletal framework…. To
76
this skeletal framework, performers added ornaments, cadential formulae, and improvised
entire sections.’4 The performer’s responsibility for the sound of the performance was equal
to or greater than that of the composer (1997a, p. 146).
This notion of ‘performer as composer’ is echoed in an article written by Soufi Assaf, where she
claims that celebrated Egyptian singer Umm Kulthūm ‘changed words … and interfered in the
writing and composition of her songs’ (2008, p. 45).
8.6 The influence of Western art music on the Arab world

In a 1985 article, El-Shawan explains how Muhammad ‘Ali, the Albanian ruler of Egypt who ruled
from 1805 to 1848, ‘founded five schools of Western military music as part of his vast program for
the modernization of Egypt’ (1985, p. 143). These included: ‘the Madrasat Al-Tubūl (founded in
1824), Madrasat al-Tubūl wa Al-Aswāt (founded in 1824), Madrasat Al-Mūsīqa (founded in 1827),
Madrasat Al-‘Azf (founded in 1827), and Madrasat Al-Muhtarifīn (founded in 1834)’ (ibid.). El-
Shawan argues that the impact of these schools was not limited to ‘providing military bands for the
army’, although that was why the schools were initially created. As she explains:
From the 1850s to the 1950s the demand for Western music instruction and per-
formance came from both the large communities of Europeans … settled in Cairo and
Alexandria, and Western-educated Egyptians who regarded Western music as a
symbol of ‘progress’ and their involvement in it as amateur musicians or listeners as
one of the requisites for their admission to the upper echelons of Egyptian society
(ibid., p. 144).
This is particularly significant considering the aims of the First National Congress of Music in
1932, and, upon reflection, of the role Western notation and Western instrumentation played
in creating ‘high culture’ musicianship. The Cairo Opera House, which opened its doors in
1869, also played a substantial role in the dissemination of Western ‘high’ culture. ‘It became’,
writes El-Shawan, ‘one of the most important centers for Western music activities not only in
Egypt, but also throughout the Middle East’ (ibid.). In the 1920s, several conservatoires fea-
turing European instructors were set up in Cairo. During this time, ‘first and second generations
of Egyptian composers of symphonic music’ (ibid., p. 145) were educated and trained by
European instructors, including Composer Awatef Abdel-Karim, who is credited as being the
first woman to officially study music composition in Egypt (Mattar 2006). During the 1950s and
1960s, ‘generous support provided by the government for Western “art” music … led many of
its Egyptian practitioners to refer to this period as the “golden era” of Western music in Egypt’,
explains El-Shawan, led by the Cairo National Conservatory and the Cairo Symphony
Orchestra (1985, p. 148).
8.7 The National Congress of Arabic Music, 1932

European musicologists and leading Arab musicians – under the patronage of His Majesty King
Fu’ād I – organised the National Congress of Arabic Music in 1932 in Cairo. This meeting would
become a historic moment in Arabic music history – a ‘landmark event that has shaped music
education, scholarship, and cultural policy in Arab countries since that time’ (Thomas 2007, p. 1).
Thomas claims that the event ‘codified a category called “Arab music”’ (ibid.), (al-musiqa al-
Arabiyya) which, until then, had been referred to as Oriental music (al-musiqa ash-sharqiyya). This
77
Zaina Shihabi
transformation, which Thomas notes has also been discussed by ‘El Shawwan and others’, was ‘a
move which both created an artificial grouping of cultural traditions among “Arabs” (itself an
emergent category) and emphasized a distinction from non-Arab musical traditions, including
Turkish and Persian musics’ (ibid., p. 2). In addition to this significant categorisation, this conference
was not organised simply to ‘survey and document Arab music’, Thomas argues, it was put together
in order to ‘intervene’ and ‘make recommendations’ in the development of Arab music (ibid.). The
conference included acts from a variety of Middle Eastern countries, including Syria, Iraq, Tunisia,
Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Turkey. Despite the various significant roles women were playing in
the creation of Arabic music at the time, however, all of the musicians and musicologists invited to
the conference were men, with Umm Kulthūm being the only exception.5
8.8 A brief historical discussion of Arab women composers

In order to collect information from varied sources on the topic of women composers in Arabic
music, I conducted searches in both English and Arabic of blogs, newspapers and online articles
that discuss Arab women composers. I will now briefly discuss and provide content analysis of
some of the sources I uncovered concerning these influential women and the impact they had
during their time and beyond.
Umm Kulthūm (c.1904–75) – ‘the voice of the Arabs’ (Soufi Assaf 2008, p. 46), – is a name
so widely recognised in the Arab world, it would be difficult to come across an individual who
does not know her. Umm Kulthūm was known for her incredible voice and improvisational
singing style and was one of the most popular and influential singers of her time. Those who
remember her concerts claim she never ‘sang a line the same way twice’ (Danielson 1997b).
Danielson writes of her vast improvisational ability: ‘With virtuosic command of the historic
Arab melodic system and hundreds of vocal colors and ornaments, she stretched 20-minute
compositions into two-hour performances’ (ibid.).
In addition to this notion of ‘performance as composition’, several non-academic sources
also claim that Umm Kulthūm did, in fact, compose a few of her own songs. According to an
article written for the revolutionary and controversial Lebanon-based online magazine
Raseef22, titled ‘Music Behind the Microphone: The Most Famous Female Experiences in
Creating Melodies and Composing Music’, Umm Kulthūm composed the music for her songs
‘On the Eyes of Desertion’ of 1928, and ‘I wish I were the Breeze’ of 1936 (Al Aswani 2016).
As mentioned, Umm Kulthūm was the only Arab woman musician invited to the National
Congress, where she reportedly delivered a presentation during which she allegedly ‘appeared
provoked by what she perceived as the organizers’ underestimating of her role as a musician’
due to her gender (Soufi Assaf 2008, p. 45). In terms of women’s rights, Soufi Assaf claims that:
Umm Kulthum played an active role in advocating for women’s right [sic]. In her
tours in Egypt and the neighboring countries, Umm Kulthoun [sic] frequently asserted
women’s right [sic] to vote, criticized female circumcision, and called for raising the
marriage age (ibid.).
Although several other notable women were also creating music and making an impact in
Egypt between the 1920s and 1960s, few of them are as widely remembered and celebrated
today as Umm Kulthūm. Bahija Hafez (1908–83), for example, was not only a successful
composer who is said to have written her first piano composition at the age of nine: she was also
considered one of the ‘distinguished female pioneers’ (Gharib 2019) of Egyptian cinema in the
1920s (see Leaman 2001). And according to an article by the International Alliance for Women
78
in Music (IAWM), composer Awatef Abdel Karim, born in 1931, was the first Egyptian woman
to study composition (Mattar 2006). Additionally, the author also claims that Abdel Karim
’founded the Theory and Composition Department at the Faculty of Music Education at
Helwan University’ in Egypt and ’became its dean’, paving the way for new generations of
Egyptian composers (ibid).
Prior to Egyptian independence from the British, prolific singer Munīra al-Mahdiyya
(1885–1965) was not only ‘one of relatively few women making commercial recordings before
World War I’ (Danielson 1997a, p. 46), she also formed her own theatre company and managed
it herself. Danielson claims in Voice of Egypt that al-Mahdiyya’s company ‘frequently performed
nationalistic songs that were summarily censored by the British’, and further elaborates:
Munira al-Mahdiyya’s nationalistic songs of the 1890s and the anti-British perfor-
mances … formed part of the widespread public attitude of resistance to foreign rule
that permeated city and countryside throughout the first quarter of the century (ibid).
Although the topic of Arab women composers is a significantly under-researched area of his-
tory, it can be argued that women have been successfully utilising music as a form of protest
throughout, in spite of their marginalisation. It can also be argued, as Nawar Al-Hasasn Golley
insightfully observes, that ‘in the Arab world, feminist consciousness has developed hand in
hand with national consciousness since the early 19th century’ (Golley 2004, p. 521). From al-
Mahdiyya’s anti-British performances to more recent compositions by Palestinian composer
Rima Tarazi ‘Aghānī al-Ḥurriya wa al-Amal’ (Songs of Freedom and Hope),6 and songs of
protest such as Tunisian singer/songwriter Emel Mathlouthi’s songs ‘Ya Tounes Ya Meskin’
(Poor Tunisia) and ‘Kelmti Horra’ (My Word Is Free) – ‘both of which … became anthems for
the Tunisian Revolution’ (Salti 2016) – it can be argued that Arab women have been using
music as a form of consciousness-raising and feminist protest for over a century.
8.9 Conclusion and opportunities for further research

Although there are several other notable women who helped shape the history of Arabic music over
the last century, they cannot all be listed here. This research has provided a preliminary and ne-
cessary first step towards a much larger and under-researched topic from both a historical and
sociological standpoint. Continuing this research will provide numerous and widespread oppor-
tunities for further research as it continues to uncover never before told stories of women composers
in the Arab world over the last century. Analysis of the 2006 Al-Quds Al-Arabi article strongly
suggests that history is vital, as the lack of female representation in Arabic music history is impacting
women attempting to enter the field. In The Pursuit of History John Tosh reminds us that ‘to
understand our social arrangements, we need to have some notion of where they have come from’
(2010, p. 2). Perhaps by providing this lost history and the reasons for its omission, assumptions
concerning the capability of women composers in the Arab world may also begin to change.
Notes
1 Technical note: The International Journal of Middle East Studies transliteration system guide has been
referred to for the transliteration of Arabic words in this article. Available from: https://
www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-file-manager/file/57d83390f6ea5a022234b400/TransChart.pdf
2 The Munk Debates were established in 2008 by co-founders Peter and Melanie Munk. They are semi-
annual, Toronto-based debates.
79
Zaina Shihabi
3 Several other sources have also enriched this research, including: B. Barclay, ‘Woman at Point Zero
review – compelling music from unfamiliar sources as Arab voices thrill’, Guardian, 16 July 2017:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jul/16/woman-at-point-zero-review-nawal-el-saadawi-
lso-st-lukes; M. Booth, ‘Biography and Feminist Rhetoric in Early Twentieth-Century Egypt: Mayy
Ziyada’s Studies of Three Women’s Lives’, Journal of Women’s History, vol. 3/1, 1991, pp. 38-64; V.
Danielson, ‘Artists and Entrepreneurs: Female Singers in Cairo during the 1920s’ in N. Keddie & B.
Baron, (eds.), Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (Yale: Yale
University Press, 1991), pp. 292-309; S. El-Shawan, ‘The Role of Mediators in the Transmission of
Al-Musiḳa al-’Arabiyyah in Twentieth Century Cairo’, Yearbook for Traditional Music, vol. 14, 1982,
pp. 55-74; A.J. Racy, Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Ṭarab (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003); S. Saeed, ‘Composer Bushra El Turk on her adaptation of Nawal
El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero’, The National, 9 July 2017: https://www.thenational.ae/arts-
culture/on-stage/composer-bushra-el-turk-on-her-adaptation-of-nawal-el-saadawi-s-woman-at-
point-zero-1.436974; M. Salami, ‘An Egyptian classic of feminist fiction’, Guardian, 7 October 2015:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/oct/07/an-egyptian-classic-of-feminist-
fiction
4 Danielson is quoting El-Shawan in this section.
5 See Thomas (2007) for more on the 1932 Congress in Cairo. Refer also to DanDana radio segment by
SOAS Radio with PhD candidate Hazem Jamjoum – DanDana EP03 Cairo Congress on Arab Music
(2019). Available online from: https://www.mixcloud.com/SOASradio/dandana-radio-episode-03-
cairo-congress-on-arab-music/
6 See Boulos, I.I. 2020, ‘The Palestinian music‐making experience in the West Bank, 1920s to 1959:
nationalism, colonialism, and identity’, PhD thesis, Leiden University.
References
Al Aswani, M., 2016. Music behind the microphone: the most famous female experiences in creating me-
lodies and composing music. Raseef, 22, 11 July: https://raseef22.com/article/33391-female-musicians-
behind-the-microphone-the-most-famous-female-experiences-in-music-composition
Al-Ittihad, 2015. What is musical composition?. 7 April. Available from: https://www.alittihad.ae/
article/107312/2015/
‘Āṭif, M., 2006. Samīra Sa’eed and Laṭīfa and Ġhada Rağab and Amal Wahby have turned to composing.
Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 16 February: https://www.alquds.co.uk
Badran, M. and Cooke, M., 1990. Opening the gates: a century of Arab feminist writing. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Beck, L. and Keddie, N.R., 1978. Women in the Muslim world. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Danielson, V., 1997a. The voice of Egypt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Danielson, V., 1997b. Umm Kulthum Ibrahim. Harvard Magazine, 1 August. Available from: https://
harvardmagazine.com/1997/07/umm-kulthum-ibrahim
El-Shawan, S., 1985. Western music and it’s practitioners in Egypt (ca. 1825-1985): the integration of a
new musical tradition in a changing environment. Asian Music, 17/1, 143–153.
Fernea, E.W. and Bezirgan, B.Q., 1977. Middle Eastern women speak. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Gharib, A., 2019. Remembering Bahiga Hafez: Egyptian cinema pioneer. Ahramonline. Available from:
http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/344091.aspx
Golley, N., 2004. Is feminism relevant to Arab women? Third World Quarterly, 25/3, 521–536.
Keddie, N.R., 1979. Problems in the study of Middle Eastern women. International Journal of Middle East
Studies, 10/2, 225–240.
Lagrange, F., 2009. Women in the singing business, women in songs. History Compass, 7/1, 226–250.
Leaman, O., ed., 2001. Companion encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African film. London & New
York: Routledge.
Macarthur, S., et al., 2017. The rise and fall, and the rise (again) of feminist research in music: “what goes
around comes around”. Musicology Australia, 39/2, 73–95.
Mattar, N., 2006. Women musicians in Egypt. IAWM Journal, 12/2, 47-48. Available from: https://
web.archive.org/web/20070927220912/http:/www.iawm.org/articles_html/mattar_egypt.html
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Paglia, C., 2015. Interview with Camille Paglia for the Munk debate on gender in the 21st century. The
Munk Debates, December. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2V-DoQGY70
Salti, R., 2016. Islamic voices: music of the Arab spring. StandfordLive, 20 September. Available from:
https://live.stanford.edu/blog/september-2016/islamic-voices-music-arab-spring
Saylor, E., 2019. Subversive sisterhood: gender, hybridity, and transnationalism in ʿAfifa Karam’s Fatima
al‐Badawiyya (Fatima the Bedouin, 1909). Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 15 (1), 3–23.
Shihabi, Z., 2019. The changing position of women composers and songwriters in A-level music curricula
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Tosh, J., 2010. The pursuit of history. 5th ed. Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.
Upton, G.P., 1890. Woman in music. 3rd ed. Chicago: A.C. McClurg and Co. Originally published in 1880.
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9
THE RISE AND RISE OF WOMEN
IN AUSTRALIAN COMPOSITION
Sally Macarthur
Western historical accounts of music are mostly elaborated along a straight line, which is to say
that they plot a continuous, future-oriented, processive and progressive history of music. This
chronological model is dominant, shaping and conditioning our knowledge and understanding
of music. It has produced a Western art music history that is thoroughly and shamelessly
masculinised, making little room for the experience of the feminine. Against this history,
women’s history is perceived as secondary, lacking a critical mass of composers and unable to
recover many exceptional composers. In relation to women in Australian art music composi-
tion, the hierarchical nature of the chronological model sets one music against another. To
paraphrase Thérèse Radic (1991, p. 44): early Australian music is rendered inferior to European
music; early Australian music is judged inferior to British music; and British music is decreed
inferior to European music, making Australian music doubly inferior. In this line of reasoning,
Australian women’s music might be triply inferior.
Of course, feminist work has thoroughly deconstructed the hierarchical thinking of the
progressivist Western tradition that privileges a masculine world-view but its interventions are
yet to fully impact music. In this short chapter, I will make another intervention to generate
new understandings of women’s music history by approaching questions of temporality dif-
ferently. Aeon time, as elaborated in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), concerned
as it is with the non-physical realm of incorporeal identities, offers possibilities to break open
the narrative of chronology by paying attention to that which is seemingly invisible, minor and
experiential, hidden beneath linear time, subsumed under the grand narrative of chronological
time.1 The incorporeal realm is unseeable and unknowable, and yet, in Deleuzian thought,
everything we know and experience in the world moves around this realm. When something
shifts, we glimpse or grasp what is otherwise hidden. The incorporeal realm is not conceived as
a binary, dividing the unseeable and the unknowable from the physical reality of the world.
What is represented in the actual world is dependent upon the unseen forces of the immaterial,
incorporeal realm: both realms influence each other and are dependent upon each other. While,
out of necessity, I will speak the language of chronological time, I will occasionally move in and
out of its implied straight line, weaving a narrative that glimpses the past differently, shifting
towards serendipitous moments of possibility, or to lines of flight, presaging new directions for
music. In so doing, I will be calling on two models of time simultaneously – Chronos and Aeon –
to account for the double dimension of time in Australian women’s music.
82 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-9
Rise of women in Australian composition
Women composers have been pivotal in shaping Australian music since the first European
settlers arrived in the penal colony in 1788. At the end of the nineteenth century, they ac-
counted for 20% of the total number of composers (Selleck 2007) but, as highlighted by Jula
Szuster (2014), their contributions at that time were predominantly in popular genres that were
‘intended for domestic use and sold as sheet music’. Music destined for the concert hall was
almost entirely composed by men. Unlike Europe, as Radic explains (1991, p. 45), very little
attention had been paid to Australian professional composers of either gender until after World
War II. Rosalind Appleby puts this down to Australian music ‘lagging decades behind European
music’ (2012, p. 12), with much of it derivative of the Romantic works in vogue in Britain and
Europe. It was not until Peter Sculthorpe’s (1929–2014) career was launched in the 1960s that
post-colonial Australian music came into its own. On his death, Sculthorpe was lauded as ‘a
musical giant’ who ‘changed Australia’s music landscape forever’ (Guardian 2014). However,
Sculthorpe’s music did not materialise ‘out of thin air’. The preceding generation, who in-
cluded three significant women composers, Mirrie Hill (1889–1996), Margaret Sutherland
(1897–1984) and Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912–90), laid the foundation for the-Sculthorpe-to-
come. Upon hearing Sutherland for the first time in 1948, Sculthorpe remarked that it was his
‘first encounter with a truly original and Australian voice’ (Petersen 2014). A revision of the
chronological narrative would fill in gaps like this, retrospectively recognising that the
Sculthorpe-to-come had possibly already intuited Mirrie Hill’s unique music with its
Aboriginal influences, Sutherland’s expression of her inner musical voice that she called her
chant interieur and Glanville-Hicks’ discovery of a new compositional method that she described
as her ‘melody-rhythm’ concept.
This chapter does not attempt a full and inclusive history of Australian women composers.
To do so would be impossible in terms of their sheer number and, in any case, to separate the
included from the excluded would be to buy into the patriarchal conditioning of chronological
historical thinking. Rather, I focus on just six foundational women composers – Hill,
Sutherland, Glanville-Hicks, Ann Boyd (b. 1946), Moya Henderson (b. 1941) and Elena Kats-
Chernin (b. 1958) – and dramatize their musical actualisations, conceiving each as the figure of
the ‘singular life of the event’ (Deleuze 1990, p. 41) in which transformations happen. In so
doing, I re-imagine the force of the past as it informs thinking in the future. I consider the ethics
of appropriation, highlighting that it has been comprehensively debated by Australian com-
posers in two issues of Sounds Australian (1991; 2006), giving rise to sharply divided opinions. It
is not my intention to judge how the women who engage with indigenous music resolve their
ethical issues of appropriation. Rather, I report on the practice as it arises, bearing in mind that,
as Linda Kouvaras has pointed out (1995), a preoccupation with Indigenous music is not
common to most Australian composers, including Glanville-Hicks and Kats-Chernin.
Henderson and Boyd, however, almost as an echo of Hill and Sutherland, engage with the
practice of appropriation as an exploration of their Australian identities. Above all, my aim is to
lightly dust this narrative with different conceptions of time – Aeon in tandem with Chronos and
their related concepts of becoming, the untimely, and minor music – showing how such
conceptions allow for a shift from a negative representation of women’s music to an affirming
idea of its untimely affects.
In a fleeting remark, Gordon Kerry (2009, p. 175), echoing an earlier view of Deborah Crisp
(1979), foregrounds the originality of Mirrie Hill, suggesting that in comparison to her husband,
Alfred Hill (1869–1960), she was more ‘interesting’ and adventurous. In Crisp’s words, Mirrie
Hill possessed an originality of perspective that ‘far exceeded that of her husband’, noting that
she composed in her spare time, working on the kitchen table, while her husband worked in
the luxurious comfort of a rather large studio. Whereas an anthology of Australian composers
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Sally Macarthur
elevates Alfred Hill to the status of a ‘Founding Father’ of Australian music (Tunley 1978, p. 2),
another view, re-assessing his music, concludes that: ‘Hill never shifted from his late-romantic
stance; it is as though the major portion of the twentieth century that he witnessed had never
happened’ (Sitsky 2011). In contrast, Mirrie Hill’s imaginative contributions can be read as
creating an opening for an Australian music-to-come with works that attempt to synthesise
Aboriginal music, including Film Music (1948), Three Aboriginal Dances for piano and orchestra
(1954), the Arnhem Land Symphony (1954) and Aboriginal Themes for mezzo soprano, baritone,
flute, oboe, harp and strings (1971).
The composing activities of Mirrie Hill can be partially understood in terms of the public/
private distinction in which women’s music is typically associated with the private domain.
Several women composers in the same generation as Hill, Sutherland and Glanville-Hicks
composed music for the Australian Music Examinations Board (AMEB), providing a wealth of
material on which musicians-in-training would develop their technical expertise while be-
coming acquainted with its mostly quasi-romantic aesthetic. While many of these women,
notably Dulcie Holland (1913–2000) and Miriam Hyde (1913–2005), also wrote in just about
every genre for the concert hall, such work has been largely overlooked, perhaps translating into
the idea that it continues to lurk in Aeon time: ‘an already there that is at the same time not-yet-
here’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p. 262). The public/private distinction has resonances with
the broader narrative of Australian history, as noted by Grimshaw et al. (1994, p. 3), in which
the public achievements of men are celebrated while women, along with indigenous and other
ethnic Australians, are ‘turned into conditions of subordination’. Mirrie Hill, Sutherland and
Glanville-Hicks made an entrance into Australian music history at a time when their profession
writ large was invisible to the broader public. They were sandwiched between Isaac Nathan
(1791–1864), the first official Australian composer, and Sculthorpe, the first official composer to
make composing a respectable profession some 100 years later. Furthermore, unlike America,
Australia did not inherit the intellectual cream of Europe during the interwar years. Vincent
Plush (1988) comments that the debate that had become fashionable on the continent about
Stravinsky versus Schoenberg passed Australia by. Accordingly, Sutherland, who had studied in
Paris in the 1920s, ‘came home with her Stravinskian music, endured official ridicule and
sought refuge in the first duty of Australian womanhood, the family’ (ibid.).
The idea of the double dimension of time, the slower pace of Aeon moving in the back-
ground, allows for a re-envisioning of Sutherland’s contribution in which gender is understood
to perform itself differently as an event of time in the temporality of her own life-time and that
of the present time. In a Heideggerian sense (Heidegger 1962, pp. 278, 428, 434), the now-
time of her own life-time is plotted as the invisible female composer; and in the now-time of
the present, pointing to the future, it is actualised as a becoming-visible-and-audible of music.
In her own life-time, she struggled to gain recognition. She was refused publication of her
Concerto for Strings by Boosey & Hawkes when they discovered that ‘M. Sutherland’ was a
woman (Murdoch 1972, p. 184), and, as Appleby (2012, p. 14) says, her last completed work
was her first ever commission. For Covell, ‘it was a woman, Margaret Sutherland of
Melbourne, who really naturalised the twentieth century in Australian music’ (2016, p. 155).
She wrote ‘music that paralleled the new classical reaction against romantic styles in most
European, or Europe-derived societies’ (ibid.). In 1923, she travelled to London to study with
Arnold Bax (1883–1953), returning in 1925. In 1927, she married the Melbourne psychiatrist,
Dr. Norman Albiston, who ‘thought composing music was a sign of mental illness in a woman’
(Appleby 2012, p. 14). After divorcing Albiston in 1949, Sutherland unleashed what Appleby
describes as an ‘outpouring of creativity’ (ibid., pp. 18–19), suggesting that her composing
career was only inaugurated at the age of 51. Her originality, however, was evident ten years
84
earlier. The First String Quartet (1939) breaks many musical conventions, charting similar
territory to that of composers who were in vogue on the continent, such as Debussy,
Stravinsky, Ravel and Bartók. Its fluid elasticity is generated from Sutherland’s chant interieur in
which a stream of musical ideas constantly present themselves for crafting and refinement. The
Quartet shares these qualities with numerous others that followed, including Contrasts for two
violins, Discussion for string quartet (1954) – both sharing an allegiance to the music of Bartók –
the Six Bagatelles, the Violin Concerto, her much admired orchestral work, Haunted Hills
(1950), and chamber opera The Young Kabbarli (1964). Opening with an extended passage for
didgeridoo, the opera unfolds the story of Daisy Bates who lived among the indigenous
communities on the Nullarbor in South Australia, a story that almost 50 years later is re-
imagined as another opera, Daisy Bates at Ooldea (2012), by Anne Boyd. According to
Crisp (1979):
Sutherland provided for Australian music the beginning of its own musical style. For
Australian women, she provides a precedent, proving that woman can, indeed, be
innovative in their music; she provides also that most essential element in the growth
of any tradition: a starting point with which Australian women can identify and from
which their music can develop (unpaginated).
While Sutherland mostly stayed on home soil, Glanville-Hicks spent much of her career
abroad, taking up citizenship in North America before returning to Australia in the mid-1970s.
She was an acknowledged critic, promoter and composer of new music. As critic and promoter,
she was highly visible. As a composer, however, her journey was hard-fought. Victoria Rogers
(2009) describes Glanville-Hicks as an innovative experimenter who was searching for her own
solution to the musical impasse that had emerged in the ‘serial camp’. Serialist composers had
come to the realisation that not all of music’s parameters could be tightly controlled. Glanville-
Hicks’ melody-rhythm concept, which takes inspiration from Indian antiquity and other
‘exotic’ musical traditions, presents itself as a unique solution to the ‘serial problem’. Notable
among the highly distinctive works of the 1950s that utilise this new concept are the Sonata for
Harp (1950), Sonata for Piano and Percussion (1951), Letters from Morocco (1952), Sinfonia da Pacifica
(1952), the Etruscan Concerto (1954) and the opera Transposed Heads (1952–53). It is well-known
that Glanville-Hicks disliked being called a ‘woman composer’ and went to great lengths to
disassociate herself from women (Radic 1991; Rogers 2009). Despite this, she was not immune
to discrimination, writing to Kurt Stone that:
When a gentleman composer produces nine bad works, and one good one, it is the
good one by which he is measured. When a lady composer produces nine good works
and one bad one, it will be the bad one by which she is measured (Glanville-Hicks,
cited in Rogers 2009, pp. 83–84).
A re-imagining of Glanville-Hicks might understand her not as a self-identity but as a ‘para-

doxical entity’ in which her subjectivity and identity becomes the ‘singular life’ of the event,
creating something new in evental time (Deleuze 1990, p. 41). Her music enacts a transfor-
mation through the process of differential becoming, a continuous movement into the future
that affirms creative difference as a break with the past, thereby opening up connections to the
past that alter the present.
It is estimated that women composers in the 1970s and early 1980s accounted for ap-
proximately 8% of the total number of composers in Australia (Macarthur 1997), which, by
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Sally Macarthur
1988, had grown to 15% (Appleby, p. 42; Szuster 2014), rising to 25% in 2021 and, in 2019,
with a total of 231 women and 605 men, to 28% (Australian Music Centre 2021). However,
the rise and rise of women composers – by which I mean the rise of their representation in the
official register at the Australian Music Centre – is offset by their struggle to have their works
commissioned, published, broadcast and performed by professional musicians (Macarthur et al.
2017). As a field of cultural production, music has been an ongoing site of struggle for women
composers, prompting political debates about the value of their music and whether a quota
system should be imposed on funding bodies and professional performers to ensure that they are
adequately represented. A literature review (Macarthur et al. 2017) shows that a considerable
body of feminist work had been generated over the past five decades, growing in quantity in the
1990s, tapering off in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and increasing in volume once
again in the second decade. Quite reasonably, with the quantity and impact of this work in the
1990s, Susan McClary (1993, p. 420) anticipated that the issue of women’s marginalisation
would be solved by the twenty-first century. However, the literature suggests otherwise,
showing that the decline in the amount of research on women’s music at the beginning of the
twenty-first century coincides with a decline in the performance of their music (Macarthur
et al. 2017). This is particularly evident in Australia, leading to a call to music organisations to
re-double their efforts to support and perform women’s music (Browning 2016; Macarthur
et al. 2016; Hope 2017). As a process of ‘becoming-other-than-itself’, as Rosi Braidotti would
put it, ‘suspended between the no-longer and the not-yet’ (2006, p. 156), Australian women’s
music might be read, then, not as an event within Chronos time but as the power of time itself in
which it continually presents itself as the untimely. In Deleuze, the concept of the untimely, as
it might be thought on the line of time, is an opening to a new experience of history
(Colebrook 2002, p. 62).
Many Australian post-settler composers have drawn inspiration from the music of the First
Nations peoples to enrich their Western scores and to fulfil their quests to create a distinctly
Australian music. It is estimated that the traditions of the First Nations peoples stem as far back
as 80,000 years. In the first half of the twentieth century, post-colonial composers involved in
this activity were dubbed Jindyworabaks. This label, of Aboriginal origin, had the meaning of
annexing or joining. It began as a literary movement before and during World War II, and
gradually extended to the other arts. Sutherland and Mirrie Hill, as discussed above, engaged in
this practice as did Peter Sculthorpe and two women composers belonging to the next gen-
eration, Anne Boyd and Moya Henderson. While the intention of most who engage in this
practice is to honour the music of the subordinated culture, inserting the ‘spirit of the land’ into
music that is otherwise based in the European tradition, it has produced a sharply divided
perspective. One holds that any referencing of Indigenous music is appropriation, and thus
unethical; the other argues that not to incorporate Indigenous music would be to perpetuate the
disrespect and marginalisation of Indigenous peoples (see Macarthur 2019). For Gordon Kerry
(2009, p. 30), for example, no matter how respectful its intentions, appropriation is un-
comfortable because it risks reinforcing the superiority of non-indigenous composers and
musicians. His reflections are an example of the relatively recent emergence of awareness that
when valuing musical composition as ‘national culture’, it inevitably brings into sharp focus
questions about the continuing relationship between those who colonise and those who are
colonised. It is also evident that there is no clear-cut answer to these questions.
Australian women composers, like the First Nations peoples, are situated outside the
dominant tradition of white, male, post-colonial composers. As such, their musical ‘languages’
do not necessarily accord with the dominant tradition. As I will now argue, belonging to a
86
minor tradition has the potential to reveal the hidden power of difference. As a vehicle for
creativity, minor music is poised on the edge of the new. Focusing on literature, Claire
Colebrook (2002, pp. 64, 121) suggests that its newness does not arise through its reproduction
of formulaic models of the dominant tradition. Its newness arises from its ongoing genesis of
new ideas. In a similar vein, minoritarian music does not faithfully repeat the formulaic models
of the majoritarian tradition as represented by the chronologically sequenced Western art music
canon, which presents itself as the tradition, or the expressions of genius composers. Rather, to
follow Colebrook’s logic, a minor music would avoid the banality of formulaic imitations,
instead, repeating ‘the power of difference that produces the original’ (ibid.). I want to suggest,
then, that Boyd and Henderson can be read in these terms. In different ways, each has pursued
the power of difference, even as they appropriate the rich resources of indigenous music. As
problematic as this practice has been viewed, this position-taking vehemently defends its ethical
stance, suggesting that it is paying homage to an ancient culture.
Boyd’s music traces what Deleuze would call a ‘line of flight’.2 The arid, outback Australian
landscape of Boyd’s childhood, and its connection with indigenous Australians, takes flight,
transforming landscape into music, thereby launching a thoroughly new musical style in the
1970s. Here we see the event dramatized where, as Deleuze would put it, ‘all events gather
together in one that transmutation happens’ (1990, p. 153). Boyd’s aesthetic is anchored on the
modes, instruments and heterophonic textures of South East Asian musical traditions while
imagining and re-imagining the Australian landscape and its connections with indigenous
Australians in countless different ways. Significant among her works that move music into this
uncharted territory are As it Leaves the Bell (1973), Angklung (1974) and As I Crossed Bridge of
Dreams (1975). In rejecting modernism, these works have more in common with minimalism
and, together with others that followed – such as The Book of Bells I, II and III (1980–81; rev.
1995, 1996), Meditations on A Chinese Character (1996), Last Songs of the Kamikazi (1997) and
Dreams of the Earth (1998) – were worked out in a productive creative partnership with the
internationally renowned concert pianist, Roger Woodward. Boyd’s notion of ‘two-ways’ of
telling Australian stories, with its emphasis on equality, has become increasingly prominent in
her recent work, and influential in the debate in Australian music about cultural appropriation.
The opera, Daisy Bates at Ooldea (2012), the large-scale orchestral work, Olive Pink’s Garden
(2017) and the second opera, Alchera-Jugulba (2020), are ethically bound to this principle.
On a different trajectory, Henderson pushes music into several parallel lines of enquiry,
involving: a fascination with the non-conformist potentiality of the dominant Western art
music tradition in works such as Larrikin’s Lot (1982), Six Urban Songs (1983) and Wild Card
(1991); a deep attraction, like Boyd, to the spiritual dimensions of the many musical traditions
of Aboriginal heritage in works such as The Dreaming (1985), Celebration 40,000 (1987), Cross-
Hatching for solo piano (1984), Sacred Site for organ and tape (1981) and Kudikynah Cave (1987);
a probing of feminist and polemical issues in pieces such as Meditations and Distractions on the
Theme of the Singing Nun (1990) and the opera Lindy (1997); and exploring the limitless
boundaries of absurdity, stemming from her days as a student (1974–76) in Germany with
Maurico Kagel (1931–2008), giving rise to works such as Marxisms (1974), Stubble (1976) and
Rinse Cycle (2010). A negative representation of Henderson, however, would posit her com-
posing career as a line of descent. It was launched amid great fanfare in 1973 when the popular
media reported on the composer’s intention to write an opera based on Patrick White’s Voss
(Pascall 1973, p. 3). She enjoyed several years basking in her success (Appleby 2012, pp. 71–77),
but since the first decade of the twenty-first century she reflects on her career as a dis-
appointment. As Appleby explains, although there have been high moments in Henderson’s
87
Sally Macarthur
composing career, such as the success of her opera Lindy, these have been overshadowed by the
numerous compromises she has had to make. Henderson states, ‘I would never recommend a
career in composition to students’ (cited in ibid., p. 72). But what if we reimagine Henderson’s
career as contingent, operating within multiple temporalities at once? Might it reveal a different
idea for her life and career? The paradox is that gender in chronological time is limited by what
it can do. Yet, because it is also produced by the very power regimes that restrict it, to draw on
Butler (1995, pp. 131, 136), it has the capacity to continuously rework the past through which
it is constituted. Perhaps, in the case of Henderson, what is really emerging, yet to be fully
actualised, is a becoming-woman in which creative resistance to masculine power structures is
enacted as she constructs a new future. As an ongoing, future-oriented production of the new,
out of step with its own time but in step with the flow of Aeon time, ‘it defines a praxis, or
rather the very site where praxis must take hold’ (Deleuze 2004, p. 191).
Kats-Chernin, who was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, migrating to Australia in 1975,
studying in Germany with Louis Andriessen (b. 1939) in the 1980s, returning to Sydney in the
1990s where she now resides, is a household name in Australian new music. She has a for-
midable international following with her works performed regularly overseas (Adkins-Chiti
2003; Appleby 2012, pp. 106–112). Yet, as Appleby writes, Boyd describes Kats-Chernin as ‘a
party girl, whose music is “upbeat, quirky, sexy, intimate and confronting”’ (2012, p. 106).
According to Kats-Chernin (ibid., p. 111), her music is both ‘audience-friendly’ and has ‘dark
moments’, parading an eclecticism of style, drawing on popular forms, diatonic music and, in
the earlier works, aligned with the post-serialism of high modernism. In contrast to Henderson,
Kats Chernin continues to flourish as a highly successful, autonomous, freelance composer. She
is resilient and adaptable and displays considerable entrepreneurial flair with the ability to keep
reinventing her music. In the double time of a Kats-Chernin event, it becomes possible to
imagine that here is the creation of an ever-divergent music, a series of lines that take music
from its flippant, dark and disruptive territories towards its ever continuous creation of new
breaks and beginnings, conceived as a continuous stream of becomings.
Australian music history is relatively thin on the ground in terms of its book publication
track record. The landmark study of Roger Covell, first published in 1967, is offset by five
other major texts: Murdoch (1972), Callaway and Tunley (1978), Bebbington (1997), Sitsky
(2011) and Kerry (2009). Alongside these works, which mostly focused on the achievements of
men, is Appleby’s Women of Note (2012). Written in an imaginative, quirky narrative style, this
book reveals the kind of information about its composers that would be, perhaps, excluded
from mainstream histories, such as personal anecdote, and how a work-life balance might be
achieved, including the impact of marriage and raising children. In its own way, this remarkable
book is its own event, a happening of the dramatic in which ‘the rhythm of life is not simply
revealed, but is actually lived’ (Zepke 2009, p. 112). As an event, Appleby’s book marks a
moment in time, to quote Zepke, conceived as ‘a threshold across which a becoming is ac-
tualised … a method of dramatization’ (ibid., pp. 110–111). In this short chapter, I have pointed
to the ways in which Aeon time disrupts the historical conditioning of Chronos time, suggesting
that women’s music might be conceived as its own event, embodying the role of the para-
doxical entity, giving a sense that ‘it is either already over or still to come in relation to its
embodiment’ (ibid., p. 110). As a musicologist who is often tarred with a ‘feminist brush’, I
have used the philosophical thinking in this chapter to allow for my own continual transfor-
mations, making an argument about women’s music, time and feminism through these ori-
ginating conceptions of time. In so doing, I want to thank Angie Contini, a companion-
philosopher-traveller, for pointing me in this direction.
88
Notes
1 For Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 262), whatever happens always occurs within this double di-
mension of Aeon and Chronos. Chronos time passes into the present. It is the time in which an event
unfolds, including the idea of a past and future relative to it. Aeon is ‘the indefinite time of the event,
the floating line that knows only speeds and continually divides that which transpires into an already
there that is at the same time not-yet-here, a simultaneous too-late and too-early, a something that is
both going to happen and has just happened’.
2 Ashley Woodward (2007, pp. 69–70) explains the way in which Deleuze and Guattari conceptualise
three lines of force, molar, molecular and lines of flight, suggesting that ‘molar lines organize by
drawing strict boundaries, creating binary oppositions and dividing space into rigid segments with a
hierarchical structure. Molecular lines organize in a more supple way, interlacing segments in a non-
hierarchical fashion. The line of flight is the privileged line for Deleuze and Guattari, since it is the line
of change and metamorphosis. The line of flight doesn’t organize in a segmentary fashion, but is a pure
movement of change, which breaks out of one form of organization and moves towards another’.
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Colebrook, C., 2002. Gilles Deleuze. London & New York: Routledge.
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Columbia University Press.
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10
WOMEN COMPOSERS AND THE
PROMS: THE FIRST 100 YEARS
(1895–1994)
10.1 The first decade (1895–1904)

The BBC Proms, as they are known today, began life in 1895 as the Queen’s Hall Promenade
Concerts. They were conceived by Robert Newman with the intention of educating and
building up public taste for classical and modern music. Newman appointed Henry Wood, later
to become Sir Henry Wood, as conductor and established an orchestra at the Queen’s Hall
(Wood 1938, pp. 91–95). Although it is not possible to include a full literature survey on
women composers in this chapter, I have decided to take two, well-known books as re
presentative of writings on twentieth-century music. The first book consulted, the 1999 edition
of Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century by the musicologist Arnold Whittall, contained
very little about women composers. The music critic Normal Lebrecht’s The Complete
Companion to Twentieth was an improvement. There were entries on Elisabeth Lutyens,
Elizabeth Maconchy, Thea Musgrave, Judith Weir and Grace Williams, among others, and a
short paragraph entitled ‘women’ in which there was a list of composers who had won a
‘modicum of recognition’ (Lebrecht 2000, p. 416): there was no paragraph entitled ‘men’, of
course. With women composers few in number in these books, I consulted the BBC Proms
Performance Archive to see how many women composers had been featured.1 In the first year
of the Proms (1895), 11 works by women composers were performed, and in the first decade
there were no fewer than 42 different women composers. A summary charting a selection of
women composers featured in the first decade follows.
The first woman composer to have a work played at the Proms was the French composer
Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944). She was a favourite of Queen Victoria and was virtually self-
taught (Stephens 1899), but paternal pressure preventing her from going to a conservatoire
(Citron 2001). She wrote around 400 works including some 200 pieces for piano and 125 songs
(Glickman and Schleifer 2003, p. 171). Her song, ‘Chanson d’amour en espagnol’, received its
London premiere in the second half of the second Prom concert in 1895. The following year
she had a piano duet, Idylle Arabe, performed at the First Night, an orchestral suite, Callirhoe,
and song ‘The Silver Ring’, performed in Prom 5. Chaminade had 20 performances of 13
works in 19 concerts in the Proms, the last in 1931 (Figure 10.1). She died in 1944, the same
year as Sir Henry Wood, and there have been no posthumous performances.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-10 91
Figure 10.1 Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944) and her Proms.
Figure 10.2 The Proms of Maude Valérie White (1855–1937).
Another composer who had a work played in the first year of the Proms was Maude Valérie
White (1855–1937). White studied at the Royal Academy of Music and was a well-travelled
lady who spoke French, German, Italian, Swedish and Russian. She translated many European
books into English and, when not composing or writing, spent much of her time helping the
poor. Indeed, her generosity often left her in poverty herself (de Navarro 1937). White had 121
performances of 25 of her songs at 116 Prom concerts (see Figure 10.2), making her the woman
composer with the most performances at Prom concerts. One song, ‘So we’ll go no more
a’roving’, a setting of Byron, was sung 29 times, while another song, ‘The Devout Lover’,
received 16 performances. Two of her songs, ‘King Charles’ and ‘Marching Along’, were
performed at the Last Night in 1938, the year after she died, and in 1940 both ‘So we’ll go no
92
Women composers and the Proms (1895–1994)
Figure 10.3 Liza Lehmann (1862–1918) and her Proms.
more a’roving’ and ‘The Devout Lover’ were performed. Her music has not been featured at
the Proms since.
Liza Lehmann (1862–1918) enjoyed great popularity at the Proms for more than three
decades. There were 84 performances of 35 of her songs at 79 concerts between 1895 and 1930
(Figure 10.3). After her marriage to Herbert Bedford, she lived in Pinner and was a neighbour
of Maude Valérie White, the two of them sharing their music with one another (Fuller 1994,
p. 182). Lehmann was appointed the first President of the Society of Women Musicians and
also taught singing at the Guildhall School of Music (ibid., p. 185). Lehmann died in 1918 but
many of her songs were still performed at the Proms for a further 12 years.2 In 2007, 90 years
after her death, one of her songs, ‘Love, if you knew the light’, received its Proms premiere,
sung by Alice Coote, in a Chamber Music Prom (16 July) at the Cadogan Hall. Lehmann’s
mother, Amelia, also had works performed at the Proms: four songs, one of which was per
formed four times.
Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) wrote The March of the Women (1911), the anthem of the
Suffragette Movement, and gave up composing for two years to help fight the cause (Smyth
1987, p. 301). She ended up in prison twice, once for window smashing, and there is a well-
known story that Sir Thomas Beecham, on visiting, found her conducting the women who
were out in the exercise yard from her cell window with a toothbrush (Beecham 1958). Smyth
had her first work performed at the Proms in 1902 – the dance from her one-act opera Der
Wald. This opera was performed in America at the Metropolitan Opera in the following year
and remained the only opera by a woman composer for 113 years to be performed there
(Cooper 2016).3 Smyth’s second work at the Proms did not appear until 1913. This was the first
of 29 performances of sections, mainly the overture, from her opera The Wreckers (1906).
Another overture, this time from her opera The Boatswain’s Mate, featured 16 times. Other
93
Figure 10.4 Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) and her Proms.
works by Smyth performed at the Proms included her Concerto for Violin and Horn (1928),
part of her Mass in D (1921, rev. 1925) and four Choral Preludes for organ (c. 1913).
Unusually, Smyth also conducted her works at the Proms on no fewer than 14 occasions. 50
years later, Odaline de la Martinez conducted a full performance of The Wreckers (31 July 1994)
in the hope that this might bring about a revival of Smyth’s works. Smyth’s Concerto for Violin
and Horn was performed at the Proms in 2008, marking her 150th anniversary, and the Prelude
to Act 2 of The Wreckers was performed in 2018 (Figure 10.4).
Guy d’Hardelot (1858–1936) was the pen name taken by Helen Rhodes. Guy was her maiden
name and she was born in Hardelot Castle, near Boulogne in France, to an English father and
French mother. She studied in Paris and then moved to London. She was encouraged in com
position by both Gounod and Massenet (Lamb 2001) and is the woman composer with the most
works played at the Proms: a total of 46. One song, ‘Wait’, received 13 performances. D’Hardelot’s
work received 112 performances in 100 concerts between 1899 and 1926 (Figure 10.5).
10.2 The second decade (1905–1914)

The five women mentioned thus far were among the 42 who had pieces performed in the first
decade of the Proms. In the second decade, the number of featured women composers in
creased to 53, with 30 of these composers appearing at the Proms for the first time. During the
first 20 years of the Proms, therefore, a total of 72 women composers were featured, and the
majority of these composers were represented by performances of songs. Notably, the 1909
Proms included music by 20 women composers, the highest number in any year until the 2018
Proms when 21 women composers were featured.
One composer, Marjory Kennedy-Fraser (1857–1930), was a collector of Hebridean folk
songs, and these were performed on nine occasions between 1909 and 1930 with a further two
arrangements of Scottish folk songs attributed to her in 1927. Another well-known, folksong
collector, Lucy Broadwood (1858–1929), had her arrangement of a song, ‘The Crocodile’,
94
Figure 10.5 Guy d’Hardelot (1858–1936) and her Proms.
performed – but only once in 1928. The year 1907 at the Proms was important for Ethel Barns
(1874–1948) in that she was also the soloist in the premiere (17 October) of her own com
position, the Concertstück for violin and orchestra in D minor. Barns had made her Proms debut
in 1895 when she performed her Mazurka in G major, and the remainder of the 20 perfor
mances of her music at the Proms were songs. Her last Proms performance – a song, ‘O Soul of
Mine!’ – was in 1925 (Figure 10.6). She had been a sub-professor at the Royal Academy in her
younger years, working mainly to be able to continue to have lessons with Emile Suaret there,
and later established, with her husband Charles Phillips, the successful Barns-Phillips Chamber
Concerts series at the Bechstein (later Wigmore) Hall. She continued composing up until the
late 1920s and died in 1948 with little known about her final years (Fuller 1994, pp. 44–46).
Teresa del Riego, (1876–1968), British-born of Spanish ancestry, received 104 performances
of 38 of her songs at 100 concerts between 1899 and 1926. Her most-performed song,
‘Homing’, had 15 performances, one of which was at the First Night in 1919 and another in the
presence of King George V and Queen Mary on 15 October 1924. She is best known as a
songwriter but also composed piano, chamber and orchestral works. She died in 1968 but the
BBC takeover in 1927 marked the end of her Proms (Figure 10.7).
Francis Allitsen (1848–1912) came from a family of booksellers who were not in favour of a
career in music. Consequently, she was in her 30s before she went to study at Guildhall School
of Music, giving private singing lessons to help pay for her course (Armstrong 1902). She
became a very popular songwriter and had 66 performances of 21 of her songs at the Proms at
58 concerts (Figure 10.8). A grand total of 16 were performed in 1900 alone, and there have
been two posthumous years, 1914 and 1994. She did write some larger works, including an
opera, Bindra the Minstrel (1912), a cantata, For the Queen (1911), and a scena, Cleopatra (1904),
written for Clara Butt, but songs were her most numerous genre and she had almost 150 of
them published (Fuller 1994, p. 39).
95
Figure 10.6 The Proms of Ethel Barns (1874–1948).
Figure 10.7 The Proms of Teresa del Riego (1876–1968).
The statistics for the first 20 years of the Proms appear quite healthy with between six and 20
women composers each year. However, the addition of men paints a less impressive picture:
there were between 124 and 209 male composers featured each year in the first two decades of
the Proms.
96
Figure 10.8 Frances Allitsen (1848–1912) and her Proms.
10.3 Performances in the third, fourth and fifth decades (1915–1944)

It is interesting to note that in the first two decades of the Proms, women composers had many,
repeated performances of their works. This pattern changed in the ensuing years, with women
composers having fewer repeated performances. In 1917, Dora Bright (1862–1951), a writer of
orchestral, piano and chamber works as well as mini dramas and ballet music, had her Suite
Bretonne for flute and orchestra performed at the Proms. She also had a piece (Liebeslied) played
in a Saturday-only Prom during the spring of 1897. These were extra Promenade Concerts that
Newman instigated following the success of the second summer season (Jacobs 1994, p. 48).
Also in 1917, Morfydd Owen (1891–1918) had a song, ‘For Jeannie’s sake’, performed at the
Proms. Despite being described as a pivotal figure in early twentieth-century Welsh music
(Davies 2001), Owen’s music did not feature at the Proms until 2018 when her Nocturne for
orchestra was performed, a piece described as showing a ‘sensuous and utterly original musical
voice’ (Webb 2018, p. 125). Owen died at the age of 26 under suspicious circumstances fol
lowing emergency surgery for acute appendicitis.
Lili Boulanger (1893–1918), Owen’s contemporary, also died at a young age: she was just
24. Gabriel Fauré was very impressed with her talents and she also studied with Paul Vidor and
Georges Caussade at the Paris Conservatoire (Glickman and Schleifer 2003, pp. 226–227).
Boulanger’s Proms performances, all posthumous, consist of her Nocturne for violin and piano in
1931, two Psalm settings in 1999 and a symphonic poem, D’un matin de printemps, in 2017.
However, six works were performed on the centenary of her death in 2018, including a choral
work, Pour les funérailles d’un soldat, and Trois morceaux, miniature works for piano.
The Irish composer Ina Boyle (1889–1967) wrote orchestral, vocal and choral music but had
just one piece performed at the Proms. Her orchestral rhapsody The Magic Harp won a Carnegie
Award and was performed at the Proms in 1923. Boyd was a friend of Elizabeth Maconchy who
wrote of her:
97
Living out of the world, though it suited her temperamentally, had the disadvantage
that she made very few musical contacts and that her music remained little known and
almost unperformed (Maconchy 1974).
Although the Proms featured works by some women composers who were prominent in their
day, the relative absence of others raises questions about how representative these concerts really
were. Amy Beach (1867–1944), described as the foremost woman composer of the United States
and the first American woman to succeed as a composer of large-scale art music (Block and
Bomberger 2013), had just one song performed at the Proms on four occasions between 1904 and
1914. The song performed was the first of her Three Browning Songs, ‘The year’s at the spring’.
Her ‘Gaelic’ Symphony (1894), the first symphony by an American woman, was heard all over
the US and in Europe but, sadly, not at the Proms. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she did
not study in Europe but under parental pressure stayed in America. Mostly self-taught, she wrote
in a Romantic style to begin with but later was more experimental adding impressionistic
techniques to her works (Fuller 1994, p. 60; Glickman and Schleifer 2003, p. 184).
The British composer Ruth Gipps (1921–99) had an orchestral tone poem, Knight in Armour,
played at the Last Night of the Proms in 1942. Sir Henry Wood had been looking for unpublished
British works when he came across Gipps’ music (Halstead 2006, p. 20). The work was well
received, with a report in the Times afterwards describing her as ‘a young composer making her
mark’, but there have been no other performances of her works at the Proms (up to 2018).4
Alice Mary Meadows White née Smith (1839–84) has had nothing performed at the Proms,
although she was described as ‘undoubtedly ... the foremost woman composer of England’
(Elson 1909). She wrote two symphonies, four overtures, a clarinet concerto, four piano
quartets and three string quartets as well as cantatas and part-songs. Meadows White died of
typhoid fever in 1884 at the age of 45.
10.4 The BBC Proms

When the BBC took over the running of the Proms in 1927, the number of songs performed
that were written by women composers decreased dramatically, along with a sharp decline of
featured women composers. Why was this the case? From the beginning (in 1895), the concerts
took the form of being more serious in the first half, perhaps concentrating on one composer,
and shorter and lighter after the interval, with songs and ballads set between orchestral works. In
1926, following the death of Robert Newman, Chappell withdrew from funding the Proms.
Following the BBC involvement from 1927, ballads and popular songs, often published by
Chappell, were withdrawn in favour of high art songs (Doctor et al. 2007, p. 98). Back in 1895,
Henry Wood had said that songs were only included if they were justified by merit and po
pularity and he made a stand against publishers who paid royalties for performances of songs that
were mediocre (‘A Chat with Mr. Henry Wood’ 1895). Clearly, ballads and songs were be
coming less popular by the late 1920s and in the Times (15 August 1927) the reviewer of the
opening night made the comment: ‘No-one will ... regret this change ... which substitutes
songs of real merit for worthless ballads’.5 Unfortunately, there are many songs of real merit that
were no longer sung at the Proms, and following the BBC takeover, the number of women
composers dropped to just one by 1931.
Sir Henry Wood had always undertaken the programming of works, and in his quest, along
with Robert Newman, to educate the British public, he is said to have ‘changed musical taste
by giving people a little of what they wanted to hear and a great deal of what he wanted them to
98
hear’.6 When Wood died in 1944, the BBC Director of Music, Victor Hely-Hutchinson,
decided to appoint Sir Adrian Boult and Basil Cameron as Joint Principal Conductors as they
were already known by the public as being associated with the Proms. Hely-Hutchinson also
created a programming committee (Doctor et al. 2007, p. 139). There were many changes that
took place over the next few years, and much disagreement about conductors, orchestras, lack
of rehearsal time, performance standards and the programming of works at the Proms has not
always been without controversy. For instance, William Glock took over as Controller of
Music between 1959 and 1972 and took charge of the Proms personally from 1960. Glock had
not had a formal conservatory education and had no connections with the English School of
composers. He had studied piano in Berlin with Artur Schnabel and developed a passion for
contemporary, experimental music (ibid., p. 169). He wanted to introduce this to the British
public who were still dominated by the English national pastoral composers. After the Second
World War, the Proms had been under the artistic direction of Sir Malcolm Sargent, considered
to be conservative in his tastes and disliking much twentieth-century music. In trying to
persuade the BBC not to include what he called ‘difficult’ music he wrote: ‘... it is more
important to get new music lovers than new musical works’ (Sargent, cited in ibid., p. 164).
This was very different to Wood, who gave many new works a hearing at the Proms. Although
the Proms, in particular the Last Night, had become very popular, there was very little con
temporary music by 1958. Glock changed this and included many contemporary works
alongside established classics (Edmunds 2006).
10.5 The Proms and William Glock

What about music by women composers at the Proms during the Glock era? Were there
composers who were in favour whilst others were out? The answer to the first question is that
there was very little women’s music, and to the second – yes, there were, although this applied
to some men too. For instance, Glock and his successor Robert Ponsonby favoured the music
of Elisabeth Lutyens (1906–83). Lutyens used her own kind of serial technique in her music,
and the 1960s and 1970s were good decades for her with eight works performed at the Proms.
Elizabeth Maconchy (1907–94), however, had just one piece performed during this time, her
Variazioni concertanti for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn and string orchestra in 1965 (Figure 10.9).
Sir Henry Wood had helped Maconchy’s career early on (starting in 1930 with her orchestral
piece, The Land) by programming her works five times before he died.
Welsh composer Grace Williams (1906–77) had one orchestral piece, Penillion, performed in
1958 but nothing during Glock’s years: and only four of her works were performed after her
death in 1977 up until 2016. However, in 2017, on the 40th anniversary of her death, two of
her Sea Sketches were performed in three Proms concerts that took place in Hull. According to
Rhiannon Mathias, Lutyens and Maconchy, along with Grace Williams, all made significant
contributions to British music but their music was often misunderstood in their own lifetimes
and continues to suffer from neglect to this day (Mathias 2012, p. 6).
A composer who did well during the William Glock (1959–73) and Robert Ponsonby
(1974–85) eras was Thea Musgrave (b. 1928), with 11 works performed during this time. In
fact, she is the most prolific living female composer at the Proms, as of 2018, with 22 works –
26 performances at 24 concerts (Figure 10.10). Her 20-minute work Phoenix Rising was per
formed in 2018, the year of her 90th birthday.
Following closely behind Musgrave is Judith Weir (b. 1954) with 20 works, 22 perfor
mances at 20 concerts, as of 2018 (Figure 10.11). In 2014, Weir succeeded Sir Peter Maxwell
99
Elisabeth Lutyens' Proms

2
No. of works performed
1
1940
1943
1946
1949
1952
1955
1958
1961
1964
1967
1970
1973
1976
1979
1982
1985
1988
1991
1994
Elizabeth Maconchy's Proms
5
No. of works performed
0
1930
1933
1936
1939
1942
1945
1948
1951
1954
1957
1960
1963
1966
1969
1972
1975
1978
1981
1984
1987
1990
1993
1996
1999
2002
2005
2008
Figure 10.9 2011
The Proms of Elisabeth Lutyens (1906–1983) and Elizabeth Maconchy (1907–1994) high
lighting the difference between the two in the 1960s and 1970s.
Davies as Master of The Queen’s Music and is the first woman to hold that post. Her Proms
started in 1988 with her musical drama The Consolations of Scholarship.
Other living composers featured in the first 100 years of the Proms include Nicola Lefanu (b.
1947), Alison Bauld (b. 1944), Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939) and Elena Firsova (b. 1950), all
with one work played to date (2018). Keiko Abe (b. 1937) has had two works performed,
Diana Burrell (b. 1948) three, and Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931) has had nine works featured
(Figure 10.12).
10.6 Proms gender statistics: past, present ... and the future
The years between 1932 and 1994 were the worst for women composers and the Proms. For 15
of those years, there were no performances at all (1945, 1946, 1948, 1949, 1951, 1953, 1955,
1957, 1963, 1966, 1969, 1979, 1985, 1986 and 1987). Just one woman composer was featured
in 31 of those years, and ten years featured only two composers. Two years featured four
100
Figure 10.10 Thea Musgrave (b. 1928) and her Proms.
Figure 10.11 Judith Weir (b. 1954) and her Proms.
101
Figure 10.12 Nicola LeFanu, Alison Bauld, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (top), Diana Burrell, Elena Firsova, Sofia
Gubaidulina (bottom).
women composers, and on four years there were five. At the beginning of this chapter I
mentioned that there were 11 women composers in the first year. For the whole period of 46
years between 1941 and 1987 there were also 11.
In the first 100 years of the Proms there were 123 women composers (see list below). The
drop in numbers after the BBC took over applied to men as well as to women but their
numbers have increased at a much faster rate than the women, especially in the last 50 years.
The line graph (Figure 10.13) shows the whole century from 1895 to 1994 and then the graph
is extended to show the latest 24 years (up to 2018) using data provided by Jenny Fowler’s
Women in Music Proms Survey.7 The number of women composers is rising, but in 1996 and
2006 none were featured, and so careful monitoring is still needed. It is clear that in the first 100
years there was no progress whatsoever with the number of women composers at the Proms;
quite the opposite, in fact. However, in 2018, after 124 years, there was a significant increase:
21 women composers had works performed at the Proms. Finally the figure of 20 composers in
1909 has been exceeded, but it should be noted that this is still only 15.8% of the total
composers in 2018. It is encouraging that the BBC has pledged to a 50/50 gender balance for
102
Figure 10.13 Proms gender statistics.
contemporary composers from 2022. This is a good thing for living composers, although, as
highlighted in this chapter, there are a very great number of women composers from the past
whose works are of merit. They should be performed more often so that they can take their
rightful place in the history of composition and be included in the canon of works that current
and future generations can experience.
List of women composers whose works were performed in the first 100 years of
the Proms (1895–1994)
Abe, Keiko; Allitsen, Frances; Angless, Ethel; Aylward, Florence.
Backer-Grondahl, Agathe; Barclay, Marion; Barker, Lois; Barns, Ethel; Barrett-Lennard,
Emma; Barry, Katharine; Bauld, Alison; Beach, Amy; Beney, Theresa; Blackwood, Helen
Selina; Bland, Helena M.; Boulanger, Lili; Boyle, Ina; Brahe, May; Bright, Dora; Broadwood,
Lucy; Brook, Emmeline; Bruckshaw, Kathleen; Bunten, Alice Chambers; Burrell, Diana.
Carew, Molly; Carwithen, Doreen; Chaminade, Cécile; Claribel; Clarke, Emilie; Clarke,
Rebecca; Cooke, Edith; Cowdell, Ellen; Curran, Pearl Gildersleeve.
d’Hardelot, Guy; Davies, Clara Novello; Dell’Acqua, Eva.
Etherington, Mary W.
Faber, Ella; Firsova, Elena; Forster, Dorothy.
Gambogi, Frederica Elvira; Gilbert, Florence; Gipps, Ruth; Goetz, Alma; Greville, Ursula;
Gubaidulina, Sofia.
Harrison, Annie Fortescue; Hartog, Cécile; Hearne, Isabel; Hickey, Vivian; Holmès,
Augusta; Horrocks, Amy Elsie; Howell, Dorothy.
Jacobs-Bond, Carrie.
Keal, Minna; Kennedy-Fraser, Marjory; Klean, Bluebell.
Lambert, Agnes; Lefanu, Nicola; Lehmann, Amelia; Lehmann, Liza; Lemon, Laura;
Lonsdale, Eva; Lucas, Mary; Luckstone, Isadora; Lumley, Marjorie Hope; Lutyens, Elisabeth.
103
Maconchy, Elizabeth; Maud, Constance; May, Pamela; MacEwan, Désirée; Mely, Marie;
Meredith, Margaret; Miller, Maud; Moss, Katie; Murio-Celli, Adelina;
Musgrave, Thea.
Needham, Alicia.
Olagnier, Marguerite; Overbeck, Ella; Owen, Morfydd Llwyn.
Palliser, Sybil; Park, Edna Rosalind; Parker, Katharine; Pease, Jessie L.; Perkin, Helen;
Poldowski; Poston, Elizabeth; Puzzi, Fanny.
Rainier, Priaulx; del Riego, Teresa; Rodrigo, María; Rowley, Frederica; Rudd, Olga.
Sadero, Geni; Sainton-Dolby, Charlotte; Sargent, Cora Decker; Scarborough, Ethel;
Sheldon, Mary; Smyth, Ethel; Spain-Dunk, Susan; Spotiswoode, Alicia Ann; Stainer, Kate;
Strickland, Lily.
Tailleferre, Germaine; Tate, Phyllis; Temple, Hope; Thomas, Janet Owen; Trevalsa, Joan.
Verne, Adela; von Bingen, Hildegarde.
Ware, Harriet; Watson, Mary; Weir, Frances; Weir, Judith; White, Maude Valérie;
Williams, Grace; Wilson, Hilda; Woodforde-Finden, Amy; Wright, Ellen; Wright, Helen.
Zwilich, Ellen Taaffe.
Notes
1 BBC Proms Performance Archive. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3
SsklRvCSPvfHr13wgz6HCJ/proms-performance-archive
2 This was very unusual because when composers died, their music often died with them as far as the
Proms was concerned, e.g. Granville Bantock; Ethel Barns; Teresa del Riego; Cyril Scott.
3 The second opera by a woman composer to be performed at the Met was L’Amour de Loin by Kaija
Saariaho in 2016.
4 ‘Promenade Concerts’, The Times, 24 August 1942, Issue 49322, p. 6.
5 ‘The Promenade Concerts’, The Times, 15 August 1927, Issue 44660 p. 8.
6 ‘English Musical Taste, Sir Henry Wood on Sunday Concerts’, The Times, 18 November 18, 1925
Issue 44122, p.11.
7 See the Women in Music website. Available from: http://www.womeninmusic.org.uk/proms-
survey.htm
References
‘A chat with Mr. Henry Wood’ 1895 ‘A chat with Mr. Henry Wood’, 1895. The Era, 2971, 13 August.
Armstrong, W., 1902. Three English women composers. The Etude, 20/4, 127.
Beecham, T., 1958. Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944). Musical Times, 99/1385, 363–365.
Block, A. and Bomberger, E., 2013. Beach [Cheney], Amy Marcy. Grove Music Online: http://
www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-97815615
92630-e-1002248268
Citron, M., 2001. Chaminade, Cécile. Grove Music Online: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/
view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000005388
Cooper, M., 2016. Met to stage its first opera by a woman since 1903. New York Times, 17 February:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/arts/music/met-to-stage-its-first-operaby-a-womansince-1
903.html
Davies, R., 2001. Owen [Llwyn-Owen], Morfydd. Grove Music Online: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/
grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-00000456433
de Navarro, M., 1937. Miss Maude Valerie White. Times, 11 November, issue 47839, 19.
Doctor, J., Kenyon, N. and Wright, D. ed., 2007. The Proms: a new history. London: Thames & Hudson.
104
Edmunds, N., 2006. William Glock and the British broadcasting corporation’s music policy, 1959–73.
Contemporary British History, 20/2, 233–261. 10.1080/13619460600600805
Elson, A., 1909. Famous women in musical history. The Etude, July, p. 442.
Fuller, S. 1994. The Pandora guide to women composers: Britain and the United States, 1629‐present. London:
Pandora Press.
Glickman, S. and Schleifer, M., eds., 2003. From convent to concert hall: a guide to women composers. Westport:
Greenwood Press.
Halstead, J., 2006. Ruth Gipps: anti-modernism, nationalism and difference in English music. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Jacobs, A., 1994. Henry J. Wood: maker of the Proms. London: Methuen.
Lamb, A., 2001. Hardelot, Guy d’. Grove Music Online: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/
view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000012364
Lebrecht, N., 2000. The complete companion to 20th-century music. 2nd ed. London: Simon & Schuster.
Maconchy, E., 1974. Ina Boyle: an appreciation, with a select list of her music. Dublin: Dolmen Press.
Mathias, R., 2012. Lutyens, Maconchy, Williams and twentieth-century British music: a blest trio of sirens.
Farnham: Ashgate.
Smyth, E., 1987. The memoirs of Ethel Smyth. R. Crichton, ed., New York: Viking.
Stephens, W., 1899. Cécile Chaminade. The Etude, 17/6, 184.
Webb, C. ed., 2018. BBC Proms 2018. London: BBC Proms Publications.
Whittall, A., 1999. Musical composition in the twentieth century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wood, H.J., 1938. My life of music. London: Victor Gollancz.
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11
CHASING MARÍA TERESA LARA:
AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC
ACCOUNT OF TRYING TO
RECUPERATE THE STORY OF A
‘LOST’ WOMAN COMPOSER
11.1 Introduction
The present discussion gives an auto-ethnographical account (see Adams et al. 2015; Bartleet
and Ellis 2009) of the struggle to encounter a ‘truth’ that may no longer be available. The
chapter attempts to recuperate more biographical data about María Teresa Lara (1904–84), the
sister of the star bolero composer and performer Agustín Lara, before it becomes unavailable,
and also reflects on the wider cultural implications and clashing agendas of promoting the
brother’s and/or the sister’s musical creativity.1 The inquiry is based on a continuing need to
recuperate ‘lost’ women composers (see Zavala Gironés 2009, p. 207). Moreover, it aims to do
so within a Latin-American, and specifically Mexican, context where – despite pioneering
work by Pulido (1958) and others such as Meierovich (2001) – a lot of female creators of music
still need to be given the attention they deserve. Indeed, in addition to a flourishing field for
contemporary women composers, Mexico has its share of historical female creators of music,
such as Ángela Peralta (1845–83), Guadalupe Olmedo (1853–89), Spanish-Mexican Emiliana
de Zubeldía (1888–1987) and María Teresa Prieto (1896–1982), to name only a few.
More notoriety was obtained by women composers such as María Grever (1885–1951) and
Consuelo Velázquez (1916–2005) within the popular ‘bolero’ genre which – originally Cuban
but of great popularity in Mexico – is typically ‘steeped in sentimentality that artfully combines
feelings of hope and despair, deceit and desire’ (Grant Wood 2014, p. 16). Velázquez’s ‘Bésame
Mucho’ has been considered the most famous (and most frequently performed and recorded)
Mexican song in history, with recordings by Frank Sinatra, Plácido Domingo and The Beatles,
among many others (Fonoteca Nacional 2016). Some of Grever’s songs, such as ‘Júrame’, also
continue to be performed both in a popular context and within the classical music sphere. The
same is true for María Teresa’s – and/or Agustín’s – songs. However, while biographical writing
on women composers of bolero is scarce or virtually absent, Agustín Lara has been the subject
of several full-length biographies both in Spanish (Loaeza and Granados 2009) and English
(Grant Wood 2014).
106 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-11

Chasing María Teresa Lara
11.2 Before the journey

Starting with Agustín Lara’s story, one cannot even recount some basic facts about his life
without acknowledging that he had a liberal relationship with the truth. There is a lasting
controversy regarding the year (probably 30 October 1897) and the place of his birth. Agustín’s
(false) birth certificate names the town of Tlacotalpan, Veracruz (Grant Wood 2014, pp. 220,
229). His actual certificate indicates Mexico City (ibid., p. 220; Abaroa Martínez 1993,
pp. 12–13), but others claim it may have been Tlatlauquitepec, Puebla, his family’s home town.
Agustín apparently staged some of his (many) marriages, with actors performing the rites
(Loaeza and Granados 2009, pp. 365–366).
Several of his songs have led to accusations of plagiarism, although only a few ‘borrowings’
have been proven. His father Joaquín M. Lara’s song, ‘Murmurios de la selva’, became his ‘La
Clave Azul’ (ibid., p. 229), and the melody of Agustín’s ‘María Bonita’ is extremely similar to
the earlier ‘El remero’ by Cucho Monge (ibid., p. 232). In 2010, there was also a controversy
regarding the chotis ‘Madrid’, with family members of Rafael Oropesa – born in Spain but
exiled in Mexico – claiming the latter composed the song. There is no proof, but Agustín Lara’s
biographers, Loaeza and Granados, reacted by respectively accusing Spain of being ‘ungrateful’
and displaying a ‘lack of trust [which] comes from the fact that a Mexican composed Spain’s
most famous song’ (Loaeza and Granados, cited in Astasio 2010, my translation).
María Teresa Lara (Aguirre del Pino), the daughter of Joaquín Lara and María Aguirre del
Pino, was born in 1904 in Tlatlauquitepec, Puebla, and died there in 1984. She spent a few
years in Mexico City in her youth and was married to Nicanor Germán Guerrero (1909–92).
From the short Wikipedia entry (as a measure of commonly available knowledge) dedicated to
her, one can learn that she was a ‘composer and lyricist’, who ‘collaborated with Agustín on
many songs’ (Wikipedia 2019, my translation). In fact, many songs associated with Agustín Lara –
Loaeza and Granados mention 16 (2009, p. 242), and a more recent article refers to 51
(Municipios 2018) – are copyrighted under her name. These including famous pieces such as
‘Noche de Ronda’ (c. 1935) and ‘Piensa en mí’ (c. 1935).
Although relatives of María Teresa still receive royalties for these songs (Figueroa 2012),
there is no consensus on whether she actually composed them. Some of Lara’s biographers and
contemporaries (see, for instance, Figueroa 2012) claim María Teresa only gave them her name
to help Agustín escape from the restrictions of previously signed contracts. According to Loaeza
and Granados, he had a ‘contract of exclusivity he couldn’t undo with Emilio Azcárraga’, the
man he worked for in the radio company XEW (Loaeza and Granados 2009, p. 242, my
translation). In a somewhat different version, Grant Wood (2014, p. 89) claims that María
Teresa gave her name to many songs, ‘ostensibly … to make an end run around claims by
Southern [music company]’. Even the previously mentioned Wikipedia entry ambiguously
adds, after the sentence acknowledging the Lara siblings’ musical collaboration, that ‘some of
the songs by Agustín were registered under her name’ (Wikipedia 2019, my translation).
Other sources, however, emphasize that it was ‘María Teresa Lara, the composer’s sister,
who composed many of Agustín Lara’s hit Boleros’ (Broyles-González 2013, p. 163). This idea
is also maintained by several of María Teresa’s contemporaries. In the documentary film La
Sierra de Lara, Jesús Juan Carmona – a man who worked for her – stated that ‘she made the
songs of Agustín Lara, she was his composer’ (cited in Figueroa 2012, my translation). Piedad
Arrieta, one of her nieces, more cautiously claims that composing ‘some melodies’ was one of
María Teresa’s hobbies. As Arrieta states: ‘we do know that [the song] ‘Adiós Nicanor’ is hers.
They also told us that there were other melodies she had composed’ (cited in ibid., my
translation).
107
Among María Teresa’s advocates, there seems to be considerable agreement regarding the
song ‘Adiós Nicanor’, even though it is copyrighted under Agustín Lara’s name. The article
‘Songs that are not by Agustín Lara’ also stresses that it was created by María Teresa for her
husband (Pacheco 2013). This sounds plausible enough, as Nicanor was indeed her husband’s
name and the song is written in a heterosexual, female voice (for example, ‘your love is for
another woman’). I did wonder, however, why María Teresa would write ‘good-bye’ and
about ‘other women’ to the man she remained married to for most of her life. So I went to
Tlatlauquitepec, Puebla – the village where María Teresa Lara had lived for most of her life – to
find out more.
11.3 The journey

To undertake my trip to Tlatlauquitepec, I enlisted the help of historian and friend Cecilia
Barraza. Also, I had two contacts. Germán Moroni Landero, who had posted on María Teresa
Lara in a Facebook group promoting the village (2015), and Jorge Guzmán. The latter is María
Teresa’s nephew and owns both a hotel and a museum called El Rincón de los Recuerdos (The
Corner of Memories) dedicated to his town and family in Tlatlauquitepec. Apparently, the
museum contained a photo providing proof of the Lara siblings’ collaboration. When we ar-
rived in the still partially indigenous town of some 60,000 inhabitants, Cecilia and I left our
things in the hotel and rushed to the local tourist office, just off the lively main square. I had not
heard back from Jorge, and Germán messaged me quickly to say he might be out of town. At
the tourist office, they knew nothing about María Teresa but stressed that, in 2012,
Tlatlauquitepec had been given the important Mexican tourist accolade of a ‘magical town’.2
Also, they told us how to reach the Hotel San Jorge which housed the small museum. It turned
out that Jorge, the owner, was not there, and that the museum was closed for renovation. I told
the young man – Jorge’s son – our plight, and he kindly took us to see the museum anyway and
personally showed us around. Through a larger room of historical paraphernalia, he led us to a
smaller space and began showing us pictures of the Lara family.
‘There’ll be many versions of the history of Agustín Lara, María Teresa and the entire
family’, he carefully explained. ‘It will be up to you to decide which version is closer to what
you believe’ (J. Guzmán, son, personal interview, 3 August 2017, my translation). According to
the version they ‘managed here’ (ibid.), María Teresa Lara was the actual composer of many of
Agustín’s songs. This was what I had longed to hear. But before I could learn more, we were
interrupted by a message by Germán, telling us we could meet the town’s official historian. The
only problem was that it had to be now. Feeling guilty and excited, we arranged to come later
that afternoon and then left.
We met the town’s historian in a government building on the main square, just before
everyone in the office was heading home for the day. He already knew about our interest and
soon spoke about Teresa as a composer. He told us about María Teresa and Nicanor’s former
house, now partially a bakery, which still contained the original sign ‘El relajo’ – a Mexican
word meaning something like ‘fun’ – they had assigned to it, in homage to their love of music,
parties and life. I learned that Nicanor had been María Teresa’s ex-boyfriend and that they met
again in Mexico City when she apparently studied at a ‘Academia Commercial’ (a place for
women to obtain secretarial skills) and worked at the Mexican National Bank for some time.
Due to this reunion, they got together again. This, of course, explained the ‘other woman’ and
‘good-bye’ in the song ‘Adiós Nicanor’ I had wondered about. She must have written it while
they were separated.
108
Now Nicanor and María Teresa married and returned to Tlatlauquitepec together. Finally,
the historian told us about María Teresa’s friend, Doña Guillermina Martagón, who was still
alive and whose family ran a restaurant called El Parapeto we could visit. In fact, Germán had
briefly mentioned this friend, and that she was not well. We found the restaurant quickly. We
asked the young waitresses for Doña Guillermina, who, it turned out, was 90 years old and
suffering from Alzheimer’s. When they called her daughter to ask if we could see her, we were
told that we could not, but that the waitresses may show us around the restaurant. This proved
more interesting than we would have expected. The menu contained photos and a biography of
Doña Guillermina and her brother. Doña Martagón was a mezzo soprano and her brother a
tenor who had even sung in Mexico’s prestigious Palacio de Bellas Artes. The backroom was a
musical bar named ‘El Farolito de Lara’, after one of Agustín’s most famous songs. The tables
surfaces were all covered by Agustín’s – or María Teresa’s – sheet music. Apparently, there
would be a karaoke event the next day. The town, present and past, contained plenty of people
who loved and made music.
This was confirmed when I approached a worker fixing something in the bar who had been
half-listening to our conversation. The man told us he used to play in his own musical group
with his brothers. Even more interestingly for us, he had known María Teresa Lara personally.
He spoke about her with great kindness and informed us, pretty much as soon as we asked
about her, that Agustín did not actually compose, but that María Teresa did, naming the song
‘Adiós Nicanor’ as an example. He also complained that people did not appreciate this. Her
house should have been turned into a museum instead of a bakery, he said emphatically. We
were disappointed not to meet Doña Guillermina but were excited by the fact that María
Teresa and Guillermina must have shared a passion for music. And so far, everyone had freely
confirmed that María Teresa had been the composer of (some of) ‘Agustín’s’ music.
Had we stopped researching there, we would have been convinced of a common enough
belief in María Teresa Lara, the ‘composer figure’. But things got trickier. As planned, we went
once more to the museum. Jorge – the hotel owner I had been in contact with – had returned
by now and personally showed us around, accompanied by his son and an elderly man who had
also come to speak to Don Jorge (and who had also known the Laras, it seemed). Due to our
eager questioning, Cecilia and I were soon handed the ‘proof’ of María Teresa’s and Agustín’s
collaboration we had been longing to see. It was an (undated) photo of Agustín playing the
piano, and a note signed ‘Agustín’ that read: ‘Skinny one, get to work. You simply listen….’
(my translation). But what exactly did this mean? Jorge, the son, must have seen the question
mark in our eyes, because he quickly explained: ‘Why this message? Because Agustín created
the melodies, but he didn’t compose the songs’ (J. Guzmán (son) 2017, op. cit.).
Now I was more confused than pleased and asked for clarification. He created melodies but
did not compose? According to Guzmán, María Teresa
[…] only wrote the songs. I don’t know if she played an instrument … she wrote the
songs and Agustín put them into music. As far as I understand, it worked both ways.
Either Agustín sent melodies first and then María Teresa wrote the lyrics, or first María
Teresa wrote the lyrics and then Agustín composed the music (ibid.).
So, they collaborated indeed. But María Teresa, according to the ‘version they managed here’,
was the lyrist of many famous songs, it seemed. Later, we learned some facts that made this close
collaboration more plausible. Apparently, the tale of María Teresa and Agustín’s estrangement –
repeated by several biographers – was another one of Agustín’s myths. While showing us several
of María Teresa’s photographs, Jorge Guzmán senior recalled that:
109
[T]hey always told me that Don Agustín never came [to Tlatlauquitepec].… And
later, when I started to ask, [it turned out] he did come. So much so, that they had a
piano in Don Nicanor’s house which he played when he came (Jorge Guzmán, father,
personal interview, 3 August 2017, my translation).
To which his acquaintance added excitedly that Agustin indeed came to the village and often
stayed at María Teresa’s house for about a week.
Towards the end of the museum visit, Don Jorge senior once more emphasized that María
Teresa was,
a very intelligent woman, very sensitive, her sensitivity helped her to write all these
songs, but her kindness … did not allow her to go away from here and grow. Let’s be
honest. The love she had for her husband didn’t allow her to go out and grow like
Agustín did (ibid.).
Finally, I asked if María Teresa had left any papers. Apparently, she did. They were with a
lawyer and I was told that once they had access to these papers, I could see them. Cecilia and I
went for dinner, exhausted. Germán, my other contact, arrived to join us. He asked us about
our day and we ended up talking about Guillermina, María Teresa’s friend. Had he, I inquired,
had a chance to speak to her about María Teresa? He said, yes, and told us that, in fact, the two
women often sang together. So María Teresa sang?
The next morning, Cecilia headed off. I wanted to visit María Teresa’s former home, which
I found thanks to the name of the bakery. It is a pink building, now divided into different parts.
When I found the sign ‘El relajo’ at the entrance of a part that remained someone’s home, I felt
sad. The story about her and her husband’s joie de vivre must have been true, but there was no
sign mentioning her name. I set off to the restaurant once more, but Guillermina’s daughter was
not there. I was told I could perhaps visit her husband, who was a doctor named José Nicolás
González Rojas and who worked near María Teresa’s former home. Once I managed to speak
to him, he kindly told me over the counter of his pharmacy that he had known María Teresa
well and had even gotten drunk with her. Regarding her creative activities, he said:
She composed. Where did it come from? Just her own inspiration. Because nowadays
people study to become composers. But [for her it was] pure inspiration (José Nicolás
González Rojas, personal interview, 4 August 2017, my translation).
Wiser now, I asked if he meant that she composed melodies or wrote lyrics. He replied: ‘The
lyrics, and she gave them to Agustín. Many [songs], not all, I won’t tell you that they were all by
her, but many’ (ibid.). Then he inquired if I had spoken to Doña Bertha López, María Teresa
and Agustín’s stepsister, and asked his assistant, who I will call Ana Laura, to take me there. I
was not sure if I had understood the doctor incorrectly, or if Ana Laura had plans of her own.
She took me to see a friend of hers, a lady called Judith, a trained engineer who also turned out
to be one of the town’s unofficial historian. She knew about María Teresa too and was the first
to bring up her musical education. Both María Teresa and Agustín had studied with their aunt –
she must have meant Refugio Aguirre del Pino – in Mexico City. It had been a cultured family
and, as this was proper for a lady, when Agustín learned to play the piano, María Teresa was
taught how to sing. She was properly trained, with a good teacher, the woman insisted. María
Teresa had a beautiful voice.
110
On our way to once more see María Teresa’s former house, Ana Laura said she had met
María Teresa, because as a child she had run little errands for her. We went to see Bertha, an
elderly woman who was nearly blind. Bertha had later grown up with María Teresa and
Agustín’s father, who had insisted on Bertha’s musical training (which made María Teresa’s
training even more plausible). She even remembered playing the father’s composition(s), later
published under Agustín’s name. However, she had little faith in María Teresa’s abilities. She
had not met her very often, but re-affirmed she was a secretary who only signed Agustín’s songs
to help him pay fewer taxes. After a kind lunch invitation to Ana Laura’s home, we went to the
cemetery on the outskirts of the town, full of half-sunken gravestones. Here, Ana Laura dis-
covered María Teresa’s gravestone. In fact, it was not a grave, just a stone-sign on the entrance
wall.3 I asked Ana Laura to take a picture of me and what remained of María Teresa. I offered to
take a picture of her, but she said that she did not want any photos with the dead: she only cared
about the living.
11.4 A conclusion, for now

The community of Tlatauquitepec clearly has two María Teresa Laras: one unartistic, the other
highly creative. Which is the true version? Here is what I believe at this stage. Brother and sister
did probably collaborate on some – or many – songs, such as ‘Adiós Nicanor’, as implied by
Agustín’s message ‘get to work’. Agustín’s (alleged and proven) acts of plagiarism and his in-
volvement in other deliberate acts of falsification – as well as the siblings’ secret meetings –
make all this plausible. Also, it seems likely that María Teresa Lara was her brother’s (partial)
lyricist rather than ‘his’ composer. Weighing up the evidence, however, I am not entirely
convinced by this. After all, several interviewees attested to María Teresa’s musical education
and singing abilities, and Piedad Arrieta claimed that she did ‘compose some melodies’ (cited in
Figueroa 2012). I do hope that in the future – perhaps once I am granted access to her papers – I
will be able to shed more light on this, and further ‘chase’ the elusive truth about María
Teresa Lara.
A final question arises: Why does it matter, and to whom? Why do I – or should anyone –
care for ‘the dead’? It is a matter of historical justice. But this is not all. The more I ‘chased’
María Teresa, the more I discovered multiple interests invested in the Lara mystery. First, there
are considerable royalty payments involved. The lack of clarity surrounding the issue might
victimise one group of surviving relatives while benefitting the other. Alternatively, the ar-
rangement may be relatively fair, with ‘Adiós Nicanor’ perhaps falsely attributed to Agustín and
other songs to María Teresa. Perhaps, once royalties cease to be relevant, more facts will come
to light. Or perhaps it might be too late by then.
There is also the matter of cultural representation (also partially tied up with financial
concerns). The state of Veracruz – to which Agustín attributes his birth – pays lasting homage to
its famous off-spring through a festival, a museum and so on. Similarly, some defenders of María
Teresa Lara’s creativity in Tlatlauquitepec may combine their quest for her recognition with a
wish to promote their ‘magical’ home town. Once it occurred to me to look online for María
Teresa on sites dedicated to the town, I found out that some of them celebrate her – ‘the
composer’ – as a source of regional pride.4
There are naturally also gender politics at stake. Composers are figures who are often in-
volved in hero (and rarely heroine) worship, which – as I have argued elsewhere (Chibici-
Revneanu 2013) – helps to uphold patriarchy. Often, ‘geniuses’ like Agustín Lara act as my-
thical figures who not only function as sources of regional and national identification (as
shown), but also as symbols of what ‘humans’ are able to do. By obscuring female collaboration
111
and creation, however, it creates the false notion that usually only men can aspire to such
greatness, implying a sense of superiority which in turn assists in the justification of dominance
(see Tyson 2009, p. 85). It is well known how this has led to the ‘the syndrome of “beginners”’
(Zavala Gironés 2009, p. 215, my translation) among many creative women, actively dis-
couraged by lack of female models and the notion that they have to be doubly ‘gifted’ to be a
woman composer. In fact, despite all the contradictory elements, one thing that my journey has
clarified is that Agustín and Teresa, although personally gifted individuals, emerged from a
musical context which drew from both their family and from the entire town of Tlatlauqitepec.
It is unlikely that ‘their’ achievements would have been possible without the town’s collective –
and clearly under-recognised – cultivation of music.
Notes
1 This work was supported by the research programme UNAM-DGAPA-PAPIIT [grant number
IN405420] I am grateful to Dr. Cecilia Barraza for accompanying me to Tlatlaquitepec and for her
research advice. Also, I would like to thank all interviewees, informants and those who helped me
access additional information during the covid-19 pandemic, especially María Luisa Ortega
Hernández, Germán Lhudovick Moroni Landero, Jorge Alberto Guzmán Cosca, Ing. Judith Báez
Vázquez and Héctor José González Jiménez.
2 This sought-after accolade is awarded by the Mexican government to towns which fulfil certain
criteria, such as having a well-preserved cultural heritage (Secretaría De Turismo 2014, p. 20).
3 I have recently been informed by my contacts that they have now built a statue of María Teresa Lara in
Tlatlauquitepec (see also Municipios 2018).
4 See, for instance, the Wikipedia entry on ’Tlatlauquitepec’, which mentions María Teresa Lara as a
‘composer of countless songs interpreted by her brother Agustín Lara’ (Wikipedia 2020, my transla-
tion). A more recent article on the statue of María Teresa celebrates her as ‘the author of 51 songs
registered at the Mexican society of authors and composers’ (Municipios 2018, my translation).
References
Abaroa Martínez, G., 1993. El flaco de oro. Mexico City: Editorial Planeta.
Adams, T.E., Holman Jones, S. and Ellis, C., 2015. Autoethnography: understanding qualitative research.
Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press (e-book).
Astasio, M., 2010. Biógrafos de Lara asocian supuesto plagio de ‘Madrid’ a ficcióny publicidad. Fedemex, 28
January. Available from: https://elperiodicodemexico.com/nota.php?id=339292&-sec=Espectaculos
Bartleet, B.L. and Ellis, C., 2009. Music autoethnographies: making autoethnography sing/making music personal.
Bowen Hills: Australian Academic Press.
Broyles-González, Y., 2013. The sound tracks of borderlands mujerista movements: remembering Chelo
Silva. In: G. Prampolini and A. Pinazzi, eds. The Shade of saguaro/La sombra del saguaro: essays on the
literary cultures of the American Southwest/Ensayos sobre las culturas literarias del suroeste norteamericano.
Florence: Firenze University Press, 159–171.
Chibici-Revneanu, C., 2013. Composing disappearances: the mythical power behind the women composer
question. Entreciencias, 1/2. Available from: https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/4576/457645124009.pdf
Figueroa, S.C., 2012. La Sierra de Lara – documental. Puebla, Mexico: Soleil Films. Available from: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6HXUAssLfE&t=782s
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Consuelito Velázquez a 100 años de su nacimiento. 12 August. Available from: https://
www.fonotecanacional.gob.mx/index.php/noticias/1401-besame-mucho-y-la-obra-de-consuelo-ve-
lazquez-1916-2005-homenaje-a-consuelito-velazquez-a-100-anos-de-su-nacimiento
Grant Wood, A., 2014. Agustín Lara: a cultural biography. London & New York: Oxford University Press.
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original que se haya escrito sobre Agustín Lara. Mexico City: Océano.
Meierovich, C., 2001. Mujeres en la creación musical de México. México: Conaculta.
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Moroni Landero, G.L., 2015. Compositora que no negó la cruz de la parroquia. Jóvenes Por Tlatlauqui, 29
August. Available from: https://www.facebook.com/jovenesportlatlauqui1/posts/d41d8cd9/163463
0066801571/
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Available from: http://municipiospuebla.mx/nota/2018-09-09/zacapoaxtla/develan-estatua-de-hermana-
de-agust%C3%ADn-lara-en-tlatlauquitepec
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February. Available from: https://elpopular.mx/secciones/hello/2013/02/19/canciones-que-no-son-
de-agustin-lara
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Revista Bellas Artes.
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www.sectur.gob.mx/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/GUIA-FINAL.pdf
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feminista. Papeles del Festival de música española de Cádiz, 4, 207–217.
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12
THE ARTISTIC PATH AND
ACHIEVEMENT OF POLISH
COMPOSER EWA SYNOWIEC
12.1 Introduction
The subject of my chapter is the artistic demeanour, vicissitudes and artistic choices of Ewa
Synowiec (1942–2021). Her artistic path began in Cracow, where, among many musical in
fluences, she met Professor Bogusław Schaeffer (1929–2019), one of the most important re
presentatives of the avant-garde in Polish music of his time.1 His personality had an impact on
Synowiec’s achievements which unambiguously displays avant-garde characteristics. However,
her attitude to life and her artistic dilemmas are not so easily and clearly recognisable. Her
creativity indicates the influence of a variety of different impulses and the external world’s
influence on the personal, internal dimension of her actions.
Taking the invariant life structure model of the creator by Mieczysław Tomaszewski (2003)
as the groundwork for these deliberations, the life and work of Synowiec appears to be a
coherent narrative of key moments and successive phases of achievements in composing.
Reference to this model and its invariant character (which is the strength of the suggested
methodology) should be emphasized. For Tomaszewski assumes the peculiarly conceived
pattern dynamics which allows for displacing, completing, elongating and accentuating different
determinants of life and creativity, which is justified by a variety of human attitudes and choices,
and which also relates to outstanding individuals, including composers.
12.2 Methodological conception

Research in the field of psychology and aesthetics became the seedbed for the conception of the
invariant life structure model of the creator by Tomaszewski. The source of this model is the
concept of a significant lived experience introduced by Wilhelm Dilthey in his writings (1982),
making it the underlying cause of the creation of a work of art. A work, understood as an
expression of a given lived experience, is the specific indication of life expression in the field of
art. The groundwork for Tomaszewski’s conception also became observations of the bio
graphies of composers. Tomaszewski indicates certain repeatabilities of artistic fortunes, de
signated by specific culminating points. He specifies in detail six essential, hierarchically
organised significant life experiences, which he calls the key moments of a composer’s life.
They are as follows:
114 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-12

Polish composer Ewa Synowiec
• The moment of taking over heritage

• The moment of the first fascination
• The moment of resistance and rebellion
• The moment of a significant meeting
• The moment of a threat to existence
• The moment of loneliness and liberation
These key moments are turning points in a life narrative. They are, as it were, the determinants
of successive phases of creativity; they initiate changes in works in a technical sense, and
ideological changes in a mental sense. Tomaszewski distinguishes the following stylistic phases:
• The phase of initial creativity

• The phase of early creativity
• The phase of mature creativity
• The phase of peak creativity
• The phase of late creativity
• The phase of final creativity
The rhythm of this life narrative is strictly connected to what is certain and inevitable in human
life. The invariance of the model in individual cases may be greatly modified. However, its
basic structure and assumptions remain the same.
12.3 The piano and first attempts at composing in childhood

Ewa Synowiec’s childhood was spent during the war and afterwards, and that difficult time left
its painful mark on her. As a child, she lost her closest family members when, just after she was
born, her father and maternal grandfather died. Actually, the whole period of her childhood in
Cracow was marked by her mother, who effectively had to replace the whole family. Music
appeared in the composer’s life very quickly: as a little girl she spent a lot of time at the piano,
encouraged by her mother. Soon, it was discovered that she had extraordinary musical talents –
perfect pitch combined with a natural ability to improvise and outstanding sensitivity to the
tone colour of the piano. In the beginning, her closest relatives – her surviving grandparents and
mother – gave her music lessons before she started her regular music classes and became a
student at the Primary Music School (Blaszkiewicz 2005, pp. 964–967).
From the above, it can be ascertained that ‘the moment of taking over heritage’, which
occurred when she was such a young child, was related to the piano as a medium and means of
artistic expression, as well as the experiences from her family home. As a five-year-old girl,
Synowiec created her first compositions – something eagerly noted by her mother – and made
her debut as a pianist when she was six. She started taking regular music lessons at the Primary
Music School, located at ul. Stroma in Cracow, in 1949. After two years, she was moved to the
State Primary and Secondary Music School, established in 1950 at ul. Basztowa, where she had
violin and piano lessons, winning scholarships and awards every year as a pianist. I mention
these facts of the early music rootedness to emphasize a genuine fascination with music ex
pressed by such a small child, and to indicate a real talent that was appreciated by teachers,
competition juries and audiences during many performances. The period of secondary edu
cation, when she attended the Frederyk Chopin State Secondary Music School, was similar.2 As
a pianist, Synowiec won national competitions successively, and received honourable mentions,
won a scholarship from the Fryderyk Chopin Society, and performed in concerts. What should
115
also be emphasized is that among the compositions of Bach, Liszt, Szymanowski and
Lutosławski, the composer performed her own piano miniatures in these concerts.
Synowiec began studying piano with Ludwik Stefanski at the State High Music School in
Cracow (later Music Academy) in 1961. Pianism in the composer’s life was related to her
further success – this time international competitions, where she celebrated triumphs.3 As a
matter of fact, the smoothly developing career of the pianist did not give the composer full
satisfaction. Her improvising talent, which was a very important mark of her artistic devel
opment from the beginning, could not be translated directly into a performance based on the
accurate score. These musical dilemmas, this specific dissatisfaction of the versatile composer,
became a perfect space to fill with new challenges, heralding a new phase of life and creativity.
However, to summarise the circumstances and achievements of the initial phase, it must be
emphasized one more time that it was completely connected to pianism and piano music. This
experience unambiguously came from the atmosphere of the family home where Synowiec’s
outstanding talent could be perfectly developed. The works which were composed in this
period were, according to the composer, not just a simple imitation of children’s literature
(Fredrich 2001). Even at this initial stage of creativity, Synowiec experimented with individual
tone colours – for example, by improvising from a given pitch – and very often surprised with
her unconventional (especially regarding her young age) approach to sound matter.
12.4 The meeting with Bogusław Schaeffer: the phase of initial creativity
The ‘moment of the first fascination’ in Synowiec’s life narrative, connecting with ‘the phase of
initial creativity’, is strictly defined by her meeting with Bogusław Schaeffer, who, in 1963,
became a teacher of a composition class of the State Higher School of Music in Cracow (now
the Academy of Music). This experience became an immensely important artistic impulse. In
the next year (1964), the composer began composition studies with him, continuing with her
piano studies at the same time. Synowiec best expressed her adoration and admiration for her
professor in later statements made in interviews:
I had the luck of meeting this unusual genius at the very right moment of my life. It
was just after I was twenty when there was a special demand for so-called authority.
Although I do not belong to slavish souls, as I describe it, which cannot live without
prostrating themselves, for Schaeffer I authentically had a lot of admiration (Synowiec,
cited in Fredrich 2001, p. 14).
The above quote touches on the kind of mutual relationships between a professor and a student.
They did not only relate to the issue of music sensu stricto. Schaeffer’s many-sided activities
within the scope of graphics, including music graphics and literature, provided the inspiration
for Synowiec. Even the first works bear traits of this influence: her Utwór na dwa fortepiany /
Piece for Two Pianos of 1966, for example, is notated without a stave on card stock.
In the mentioned period of parallel piano and composition studies, Synowiec had to re
concile her life’s two passions. The time necessary to prepare a performance of a composition
consumed her completely: this is why her composition studies lasted until 1973. Meanwhile,
the composer finished her piano studies with distinction,4 and won a French Government
Scholarship in 1967, enabling her to continue her studies under the supervision of Suzanne
Roche and Vlado Perlemuter, outstanding educators from Paris. After coming back from her
studies, Synowiec’s piano career developed further in Poland (Pociej 1967, p. 7; Gierulski
1979). In 1973, the composer was honoured with the Laurel of Cracow Music Lovers, which
116
provides evidence that audiences admired her excellent performing interpretations (Fredrich
2001, p. 16).
Compositional tasks in the discussed period did not take a back seat, by any means. In that
period, she composed several interesting and remarkable works, including Dwugłos na flet i
fortepiano / Duet for Flute and Piano (1966), Utwór na dwa fortepiany / Piece for Two Pianos
(1966), Sonata w formie otwartej / Open Form Sonata (1966), Sonata minima (1967) and Sonata per
piano forte (1969). In these works, the piano performs a special function remaining the most
powerful medium. The initial period of creativity is also characterised by a tendency to ex
periment with form, both to making an open form and to carrying the features of the sonata
model in a modern language of sound and means.
Apart from works which use the piano, several compositions for different instruments were also
completed, including Mały Kwintet na instrumenty dęte / Little Quintet for Wind Instruments for
flute, oboe, clarinet, alto saxophone and bassoon (1967); Trio smyczkowe / String Trio for violin,
viola and cello (1967); two works for flute solo – Kompozycja fletowa / Flute Composition (1966),
II Kompozycja na flet solo / Composition for Flute Solo II (1968). In all the works of these student
years, the experimental efforts characteristic of Schaeffer’s students are noticeable. Within the scope
of sound material, we find the procedures typical of dodecaphony based on a full series – in, for
example, Trio smyczkowe / String Trio (1967) and Quartettino d’archi (1969) – but also often based
on confining the material still processed according to the procedures of dodecaphony, such as in
Sonata minima (1967). The most spectacular work using the means of dodecaphony is Synowiec’s
diploma composition, Plus ça change – plus c’est la même chose for string sextet (1973), in which the
idea of transforming the material of the series, while maintaining its integrity at the same time,
expresses itself in the very title.5 On the basis of the procedures of dodecaphony, the composer
creates variations in which she uses different techniques of playing instruments.
These explorations within the scope of sound material complement the innovative solutions
in the rhythm area: for example, in Kwartet ósemkowy / Quaver Quartet (1971) and II
Kompozycja na flet solo / Composition for Flute Solo II (1968); experiments with open form –
Sonata w formie otwartej / Open Form Sonata (1966) and Sonata per piano forte (1969);6 as well as
the composer’s first attempts to create graphic scores – Utwór na dwa fortepiany / Piece for Two
Pianos (1966), Psalmodia / Psalmody (1968) and Quartettino d’archi (1969). The various multi-
layered music solutions are even more interesting because every work has its own unique
structural shape. In some works, the focus on pitch is in the foreground; in others, rhythm or
tone colour are come to the fore, as evidenced by, for example, an unusual choice of instru
ments. For Synowiec, this intensive period in life, hovering between performance and music
creation, was a very fruitful time for her composition. She composed more that 20 works of
mostly chamber music, and each one was distinctive and different from the other. At the same
time, her duties made her face the difficult task of choosing her future path of life and made her
realise that keeping such a fast pace of life is impossible in the long run.
12.5 Rebellion in the years of maturity: getting away from performing

Making a clear and perverse decision to completely give up her piano career to focus on
creativity in composing was another break in the life of Synowiec. First of all, this decision
proves her strong character and, in this sense, is an excellent expression of a model situation of
Tomaszewski’s conception of ‘the moment of resistance and rebellion’ (2003, pp. 37–38).
However, it is not, as Tomaszewski wishes, breaking with existing convention and/or aesthetic
transformation that makes a composer take their own, totally separate path. Synowiec rebelled
117
mainly against herself, against her outstanding piano talents, against her own audience and
critics who emphasized the perfection of her playing. It can also be said that the composer cut
herself off from her home heritage relating to the piano, as well as from the unfulfilled as
pirations and expectations of the music community.
Nevertheless, this decision was not easy. It was spread over time, and although her last public
concert was given as part of the Polish Piano Festival in Słupsk in September 1973, in the next
year, Synowiec made a few radio recordings which were often broadcast on Polish Radio.7 The
statement which appeared in one of the interviews with the composer sheds light on the nature
of her artistic dilemmas:
If I believed in reincarnation I would be a pianist until the end of my life. I would

reserve composing, painting and writing for other incarnations. I would willingly take
up linguistics, the history of culture and psychology.… But they are only dreams and I
feel as if I were in a waiting room at an airport. Because of that, I try to arrange my
time in such a way as to do what I am interested in most (Synowiec, cited in Schaeffer
1986, p. 10).
Although already celebrated as a concert pianist in the early 1970s, Synowiec achieved her first
significant successes as a composer at this time. In May 1973, she received an honourable
mention in the National Composers Competition during the Opolska Wiosna Festival (Poland)
for her Sonata per pianoforte. Next, in October 1974, she also received an honourable mention
for Quartettino in the Jeunesses Musicales National Composers Competition. In 1975, the
composer gave a concert consisting entirely of her own pieces as part of the First Festival in
Stalowa Wola’s ‘Young Musicians for a Young Town’.
On the threshold of mature creativity, another important turning point came in Synowiec’s
life when she moved to Gdańsk in 1975 (Sperski 1980, pp. 177–181). For the composer, this
move became the ultimate confirmation of her decision to resign from an active concert-
performer life and to devote herself to composing. In Gdańsk, Synowiec affiliated herself with
the Academy of Music, teaching mainly theoretical subjects and the piano, before becoming a
teacher of a composition class. Nevertheless, the composer’s real motivation for making such a
radical change will remain secret. This situation was not only a technically simple way to change
her place of residence. It also involved many life and artistic consequences. Even the distance
between the towns is the evidence of their cultural, social and historical separateness.
The unusualness of the decision made by the composer, whose personal motivations raise so
many questions that remain unanswered, is even more intriguing and noteworthy. Maybe the
major reason was the need to alienate herself, about which she said:
It is hard to do anything sensible if a person feels imprisoned, tied up and conditioned,

preoccupied with one’s own or other people’s matters and problems. Time and
loneliness are necessary conditions, in my opinion (Synowiec, cited in Fredrich
2001, p. 25).
Such an attitude would explain the characteristics of Synowiec’s creativity in the maturity
phase, which, with regard to the many radical decisions that initiated it, remains rather a
continuation of her achievements. Thus, the changes have external character. They are also
connected to escape from obligations other than composing, thanks to which Synowiec gained
the time necessary to work on other compositions.
118
The works composed in the discussed period are more and more characterised by the in
fluence of coincidence and game theory which, by newer and newer personification, makes its
way towards loosening strict score notation in favour of less conventional graphic symbols.
Within the form, there are efforts related to the synchronous and asynchronous treatment of
instrumental voices, but the composer most often allows both types of interpretation in pieces
such as UDMSW (1975), Da camera (1977), Pory roku / Seasons (1978) and Trio (par hasard)
(1980). Within the form, sonoristic efforts also appear. They are about building up newer and
newer instrumental tone colours and using unchanged sound material as in Invitation (Martwa
Natura II / Still Life II) (1974). Another example is Ricordanza (Martwa Natura III / Still Life III)
for flute, trombone and vibraphone, where the performers have twice as much material that
appears in all possible instrumental configurations, which is regulated by a separate diagram.
Within the context of sonoristic explorations, it is worth indicating the composer’s clear
predilection for some instrumental tone colours. String instruments often appear in homogenous
groups in works such as Syntonia for 58 string instruments (1976), Kwartet smyczkowy / String
Quartet (1977), Koncert na smyczki / Concerto for Strings (1978) and Arboretum for string sextet
(1980). More and more often, however, Synowiec abandoned a precise description of in
strumentation using alternative possibilities for choosing musicians as in Alternacja II / Alternation II
for harpsichord solo or piano solo or two harpsichords (1979); Refuge (1982) – written for a soloist
playing any instrument or set of instruments, any ensemble or symphony orchestra; or completely
resigning from describing the type of instruments as in the case of Espressivo (chamber music) for
seven instruments (1981). Within the scope of many technical efforts, the characteristic numerical
experiments are noticeable – for example, as in Martwa Natura I / Still Life I (1974) where all the
parameters are defined by the number five. The composer more often tries experiments with score
notation which is characterised by the 180-degree rotation of the score, as can be seen in Alternacja
I / Alternation I (1978), Alternacja II / Alternation II and Refuge.
Among the discussed technical procedures, the tendency to extend an interpretational role of
a performer in many aspects of a work is distinct. However, gradually but consistently, the
composer uses graphic symbolism. To be honest, in the chronological context, notating works
in the form of graphic scores have dominated Synowiec’s creativity since 1982. In Refuge, we
can observe connections with the traditional notation based on a stave. The characteristic
feature of traditional thinking is also apparent in the differentiation of particular parts with the
use of other graphic symbols. Another idea lies behind Muzyka i mózg / Music and Brain of
1982, which is a graphic composition for any performers (Figure 12.1). The composer supports
herself with a quote from Charles Ives’ statement:
Why cannot a musical thought be presented the way it is born…. The fact that music
must be heard has no fundamental importance – how it sounds does not have to be the
same as what it is.8
To summarise, it may be concluded that the direction of changes in Synowiec’s creativity is to

gradually extend the function of aleatorism in particular parameters of a work. This direction
designates gradual movement to graphic notation sensu stricto, which is a natural consequence
of the composer’s aesthetic attitude.
12.6 Drama of disease on the threshold of peak creativity

The next phase of life in the model situation is initiated by ‘the moment of a significant
meeting’ (Tomaszewski 2003, p. 38). However, it is difficult to characterise the next nodal
119
Figure 12.1 Ewa Synowiec, Muzyka i mózg / Music and Brain (1982).
(© Ewa Synowiec. Score held at Library of Music Academy, Gdańsk)
120
point in Synowiec’s life narrative. A sudden and dramatic circumstance – internal bleeding in
the left eye – was an important turning point. This condition was very unpleasant and acute,
especially in the context of the composer’s generally poor eyesight. Synowiec spoke about the
impact of this disease on her life in an interview after many years: ‘Eye bleeding was a distinct
turning point in my life which resulted in changes in the way of functioning and even the way
of being’ (cited in Fredrich 2001, p. 21).
This sudden circumstance took place at the moment of intensive work before starting the
habilitation procedures.9 Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that the direct cause of the disease was
the effort, overwork and the stressful situation. Eventually, in 1986, due to a delay in the habilitation
procedures, Synowiec received the title of Associate Professor, by which she strengthened her
position at the school in Gdańsk. Nevertheless, in the area of creativity, the disease resulted in a final
turn to graphic music in which symbolism, especially using a colour stave, was a much easier way of
notating for a visually impaired person. Thus, it can be ascertained that in the place where in a
model situation, according to Tomaszewski, ‘the moment of a significant meeting’ appears, there
was rather a ‘moment of a threat to existence’ (Tomaszewski 2003, p. 38).
Synowiec’s creativity in the discussed period was clearly concentrated around graphic music.
The score, as a separate work of art, won praise from the community, and the composer had her
works exhibited many times. In 1984, for example, her music graphics were presented as part of
the Fascinating Music Festival in Katowice, and at the ‘La partition musicale comme œuvre d’art’
exhibition in Paris (1985), Synowiec’s graphics were next to Penderecki’s and Schaeffer’s works.
The Cracow gallery Krzysztofory also staged an exhibition of the composer’s graphics in 1987. Her
works would be also presented in 1988 at the Exhibition of Contemporary Music Manuscripts in
the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, and as part of the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1999 (Błaszkiewicz 2005,
p. 966). In the second half of the 1980s, Synowiec’s works appeared in the programmes of concerts
and music festivals both in Poland and abroad. The interest in the composer’s creativity in this
period also resulted in theoretical studies on her creativity. It is worth mentioning Barbara Buczek’s
lecture entitled ‘Synowiec – ihre Tätigkeit Und Werke’, which was delivered during the Swiss
Frauenmusik Forum (7–9 November 1986, Boswil) (cited in Fredrich 2001, p. 8).
Synowiec’s disease, which became such a heavy burden, also contributed to new creative
impulses. These impulses first appeared in the area of the work’s notation and was combined with
an immediate fascination with fine arts, especially painting. Secondly, the disease also brought on
reflections on passing which, in Synowiec’s works, is connected to a special need for registering
everyday life. I mean such works as NDSL (Nulla Dies Sine Linea / No Day Without a Line), a
graphic composition which was made every day by adding subsequent graphic elements, and the
same approach was used to create two other works – Do szuflady / Just for Myself (July 1986) and
Diariusz / Diary (1988). A return to traditional notation and to the piano as a medium was also a
special feature here. These works were made as a daily notation of reality – a kind of a diary
without words.
In the discussed phase, and regarding those creative efforts, we can speak about a specific
combination of elements of the peak creativity phase which is indicated by the great devel
opment of music graphics – Synowiec’s typical means of artistic expression – with features of
her late phase: specifically expressed reflection on passing and referring to autobiographical
threads in early creativity by using the piano and traditional notation.
12.7 Last works

Establishing a clear turning point for ‘the phase of late creativity’ by Synowiec is a problematic issue
given that the features typical for the model of a life narrative are already anticipated at the phase of
121
peak creativity. It is also difficult to mark a significant turning point that could be characterised as a
key moment. In the composer’s life, we observe a rather smooth transition towards more noticeable
seclusion and/or alienation. This phenomenon is, in my opinion, the consequence of the philo
sophy of life that rejects the need for contact with listeners or dialogue with an audience. Synowiec
gained the greatest satisfaction from the very act of creating, which was the most valuable ex
perience for her as a composer. As a consequence, such an act of creation led to a complete
resignation from seeking an audience for her creativity. Her works in the large majority remain in
manuscript form, and music graphics more often function as exhibited paintings.
In Synowiec’s phase of late creativity, the trend towards songs may also be indicated. This
phenomenon seems to be specific for this stage of life because the composer rarely used vocal
and instrumental musicians in the previous years: one exception is her Pieśni o 12-u miesiącach /
Songs about 12 Months for alto and piano of 1985, a work revised in 1986 and 1987. In the
mid-1990s, two song cycles appeared: Ostatnie źródło / The Last Source – seven songs to her
own texts for voice and piano (1994) and Cykl pieśni do własnych wierszy Haiku / Song Cycle to
One’s Own Haiku Poems for voice with piano (1996). In this period, the composer con
sistently came back to piano creativity, writing Elegia dla Matki / Elegy for Mother in 1995, 19
listów do Zmarłej / 19 Letters to the Deceased for piano in the next year, and 30 Haikus in 1999.
All of these works are veiled in secrecy as they remain in manuscript in the composer’s personal
archive. The final act of alienation was performed in the last period when Synowiec retired as
an educator at the beginning of the new century. The composer totally cut herself off from the
public and musical life, and consistently rejected any contacts with the outside world. She has
remained a closed book, an esoteric person in the musical life of Gdańsk.
12.8 Conclusion
In attempting to generalise the observations I have made about the creative and life attitude of
Synowiec, a range of significant features may be indicated. First of all, within the scope of
stylistics, we observe a consistent, homogenous, strongly avant-garde creative attitude. The
works notated traditionally are characterised by a conceptual approach to sound matter de
veloped on the basis of the procedures of dodecaphony, which, over time, became subject to
various modifications within number strategies. Graphic works, oscillating around re
miniscences of traditional notation in the beginning, gradually evolved into separate artistic
entities in fine art. The intimacy of expression – most notably indicated in the use of solo or
chamber forces (only in a few works does an orchestra appear) – is also typical of Synowiec. In
most works, chamber musicians are used, or (where instruments are not specified) just any
musicians. Special sensitivity to the tone colours of instruments and pitch, working with so
phisticated, delicate timbre, also provide an intimacy of expression in these works. Creative
interest in other arts – graphics, painting, poetry – remains an important characteristic of the
composer in her philosophy of life and artistic activities. Within the scope of all these spheres,
Synowiec met her need for authentic expression. Finally, the last characteristic feature of her
personality is her eccentricity – which is expressed by total alienation in her final years.
Notes
1 Bogusław Schaeffer was a Polish musicologist, composer, music critic, playwright, graphic artist and
teacher, as well as author of a number of monographs and articles on contemporary music. From 1963,
he lectured on composition at the Academy of Music in Cracow, and also worked as an academic
teacher at the Jagiellonian University, Salzburg, in Middelburg, The Netherlands and in York,
122
England. He collaborated with the Polish Radio Experimental Studio and is also the author of many
theatre plays.
2 Ewa Synowiec went to the Fryderyk Chopin State Secondary Music School located also at ul.
Basztowa. She attended Irena Rolanowska’s piano classes.
3 For example, she won 5th place in the International Liszt and Bartok Piano Competition (1966), a
diploma in the George Enescu International Piano Competition (1967) and 2nd prize in the Maria
Canals Competition in Barcelona.
4 In 1965/66 she received an award for the best student of the State Higher School of Music in Cracow
as well as the Rector’s Award, and an honourable mention in the Red Rose Competition in Cracow
in 1966.
5 The more things change, the more they stay the same (author’s own translation).
6 See Teresa Błaszkiewicz, Problemy konstrukcyjne w sonatach fortepianowych Ewa Synowiec, Muzyka
fortepianowa, vol. 10 (Gdańsk 1995), pp. 171–180.
7 In her Master’s thesis, Ewa Marciniec mentions the archival recording Bagatel of Krystyna
Moszumanska- Nazar and Sonata per piano forte which Ewa Synowiec made in 1974 (Marciniec 1992a,
p. 36; 1992b). See also Kurylak (2001).
8 The quotation is from Ives’ essay, ‘On Substance and Manner in Music’, and is based on a note in the
score (see Figure 12.1).
9 In order to gain the title of ‘professor’ in Poland, one must gain an additional title of (in Polish) ‘doktor
habilitowany’ which translates to ‘habilitated’ (after PhD). This is similar to the German system.
References
Błaszkiewicz, T., 2005. Synowiec, Ewa. In: M. Podhajski, ed., Kompozytorzy polscy 1918–2000. II
biogramy. Cracow: Music Academy in Warsaw, Music Academy in Gdańsk, 964–967.
Dilthey, W., 1982. Pisma estetyczne. trans. K. Krzemieniowa. Warszawa: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne.
Fredrich, P., 2001. Twórczość kameralna Ewy Synowiec z udziałem fortepianu. Master’s thesis, Music
Academy in Gdańsk.
Gierulski, A., 1979. Fortepian w twórczości młodych kompozytorów środowiska krakowskiego. Muzyka
fortepianowa, 3 (1), Gdańsk, 389–402.
Kurylak, R., 2001. Sezon w piekle wg Rimbaud Ewy Synowiec: technologia i symbolika. Master’s thesis,
Music Academy in Gdańsk.
Marciniec, E., 1992a. Muzyka graficzna Ewy Synowiec. Master’s thesis, Music Academy in Gdańsk.
Marciniec, E., 1992b. Muzyka graficzna Ewy Synowiec. In: J. Krassowski, ed., Muzyka w Gdańsku wczoraj
i dziś. Poland: Music Academy in Gdańsk, 245–257.
Pociej, B., 1967. Krakowska wiosna muzyki. Ruch Muzyczny, 13, 7.
Schaeffer, P.M., 1986. Od fortepianu do muzycznych pejzaży. Życie literackie, 45, 10.
Sperski, K., 1980. Ewa Synowiec. In: J. Krassowski, ed., Kompozytorzy gdańscy. Szkice pod redakcją Janusza
Krassowskiego. Gdańsk: Gdańskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Sztuki, 177–181.
Tomaszewski, M., 2003. Muzyka w dialogu ze słowem. Cracow: Music Academy in Cracow.
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13
COMPOSER, PERFORMER,
TEACHER: JEANNE BARBILLION
(1895–1992) AND THE SCHOLA
CANTORUM, PARIS
Eva M. Maschke
13.1 Introduction
Once upon a time, a young Hamburg student looked through a cardboard box of free scores and
took an interest in the score of a Piano Trio composed by a female composer she had never heard
of before. Occasionally, there were cardboard boxes in front of the library of the University of
Music and Theatre in Hamburg as well as in the entrance area of the Hamburg student accom
modation, where this student lived from 1997 to 1999. Such boxes usually displayed signs such as
‘help yourselves’, hoping that students might be happy to grab some free music. As indicated in the
score, Jeanne Barbillion’s Piano Trio won the Prix de Société des Compositeurs de Musique in
1928 (see Figure 13.1). For the sake of curiosity, the Hamburg undergraduate student took it
home, waiting for the opportunity to find a violinist and cellist to play it.1
The opportunity came some 20 years later – while I was a professional musicologist living in
Mannheim. When I undertook bibliographic research on this French composer, I found almost
nothing: Barbillion and her Piano Trio seemed to be completely forgotten. There were some
sources, however. In his International Encyclopedia of Women Composers, Aaron Cohen (1987, p. 51)
presented a short biography of Barbillion. Other existing encyclopaedic and catalogue entries – in
particular, Pedigo (1979), Boenke (1988) and Heinrich (1991) – contained some references to her
work and provided basic biographical details.2 Alongside the award-winning Piano Trio,
Barbillion thus seems to have left a considerable oeuvre, covering various genres of chamber
music as well as keyboard music, symphonic music and more unusual instrumental pairings.
In his 2001 monograph about French cello sonatas, Stephen Sensbach provides a short
overview about Barbillion’s Sonate synthétique for cello and piano. Dedicated to the cello professor
Jean Schricke (1900-86), the sonata was premièred by the dedicatee and the composer in the
Parisian Salle Érard on 20 February 1931. Since both Barbillion and Schricke taught at the Schola
cantorum, and were chamber music partners, the two colleagues gave a second performance at a
concert of professors of the Schola cantorum in June 1933 (Sensbach 2001, p. 13). Sensbach
emphasizes the ‘carefully constructed plan’ by which the five sections of the sonata are condensed
into one movement, ‘a sort of sonata-form movement with a balanced scheme of ABCBA’ (ibid.)
He also includes Barbillion’s Sonate synthétique in his list of recommended French cello sonatas,
124 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-13

Jeanne Barbillion (1895–1992)
Figure 13.1 First Page of Barbillion's Piano Trio – with official dedication.
(Reproduced with the kind authorisation of Éditions Musicales Fortin-Armiane, 16 rue Ganneron, 75018 Paris:
editions@fortin-armiane.fr / Tel +33 148742821.)
summarising it as follows: ‘An interesting work in a modern idiom, this sonata in one movement
has a cello part that is particularly effective’ (ibid., p. 282).3
With these few exceptions, Barbillion’s oeuvre has remained almost entirely unexplored.
This chapter, therefore, evaluates the traces of her life and work, taking as a point of departure
the scores available from the Parisian publisher Éditions Musicales Fortin, who published
Barbillion’s Piano Trio during the 1920s, as well as documents about the Schola cantorum de
Paris, where Barbillion studied and later also taught. Archival documents have not yet been
consulted; thus, this chapter mainly relies on two dissertations by Catrena Flint (2007) and
Michel Duchesneau (1994) which evaluate some of the relevant archival material.4
13.2 Jeanne Barbillion’s musical education at the Schola cantorum, Paris

Barbillion’s award-winning Piano Trio is dedicated to Armand Parent (1863–1934), her former
violin teacher at the Schola cantorum, from where she had graduated with the best possible
degree in 1914 (D’Indy 1927, p. 226). Additionally, however, the personal copy now in my
private ownership contains a handwritten dedication dating from 1934, written in the com
poser’s hand and addressing Louis de Serres (1864–1942) in a gesture of ‘Hommage d’affection
et de fidélité artistique’ (see Figure 13.1). Among the various roles and responsibilities at the
Schola cantorum, where he was director of studies during the 1920s, Serres taught chamber
125
Eva M. Maschke
music and was director of the choir. His 70th birthday in 1934 seems to have been a likely
occasion for Barbillion to sign this personal copy for him.5
Barbillion received her early musical education at the Schola cantorum in Paris, an institution
which shaped her character and formed her musical personality. Founded in 1894 by Charles
Bordes (1863–1909), Alexandre Guilmant (1837–1911) and Vincent d’ Indy (1851–1931), the
Société Schola cantorum was intimately connected with the Early Music revival and established a
music school in Montparnasse in 1896 (Castéra 1927, p. 6). Moving to a new building in rue
Saint-Jacques in 1900, the Schola became ‘an institution devoted to general music education for
both men and women, but still connected to the society’s original mission to promote the work
of Solesmes and “Palestrinian” music’ (Flint 2007, p. 7). In his inaugural speech as educational
director (in 1900), d’Indy ‘stressed the importance of learning Gregorian chant’ (ibid.), but soon
sought to develop the Schola’s programme. As Flint has noted:
There is no doubt that after 1904 the Schola cantorum had become quite different from
the school for liturgical singing of the 1890s. It became a place where young men and
women could engage in the composition and performance of all kinds of music
(ibid., p. 9).
According to Cohen’s encyclopaedia entry – which is based on personal information provided

by the composer6 – the young Barbillion, born in 1895, started to learn solfège and piano at the
age of four, and appears to have been among the first generation of pupils entering the Schola at
the age of eight (Cohen 1987, p. 51). Looking through the school’s bulletin, Les Tablettes de la
Schola, as well as the 1925 anniversary volume of the Schola cantorum journal, Barbillion’s name
is found various times, thus allowing for a reconstruction of her studies. Having graduated in
solfège in 1905, Barbillion carried on studying both violin and piano.7 As stated above, her
violin teacher was Armand Parent, and her piano teacher was Berthe Duranton, who regularly
performed historical as well as contemporary music both as a soloist and in various chamber
music ensembles. A composer herself,8 Duranton gave her students the chance to perform
contemporary music early on.9 In all instrumental exams, Barbillion graduated with the best
possible degree.10 Due to her extraordinary talent, ‘Mlle Barbillion’ seems to have been chosen
as a soloist in special concerts at the Schola cantorum, such as the 1912 concert for the benefit of
the monument to Charles Bordes, who had died in 1909 (Flint 2007, p. 107).
The list of Barbillion’s fellow students has not yet been systematically explored. What seems
remarkable, however, is that the names of a great number of her female fellow students also
seem to have been forgotten today. Barbillion’s female contemporaries included the pianist
Louise Crépet (-Bertrand),11 with whom Barbillion gave concerts well beyond their graduation
(D’Indy 1927, p. 217). Like Barbillion, Rosette Ehrmann (1887–1974) studied composition
with d’Indy (ibid., p. 249) and also left a considerable oeuvre.12 Further names in the list of
d’Indy’s female composition students (ibid., pp. 248–250) include Irène Baume, Eugénie
Brodu, Henriette de Carfort, Germaine Chassagneux, Amy (Dommel-) Dieny (1894–1981),
Marguerite-Marie Fraguier, Alice Gabeaud, Françoise Gachet, Adélaïde Garaudet, Marguerite
Gauthier-Villars (1890–1946), Cécile Gauthiez (1873–1946), Suzanne Guillemot, Jeanne
Lefèvre, Paule Piédelièvre (?-1964), Germaine Portéhaut, Alice Quintin, Claudie Renart
(1887–?), Constance Rulison, Charlotte Sohy (1887–1955) and the pianist Blanche Selva
(1884–1942).
Similarly, Barbillion’s professional network needs further clarification. As for the personal
dedications of her compositions (see Figure 13.3), research in Les Tablettes de la Schola unearthed
126
at least two of the dedicatees, the singers Fanny Malnory (-Marseillac)13 and Marthe Legrand
(-Philip). While Barbillion was a student at the Schola cantorum, Malnory (-Marseillac) gave
several successful concerts, all of them mentioned in the Tablettes de la Schola from 1912 to 1914,
and the soprano later became a dedicatee of Barbillion’s ‘Nocturne’ (from the Mélodies for voice
and piano). Marthe Legrand (-Philip) often featured as an alto or mezzo soprano in various
concerts, and Barbillion later dedicated the third song from her Mélodies – ‘Chansons’, set to a
poem by Maeterlinck – to her.
After her graduation in violin in 1914, Barbillion founded a string quartet known as the
Quatuor Jeanne Barbillion (D’Indy 1927, p. 145).14 During the First World War, she seems to
have continued her studies as she finished her diploma in Counterpoint with good results in
1917 (ibid., p. 214). However, the war must have affected her life in one way or another, and
she became involved in war aid concerts, some of them probably with her all-female quartet. In
February 1918, Barbillion took part in a charity concert organised by d’ Indy.15 With the
exception of the organiser, all of the performers were female; the majority of men had been
called up for military service. Among the seven programme items, Barbillion featured twice – as
a solo violinist and as part of a piano trio. Performing the Scherzo (Divertissement: Vif et animé)
from d’Indy’s Trio in B flat major, the composer (d’Indy) played the piano part, Barbillion the
violin and Edwige Bergeron the cello.
13.3 Barbillion’s breakthrough as a composer: awards, concerts

and successes in the inter-war years
In October 1924, Barbillion was featured in the French periodical Le Courrier musical, with her
photo taken by the famous photographer Henri Manuel (1874–1947). D’Indy, Barbillion’s
teacher and mentor, wrote an article in which he highlighted both her success as a concert
violinist and her extraordinary productivity in composition. As he stated:
Jeanne BARBILLION [photo], who is going to give several concerts of chamber

music this winter, including a Quartet (for piano and strings), which will be per
formed at the Salon d’automne on the 28 November.
At the Schola cantorum, Jeanne Barbillion completed her studies in piano, violin,
harmony and counterpoint; she is currently finishing her degree in composition,
which she has studied brilliantly for more than 10 years.
Without speaking about her talent as a violinist which one can appreciate in her
concerts, this young artist, endowed with precious qualities as a composer, has already
written a great number of compositions in all the genres: songs, dramatic pieces,
chamber music and one remarkable symphony.
She founded a string quartet which is about to become one of the best in Paris,
because the same performers have been working together for several years, and she has
known how to bring together the best musical partners.
Endowed with a profound and very true feeling for her art, Jeanne Barbillion also
possesses virtuosity alongside an absolute sincerity of interpretation in the works
which she studies, and this is no overstatement in an age when the great performers,
too often to the detriment of real musical sentiment and style, seem only to seek
success at any cost.
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Eva M. Maschke
Jeanne Barbillion remains convinced that her mission is not only to create art, but, to
the contrary, to serve music with all her heart and soul (D’Indy 1924, p. 498).16
Barbillion’s name had already appeared in the periodical earlier that year in a short notice (June
1924) about a concert she had given together with the pianist Louise Crépet (-Bertrand), who
would later be to become the dedicatee of the piano piece Impression maritime (see Figure 13.3).
In that concert, Barbillion and Crépet performed the Sonata in G major by the Belgian
composer Guillaume Lekeu and Robert Schumann’s Sonata in D minor. Additionally,
Barbillion’s Mélodies were performed by the soprano Fanny Malnory-Marseillac. The reviewer
praised the rich and nuanced harmonies of the composition as well as its sensitivity.17
Barbillion’s name was also present in the 1925 anniversary volume of the Schola cantorum
several times, and her string quartet, the Quatuor Jeanne Barbillion, was praised in this volume
as lively and full of expression (‘si vivant et expressif’) (D’Indy 1927, p. 145). The real
breakthrough, however, came with the award of the Prix de la Société des Compositeurs for
Barbillion’s Piano Trio in 1928 (see Figure 13.1) – although it is hard to estimate the general
status of the award at this point in time. Due to gaps in the documentation after 1912, I have
not found much information about the role of the Société des Compositeurs in the inter-war
period. Laure Schnapper, who evaluated documents from 1875 to 1912, suspected that the
society might have lost its relevance from the 1910s onwards (Schnapper 1985, p. 106). First
awarded during the 1870s, neither the frequency with which the award was tendered, nor its
significance during the 1920s, are currently known. So far, I have not found any information
about the members of the 1928 jury and their criteria on conferring the award.18
A brief summary of the history of this award, however, might convey a certain idea of the
tradition behind it. Founded in 1862, the Société des Compositeurs de Musique (hereafter
SCM) originally focused on encouraging new chamber music written by French composers of
all genders (ibid., p. 98). Later, the increasing influence of Italian opera in France and the
difficult economic situation of the Thèâtre-Lyrique also led the SCM to run a campaign of
support for this opera house in which new French operas were to be created. While the society
only consisted of French members, their concert programmes occasionally included composers
of other nationalities. However, particularly during the time of presidency of Camille Saint-
Saëns (from 1887 to 1891), the nationalist thrust of the SCM went so far to forbid composers of
all other nationalities to be included into the concert programmes (ibid., p. 101).
Between 1875 and 1912, the Prix de la Société des Compositeurs was awarded annually.
The award was open to non-French nationals, and the compositions were to be submitted
anonymously. After 1912, the annual documentation either seems to have been lost or to have
ceased to exist (Launay 2006, pp. 138–139). During the First World War, it seems likely that no
activity took place. In the interwar period, however, at least some allocations of this award have
been documented. According to Schnapper (1985, p. 100) and Launay (2006, p. 466), for
example, two female composers were awarded the Prix in 1923: Madeleine Dedieu-Peters for
her Piano Sonata and her Prélude et fugue sur un sujet de Caussade à la harpe, and Simone Plé for
her Suite de Pièces pour voix, quatuor à cordes et cor. The 1928 award, documented in the score of
Barbillion’s Piano Trio, has now uncovered another trace of the SCM prize, documenting at
least some activity of this society ten years after the First World War. This small amount of
evidence suggests that the then 66-year-old Société des Compositeurs did not seem to have
been among the key players of the musical avant-garde anymore. After the turn of the century,
new societies had come into play. Founded in 1909, the Société musicale indépendante came to
rival the French Société Nationale de Musique, which was founded in 1871 and under the
presidency of d’ Indy from 1890 to 1910 (Duchesneau 1994). As for the inter-war period, Nigel
128
Simeone (2002) has examined the role of La Spirale and La Jeune France, two newly founded
societies from the 1930s.
Although an award from the SCM in 1928 may have perhaps seemed a little passé to some,
this recognition must have meant a great deal to the 33-year-old Barbillion. The special
qualities of her Piano Trio can be seen in the subtle way the composer manages to harmonise
rivalling styles between the influences of Franck, Wagner and Debussy. Barbillion’s Trio
consists of three contrasting movements. The highly elaborated first movement in B minor
displays a variety of styles, combining expansive melodies and late-romantic harmonies with the
sober modernism of Debussy, including the use of whole-tone scales. With its calm and
concentrated unfolding of the thematic material, the lyrical second movement, in G minor,
evokes a sense of lamentation and ends on an added-sixth chord. Considering its virtuosity and
technical challenges for the pianist, the piano part of the effective final movement is comparable
to the technical level of the second movement of Franck’s Violin Sonata in A major.19
The Piano Trio was one of several of Barbillion’s pieces to be premiered at Société
Nationale de Musique concerts during inter-war years: Barbillion was a member of this society
according to her professional portfolio.20 Michel Duchesneau has compiled a list of compo
sitions that were performed in Société Nationale concerts between 1909 and 1939 (Duchesneau
1994, Appendix 1, pp. 325–365). Six of these concerts featured premieres by Barbillion, as
follows:
• La tristesse de pan for baritone, flute, harp and string quartet – Salle Pleyel, Paris, 13 March
1926 (ibid., p. 345)21
• Piano Trio – Salle Pleyel, 19 March 1927 (ibid., p. 346)
• Poème d’été for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and piano – Salle Érard, 1 March 1930
(ibid., p. 350)
• En forêt. Suite pour piano à four mains – Salle Chopin (Pleyel), 20 February 1932 (ibid,
pp. 353–354)
• Mélodies: Nocturne, Amitié, La noce (for voice and piano) – École normale de musique, 24
March 1934 (ibid., p. 357)
• String Quartet – École normale de musique, 21 March 1936 (ibid., p. 360)
13.4 Compositions, publishers and dedicatees: a preliminary survey

Barbillion’s professional portfolio from the 1930s is still available from her publisher, Éditions
Musicales Fortin-Armaine.22 The portfolio contains a professional photo of the composer,
taken by E. Romanais, showing her in 1935 at the age of 40 (Figure 13.2). Barbillion also
advertises as a music teacher offering private lessons in violin, piano, chamber music, piano
accompaniment, solfège and composition, and it is likely that these activities must have been
her main source of income. The address underneath the photo, Avenue de l’Observatoire,
Paris, seems to have been her private address – which is located within walking distance of the
Schola cantorum in the Rue Saint-Jacques. Alongside her work as a free-lancer, however,
Barbillion seems to have remained attached to the Schola cantorum and later taught at the École
César Franck, a split-off of the Schola cantorum.23
In her portfolio, Barbillion mentions all of her works written before 1935. As Figures 13.3
and 13.4 show, her work covers a wide range of genres from chamber music to vocal music and
symphonic music. Alongside songs and string quartets, some more unusual instrumental pair
ings, such as a Cortège funèbre for English horn and string orchestra, are found. Such in-
strumental combinations flourished during the 1930s, partly because they presented artistic
129
Eva M. Maschke
Figure 13.2 Title page of Jeanne Barbillion’s Professional Portfolio.

(Reproduced with the kind authorisation of Éditions Musicales Fortin-Armiane, 16 rue Ganneron, 75018 Paris:
editions@fortin-armiane.fr / Tel 33 148742821.)
challenges for the composers, but also because of the economic situation in Paris at this time. As
Duchesneau (1994) has noted, concert organisers could not always afford a full symphony
orchestra, so a string quartet or a small string orchestra and some additional orchestral instru
ments had to replace the rich symphonic colours of the contemporary orchestra.
Two compositions, the Violin Sonata in D major and Provence, two character pieces for
piano with movements entitled ‘Bord de mer, le soir’ and ‘Fête de soleil’, were published by the
Parisian publisher Maurice Senart in 1926.24 Alongside the successful Piano Trio, further
compositions were published by Éditions Fortin-Armiane, and are still available for purchase
(see Figure 13.3).25 All of the other pieces mentioned in her portfolio (see Figure 13.4) do not
seem to have been published as the composer does not mention the name of a publisher in
brackets behind the titles. As I have not been able to trace the location of Barbillion’s written
130
131
Figure 13.3 Published Works Composed Before 1935.

132
Eva M. Maschke
Figure 13.4 Unpublished Works.

NB. Titles in bold indicate pieces that are not listed in the Barbillion portfolio, but are listed in Cohen (1987) and other sources, and were therefore composed after 1935.
archive after her death in 1992, it remains unclear whether copies and sketches of her
unpublished works survive.26
Figures 13.3 and 13.4 are the result of my preliminary research and are mainly based on the
composer’s professional portfolio from 1935 and the secondary literature consulted for this
chapter; thus, they might have to be corrected in future. For now, they distinguish between
published works and compositions which are either unpublished or for which the publisher has
not yet been found.
13.5 Conclusion
Since my research on Jeanne Barbillion is still very much in its infancy, future research will
hopefully be able to reconstruct more information about this composer, performer and teacher
who dedicated her long life to music. As this chapter has focused on tracking performances of
her compositions, various Parisian concert programmes in which she appeared as a performer
still remain to be evaluated. As the personal dedications show, almost every composition is
dedicated to a different person or couple (see Figure 13.3). These dedications alone will allow
future research for reconstructing her personal networks, both privately and professionally.
When digging out forgotten (female) composers in order to rescue them from oblivion, re
search can only proceed in small steps. Rather like this study, which began with the discovery
in a cardboard box of Barbillion’s Piano Trio and two dedications which appeared in the score:
the official, printed dedication to Armand Parent and, in the handwritten addition, the added
dedicatory note for Louis de Serres’ personal copy from 1934.
Notes
1 Except for a private recording of our rehearsals, no recording of this Trio currently exists. My cordial
thanks go to Nils Ehlert (cello), and Brigitte Hege (violin), who joined me playing the Piano Trio in
Heidelberg 2017.
2 Adel Heinrich (1991) does not mention any compositions for organ solo by Barbillion in her cata
logue, but refers to the Chorale et pastorale en rondeau for ondes martenot, organ and strings as well as to
the Variations on old Carols for string quartet and organ (see Figure 13.4).
3 See also Sensbach, 2000. Le violoncelle et les violoncellistes à Paris de 1930 à 1939. In: D. Pistone, ed.
Musiques et musiciens à Paris dans les années trente: Textes présentés et réunis par Danièle Pistone. Paris:
Honourè Champion, 348 & 354.
4 Flint’s thesis (2007) evaluates developments at the Schola cantorum up to 1914 only, thus leaving space
for future research to examine developments afterwards. Duchesneau evaluates all of the concert
programmes of the Société Nationale de Musique from 1909 to 1935, in which I found some of
Barbillion’s compositions performed (1994, pp. 325–365).
5 The provenance of this copy Jeanne Barbillion personally signed for Louis de Serres (now in my
private possession) needs further clarification. I have not yet been able to clarify how this copy ended
up in a cardboard box in Hamburg. Since Louis de Serres died in 1942, it is not impossible that his
bequest became looted art taken during the Nazi occupation. In this case, legal heirs are invited to get
in touch with me.
6 Cohen seems to have contacted the composer personally, since he cites ‘Ref. composer’ among his
sources. Since only her date of birth was given (‘born Paris, October 12, 1895’), the book must have
been in print while Barbillion was still alive. (The second and revised version of this book appeared in
1987, five years before her death).
7 Les Tablettes de la Schola, vol. 8 ( June 1913), p. 128: ‘Solfège: Barbillion (Mlle) TB (très bien), 1905 (fin
d’année)’.
8 The Bibliothèque nationale de France holds two copies of a composition for voice and piano by
Duranton, Indiscrète (1911) to a poem by G. Fabien de Champville: F-Pn FOL-VM7-5674 and F-Pn
133
Eva M. Maschke
K-21025. See also Bibliothèque nationale de France, ‘Duranton, Berthe: Compositeur’: https://
catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb42971038p
9 See, for example, the little report ’Audition Duranton’ in Les Tablettes de la Schola, vol. 7 (April 1912),
p. 111. Barbillion was one of the piano students who performed in this concert.
10 In the list of Diplomas and Exams in the 1925 anniversary volume of the Schola cantorum, Barbillion is
listed in the classes ‘Violon deuxième degré’ in 1910 (D’Indy 1927, p. 220), ‘Piano deuxième degré’ in
1912 (ibid., p. 217), all with the best possible degree.
11 Married name appears in brackets.
12 In 1913, Ehrmann and Barbillion studied together in d’Indy’s masterclass (Les Tablettes de la Schola, vol.
7 (May 1913), p. 106). For a list of her compositions, see Bibliothèque Nationale de France: https://
data.bnf.fr/fr/16347626/rosette_ehrmann/
13 Fanny Malnory’s marriage to the cellist Joseph Marseillac was announced in Les Tablettes de la Schola,
vol. 5 (March 1914), p. 84.
14 According to Pierre Key’s Music Year Book 1926-27, the other string players were Edwige Bergeron,
Madeleine Portier and Marcel Vernet. (New York: Pierre Key Inc., 1926), p. 124. Available from: https://
archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.155429. This information was taken from the most recent French
Wikipedia article, which appeared in August 2020. Further information from this article could not be in
corporated into this study: https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jeanne_Barbillion&oldid=173644893
15 The programme of the concert is reproduced in Schwartz, M. and Chimènes, M., eds., 2006. Vincent
d’Indy et son temps, Collection/Musique-Musicologie. Sprimont: Mardaga, p. 70, Illustration 1.
16 Author’s translation. Later, Barbillion also attached parts of this article to her professional portfolio.
17 A.H., [Les Concerts:] ‘Mmes Crepet, Barbillion.’, Le Courrier musical, vol. 26/11 (1 June 1924), p. 327.
In the same concert, Fanny Malnory-Marseillac sang Debussy’s Les Chansons de Bilitis and two me
lodies by Serres in the same concert, the venue of which is not mentioned.
18 According to Schnapper, the jury usually consisted of seven to ten people chosen among the members
of the society, including at least one of the vice presidents, one of the honorary members and one of
the composers of a certain renown who had been given the function of the secretary within the society
(1985, 100). Female composers were part of the committee, too. For example, Mel Bonis, who was a
member of the society from 1899 onwards, was occasionally part of the jury (Launay 2006,
pp. 138, 465).
19 A more detailed analysis of the Trio is beyond the scope of this chapter and will be provided elsewhere.
20 I have not yet been able to clarify when Barbillion became a member of the Société Nationale.
However, it is likely that she had already been a member during the 1920s, a time in which the Schola
cantorum had much more influence during the Société Nationale than during the 1930s.
21 According to Pierre Key‘s Music Year Book 1926-27, the performers were G. de Mulder, Portré, Mme.
Genvrier and the Barbillion Quartet (p. 120).
22 When I ordered all of the scores available from the Parisian publisher Éditions Fortin, they additionally
sent me photocopies of the professional portfolio she must have left with them.
23 Due to disagreements about the future profile of the Schola cantorum after d’Indy’s death in 1931, the
majority of his former students left the Schola cantorum and founded the École César Franck: Louis de
Serres became the first director of the new institution in 1935. It is possible that Barbillion followed
him, but I have not yet undertaken archival research on this subject..
24 One copy of Provence is available in Mannheim, Musikbibliothek im Dalberghaus, and copies of both
printed scores are held at Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (see Figure 13.3).
25 In addition to the Piano Trio I took from a cardboard box of free scores, I ordered all of the remaining
scores available from Editions Fortin, Paris (see Figure 13.3).
26 The Bibliothèque nationale de France does not house her archive; however, they provide a page with
her life data and hold the above-mentioned copies of three printed compositions.
References
Boenke, H.M., 1988. Flute music by women composers: an annotated catalog. New York & London: Greenwood
Press.
Cohen, A.I., 1987. BARBILLON, Jeanne. In: International encyclopedia of women composers, 1. 2nd ed. New
York: Books & Music.
de Castéra, R., 1927. La Fondation de la Schola cantorum rue Stanislas. In: V. d’Indy ed. La Schola
Cantorum: Son histoire depuis sa fondation jusqu’en 1925. Paris: Bloud et Gay, 4–18.
134
D’Indy, V., 1924. Jeanne Barbillion. Le Courrier musical, 26/16, October, 498.
D’Indy, V., 1927. La Schola Cantorum: Son histoire depuis sa fondation jusqu’en 1925. Paris: Bloud et Gay.
Flint, C.M., 2007. The Schola cantorum, early music and French political culture from 1894 to 1914. PhD
thesis, McGill University.
Duchesneau, M., 1994. Le rôle de la Société Nationale et de la Société Musicale Indépendante dans la
création musicale à Paris de 1909 à 1935. PhD thesis, University of Laval.
Heinrich, A., 1991. Organ and Harpsichord music by women composers: an annotated catalog. New York &
London: Greenwood Press.
Launay, F., 2006. Les compositrices en France au XIXe siècle. Paris: Fayard.
Pedigo, A., 1979. International encyclopedia of violin-keyboard sonatas and composer biographies. Booneville:
Arriaga Publishing.
Schnapper, L., 1985. La Société des Compositeurs de Musique. Revue Internationale de Musique Française,
16, 95–106.
Sensbach, S., 2001. French cello sonatas 1871–1939. Dublin: The Liliput Press.
Simeone, N., 2002. La Spirale and La Jeune France: group Identities. Musical Times, 143/1880,
Autumn, 10–36.
RISM Sigla
D-MHst Tkl3 Barb: Mannheim, Städtische Musikbücherei im Dalberghaus, Tkl3 Barb
F-Pn FOL-VM9-2446 (and other shelfmarks): Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Richelieu –
Musique – magasin, FOL-VM9-2446 (and other shelfmarks)
135
14
HOW THEOCRITUS SANG:
ELEANOR EVEREST FREER’S
SONNETS FROM THE
PORTUGUESE
Following the 1920 premiere of her monumental Sonnets from the Portuguese, the first complete
setting of Barrett Browning’s work, Eleanor Everest Freer (1864–1942) published a statement
in the popular Chicago journal Music News addressing the role of her work in establishing an
American idiom. In an article unequivocally titled ‘Mrs. Freer Defines Her Position’, she wrote:
[I]n offering the sonnets as a “Premiere,” by request, it has been done for several reasons
… in offering it as a contribution to American musical art, it has been done in a totally
impersonal manner and merely as art. As a premiere, this work was of vital significance
to American musical art and seemed to demand the equal, if not greater, civic attention
than that given the foreign “Premiere” given this same week in Chicago.1 In failing to
do full justice to the American work we have missed an opportunity, we have been
unjust, and we have impeded the progress of our national music…. [W]e demand full
justice to an American work (and it must be published or heard) if we are to stand side
by side with other art-making nations (Freer 1920, p. 22).
Freer’s embrace of English language song was timely. Its flourishing at the turn of the twentieth
century epitomised the search for national identity through the exploration of musical materials
beyond the inherited Continental tradition, which had come to represent for many composers,
besides Freer, a cultural shibboleth. However, despite considerable success as a song composer,
Freer mostly abandoned the genre after 1920 in favour of the ambitious plan of composing
English language opera, for which she felt her songs had been an apprenticeship and furthered her
nationalist agenda. This agenda became increasingly focused in efforts to establish an American
operatic tradition and if Freer is remembered at all today, it is for her founding of the American
Opera Society of Chicago, rather than her personal contributions to American music. Although
this is an outcome that she may have embraced, it has deprived us of a body of literature that, by
most accounts, was both interesting and important to the development of an American idiom.
Critical reception of Freer’s music in America paralleled that of her direct contemporary Amy
Beach (1867–1944); moreover, much of her prodigious output – comprising over 130 songs, 11
chamber operas and numerous piano and ensemble vocal works – was published in her lifetime,
136 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-14

How Theocritus sang
illustrative of the esteem in which her music was held.2 She was the only woman composer to be
recognised in The Musiclovers Calendar, an early twentieth-century Midwestern annual that each
year featured biographical sketches of around a dozen prominent contemporary American and
European composers.3 The Freer sketch (van der Berg 1906, p. 69) states that ‘the serious mu
sician, the singer in particular, who would give some representation to American composers, can
scarcely afford to omit some work of [Freer]’, refers to Freer as a ‘songwriter of manifest genius’
(ibid., p. 70), and predicts that if other composers were to follow her principles of study and
work, a school of American music would gain ‘universal recognition’. Original even amidst the
eclectic mix that is American art song, Freer’s songs invite a closer study: as one writer noted
‘[they are] the most profound creation of the Freer muse, and to my mind, the best auguries for
America’s art future’ (Herman Devries, cited in Foster 1927, pp. 110–111).
Concern for ‘America’s art future’ drove Freer’s compositional output. When Freer returned
to the USA in 1902, after several years abroad in Germany, she turned to song writing because:
finding the untrodden field of Song to English verse and feeling it to be of prior
necessity [than composing piano literature] in our or another English-speaking
country … I began what has seemed to be the first song literature to English and
American lyrics (Freer 1929, p. 76).
The word ‘literature’ here is telling: perhaps thinking of parlour songs, synonymous with the
lowbrow, Freer felt that English language song required unexceptionable texts set deftly in
order to establish a body of literature capable of supplanting the European tradition dominating
American musical life at the time.
It was also at this time that Freer began compositional studies with the music theorist
Bernhard Ziehn (1845–1912), a German expatriate who, despite his background, had broken
with European tradition, particularly in his rejection of Riemannian functionality.4 Ziehn’s
theory of tonal plurisignificance, essentially the ability to modulate freely though the aggregate
by means of enharmonicism, allowed for a freer interpretation of tonality. His ‘enharmonic
law’, which asserted that any tone within the aggregate might become the fundamental (or
tonic), allowed for a harmonic permissiveness which parallels and prefigures that of Schoenberg.
That Ziehn’s harmonic theories were influential on Freer is apparent. Ziehn cites Freer’s Lyric
Studies (1904) in a list of enharmonic progressions with pluralsignificant dominant chords in the
English translation of his Manual of Harmony (Ziehn 1907, p. 85). While this reference seems
obviously reflexive – one would expect Ziehn’s theories of harmony to inform his composi
tional instruction – it is notable that of his many accomplished pupils,5 Freer was among only a
few of his students to be recognised in his work.
Although Freer’s harmonic language was certainly intelligible to Ziehn, the rapid shifts or
even absence of tonic that it encompassed was not necessarily as clear to others, and reviewers
were often at a loss to account for its ambiguity. Contemporaneous evaluations of Freer’s music
couch this confusion in somewhat studied terms that never go quite so far as to accuse her of
lack of polish, or her writing of amateurism. On the occasion of the premiere of the Sonnets, the
Music News noted that:
[T]he Freer Sonnets could by no means cause disappointment even to the most
unsophisticated listener on a premiere hearing, but true it is, nevertheless, that they
have a depth and complexity which cannot be entirely fathomed at once, and only by
repeated hearings and the acquiring of a “tradition” in performance will their greatness
be fully developed (Watt 1920a, p. 19).
137
Glenn Dillard Gunn, music critic of the Chicago Tribune, observed that while ‘she un
questionably possesses the greatest mastery of the technic of compositions’, employing ‘deft
harmonic touches [that] give Mrs. Freer’s songs their interesting originality’, and ‘unconven
tional harmonic progressions [that] stamp the work as highly modern and individual’, it,
however, ‘requires close analysis to discover any hint of method in this surprising originality
(Gunn, cited in Foster 1927, pp. 125–126).
This assessment has since been somewhat qualified. The entry on Freer in Women Composers:
Music Through the Ages (1996), one of the few modern sources to recognise her, indicates that
while Ziehn’s teaching, particularly his ideas about the independence of tones, conceivably had
some impact on her music, ‘the colorful and interesting chromatic expansion of tonality used by
composers of the late nineteenth century is the predominant feature of her general style’
(Eversole 1996, p. 467). This statement is not untrue, but it does lump Freer with most
European-trained composers in terms of materials and thus does not quite capture her aesthetic:
Freer’s intent was that the materials she had inherited would be employed in the creation of an
American music through their innovative meshing with English language texts. In Freer’s work,
what is described as ‘harmonic coloring’, the use of chordal effects stimulated by textual
considerations, surpasses mere text painting to create a non-verbal narrative that enhances the
poetry. This argument, in turn, helps to explain what seems inexplicable in Freer’s writing – the
startling harmonic progressions that seem to lack method and ‘keep the actual tonality a
mystery’ (ibid.). At least in one work, this harmonic ambiguity is apparently a deliberate
narrative choice.
Freer’s Sonnets from the Portuguese were composed, published and performed piecemeal over
the course of the first two decades of the 1900s. They were premiered in their entirety in a
series of four benefit concerts that took place at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall in November 1920.
Publicity notices in the Music News indicate that the sonnets were already known and had
received some critical acclaim, having been ‘pronounced by many theorists and artists to be the
most remarkable achievement of the present century in music writing’ (Devries 1920, p. 23), a
claim that, despite its hyperbolic flair, shows at least that the sonnets were fairly widely known.
Elsewhere, this achievement was also ranked with one of the previous century:
[T]he cognoscenti know her and have pronounced her sonnets “the finest expression
of feminine love-emotion since Schumann’s Frauen-liebe und leben.” We hope Mrs.
Freer will prove prophetess in her own country (ibid.).6
The significance of these settings, grasped somewhat imperfectly by reviewers, is situated in

Freer’s employment of her admittedly derivative late-nineteenth century practice and its
overlay of Ziehn’s freedom of tonality. The extensive chromaticism, passages of non-functional
harmony, modal hints and frequent, often abrupt, shifts in tonal centres in her musical works, at
first glance do appear to signal a possibly unsystematic approach to composition: however, the
rich language is not solely for aural effect. Harmonic structures in the Sonnets frequently ex
plicate the text beneath the surface level, giving the piano accompaniment a narrative role as in
Dichterliebe, if not Frauenliebe und -leben, articulating the form of the poem while also com
menting upon it as an omniscient narrator. What gives Freer’s work its originality, however, is
the extraordinary way in which her harmonic commentary and elucidation is subtly constructed
through ambiguity, retrospective reinterpretation and subversion of convention that transcends
surface level text painting effects: this process is partially rooted in Ziehn’s theories. Of his
Harmonielehre, she wrote: ‘it is as full of erudition and necessary information for the student as
the kernel is of meat. It may be opened at any chapter, or as a wheel, may be turned and
138
How Theocritus sang
Figure 14.1 Cover illustration of Freer’s Sonnets.
stopped at any rotation’ (Freer 1929, p. 75). The description of his work is an analogue for
Ziehn’s perception of tonality as a multiplicity of place upon which one could alight at any
time. At the same time, it sheds light on Freer’s application of it: the chromatic possibilities of
equal tonality at any given moment gain meaning in the context created by knowledge of the
larger whole. The cover illustration of the 1910 William Kaun Music publication of the first
series of Sonnets serves as an introduction to this multivalent process (Figure 14.1).
A soggetto cavato composed of Freer’s and Browning’s initials creates a musical fragment, the
initials of each artist appearing in the treble staff as part of a chorale texture harmonisation,
consisting of an E minor triad in first inversion, an E minor root position triad and a sym
metrically arranged chord of the augmented sixth, the first of Ziehn’s pluralsignificant
chromatic seventh chords (Ziehn 1907, p. 27). The progression is visually and aurally cryptic.
Without a key signature, it is seemingly an in media res A minor that could be interpreted as v6
– v – French augmented sixth in inversion; however, the doubling of the E resulting from the
‘unison’ initial and the prolongation of the E chord through change of inversion implies an E
minor centricity. Parsing the progression is impossible, and requires retrospective context
which does not occur until Sonnets VI and VII.7 This tonal ambiguity, an outcome of
plursignificance and the use of symmetrical chromatic chords, is integral to an element of
Freer’s harmonic style in which progressions often demand reinterpretation, similar to the
way in which Barrett Browning’s texts often shift in time or condition, negating or recasting
earlier material.
Sonnet I, ‘I thought once how Theocritus had sung’, illustrates this melding of harmonic
multivalence with textual unfolding. Although the sonnet appears nearly through-composed,
small motivic repetitions and variations provide musical cohesion at the surface level, and yet
these repetitions are not necessarily correspondent to repetitions in the text. However, there is an
underlying, large-scale harmonic progression that closely parallels the structure of the poem, the
interpretation of which is only possible after hearing the entire song. This harmonic-dramatic
linking, which occurs throughout the cycle, represents a formalistic freedom in which the ex
igencies of the text dictate the music structure, a treatment as idiosyncratic as Barrett Browning’s
approach to sonnet writing. Each movement is self-contained and, apart from obvious parallels
between the first and last sonnets, there is no use of leitmotives, key relationships or other
unifying elements between the movements.8 The sonnets are unified only in Freer’s composi
tional approach, a sonnet process, a term that acknowledges the lack of formal structures, re
cognising instead the procedure that creates such variety, a harmonic exegesis of the text.
The structure of ‘I thought once how Theocritus had sung’ (Sonnet I) is typical of
Barrett Browning’s idiosyncratic approach to the Petrarchan sonnet. She delays the volta,
moving it from the end of the eighth line to the middle of the ninth, then she adds es
sentially a second volta in the final line. With multiple shifts in mood and temporality, this
expository sonnet covers considerable emotional ground and is almost a précis of the 43 to
follow in its thematic range:
139
I thought once how Theocritus had sung 1

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years, 2
Who each one in a gracious hand appears 3
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young: 4
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, 5
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, 6
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, 7
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung 8
A shadow across me. Straightway I was ‘ware, 9
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move 10
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair, 11
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove… 12
“Guess now who holds thee?” – “Death,” I said. But there, 13
The silver answer rang …“not Death, but Love”. 9 14
The first two quatrains juxtapose two pasts: one distant, nearly mythological, to which the
narrator is only an observer; the other, a nearer and personal history. The narrator’s fixity in the
past is embedded in the structure, the passive melancholic reflection extending past the eighth
line into the middle of the ninth, the location of the displaced volta, a rupture that introduces a
second character and also propels the narrative into the present. The ominous seizure of the
narrator by the ‘mystic Shape’ propels her from static despair to active struggle, a contention
that culminates in a second volta between lines 13 and 14, an emotional metamorphosis and
revelation in which the fatalistic identification of the opponent as Death is, at the last word,
revealed as Love.
Freer’s setting is roughly ternary. The A section corresponds to the first two quatrains,
concluding with the volta in line 9 (Figure 14.2, bars 1-17). The B section comprises the text
leading up to the second volta (Figure 14.2, bars 18-30), and the extremely brief, modified
return of A accompanies the sonnet’s denouement. The sections are demarcated harmonically
by an authentic cadence (Figure 14.2, b. 17) and a half cadence (b. 30) implying C minor, and
are further distinguished by contrasting rhythmic ostinato: the first, a ‘lyre’ motive evoking an
Aeolian harp with a septuple flourish that characterises the first section and the last lines of the
poem (bars 1-17, 29-end); and the second, a syncope motive of anxiety interposed between the
two voltas (bars 18-28).
In contrast to these surface markers, the harmonic scheme underlying this text is equally
mutable and ambiguous and is only comprehensible in retrospect, a nonlinear understanding
that correlates to the delayed import of the poem. The opening chord, an embellished D major
triad superimposed upon a G minor triad, recalls the in media res progression of the frontispiece:
the juxtaposition of the fifth-related sonorities creating an ambiguity, prolonged until the D
chord, and its dissonances resolve in the third bar to a G minor triad; however, this tonic arrival
is undermined by the following prolonged embellishment of D by a neighbouring supertonic
(see Figure 14.2, bars 5-8), leaving the listener uncertain as to whether the progression is from a
G minor tonic to its dominant, or a plagal motion utilising mode mixture in which G is
understood as the minor subdominant of a D tonic. The first segment of (Figure 14.3), re
presenting the A section, shows this ambiguity in reduction.
The brevity of the G minor chord and the emphasis on the D chord through the neighbour
tone embellishments suggests that the latter is the pitch centre of the first quatrain; however, a
literal repetition of the first three bars of the initial phrase at the beginning of the second quatrain
140
How Theocritus sang
Figure 14.2 Freer, ‘I thought once how Theocritus had sung’.
141
Figure 14.3 Reduction of bars 1–8, 9–17.
(Figure 14.2, bars 9-11) apparently confirms G minor. This allows for retrospective compre
hension of the first quatrain as a prolongation of D as a dominant, not a tonic. The confirmation
of G as a tonic is brief as the progression diverges to a B-flat major triad rather than D (b. 12), a
harmonic motion that coincident with the text’s temporal shift from distant to recent past. The
treatment of the B-flat triad, which is embellished with a neighbouring supertonic chord in bar
13, corresponds to that the D major in bar 4. This further parallels the text, the link between the
two phrases representing the parallel of the narrator’s life to that of the ancient poetry.
The motion to the B-flat major triad in bar 12 is a significant moment in the musical Gestalt
of the sonnet. In its immediate context, the abrupt minor to major shift created by the mediant
relationship of G minor – B-flat major highlights the change in mood of the second quatrain,
the increased harmonic rhythm keeping pace with the quickening emotions of the narrator. On
a larger level, this substitution of B-flat (as the dominant of E-flat) for the corresponding D
major chord in the first quatrain also covertly hints at the ultimately triumphant end of the
poem and its surprising arrival at E-flat major, to be discussed shortly.
The parallelism between bars 4-5 and bars 12-13 creates an expectation that, despite the
diversion from the opening progression, continuity with the first phrase will continue and the
B-flat triad will subsequently act as a dominant to E-flat, as the D triad was heard to be the
dominant of G. Instead, a bassline outlining a partial descending tetrachord (B-flat – A-flat – G)
leads to an authentic cadence in C minor10 (Figure 14.3, segment 2), a motion coincident with
the poetic caesura as well as with the cessation of the first rhythmic ostinato that clearly ar
ticulates the end of the A section.
The full stop at the first volta (Figure 14.2, b. 17) – grammatical, harmonic, rhythmic –
suggests that the entire first section be reinterpreted. The arrival at C minor, strengthened by
the authentic cadence and identifiably functional harmonisation of the descending bassline,
supersedes the prior G centricity that in turn replaced D, an unfolding by no means tonally
directed despite the root motion by fifth: the ambiguous, opening polychord, modal inflections
and relatively static harmony of the first eight bars undermining this organisation. This retro
spection casts the entire section as an extended prolongation of a G dominant (of both major
and minor quality), embellished by its own dominant, casting bars 1-16 as a harmonic ante
cedent that is a musical articulation of the expository text, the creation of a scene that as yet
lacks context or direction.
If the first 17 bars are antecedent, then what of the consequent? The second section mu
sically supports the volta in its abrupt textural and rhythmic contrast: the introduction of a
second ostinato – a somewhat breathless syncope motive – is accompanied by a registral shift in
the piano and a paring down of the musical texture. Locating the voice and accompaniment in
the same range is a union that implies both intimacy and immediacy, and Freer further illustrates
the emotional shift with a slight tempo accelerando (see Figure 14.2, b. 18). Freer also reverses
the location of the pedal point; rather than changing voices above a static bass as in bars 1-18,
the sustained tones are situated in the treble. This interval is compacted as well; rather than an
open fifth as in bar 1, the interval is a harmonically ambiguous E-flat – G dyad that, in one
sense, might imply the third and fifth of the C minor tonality, but may also be interpreted as
root and third degrees of an E-flat major sonority (bars 18-19).11 The ambiguity aligns with the
142
How Theocritus sang
Figure 14.4 Reduction of bars 18–22, bars 23–24, bars 25–30, bars 31–38.
unsettled tone of the text, an anxiety also seen in the continuation of the accelerated harmonic
rhythm of end of the previous section; however, Freer’s setting of ‘[a]ware’, the volta turns,
which falls on the downbeat of bar 19, hints at the intent. In the first statement of the des
cending bassline (bars 12-16), the bass note B-flat supported a B-flat major chord; here, Freer
has chosen an E-flat triad in second inversion, a long range dominant-tonic relationship. The
dawning awareness of the narrator aligns with a tentative interpretation of the multivalent
interval: both suggest the unexpected. Yet, the repeated bassline figure of bars 14-17 im
mediately shifts from an E-flat interpretation, comprising chromatic scale descending from
C-flat to G that strongly reiterates motion towards the dominant of C minor. This gesture,
beginning just below the putative tonic of C, once again imputes key without stating it, an
absence that heightens expectation for the approaching authentic cadence that should arrive in
bar 23. However, an interruption by the piano prevents this closure, and the harmonic rupture,
a retrograde motion from the dominant to a half-diminished supertonic, is as unexpected to the
listener as is the seizing by the hair to the narrator. Segments 1 and 2 in Figure 14.4 summarise
the expanded bassline descent in bars 18-22 and the subsequent piano interjection in bar 23.
Despite its brevity, this brief interlude – the only moment in the sonnet when the piano
speaks alone – possesses an important extra-musical significance. Directly following the in
troduction of the ‘mystic Shape’ in line 10, the piano’s interjection, utilising the ‘lyre’ rhythmic
motive in an ominous bass register, recalls the grief of the narrator and gives aural personifi
cation to the abstraction. The dramatic tension of the moment is reiterated melodically with a
repetition in bar 24 of the vocal line in bar 22, and the half cadence over which it occurs
prolongs the shock of the seizure.
When the descending bassline is articulated a third time in bars 26-28, it is nearly identical to
that of bars 18-21, a parallelism that recalls the structure of the sonnet’s first section and anticipates
another divergence. The coming departure is hinted at by the interpolation of a C minor chord
after the piano interlude. Although it seemingly acts as a harmonic stabiliser, it repairs the harmonic
rupture created by the piano’s harmonically regressive statement, delivers the delayed cadence and
creates an elision with the vocal line – the introduction of the C minor chord subtly creates the
means to associate E-flat major with a dramatically significant moment. The extra bar of ostinato,
this chord shifts the accompaniment so that the first downbeat of the vocal line occurs a bar earlier
than in the analogous place. Thus, ‘mastery’ rather than ‘voice’ is underlaid by the E-flat chord
(b. 27), equating the awareness of the narrator with the power held by the ‘mystic Shape’.
At this point, Freer introduces a French augmented 4-3 (b. 29), Ziehn’s chromatic chord of
plurisignificance and the sonority of the Sonnets’ soggetto cavato, the only one in the composition, and
one which marks a strong motion towards a G dominant, contrasting with the previous approaches
(bars 15-16 and b. 21) that exhibit little harmonic motion.12 In contrast, the construction of the
French augmented 4-3, with the outward straining A-flat – F-sharp interval, strongly (if perhaps a
bit tritely, given the 4-3 suspension in b. 30) affirms the arrival on the dominant. The suspense as to
how the dominant will resolve is nearly as great as that of the identity of the ‘mystic Shape’.
In the apparent denouement (b. 31), several thematic elements of the song unite: C minor is
clearly affirmed after the false or delayed resolutions of the previous descending progressions,
and the first rhythmic ostinato returns, now transposed so that it is consonant with the bass
143
harmony rather than juxtaposed against it. With ‘Death’ underlaid by the C minor chord, these
confluences prolong the assumption of narrator, and the descending bassline progression begins
a final time as if in musical affirmation. However, the concluding cadence on an E-flat major
chord initially shatters listener expectation. Given the insistence on this strongly marked pro
gression towards C minor throughout the song, each time left hanging tantalisingly on the
dominant, this extremely unconventional resolution is jarring and seems ill-chosen, yet per
fectly expresses the shock of the narrator. At the same time, it has not occurred unprepared as
the Gestalt of the piece reveals; Freer has embedded E-flat signifiers throughout the song, first
in the unexpected motion to B-flat in the first section (b. 12) and subsequently in the use of E-
flat sonorities in bars 19, 27 and 33.
Barrett Browning’s revelation that the mystic figure is not Death but is, in fact, nearly its
poetic opposite, Love, suggests an interpretation of the sonnet’s harmonic model that supports
the surprising narrative, in which the tenuous references to E-flat may be seen, in the end, to
govern the tonality as the mystic shape has mastered the narrator. In this retrospective, the G
dominant prolongation that eventually settles on C minor at the traditional volta becomes
subordinate to the C minor prolongation that, in turn, gives way to E-flat major. Recast in the
revealed key of the song, C minor is no longer the tonic but vi, the relative minor, the de
ception only revealed when the poem itself reveals its deceptive ending; the final word and the
final chord an affirmation of joy and expressive negation of convention.
Apart from her statement in the Music News, Freer wrote little about her setting of the Sonnets,
but that they were important to her is clear, not only through her estimation of their value to
American music, but also to her continuing engagement with the song cycle. She orchestrated the
entire work (although the parts have now been lost) and later incorporated six of the sonnets,
including the first, into her final operatic work, The Brownings Go to Italy (1936). Although Freer’s
overarching mission to establish an English language musical tradition eventually undermined her
compositional career, the care with which she set Barrett Browning’s poetry may be seen as its
ultimate legacy. Her idiosyncratic ‘sonnet process’, in which harmonic structure interlocks with
dramatic unfolding, necessarily defies formal categorisation, and the teasing out of these structures
shows a deep engagement with the poetry that is a marked contrast from much song writing of
the time, for which aspect alone the Sonnets merit further examination. Even the choice of text is
significant to the history of American song literature. Among the earliest American compositions
to poetry by female writers, it was the first setting of Barrett Browning’s Sonnets and remains the
only complete arrangement of the work. Shortly after its official premiere in 1920, one reviewer
predicted that Sonnets would become canonical, writing:
Surely it must be conceded by every unprejudiced hearer that in this great work Mrs.
Freer has added a “heritage to the race,” which, while it is so colossal that one hearing
will do no more than give a faint idea of its grandeur and beauty, will yet, in future
hearings, reveal itself as one of the favorite masterworks (Watt 1920b, p. 7).13
Though the reviewer’s prediction proved inaccurate at the time, in hindsight perhaps Freer may
receive her due.
Notes
1 The premiere of Gino Marinuzzi’s Jacquerie at the Chicago Opera on 17 November 1920.
2 Freer’s music appeared in the catalogues of a number of US and European publishers, including the
Wa-Wan Press (Newton Centre, Massachusetts), William Kaun Music (Milwaukee), Summy-Birchard
144
How Theocritus sang
(Chicago), the Music Library of Chicago Press, Richard Kaun Verlag (Berlin) and Henry Lemoine et
Cie (Paris).
3 For context, the 1906 edition in which she was featured also included Gabriel Fauré.
4 The reduction of all chords within a given tonality to one of three functional identities (tonic,
dominant or subdominant).
5 Among which were a few of more lasting reputation, including John Alden Carpenter (1876–1951).
6 The critic is quoting the operatic baritone, David Bispham.
7 Notably, neither instance resolves conventionally: in Sonnet VI, the progression becomes part of a
chromatic omnibus terminating with a plagal cadence in C minor; in Sonnet VII, the inverted aug
mented sixth becomes an altered leading tone chord for a cadence in E major.
8 The fragmented performance of the sonnets, spread over the course of four Mondays with each set of
11 interspersed with entirely unrelated instrumental works, suggests that Freer conceived of each work
discretely.
9 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1954.
10 This voice leading reproduces that in bars 1-4 found in the right hand on the downbeats.
11 Ziehn uses a major third as the basis for his introduction to plurisignificance.
12 In the first, viio4-2 - V, the descending bass A-flat - G is effectively the only motion; the second
iteration of VI7 - V similarly lacks momentum in the preservation of the common tone G.
13 Watt is referencing George Bernard Shaw in his quotation of ‘heritage of the race’.
References
Barrett Browning, E., 1954. Sonnets from the Portuguese. Reprint, Garden City, NY: Hanover House.
Originally published in 1850.
Devries, H., 1920. Originality and delicacy in the freer music. Music News, 12/32, 23.
Eversole, S.M., 1996. Eleanor Everest Freer. In: M.F. Schleifer and S. Glickman, eds. Women composers:
music through the ages. New York: G.K. Hall, 466–468.
Foster, A.G., 1927. Eleanor Everest Freer: patriot and her colleagues. Chicago: Chicago Musical Art Publishing
Company.
Freer, E.E., 1910. Sonnets from the Portuguese. Milwaukee: William Kaun Music Company.
Freer, E.E., 1920. Mrs. Freer defines her position. Music News, 14/48, 22.
Freer, E.E., 1929. Recollections and reflections of an American composer. New York: Musical Advance
Publishing Co.
Freer, E.E., 1936. The Brownings go to Italy; or, a love story. Chicago: Music Library of Chicago.
van dern Berg, H., 1906. Eleanor Everest Freer. The Musiclovers Calendar, 2, 69–71.
Watt, C.E., 1920a. Second of the ’afternoons of music’ at Orchestra Hall. Music News, 12/48, 19.
Watt, C.E., 1920b. Four afternoons of music. Music News, 12/47, 7.
Ziehn, B., 1907. Manual of harmony. Milwaukee: William Kaun Music Company.
145
15
A LIFE IN FRAGMENTS:
MORFYDD OWEN (1891–1918)
Rhian Davies
Her name was Morfydd Owen, though her

friends called her the
‘mighty atom’.
She was an innovative composer who achieved
widespread recognition in her time.
For 35 years I have pieced together the

jigsaw of her life.
Letters, photos, press cuttings,
reminiscences from friends and relatives.
Gradually colour emerged from sepia:

a dazzling academic career;
a gifted pianist and singer,
a complex character of contradictions.
Staid Sunday lunches with

London Welsh chapelgoers versus
exotic afternoons on Hampstead Heath with
D. H. Lawrence,
Ezra Pound,
even Rasputin’s assassin.
She cut a flamboyant figure in

gaudy clothes and gargantuan hats,
revelled in idiosyncratic wordplay.
In an age which thought

psychoanalysis scandalous, she
appalled her friends by marrying
Ernest Jones, Freud’s disciple.
146 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-15

Morfydd Owen (1891–1918)
And then the final twist:

death at 26 in
circumstances shrouded to this day in
rumour.
Her peers regarded her the

brightest rising star in the
Welsh musical firmament.
For me she represents
all our lost voices,
consigned to oblivion beneath the débris of
ignorance and complacency.
Documents crumble,
memories fade,
and still there is
so much to do
to save some of the
principal glories of this
musical nation.1
I wrote and spoke this script as part of a series of two-minute films called Nation, which was
screened by BBC1 Wales to celebrate St David’s Day in 1993. The commission marked a high
point in my early research into the composer, pianist, mezzo-soprano and ethnomusicologist
Morfydd Owen (1891–1918), work that was intended originally to be submitted as an MA
dissertation at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and developed into a PhD thesis
at the University of Wales, Bangor. My chapter reflects on her life and achievement and
considers the resurgence of interest in her compositions that has gone hand in hand with the
growing international awareness and appreciation of women’s work in music.
Morfydd Owen was born in Treforest, Glamorgan, on 1 October 1891 and claimed descent
from the hymnist William Williams, Pantycelyn, on her father’s side of the family, and a
Spanish gypsy on her mother’s. The youngest child and only daughter of William and Sarah
Jane Owen, she grew up over the draper’s shop that her mother ran from various addresses in
Park Street and Castle Street in the commercial heart of the village. Her father worked as an
accountant and estate agent in Cardiff, but came originally from Llwynowen, a row of cottages
in Bont Dolgadfan, Llanbrynmair, Montgomeryshire. His daughter paid homage to these family
roots by choosing ‘Morfydd Llwyn-Owen’ as her bardic name when she was admitted to
membership of the Gorsedd at the Wrexham National Eisteddfod in 1912.
Owen was considered a prodigy when she went to the keyboard of her own accord at the
age of four and started composing at six. She took the part of Jessica in a production of The
Merchant of Venice at Pontypridd County School, debated in favour of a motion that boys should
learn cooking, and won form prizes for French and Latin. But music was always paramount.
Owen composed a ‘School Song’, gained performance experience in eisteddfodau as well as
school and chapel concerts,2 and studied with a local teacher, Isabella Powell-Davies, until the
age of 16, when David Evans, Music Professor at University College, Cardiff, accepted her as a
private pupil in piano and composition. Her first published score was not the hymn-tune
147
Rhian Davies
Figure 15.1 Morfydd Owen photographed at the Adelphi Studios, London, in 1913.
‘Morfydd’, as has long been thought, but another, called ‘Trefforest’, which appeared in a
periodical called Y Deonglwr in April 1909 when she was 17.3
Owen entered David Evans’ Department officially as the first holder of the Caradog
Scholarship in September 1909. She was one of two candidates to be awarded a BMus degree
by the University of Wales in 1912, and her Ave Maria for mezzo-soprano solo, chorus and
strings was approved by Charles Wood as external examiner. Owen played Grieg’s Piano
Concerto in 1911 and heard 20 of her compositions performed in end-of-year concerts. These
scores were already unusual for a Welsh composer. All Owen’s Cardiff songs set English words,
for example, rather than Welsh: ‘Mirage’ dabbles in whole tones; ‘The Nightingale’ has a
waywardly experimental vocal line, and Sea Drift, a scena for voice and orchestra, was com
posed 16 years before the Welsh National Orchestra (now the BBC National Orchestra of
Wales) came into being. ‘To Our Lady of Sorrows’, arguably the finest of all Owen’s songs, was
148
also written in Cardiff, its craftsmanship and emotional intensity marking it out as a particularly
remarkable achievement for a 20-year-old undergraduate in early twentieth-century Wales.
The student concerts were reviewed in the south Wales press, and there was a consistent buzz
around Owen as the most promising member of a new generation of Welsh composers that
David Evans was raising in Cardiff.
Owen continued to live at home as an undergraduate and might have gone on serving her
community as a teacher and composer if not for a chance connection with Eliot Crawshay-
Williams, Liberal MP for Leicester and a grandson of Robert Thompson Crawshay of Cyfarthfa
Ironworks, Merthyr Tydfil. The officers of Treforest United Choir wanted Owen to write them
an oratorio but, recognising the unusual quality and potential of her work, Crawshay-Williams
persuaded her parents that she should move to London and study composition with Frederick
Corder at the Royal Academy of Music (1912–17). Owen’s contemporaries at the Academy
included the pianist Harriet Cohen, the dramatic soprano Eva Turner and the cellist and conductor
John Barbirolli, but her record exceeded them all in brilliance. She made a huge impression during
her first year (1912), performing four of her own songs at the Bechstein (now Wigmore) Hall, and
winning every available prize for singing and general excellence as well as composition. Most
prestigious was the Charles Lucas Silver Medal, given in competition for writing an orchestral
Nocturne. Hailed by Corder as one of the most individual student works ever heard, the im
pressionistic Nocturne was premiered at Queen’s Hall, Langham Place, on 12 December 1913 by
the Academy Student Orchestra, conducted by the Principal, Alexander Mackenzie. Indeed, from
1913 to 1917, Mackenzie premiered one large-scale work by Owen after another at Queen’s Hall,
including A Cycle of Sea-Songs, Morfa Rhuddlan (The Marsh of Rhuddlan) and part of her cantata
Pro Patria, giving her the privilege of hearing her scores in real time, as they were written, and
learning from that experience. Among numerous favourable broadsheet reviews, the Morning Post
wrote in 1914: ‘It would seem that in the process of time Wales, in the person of this clever young
lady, will supply, is supplying a modern composer of whom much will be heard’.4
As a member of Charing Cross Chapel, Owen also began to move in influential London
Welsh circles. Her career was advanced by concert invitations and composition commissions
from Liberal MPs including David Lloyd George, H. Haydn Jones and J. Herbert Lewis.
Herbert Lewis and his wife Ruth ran an ‘open house’ for young Welsh people in London at
their home, 23 Grosvenor Road, on the Thames Embankment, where guests included the
dramatist J. O. Francis, the literary critic William Hughes Jones, the future Liberal leader
Clement Davies, and Owen herself. Owen also collaborated with Ruth Herbert Lewis to
transcribe and arrange folksongs from phonograph cylinder recordings made in Flintshire,
Denbighshire and Ceredigion. Familiar tunes such ‘Gwn Dafydd Ifan’ (David Evans’ Gun) and
‘Hela Llwynog’ (Fox-hunting) could well have been lost without this pioneering work. The
ladies used a pony and trap to scour the countryside for suitable singers, but most tunes were
collected within reach of Plas Penucha, the Herbert Lewises’ constituency home near Caerwys.
Their chief and most reliable source was Jane Williams, a resident of Holywell Workhouse,
who provided one gem after another, especially when bribed with snuff!
Ruth Herbert Lewis’ Folk-Songs Collected in Flintshire and the Vale of Clwyd, with piano ac
companiments by Morfydd Owen, were published in 1914. With Dora Rowlands, later Dora
Herbert-Jones, Owen publicised these finds at lectures and concerts in London, Wales,
Northampton and Weston-super-Mare, and 10,000 copies of the volume were in circulation by
the time it went into a fifth edition in 1927. The influence of folksong can also be seen on Owen’s
composition, such as the strophic songs ‘William’ and ‘To Violets’ with their modal melodies and
recurrent refrains. Other expressions of Welshness in exile include the songs ‘Suo-Gân’ (Lullaby)
and ‘Gweddi y Pechadur’ (The Sinner’s Prayer), and the Four Welsh Impressions, piano miniatures
149
Rhian Davies
that evoke close friends and favourite landscapes such as ‘Beti Bwt’ (Owen’s nickname for her best
friend Elizabeth Lloyd, with whom she shared a flat in Hampstead) and ‘Glantaf’ (inspired by a visit
to the grave of Elizabeth’s Professor, Sir Edward Anwyl, in Glyntaff Churchyard). Lloyd was the
first woman to take a First-Class Honours degree in Welsh at the University College of Wales,
Aberystwyth, before proceeding to postgraduate research in London and Oxford.
There are wonderful vignettes of Owen in London: her penchant for riding in motorcycle
sidecars and the flamboyant clothes she wore to picnic on Hamstead Heath. She and Elizabeth
Lloyd really did meet D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound and Prince Felix Yusupov, Rasputin’s
assassin. Owen began a relationship with Alexis Chodak-Gregory, who was reputed also to be a
Russian Prince, and transcribed folk tunes from his singing. Chodak-Gregory asked Owen to
marry him, demonstrating his devotion by taking Welsh lessons with Dora Rowlands, attending
services at Charing Cross, and saying that he would not be kept dangling! And Owen hatched
her own audacious plan to propel herself all-expenses-paid to Russia:
Subject proposed, ‘A critical study of the elements in Folk Music which permanently
influence the musical development of a nation, with special reference to Russia,
Norway and Finland; how far they already have influenced these schools, and what
the possibilities are in Wales.’ Would study in London and Petrograd.5
The University of Wales gave Owen a grant of £100 – and her orchestral tone-poem Morfa
Rhuddlan shows the direction in which she wished to move – but nothing came of the scheme
in the end. She broke up with Chodak-Gregory and the study-visit was deferred indefinitely
because of the First World War, then the Bolshevik Revolution. She wrote to Eliot Crawshay-
Williams in November 1915:
You ask what I am now – still silly dull Morfydd, and still a student at the R.A.M.... I
am working this term. Last term I didn’t work much because I was madly in love with
a Russian. – now I dislike him intensely... [and] am thanking whatever Gods there be
that I didn’t marry him.6
Buckling down ensured that 1916 marked the apogee of Owen’s career as a composer and
performer. She began taking singing lessons at the Academy alongside composition, performing
the mezzo-soprano solo in Verdi’s Requiem at Rhosllanerchrugog, near Wrexham, and giving
concerts in Bath and Oxford before making her professional recital début at the Aeolian Hall,
London, on 10 January 1917. The Western Mail was ‘astonished … by her development as a
singer’ and predicted that ‘she has her feet firmly on the ladder of fame’.7
1916 was also the year in which Owen met Ernest Jones, founder of the British Psycho-
Analytical Society and biographer of Sigmund Freud. Their clandestine wedding at Marylebone
Register Office on 6 February 1917 – barely six weeks after being introduced, and a month
after her Aeolian Hall recital – was attended by none of her family or friends and continues to
exert a potent fascination. The way in which Jones told Freud about his bride is striking:
Since my last letter, written about Christmas time, I have the news to give that I got
married last week, and have just returned from a week’s honeymoon in West
Cornwall – the Celtic end of England. She is Welsh, young (23), very pretty, in
telligent, and musical.8 After taking her degree in music she studied for four years at
the Academy and sang at her first and last public concert the week I captured her; she
has also composed some promising works (Jones, cited in Paskauskas 1993, p. 322).
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Jones did not approve of his wife performing in public, as this reference makes plain, and
Owen’s concerts dwindled away as dancing classes replaced singing lessons at the Academy. Her
productivity was also affected by acting as her husband’s secretary and proof-reader and or
ganising the maids and meals at their West End flat and country cottage in Sussex. Owen left
the Academy without taking her final qualification in composition, the Certificate of Merit, and
completed a dozen ballads and patter songs during the 20 months of her marriage. Some began
to enter the catalogues of Boosey and Chappell and were performed by eminent singers such as
Ivor Foster and Robert Radford at the London Palladium and Proms, though it is not clear
whether Owen decided to move her career in this more commercial direction, or whether
Jones encouraged her to do so. ‘Oh dear!’, she wrote to Eliot Crawshay-Williams on 22 July
1918: ‘Married life doesn’t seem to me to be quite the easiest thing to adapt oneself to, and has
taken up all my time’.9
Owen’s time was about to run out altogether for she died within six weeks of posting that
letter while on holiday at the home of her parents-in-law in Oystermouth on the Gower Coast.
She appears to have developed delayed chloroform poisoning after undergoing an operation for
appendicitis in the house, and died on Saturday morning, 7 September 1918, at the age of 26.
The interment took place in Oystermouth Cemetery the following Wednesday afternoon, 11
September 1918, and the death was registered by Ernest Jones’ stepmother a fortnight later, on
25 September. Jones chose an epitaph from Goethe’s Faust, ‘Das Unbeschreibliche, hier ist’s
getan’ (The indescribable, here it is done), and explained: ‘The quotation meant that the pain &
frightfulness of tearing two devoted people apart was indescribable, literally. Morfydd knew no
German’.10 On 11 October 1919 – 13 months to the day after the funeral – Jones married his
second wife, Katharina Jökl, in Zürich. This engagement was agreed within three days of
meeting, and the wedding within three weeks.
David Evans, Morfydd Owen’s Cardiff Professor, considered her death:
an incalculable loss to Welsh music – in fact, I know of no young British composer

who showed such promise’.11
E. T. Davies, Director of Music at Bangor University, wrote of:
a grievous loss to Wales: here was a musician of outstanding genius cut off on the
threshold of a career that would have shed lustre on her native country, and that might,
quite well, have given a new direction to Welsh musical thought and endeavour.12
And the obituary in Y Cerddor (The Musician) concluded:
Ni chafodd cerddoriaeth Gymreig ergyd drymach yn ei hanes na cholli yr eneth

ddisglair annwyl hon mor ieuanc... Gobeithiai pawb y cai fyw yn hir i gyflawni gwaith
mawr dros ei gwlad ac i gerddoriaeth yn gyffredinol. Pe gwybuasent y golled, wylasai
gwlad gyfan uwch ei bedd.
[Welsh music never sustained a heavier blow in its history than losing this dear, brilliant girl so
young... Everyone hoped she would have a long life to achieve great work for her country and for music
in general. If the significance of this loss were fully realised, a whole nation would weep at her grave].13
Several memorials were established, notably a scholarship to University College, Cardiff, that
was won for the first time by Grace Williams. Williams never forgot hearing the London
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Rhian Davies
Symphony Orchestra play Morfa Rhuddlan at the Barry National Eisteddfod in 1920 when she
was 14, and always said that her path toward becoming a composer was made much easier
because Morfydd Owen had already blazed the trail. A four-volume Memorial Edition was
published in the early 1920s – Nocturne, songs and piano pieces – and a Pontypridd optician,
Gilbert Tritschler, did valuable work during the 1950s by recording the memories of those who
had known Owen in her home area. With his nieces, Gillian and Margaret Meredith, and his
friend, Catherine Radcliffe and her daughter Ianthe, he also revived Owen’s compositions in
concerts across south Wales and led biennial pilgrimages to the grave.
I first became interested in Morfydd Owen at the age of 12 by reading the chapter about her in
Emrys Cleaver’s book Gwŷr y Gân (1964) and singing her songs as test pieces at the National
Eisteddfod. I have since researched and revived many other composers, but Owen was my ap
prentice piece, and the work would eventually change the direction of my own life as the
intended singer became an accidental music historian. Ian Parrott, my Aberystwyth University
Professor, was not keen on my researching someone who had died so young and insisted that I
make a case. So, I spent the summer of 1982 commuting to Cardiff where the principal collection
of Morfydd Owen’s manuscripts was then held in the Welsh Music Information Centre on the
top floor of the University Music Department in Corbett Road. There was no catalogue – it is
hard to imagine now, but in those pre-internet days no one could even be sure when the
composer had been born – and I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor to make my first list.
In no way did I have the experience then that I hope I have now of hearing and evaluating scores
in my head, but I had little doubt that the songs and orchestral music were of rare quality. The
manuscripts, deposited by Ernest Jones in the 1920s, are now under the care of Cardiff University
Special Collections and Archives and the current catalogue is fully searchable online.14
Publishing the best of Morfydd Owen’s vocal, choral, piano and orchestral music was a
priority through Oriana Publications and the Welsh Music Information Centre (now Tŷ Cerdd
Music Centre Wales), and this has paid dividends in terms of having scores and parts available to
recommend to performers and promoters in the UK, Europe, Asia, Canada and the USA.
Following the programming of Nocturne in 1986 by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, conducted
by Kirk Trevor, the centenary of the composer’s birth in 1991 was a useful spur to encourage
additional world premieres and first modern performances:
• Threnody at the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea, in 1991

• Pro Patria in Llandaff Cathedral in 1992
• the Piano Trio at the 1998 Lower Machen Festival
• Ave Maria for mezzo-soprano, chorus and string orchestra at Cardiff City Hall in 2001
There was even a festival during the Pan-Am Games in Winnipeg in 1999, organised by an
expatriate oncologist and musician, Dr. Keith Davies Jones. I was asked to write Owen’s first
entry in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1994, the same year in which my bilingual
pictorial biography of the composer Yr Eneth Ddisglair Annwyl / Never So Pure a Sight was
published by Gomer Press. Owen has also inspired television dramas and documentaries for
Sianel 4 Cymru (Channel 4 Wales) and BBC2 Wales, novels by Marion Eames and Eigra Lewis
Roberts, and dance productions by Geoff Moore’s Moving Being and Sally Marie’s Sweetshop
Revolution.
During Tim Thorne’s tenure at the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, it was especially
exciting to revive Morfa Rhuddlan at the Gregynog Festival in 2014 (the first public hearing of
the score in 72 years) and to organise a studio recording of Nocturne to mark International
Women’s Day in 2017. These BBC Radio 3 broadcasts opened the door for Nocturne to be
152
programmed at the BBC Proms in 2018, when a fine performance by the BBC National
Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Thomas Søndergård, was greeted with enthusiasm by the
British and French press. Believe you me, when Richard Morrison (2018) writes ‘More
Morfydd soon please’ in the Times after you have sought to draw attention to the significance of
a score for 35 years, it feels like a really good day at the office! And what a whirlwind of a day it
was, beginning with an interview for BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ with John Humphrys and moving
on through a ‘Proms Plus Talk’ with Petroc Trelawny and Steph Power to live concert
commentary with Heledd Cynwal and Alwyn Humphreys for BBC Radio Cymru. Nocturne
was relayed live from the Royal Albert Hall by BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio Cymru, and
broadcast subsequently by BBC Four Television, Radio Monalisa in Amsterdam, Red FM in
Mexico City and ABC in Sydney.
Other highlights included ceremonies over centenary weekend to unveil blue plaques on the
houses where the composer was born (68 Park Street, Treforest), and in which she died (Craig-
y-Môr, Plunch Lane, Oystermouth). Creating and delivering these occasions, including ar
rangements for performers, audience members and camera crews, kept us all so busy in the
moment that it is good to consider in quieter time just how significant they were. There can be
few people worldwide who have ever been paid such a double compliment, let alone someone
who died when she was 26 years of age, and this is surely a measure of the growing recognition
of Morfydd Owen’s significance and stature.
Owen’s example is also coming to symbolise something more than musical achievement
alone. She was chosen as one of five inspirational Welsh women to mark 100 years since the
Representation of the People Act by BBC Radio Wales’ flagship news programme ‘Good
Morning Wales’ in February 2018; and Rhondda Cynon Taf Borough Council has recently
announced that it will be honouring Owen, the writer Elaine Morgan, and the suffragette and
businesswoman Margaret Haig Thomas, Viscountess Rhondda, with commemorative panels in
local libraries. The intention is to tell their stories so that future generations of women in the
area may be inspired to follow in their footsteps.
After 35 years of work, I myself have been inspired to see Morfydd Owen championed by
the student musicians of Stetson University in Florida, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music
and Dance in London and the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff, for they are
the rising generation of performers and promoters. Cardiff University’s School of Music
honoured Owen as an alumna through concerts by its Chamber Choir and Orchestra, and the
Choir toured her music to China during the summer of 2019. Other significant recent per
formances have included the Four Welsh Impressions and the Piano Trio during concerts pro
moted by Illuminate Women’s Music in the UK and USA, and a selection of the Welsh and
Russian folksong arrangements at the National Eisteddfod in Cardiff Bay. I cannot express how
rewarding it is to see the composer reach a tipping-point, where personal lobbying is no longer
required from me for her music to be programmed, and long may it continue. Two projects
have also taken Owen’s legacy in fresh and imaginative directions by sampling her songs. Robin
Haigh’s Morfydd, commissioned by PRS for Music’s Accelerate scheme for world premiere
performance at St James’ Church, Piccadilly, by the Berkeley Ensemble, used the song ‘The
Lamb’, while Psychohistory, a sound installation for Swansea International Festival at Swansea
Museum by Locus (Richard James of Gorky’s Zygotic Monkey and Angharad Van Rijswijk of
Accü), quoted from ‘A Mother’s Lullaby’.
Was Morfydd Owen ‘an incalculable loss’? Well, she was certainly the pivotal figure in
Welsh music at the turn of the twentieth century and one of the most versatile musicians that
Wales has ever produced as a composer, singer and pianist. A 100 years on, I think we must also
acknowledge Owen’s importance as an ethnomusicologist and the 70 folksong transcriptions
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Rhian Davies
and arrangements that form an integral part of her 250 surviving manuscripts, along with 80
songs, works for orchestra, chamber and solo instruments, choral pieces and hymn-tunes.
Morfydd Owen’s songs are her most striking and original compositions: minimal settings like
‘A Song of Sorrow’ and ‘The Weeping Babe’; deft patter songs like ‘Patrick’s Your Boy’ and
‘For Jeannie’s Sake’; ballads in the polished Edwardian style of Frank Bridge and Roger Quilter
such as ‘God Made a Lovely Garden’ and ‘In Cradle Land’; the swooping melodic lines of
‘Slumber-Song of the Madonna’ and ‘Suo-Gân’, and the dramatic, almost violent vocal out
bursts of ‘To Our Lady of Sorrows’, La Tristesse’ and ‘Gweddi y Pechadur’. All are true singers’
songs, requiring technique, intellect and artistry to succeed in performance.
Beyond the orchestral scores themselves, the substantial vocal scenas with orchestral ac
companiment and the delectable orchestrations of songs, such as ‘The Fairies’ Wedding’, re
main ripe for rediscovery. The fragments of incidental music to The Passing of Branwen,
performed at a West End matinée under the patronage of T. E. Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Howard
de Walden of Chirk Castle, in 1916, also suggest that some of Owen’s future work may have
lain in music for the cinema and stage, well before Grace Williams’ soundtrack to Jill Craigie’s
film Blue Scar in 1949 and her one-act opera The Parlour in 1961. This extract from Owen’s
obituary by her London Professor Frederick Corder, placed the potential of his pupil at the very
forefront of contemporary music and posterity seems minded to concur:
A loss, which will be deeply felt by a very large circle of friends, is inflicted by the
untimely death of this remarkable young lady. Gifted by nature with exceptional
talents and mental powers not often to be found in conjunction with a personality of
such beauty and charm, she had quickly raised herself to a position of distinction in the
musical world....
Among the hundreds of musicians whom I have trained during the last 30 years, I can
remember very few lady students of as great promise and none of superior ability...
Her remarkable powers as a composer, and her almost unique distinction as a vocalist,
were fostered in her new surroundings, and honours quickly showered upon her.
These numerous activities could only have been sustained by a mind and body of
quite unusual energy, and the shock is severe to think of such exuberant vitality being
so suddenly arrested. Miss Owen had already published a few songs... good specimens
of a refined and beautiful talent, which has often delighted friends of the Royal
Academy of Music (Corder 1918, p. 14).
Notes
1 Rhian Davies, ‘A Life in Fragments’, Nation, BBC1 Wales, 1 March 1993.
2 An eisteddfod is a competitive festival of music and poetry in Wales.
3 Y Deonglwr, vii/4 (Ebrill 1909), p. 128.
4 Morning Post, 15 July 1914.
5 Y Gorlan, c/ 8 (Awst 1915), p. 13.
6 Letter from Morfydd Owen to Eliot Crawshay-Williams, 11 November 1915, in National Library of
Wales (NLW): ‘Eliot Crawshay-Williams Papers’, MS G28/18.
7 Western Mail, 11 January 1917.
8 Morfydd Owen was actually 25 years old on her wedding day, rather than 23.
9 Letter from Morfydd Owen to Eliot Crawshay-Williams, 22 July 1918, in NLW: MS G28/33.
10 Letter from Ernest Jones to Gilbert Tritschler, 24 April 1957, in NLW: ‘Material relating to Morfydd
Owen (1891-1918), musician’, MS 18247D.
11 David Evans, South Wales Daily News, 9 November 1918.
154
12 E. T. Davies, ‘Morfydd Owen’, May 1956, in NLW: MS 18247D.

13 ‘Marw-goffa Miss Morfydd Owen, Mus.Bac., A.R.A.M.’, Y Cerddor, XXX/358 (Hydref 1918), p. 111
(author’s translation).
14 See ‘Morfydd Owen Scores: Manuscript Scores and Personal Memorabilia of Composer Morfydd
Owen’, Cardiff University Special Collections and Archives: https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/special-
collections/explore/collection/morfydd-owen
References
Cleaver, E., 1964. Gŵyr y Gân, Llyfrau’r Dryw, Llandybie. Translated by E.L. Jones as Musicians of Wales:
an account of the lives and works of the major musicians of Wales in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.
Ruthin: John Jones, 1968.
Corder, F., 1918. Obituary: Morfydd Owen. R.A.M. Club Magazine, 54, September, 14 .
Crawshay-Williams, E., 1958. Morfydd Owen. Wales, 4, 50–56.
Crawshay-Williams, E., 1959. The tragedy of Morfydd. Y Ddinas, March, 17–18.
Davies, R., 1994. Yr Eneth Ddisglair Annwyl / Never So Pure A Sight. Llandysul: Gomer Press.
Herbert Lewis, R. and Owen, M., 1914. Folk-songs collected in Flintshire and the Vale of Clwyd. Wrexham:
Hughes & Son.
Jones, E., 1959. Free associations: memoirs of a psycho-analyst. London: Hogarth Press.
Jones, K.I., 1995. The enigma of Morfydd Owen. Welsh Music, v/1, Winter, 8–21.
Morrison, R., 2018. Prom 8 review: BBC NOW/Søndergård at Royal Albert Hall, SW7. Times, 23 July.
Paskauskas, R.A. ed., 1993. The complete correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones 1908–1939.
Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press.
Tritschler, G., 1962. ‘Morfydd Owen: a biography’ , typescript in National Library of Wales (NLW):
‘Material relating to Morfydd Owen (1891-1918), musician’, MS 18247D.
155
PART III
Aesthetics and music creation

16
OVERCOMING THE ‘MALE GAZE’
OF MUSIC: TOWARDS RENEWED
COMPOSITIONAL STRATEGIES
16.1 Introduction
The expression ‘male gaze’ refers to a masculine, heteronormative perspective regarding aes-
thetic ideals. While the concept was first presented by Laura Mulvey (1975), who considered
the visual aesthetics of film having been shaped to please the ‘eye’ of a male spectator, the idea
that the gender of an artist carries consequences for the norms of a field has largely been
discussed in many art forms, such as visual arts and literature. The aim has been to object to the
idea that aesthetic standards are universal. ‘Male gaze’ does not necessarily describe artistic
choices made by individuals but denotes standards that have developed over time. Western
classical music, however, has been long considered autonomous, something that exists re-
gardless of the social structures and the social background – including the gender – of a
composer. The low participation rates of women in the field of musical composition are often
explained by cultural habits, for example, women and men having been socialised to different
types of interests and engagements.
One of the difficulties of discussing the ‘male gaze’ in a musical context is that music does
not appear to say anything explicit nor to refer to anything outside of itself. This idea of
aesthetic autonomy relates to a formalist view. According to musicologist Eduard Hanslick
(1825–1904), for example, aesthetic value is found within the relationships between the internal
elements of a work: ‘[I]t is an end in itself, and it is in no way primarily a medium or material
for the representation of feelings or conceptions’ (Hanslick 1986, p. 28). In the most extreme
version of formalism, a self-contained artwork is considered to be intellectually accessible to
anyone, regardless of cultural context. The concept of a musical work that emerged around
1800 has, as philosopher Lydia Goehr (2007) claims, come to define the norms and expectations
that are still associated with classical music today, these being the practices around composing,
performing and listening to a musical work. As Goehr notes, it ‘also emerged alongside the rise
of ideals of accurate notation and perfect compliance. In this process, the work-concept
achieved the most central position’ (2007, p. 103). Western classical music signifies high culture
and timelessness. Consequently, composing a musical work is regarded as a free activity. If there
is ‘male gaze’ in music, a central question is how women, or other social minorities, could
participate in composing music without reproducing the male-created norms that are si-
multaneously defined as universal.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-16 159

This chapter begins by arguing that music carries ‘male gaze’. However, instead of arguing
that music exhibits gendered qualities, it begins with discussing the difficulties of viewing
contemporary music as a gendered activity altogether. Furthermore, the specific approach of
this text is to focus on the field of composition as a practice rather than on finished works. I will
suggest five compositional strategies, each of which create a space to recognise the composer as a
social, gendered being, with a cultural background, who actively engages with the connotations
of the social world in music. In the end, the key may not be to step outside of existing musics
and create a women’s music, but to become better aware of the ways in which social reality is
already present when a composition is made – that is, how the work already belongs to the
world.
16.2 Proper and respectable contemporary music

The artistic norms of contemporary music can be traced back to the emergence of the aesthetic
paradigm of absolute music in the nineteenth century. Alongside the development of modern
aesthetics that gave art an autonomous position, music was often considered the highest and
most abstract form of art. As Mark Evan Bonds points out, musical serialism that emerged in
1920s ‘owed much to the premise of music as an art of pure form’ (Bonds 2014, p. 3). The
relevance of this development to the situation of contemporary music is well illustrated by
musicologist Rose Rosengard Subotnik, who argues that: ‘For almost two hundred years,
Western art music has tried to secure a social guarantee of its own existence, precisely as if it
were as “self-evident” a structure as science’ (Subotnik 1994, p. 365). This reveals something
about the consequences of the ideal of self-containment: in fear of ending up at the service of
external purposes, the musical work withdraws from social context. According to Subotnik, the
contemporary work strives for individuality. One could also say that it attempts to establish its
legitimacy within its own structure because it cannot lean on anything external to validate its
existence. In this context, the term ‘contemporary music’ is to be understood as a normative
expression rather than a descriptive one. Quoting Subotnik further on this issue:
[C]ontemporary music cannot be considered a chronologically descriptive term, en-

compassing all newly created twentieth century art music. It is a historically normative
term, with aesthetic, intellectual and even moral implications (ibid., p. 371).
While there is a large variety of compositional practices today, varying both in their mediums
and ideological approaches, the norms of contemporary music still form a basis that an educated
Western composer ought to take account of.
I will here make an attempt to illustrate some of the features of a respectable work of
contemporary music. Music is not supposed to be made for any external purposes: music should
not, for example, be commercial. The musical work is not supposed to be created out of
idiomatic musical language, such as pitch and harmony, without reflection, but should chal-
lenge its own materials and tools, thus responding to a historical situation. In addition, the work
is supposed to make the listener contemplate. Altogether, the music is supposed to carry value
through its resistance to the social context of the external world.
Where does gender appear in this discourse? Is there a way for women to enter musical
composition without unknowingly reproducing the paradigms mentioned above, and do these
paradigms have some connection to ‘male gaze’? The answer appears to be that gender and
other social aspects cannot feature in this discourse as they are unable to. A musical norm that
only concerns internal musical processes excludes, per definition, social aspects other than those
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Overcoming the ‘male gaze’ of music
that constitute its expression. While several other art forms have been subjected to a feminist
critique in the twentieth century, music is often referred to as a universal medium. According to
Susan McClary, ‘it almost seems that musicology managed miraculously to pass directly from
pre- to post-feminism without ever having to change’ (1991, p. 5).
Within feminist discourse, when left unchallenged, this formalism results in two possible
approaches. First, music may be discussed merely as a social practice, often including other
aspects than the music itself – for example, revealing supposedly feminine and masculine
character traits within dramatic works such as opera. Gendered codes that are explicitly present
are more available for critical examination. On the other hand, feminist critique may circle
around questions of whether internal relationships within music, such as harmonic progression,
express masculine or feminine aesthetics. This type of discussion often results in speculations
that are, in the end, difficult to prove. In addition, they have the tendency of remaining within
essentialist and heteronormative approaches to gender. The point is, however, that both ap-
proaches fail in that they remain within the same paradigm, where music itself is considered as
being self-contained.
When examining art music, it is finished works that stand in focus. They appear as crys-
tallised compositional ideas. The complex mechanisms of compositional processes themselves
are more rarely discussed, however, and an examination of the compositional process may
illuminate this issue further. What appears as the intention of the composer is actually a part of a
general practice that is complete with its own idioms. It is not necessarily the case that a
composer ever, actively decides to compose music that will be something-in-itself. Being able
to regard one’s own music in a larger socio-historical context usually demands a sustained
engagement with these issues. Yet contemporary music is still validated when it simply carries a
specific expression, for example, when it uses extended instrumental techniques and focusses on
gestural elements. It is partly through imitation of the idioms that composers establish a re-
lationship with the field. When students learn about the field, they try to adapt themselves to a
social practice in ways that often go unarticulated, one of them being how to create music that
sounds like proper and respectable contemporary music.
This stands heavily in contrast with the norms of contemporary music themselves, which,
per definition, resists reduction to external musical spheres, including style. Contemporary
music is not supposed to be understood as a musical style, yet the situation is that contemporary
music too sounds like something. Its sound communicates signals that signify the social context
it belongs to, this being ‘serious and challenging music’. This, if anything, shows that con-
temporary music cannot escape social context or ever arrive at a space of neutrality. Keeping the
question of gender in mind, the suggested solution in this text will not be to step outside of the
tradition of composition and create more ‘worldly music’, nor to oppose contemporary music
itself as an art. Rather, the key is to recognise the ways in which music already belongs to the
world. What ought to be understood is that composition is a worldly practice. The five stra-
tegies presented here are suggestions how to actively contemplate the ways in which the culture
and society that surrounds a work are already present when the work is made.
16.3 Five compositional strategies

Strategy I: denaturalising musical material
Within gender research ‘denaturalisation’ is used as a method of revealing the hidden meanings
of language. Philosopher Judith Butler presents the idea that language is based on ritualised
repetition of norms that have developed culturally and historically (Butler 1993). She discusses
161
‘denaturalisation’ as a way of showing that no concepts are natural in the sense of having a pure,
referential meaning, but, in maintaining their historical and cultural connotations, they exhibit
values and social structures. Simultaneously, language often conceals this origin; words such as
‘body’, ‘material’ or the ‘biological gender’ appear as if they were natural and are accepted as
common sense. Denaturalising reveals the hidden power dynamics that are carried by language
(see Jegerstedt 2008).
Brought into a compositional context, denaturalisation might mean the rejection of the
notion of musical material being natural. This point is also articulated clearly by, for example,
Theodor W. Adorno, who claims that all musical material – including pitch and harmony – is
thoroughly historical (1997, p. 195). All musical expression carries specific connotations. One
does not only hear the sound of a flute but, to some degree, also the history of the flute that the
sound is charged with. In a similar way, the sound of an organ might immediately signify
‘religion’. Music is charged with the social spaces where it has been encountered.
Contemporary music already proposes denaturalisation in the attempt of distancing music
from its ordinary associative space. Helmut Lachenmann’s typology of sounds, for example, in
his book Musik als Existentielle Erfahrung (1996), displaces the focus from the idiomatic usage of
instruments and pitch-durational thinking towards the timbral development of the sound as a
process. Through several different methods in contemporary music, the focus is redirected to
gestural quality or other aspects of sound. This practice can never arrive at a point of ‘rest’, since
new connotations are created over time that, again, begin to signify something.
How, then, could denaturalisation within music work? Taking composer Sofia
Gubaidulina’s thinking as an example, her contemplation on the tradition of the concerto as a
work for soloist and an orchestra, may throw a light on this issue. In the Romantic era, the
concerto drew on the concept of a hero: ‘an outstanding individual, a winner in an unequal
competition. The main presumption was that the hero knows the absolute truth, knows where
to lead the crowd’ (Gubaidulina in Lukomsky 1998, p. 29). In the twentieth century, these
concepts have become, according to Gubaidulina, irrelevant and anachronistic. Composers
currently seek new situations for solving the problem of the concerto: Gubaidulina writes, ‘I,
too, am searching’ (ibid.). In her Piano Concerto Introitus (1978), for example, the piano part is
completely deprived of virtuosity. As Gubaidulina states:
I do not want either virtuosic or assertive passages; I do not want loud chords. My
soloist penetrates into the depth of the sound; he/she listens and invites all the other to
listen, too (ibid., p. 30).
In this example, denaturalisation occurs as a result of conscious compositional choices, as a

refusal to accept the traditional roles exhibited by the concerto as something natural. This type
of action – actively contemplating tradition through compositional work – appears as re-
sponsible. The core of denaturalisation is its ability to challenge the immediate connotations
that music always carries and to create a dialogue with the social codes embedded in the sounds.
Strategy II: advancing a critical approach to musical colonialism

The concept of denaturalisation can be further developed in a more outward-looking way ‐ for
instance, it may be used to addressed both social and political aspects of music. The strategy of
proposing a critical approach to musical colonialism builds further on the fact that social spaces
are present in sounds. However, when speaking of ‘colonialism’, there is a power structure at
stake, too. ‘Colonialism’, here, refers to the activity of going ‘somewhere’ and exploiting
162
‘something’ that did not belong to oneself to begin with. This could also be said as follows: one
engages in something that doesn’t directly belong to oneself by ripping it off from other musical
context and implementing it in Western context of a musical work. As already discussed,
focussing on the sonic or gestural features of music does not make the material neutral.
Awareness of the ways in which musical conventions in different cultural contexts are in-
terwoven in the lived worlds, enables one to engage consciously with structures and narratives
that have developed and transformed within the social arena of music. This contributes towards
a more responsible engagement with the treatment of musical tools, materials and expression.
However, there is a general tendency to ‘rip off’, for example exotic musical instruments from
other cultural contexts, using them according to personal taste and without much further re-
flection. These elements are brought at the technical level, to the seemingly neutral context of
sound process within contemporary music.
One example of the activity of extracting musical elements from other socio‐historical spaces
is the composers’ involvement with folk music, where social engagement though dance and
social encounter function as a central part of the musical activity. While interpreting folk music
in the context of notated art music, for example as a part of a symphonic work, might con-
tribute to preserving elements from the tradition that are otherwise merely orally mediated, this
activity also changes the purpose and context of this music. It brings the music into the context
of a musical work ‐ sometimes for a bourgeois audience ‐ and another way of listening. It also
contributes to a standardisation of a tradition, that further, might contribute to the way in
which folk music is transformed into a cultural commodity.
This does not mean that a composer should never step outside Western Classical music, but
that one ought to become better acquainted with the issues of colonialism from the outset.
McClary makes a similar point about how cultural phenomena becomes embedded in music.
She argues that music, as a socially organised enterprise is ‘condemned to meaning’: ‘Its [re-
ferring to music] structures, narratives, semiotic codes, and so on are developed, negotiated,
resisted, transmitted, or transformed within a completely social arena’ (McClary 1991, p. 102).
This points clearly in a direction where music, not only needs to become aware of the social
spheres it already engages with, but that when composition is understood as a reflective en-
gagement, it cannot ignore consideration of these issues. The constant focus on internal musical
processes and, for example, the experience of musical time within the organisation of musical
material, leads to an entirely different set of priorities within musical composition.
Acknowledging one’s position often as a musical colonialist would help lead to a more re-
sponsible musical engagement.
Strategy III: fighting authenticity

The idea that a musical work is the result of the creative imagination of a composer is central to
the romantic paradigm of the self-contained work. There are plenty of cultural illusions about
the creative process, many of which fail to look at the actual mechanics of artistic practice. The
Western idea of the artist could be seen, as philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff puts it, as a result
of the Platonic idea of divine inspiration as presented in Plato’s dialogue Ion. Wolterstorff notes
ironically: ‘If you want to compose, you wait for inspiration; you wait to be ravished by the
Muse’ (1994, p. 103). From this mindset, the artwork ends up being the authentic product of
creation. The avoidance of seeing the actual mechanisms – the hard work and long engagement
in the artistic field leading to a work of art being made – could also have its origins in the
idealisation of musical works as finished entities. Wolterstorff suggests that this ‘forgetting’ of
the social practice might be deliberate. It concerns the status art has been given. As Wolterstorff
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asks: ‘Could it be that we have wanted to see art as separate from society so that we could see it
as above society? Could it be that we have wanted not to notice the social contamination of art?’
(ibid., p. 127).
This worshipping of the authentic artwork as being the result of ‘creative imagination’
carries destructive consequences in understanding the field of composition as a social practice.
The act of finding one’s own artistic voice, whatever it may mean, involves engaging in and
reflecting on existing musical expressions. It involves many years of engagement; norms and
values are learned by following examples. Becoming a professional means becoming better
aware of the ways in which one is influenced. Failing to see this may result in unknowingly repeating
a given cultural practice, and in falsely considering one’s discoveries as individual and authentic.
Knowing how one is influenced leaves one freer to choose a position.
Strategy IV: ‘dumpster diving’

Many types of social spheres could potentially be brought into art music – not just for the sake
of it, but as ‘relevant research samples’ that belong to our social realities and are brought into the
musical laboratory. The resistance that one experiences to specific materials could originate
from the false belief that one’s musical identity, and thus social identity, is defined by the choice
of musical material. One is, perhaps, influenced by a specific idea of what types of materials
are valid. The notion of ’dumpster diving’ addresses the view that fertile materials could be
found, metaphorically, in the dumpsters of others, discarded as useless. These are musical
expressions that carry certain types of social stigma and initially feel awkward and shameful.
While the previous three strategies have been concerned with how a responsible under-
standing of compositional work as social engagement can be developed, dumpster diving is a
strategy that aims to enlarge the range of possibilities at one’s disposal. Other art forms, such as
writing, sometimes encourage students to approach topics that they are reluctant to write about.
Vulnerabilities may yet be what links artistic work to the world and makes it interesting. In a
musical context, this could mean acknowledging that an engagement with musical expressive
forms associated with commercial popular music – or other areas not immediately associated
with ‘high culture’ – in no way renders the composition as being less artistically valid, or the
compositional work less credible. Dumpster diving combined with rejection of authenticity
opens up the possibility of engaging reflectively with the many spheres of society where people
engage with music. Perhaps treasures are found in the dumpsters of others, among the trash that
nobody else would go near? The aim of dumpster diving as a strategy is to encourage one to
turn away from the ideal of a musical work or composition as an authentic expression and link
the music more tightly to the world.
Strategy V: embracing ‘guilty pleasures’

A professional composer ought to learn not to identify with a specific musical style too strongly,
and perhaps avoid speaking categorically of music in terms of style altogether. Embracing guilty
pleasures has a similar point of departure as dumpster diving in that it encourages one to
embrace those expressions that could appear as banal. One of the reasons for the resistance to
the inclusion of pleasurable elements in compositional thinking may be that this is associated
with feelings. These, again, have a lower status in the Western dualist division between
‘emotion’ and ‘rationality’, which, in turn, stems from Plato’s philosophy. Rationality has come
to concern everlasting ideas, while feelings are the product of a changing and defeated world.
Feelings relate to something subjective. This is why many of the theories that describe music as
a ‘language of feelings’ attempt to speak of feelings in terms of general forms that have a
164
universal status. Susanne K. Langer, for example, develops a theory that regards musical ele-
ments as symbols of emotions. These do not refer to anything concrete, but are ‘abstract’
(Langer 1963). Other thinkers, such as Hanslick, reject the idea of music having its content in
feelings at all:
Art first of all puts something beautiful before us. It is not by means of feeling that we
become aware of beauty, but by means of the imagination as the activity of pure
contemplation.... In pure contemplation the hearer takes in nothing but the piece of
music being played; every material interest must be set aside (Hanslick 1986, pp. 4–5).
This position is understandable when viewed from the perspective of the established dichotomy
between rationality and feelings. However, instead of immediately defining elements of music
as relating either to feelings as subjective experience or rationality as critical distance, another
possibility is to desist from cultivating these dichotomies, and look critically at the possibility of
any experience being subjective at all. Keeping in mind the way one is socialised to music
through worldly activity, there may not exist anything merely subjective that only concerns
one’s private relationship to music. By examining one’s own personal preferences, one’s likes
and dislikes, one might better understand society.
Engaging with pleasures in music does not automatically result in a naïve attitude. In the
end, it might be a precondition for any music to be meaningful at all. Within musicology,
critical attitudes to ‘high culture music’ as a universal norm appear to have come far further in
the reflection than within the discipline of contemporary composition. Issues of social back-
ground, such as gender, suddenly appear as relevant. McClary writes that ‘one of the principal
tasks of feminist music criticism would be to examine the semiotics of desire, arousal, and
secular pleasure that circulate in the public sphere through music’ (1991, p. 9). To be able to
perform such a critique as a composer, one needs to embrace ‘guilty pleasures’ and stop feeling
guilty. Musical engagement begins neither from rational concepts, nor from private, subjective
spheres of feelings, but from the middle of the world, where one is already engaged with musical
activity.
16.4 Composition: social science in the making

To overcome the ‘male gaze’ in music, the future task is to create a richer vocabulary for
contextual thinking around compositional strategies. Even though critical thinking concerning
musical context is already a part of the practice of composition, one could actively question the
way in which music belongs to the world. This should not only be mentioned at the end of
discussions that would otherwise concern technical matters or musical time. In overcoming the
‘male gaze’, the suggested solution is not merely to engage a multitude of different types of
individuals, representing different genders, cultures and social backgrounds in the field. As a
composer, one cannot step outside of existing musics and create one’s own musical language,
independent of all the existing codes. For music to make sense at all, it needs to somehow
respond to the existing world. The key is rather to examine actively how the world is already
present when a musical work is made. Gender and other social backgrounds are present in the
many ways we interact with the world, and in the ways in which music is present in these
interactions.
To understand the possibilities that are accessed by this approach to creating awareness, the
order of events needs to be reversed as follows: there is no ‘pure music’ first, which is then put in
a context. The work of art is not only situated in the society; rather, one should pay attention to
165
the society in the work of art. Overcoming the ‘male gaze’ means acknowledging the role of a
composer as an artist, not merely as someone who manages a handcraft well. An artist is not only
trained to work within a discipline, but she is also well oriented about the discipline, as com-
poser Bjørn Kruse writes in Den tenkende kunstner (2011, p. 11). An artist reflects on the social
context around her work. She does not only write music; she does something with her music.
Thus, reflective composition requires reflection on the social world. One might argue that
composition can become ‘a social science in the making’.
References
Adorno, T.W. 1997. Aesthetic theory, G. Adorno and R. Tiedemann. trans. R. Hullot-Kentor. London:
Regents of the University of Minnesota, Continuum. Originally published in German in 1970.
Bonds, M.E. 2014. Absolute music: the history of an idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of sex. New York and London: Routledge.
Goehr, L., 2007. The imaginary museum of musical works. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hanslick, E., 1986. On the musically beautiful. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Company. Reprint of 1891
English translation.
Jegerstedt, K., 2008. Judith Butler. In: E. Mortensen and C. Egeland, Kjønnsteori. Oslo: Gyldendal, 74–86.
Kruse, B. 2011. Den tenkende kunstner. Oslo: Unipub.
Lachenmann, H., 1996. Musik also existentielle erfahrung – schriften 1966–1995. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf &
Härtel.
Langer, S.K., 1963. Philosophy in a new key: a study in the symbolism of reason, rite, and art. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Lukomsky, V., 1998. ‘The eucharist in my fantasy’: interview with Sofia Gubaidulina. Tempo, New Series,
206, September, 29–25,
Press.
Mulvey, L., 1975. Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen, vol. 16/3, Autumn, 6-18.
Subotnik, R.R., 1994. The challenge of contemporary music. In: P. Alperson, ed. What is music?
An introduction to the philosophy of music. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 359–396.
Wolterstorff, N., 1994. The work of making a work of music. In: P. Alperson, ed. What is music? An
introduction to the philosophy of music. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 101–129.
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17
VOICES, SOUNDS AND
HERSTORIES: CONSTRUCTING
FEMINIST RESEARCH IN
EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC
Isabel Nogueira
17.1 Introduction
This chapter is part of the research project ‘Women in Experimental Music and Sound Art in
Brazil’, which I have been developing since 2016 at the Federal University of Rio Grande do
Sul, Brazil (see Nogueira and Neiva 2018). This project intends to carry out a survey of the
production of women composers, creators, improvisers and sound artists, who travel through
the field of experimental music, sound creation and sound art in Brazil, making use of tech-
nology. The project’s purpose is to contribute both to the dissemination of their production,
and to propose a critical reflection on their processes of construction of meaning and webs of
collaboration. Using the methodology of interviews, the project intends to listen to their voices
and reflect on their formative trajectories, collaborative work between women, the technical
resources they use, and their conception about the existence (or not) of a feminine expression in
the sound creation or musical composition.
This ongoing project uses the concept I have been working with about the relationship
between the ‘place of speech’ and the ‘place of listening’, where I place myself both as a
participant the field of experimental music, and as a researcher who listens, interviews and
considers the production of other women in this field of study. I was trained in classical piano,
at conservatory and university levels, and during my doctoral studies at the Autonomous
University of Madrid, I focused on how my Latin American identity could be reflected in my
music and professional performances. Back to Brazil, I started to work at Federal University of
Pelotas, where I organised a Music Documentation Centre and studied photographs of women
composers, performers and their concert programmes (see Nogueira and Campos Fonseca
2013). I observed the permanence of a canonical repertoire and, through the study of images of
women, observed the recurrence of some phatosformel (emotion formulas), using Aby
Warburg’s concepts.1 Through these studies, I recognised the continued exclusion of women
from some fields of musical making such as composition or improvising, as Pauline Oliveros
and Tara Rodgers have also pointed out (Oliveros and Maus 1994; Rodgers 2010).
This research corroborated with the findings of Lucy Green (2001), who considers music as
a generalised field. In this field, teaching, singing or piano activities are thought to be more
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-17 167

Isabel Nogueira
appropriate for women, while other practices that involve improvisation or creation are more
prohibited to them. I had been in touch with gender studies during my doctoral period through
Cecilia Piñero Gil and this area became my focus of primary interest.2 In Brazil, I developed my
gender and music investigation, studying composers’ and performers’ photographs using
Margaret Rago’s concept of feminist epistemologies. Rago (2000) points out that feminist
epistemologies are lenses to see history and that some documents, composers or theoretical ideas
were considered more important than others, generating a process of erasing and silencing of
women’s production in all knowledge areas. According to Rago, feminist studies are not
limited to the deconstruction of themes and the inclusion of female subjects, but also intend to
bring the idea of subjectivity and knowledge into the academic production. In the history of
feminist thinking, reflection follows experience – reality no longer needs to fit into the pre-
viously shaped theory. Sueli Carneiro describes this practice as epistemicides,3 and Laila Rosa,
inspired by Carneiro, and talking specifically about music, adopts the term musical feminicides.4
Since 2013, I have been a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
(UFRGS) in the city of Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, and my ‘place of speech’ is a woman seen
as white, middle class, heterosexual, performer, composer, musicologist and researcher in Brazil.
The ‘Women in Experimental Music and Sound Art in Brazil’ project has been developed by
the Research Group on Gender Studies, Body and Music at UFRGS, which I coordinate, and
aims to study the production of Brazilian women composers, improvisers and sound artists in
sound art and experimental music in order to understand their trajectories and artistic processes.
I understand experimental music and experimentation as procedures and attitudes, rather than as
musical genres, and agree with Iazzetta when he says that:
In another direction experimentalism has often been associated with practices of a

transgressing character, in which well-established behaviours, models, and delimita-
tions are questioned. Experimental means, in this case, a critical attitude towards what
is consolidated and is accepted as artistic reference, forcing an opening for the in-
corporation of elements relatively foreign to a certain field of art. In experimental
music, the focus on composition is transferred to the performance and the separation
between creation and reception is attenuated once the public is called to have a more
active role in the processes of generation and enjoyment of the work. The trait of
transgression or subversion becomes an essential element of experimentalism (Iazzetta
2014, p. 4).
Women composers have been historically silenced and invisible in books about music history,
and this justifies the need for studies investigating how this process of absence is still happening
(see, for example, Zerbinatti et al. 2017). This project not only seeks to be a compensatory
effort, however. At the same time, the Research Group aims to allow the inclusion of this
production in places of musical practice, examine the visibility of existing networks or the
emergence of new collaboration networks, as well as exploring the possibility of using the
academic environment, allied to other spaces, for reflection on these artistic processes.
Considering that the gender normativity makes the models in music teaching and practice still
eminently masculine, it is very important to know about the production of women in music
and sound in order to present new models to students. I notice a relationship between the field
of experimental music and its intention to experiment with musical practices, and feminist
epistemologies that work with materials and process which are different from those tradi-
tionally used.
168
Voices, sounds and herstories
My research questions, therefore, are: who are the women in experimental music and sound
art in Brazil?; how were they trained?; what resources do they use?; how do they consider their
artistic identities?; and what are their relationships within the musical and social contexts? In this
way, by understanding the practice of experimental music as a dissidence – and women’s work
in music as dissident, too – I intend to contribute to the building of spaces and networks, the
sharing of skills and narratives, and to giving particular focus to the Brazilian and Latin
American production in this scene. Freida Abtan highlights how important it is to share skills
when she says:
Now when people ask me how to get more women involved in electronic music
culture, I have two answers: share your skills with them; but also: share your friends with
them. I tell them to remember that culture is something that we build together, by
doing, and teaching each other how to do things. Host a workshop. Throw some
shows. Promote each other’s work. Open up your files and show each other what
you’re making, and more importantly, show each other how you’re making it. Help
each other to get your art out into the world. Don’t worry if they don’t already know
how to be involved, we are all going to build the future of music together (Abtan
2016, p. 58).
17.2 The project eight women for 8M: methodology and results
The interviews that follow were conducted by email.5 I sent an invitation in March 2019 to
participate in the project as part of the mapping that I have been doing on women in ex-
perimental music and Brazilian sound art. In order to promote a shared artistic-theoretical
project, interviewees were invited to answer the questions and to send a composition – so as to
organise a collective recording work. I created eight questions for eight women who work with
experimental music and sound art in Brazil about the following issues: formative trajectories;
the sound resources used; the presence of female artists in the references cited; work done
together; and the question of whether or not an expression or form is related to the production
of women in music. The invited artists were:
• Bartira (b. 1980, Feira de Santana, Bahia)

• Bella (b. 1988, Rio de Janeiro)
• Sanannda Acácia (b. 1992, Gravatai, RS)
• Andrea May (b. 1965, Salvador, Bahia)
• Gabriela Nobre (b. 1982, Rio de Janeiro)
• Tai Ramos Leal (b. 1990, Olinda, Pernambuco)
• Tania Mello Neiva (b. 1979, São Paulo)
• Inés Terra (b. 1985, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
For reasons of space in this chapter, I consider just the first four artists interviewed – Bartira,
Bella, Sanannda Acácia and Andrea May. All the women are Brazilian artists, or based in dif-
ferent regions of Brazil, and are active in the Brazilian experimental music scene: they are linked
to netlabels, participate in workshops and festivals, and produce albums. To highlight the voices
of these artists as completely as possible, I have transcribed each individual answer after each
question asked, with my comments at the end. I believe that this interviewing methodology has
been important in listening to the diversity of the voices of women who make experimental
169
Isabel Nogueira
music and sound art, and that this can help other women to also feel encouraged to produce and
understand the field.
Question 1 What was your trajectory in sound creation or musical composition?

BARTIRA (PERSONAL INTERVIEW, 12 MARCH 2019): ‘My process started when I was a child,
always independently and through experimentation. My grandmother whistled and
hummed songs, which I tried to play on a toy wind instrument I had. And even in that
aspect, gender affected my life. It is not very common to see women whistling, and to see
my mother and grandmother doing it gave me the impression that I, too, could do
everything. In my childhood, we listened to records, even those scratched by our lack of
care (my mother always made me take responsibility for taking care of my things).
I also found cassette tapes that I listened to with attention and had great interest in the
sounds generated by defects and damages of the tapes. I think that’s where I developed as
an adult an interest in reproductive media, like playing records and playing tapes to make
music/sound: it seemed to me something I already knew well, it was never for a reason of
nostalgia. I began to use equipment found in the trash and that was broken as part of my
practice, both to question the consumer music industry, challenging the commercial use of
such equipment, and [to satisfy] my interest in media archaeology, exploring the never-
exhausted forms that other technologies times present/represent the world.
Over time, I began to expand my practice to field recordings and make works that created
a sound experience through installations and sound interventions. Later, I developed an
interest in urban musicology and sound theories that analyse sound and music as trainers
and maintainers of identity and memory, and as forms of oppression (torture and sonic
warfare), after starting to do field recordings as a form of data collection.
Now, I have two sound projects: ‘Bartholins Glands’, using harsh noise, recordings, pedals
and feedback, and ‘Blessed’ – ambient music made to be as calm as possible. I also recorded
a radio art combining field recordings, sound collage and spoken words, which I consider
to be a new platform for performance, a kind of live radio foley art’.
BELLA (PERSONAL INTERVIEW, 7 MARCH 2019): ‘I started playing in childhood with my
grandmother. I also watched my mother on the piano and played intuitively, imitating
what I was hearing. At the age of seven, I asked to do piano lessons and musical theory, and
so I started – I never stopped. Sound creation was formed by experiences with the
instrument; then, with the computer; then, I wanted to play and record and manipulate
myself. I was always surrounded by musicians and I participated in many musical
improvisations. I say that I never had a formal education because, in fact, besides these
classes with the same teacher from childhood to adolescence, everything I developed in the
field of “composition” or “creation” started from a movement of discovering only and
with the people who crossed my path’.
SANANNDA ACÁCIA (PERSONAL INTERVIEW, 10 APRIL 2019): ‘I started making sounds using very
limited sources. At the time, I had little knowledge of composition but some experience as
a listener of noise, punk, industrial and associated genres. I was interested in producing
distortions in materials I recorded (field recording) and other materials, as in the case of the
music of the nun Hildegard von Bingen, where I used a team stretcher on my computer to
change the material and create several layers of the same band, which were superimposed
to generate a dense noise. It was intuitive, but, at the time, I was interested in the processes
behind the scarcity of resources such as inadequate recordings and non-formal use of
instruments’.
170
ANDREA MAY (PERSONAL INTERVIEW, 13 MARCH 2019): ‘I’m self-taught in music. At some point
in my life, I decided to write and sing. I set up a band, I recorded a record, experimental
projects. My trajectory originates in the coexistence with musicians, in the environments
where I have been, and in the interest of certain styles that invaded my thinking,
amplifying, modifying, re-signifying languages that are inseparable for me today: visual and
sound arts’.
Question 2 Do you think gender markers made, or make, a difference in your trajectory or performance?
In what way?
BARTIRA: ‘Yes, gender markers have always affected my practice, whether positive or negative.
As I mentioned before, the fact that my grandmother and mother whistled encouraged me
to try and do what did not conform to the rules of music, because women as well as
whistling did not settle for it, so I thought. Of course, women whistle but to this day,
I know – few because they do not know: no one ever taught them, nor were they
encouraged to whistle if they knew.
Of course, there were, and there are, also those sad experiences of other people’s as-
sumptions that, first of all, this artist before them with a suitcase of equipment and an
experience that is not even seen by them, does not know what they are doing until proven
otherwise. Then, there are the offers of unsolicited help, gaslighting or non-constructive
criticism that discourage you, and do not seem to give you the right to err or experiment as
part of your development. This pressure often made me self-question and self-diminish,
since what they expect of us is unattainable … as if the fact of being a woman made our
work never reach a level of relevance like theirs or was always discriminated against and
never understood/assigned any value. I refuse the validation of these people and under-
stand that it is not they that legitimise or legitimise what I do.
I dismantled the trap that bound me and also began to look for other ways of making
music, not based/inspired/referenced in canons determined by these white men. If they
are the norm, they are the convention and this is what I do not want to be: this is the
path toward my self-actualisation (self-actualisation, concept borrowed from bell
hooks)’.6
BELLA: ‘Always. I do not say much of that… but I became aware of it over the years because
many circles of friends I frequented related to music were basically men. And, in fact,
despite playing, I was never really part of a band or scene where these friends played: this
was during adolescence (and part of adulthood). Later, when I was determined to work
in that field, I was basically “intruding” on the boys’ improvisations. I say this because
this gender division starts back there. And these experiences make marks’.
SANANNDA ACÁCIA: ‘I really notice this. I began to make a sound when feminism was
becoming part of public awareness here in Brazil and, of course, that pointed out even
more these differences. At the time, I had not heard of many women making noise; men,
and even the women themselves, treated exotically the presence of a woman in the middle.
I think that this exoticism made me think about my trajectory in relation to my genre and,
in a way, that discomfort made some difference, yes, in the way I circled the scene’.
ANDREA MAY: ‘I’ve been noticing, more carefully, intentions … [and have] concern about
representation and inclusion that has sedimented a territory with opportunities and greater
recognition’.
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Isabel Nogueira
Question 3 How do you define your artistic identity and sound production?
BARTIRA: ‘I think I lived, and am experiencing, a great process of maturing my practice. I went
from being media-based to exploring immaterial issues through music/sound, where the
equipment used is no longer a central part of the work but is now used to investigate
questions such as dichotomies of confinement and freedom, the concrete and immaterial
conditions where black bodies circulate, sound as a means of overcoming dominant modes
of expression and representation, and problems related to existence and reality through
imaginary scenarios. A constant quest to produce work that does not align with pre-
determined codes of any kind’.
BELLA: ‘My production usually starts from a topic of interest or, when it is the case, from
meetings of improvisation. I divide in this way, although the edges mix too because I
participate in many encounters in which the objective is to produce music/sounds at that
moment and, in parallel, live personal processes linked to subjects/themes that move the
search and the sound creation itself: these result in performances, installations or
compositions. Many place what I do within these two little boxes: sound art and
experimental music’.
SANANNDA ACÁCIA: ‘I am a sound artist and a producer interested in psychoacoustic
phenomena and inventive processes of creation. My production is dense and carries
many layers and atmospheres, which are my scenarios and the language I use to introduce
myself. I am interested in magical processes, science fiction, biology and philosophy’.
ANDREA MAY: ‘A continuous risk in an intangible space where I experiment and expose myself
through images and sounds freed of labels. Sonora art that materialises in layers, grooves,
volumes and poultices of feelings’.
Question 4 Which artists are important as references to your sound work?
BARTIRA: ‘My inspiration from people relies more on ideas, ways of thinking about the world,
rather than on artistic work. I often say that my references are known people who are
honest with what they do, who always seek to articulate and realise their visions, and who
try in every way to put their foot in the door of the world. My references are people who
refuse to follow a primer, who resist, who are not allowed to co-opt’.
BELLA: ‘Christina Kubisch, Maryanne Amacher, Else Marie Pade, Maja Ratkje, Cildo Meireles,
Vânia Dantas Leite, Rie Nakajima, Ryoko Akama, Chelpa Ferro’.
SANANNDA ACÁCIA: ‘J-P.Caron, Bella, Cadu Tenorio, Hildegard von Bingen, Henry Iwao,
Anna Gardeck, Kali Malone, Frederikke Hoffmeier and others’.
ANDREA MAY: ‘Maria Chávez’.
Question 5 What instruments, processes or technologies do you use in your compositions or performances?
BARTIRA: ‘Because I move with a certain constancy, both from home and country, I keep a
very small setup and still use the strategy of finding broken or discarded things to work
with, but I also use software like Ableton and Puredata to make music. I currently have a
small mixer, some delay pedals, distortion, a loop station, a small drum percussion and a
microphone. Sometimes it happens that I create instruments just before the performances’.
BELLA: ‘Some electronic devices made by me; synthesiser; metal objects; water; sensors; tro;
walkman; lights’.
172
SANANNDA ACÁCIA: ‘Field recordings, synthesisers, processes with cassette tape, sampler,
oscillators, no-input mixer and pedals’.
ANDREA MAY: ‘Turntables, prepared vinyl, monotron, effect pedal and microkorg’.
Question 6 Do you often collaborate with other women in artistic works?
BARTIRA: ‘I did some curatorial collaborations and recorded text readings by some friends, also
not white’.
BELLA: ‘Often’.
SANANNDA ACÁCIA: ‘Yes, whenever I have the opportunity and admiration for the work. I
have a project with artist Bella called ARCOFLUXO’.
ANDREA MAY: ‘Yes! And I believe in this synergy for more completeness and strengthening of
our structure’.
Question 7 Do you think there is a feminine expression or form in sound creation or musical composition?
If you think it exists, do you think it manifests itself in your work?
BARTIRA: ‘If the feminine being is the place of pre-judgment and disregard of intellectual value
where the expectations and goals imposed are unattainable and, therefore, eventually
manufactures its own making the new one emerge, then yes, it exists and is very strong in
the my job too.’
BELLA: ‘These gender divisions in the artistic making are complex. We have lived centuries of
influence from male creators, from John Cage to Beethoven, from Villa-Lobos to Jimi
Hendrix…. [T]hese masculine references shaped much of the generations…. We now live
in a moment of reformulation of our own references, of who we are, of the spaces we can
occupy, and how; the roles, the places of speech, etc…. I believe that the feminine is
something under construction, joint, social, collective and personal. And yes, our identity
will always influence what we produce; but I would not categorise art in this way’.
SANANNDA ACÁCIA: ‘I think there are features that are freely associated with the feminine but I
do not think such a thing exists, in fact. I do not exactly think that these attributions are
negative but serve to communicate something only to a certain extent, as far as common
sense reaches, and I do not see much objectivity in saying that women have an exclusive
form of artistic expression’.
ANDREA MAY: ‘Certainly, it’s in DNA. Simultaneously, with other women in militancy around
the world, all in a state of continuous vigilance in the production of their art, I trace my
route compiling everyday materials as elements for a hybrid language in the sum of ideas
and actions, while composing chapters of a dissertation on noisy visions landscapes and
pathways for deterritorialisation; collective invasions and a radio-art of sound collages and
3D objects. Research and practice, relational art, contamination, cold sweat and dry mouth
representing the searches, the emptiness and the dream in common’.
Question 8 Can you list some important links to your work?
BARTIRA: cargocollective.com/bartira
BELLA: https://bellacomsom.bandcamp.com
http://cargocollecttive.com/bella_bella
http://cargocollective.com/bella_carolcosta
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Isabel Nogueira
SANANNDA ACÁCIA: https://seminalrecords.bandcamp.com/album/theres-no-such-animal

https://seminalrecords.bandcamp.com/album/eva-mitocondrial
https://seminalrecords.bandcamp.com/album/q-c
ANDREA MAY: www.andreamay.com.br www.projetonoiseinvade.blogspot.com
17.3 Discussing the interviews

From the above responses, I observe the use of very diverse set-ups and the presence of
technology in the soundwork of the women I interviewed, using electronic instruments, new
ways of playing traditional instruments and instruments built, or hacked, by them. So, we can
observe a posture of experimentation in the very idea of how to produce sounds. Considering
Chimamanda Adichie’s concept about the danger of unique stories (2019), this practice can be
seen as contributing to the existence of multiple stories, although sometimes the high cost of
electronic instruments may be a limitation for their use.
I observe that three of the four interviewed women do not have a specifically musical
academic background. This fact relates to Green’s conception of music as a gendered field
(2001) and also agrees with Pauline Oliveros’ concept (2005) of how academic habitus can
make difficult creative exercise and certain trajectories artistic happenings. This makes me think
about how important it is to observe different models in the field of music production, and how
it can contribute to how women see themselves as part of it. There are conflicts based on how
this gendered field is organised, certainly, and it is not easy for women to break with their
learned processes of self-demand, self-limitation, excessive criticism and charging. This can be
observed in the field of musical training in universities, where models of women composers or
improvisers that appear in the lessons of music courses are extremely rare. Professors usually say
that they do not know books about women composers that could help them to prepare classes,
and usually advise students interested in this topic to do the research themselves.
It seemed very interesting to me that the artists mentioned several contemporary artists names
as references for their works, most of them active in the musical scene today. This, for me, points
to an existence of a live and strong scene, built through the assistance of live performances,
festivals and disseminated through netlabels dedicated to experimental music. Certainly, we need
to discuss how inclusive the experimental scene is – or how conservative – when we talk about
including women’s soundwork.
On the question of the existence or not of a female identity or expression in music, the
answers were as controversial as the issue. Some of the artists mentioned a feminine essence,
others observed the social constructions that lead to the learning of a feminine way of being. This
is certainly a difficult question to answer. I personally think of how social markers of race, gender,
ethnicity and social class determined my experience in the world, and how this is necessarily
linked to my own need to always answer this question in some interviews. I say this simply
because to a white, heterosexual and cis gender man there is never a question about how he
expresses his masculine identity in music.
The right to make music based on gender neutrality is simply denied to women composers,
and it is something very remarkable. However, reflecting precisely about this limiting and
controversial issue motivated me to invite the sound artists I have interviewed to share their
impressions on this topic. The existence of several references to the works carried out in a
collaborative way among women makes me think of a strengthening of the field. So, I observe
that relationships are established, and this questions the roles historically attributed to women
working in a culture of competitiveness, effectively subverting expected norms.
174
I think that the concept of experimentalism must necessarily begin in the process of
subverting, creating and deterritorialising language, promoting everyday deconstructions. I
think that by activating words and languages, they directly move memories and concepts.
Every day, the processes of erasing and silencing voices and bodies are continuing – marking
the bodies that matter and bodies that do not matter, as Judith Butler (2015) points out. At the
same time, the artivist perspective is directly related to valuing women’s sound and artistic
production and, keeping this in mind, we observe the continuing necessity to deconstruct
patterns seized, related both to ourselves and other women.
Feminist artistic research needs to promote and prioritise work that has a close relationship
between practice and theory, which is developed in a network, and which is based on dialogue,
decentralisation of processes as well as an understanding of what has, historically, already been
produced on the subject. Above all, it is important to generate a sense of empowerment, trust
and belonging for each one of the groups. In these practices, the processes are as, or are more,
important than the products. Dialoguing, encouraging, asking, sharing, collaborating and lis-
tening are essential elements for feminist artivist and collaborative practices. The language
created to oppress us, silence us and make us invisible is not the one that will set us free, so
reinvention is necessary and urgent.
Notes
1 Aby Warburg (1866–1929) was a German specialist in art history. His work focused on describing
some visual characteristics that could be transmitted during the time, bringing some basic emotions
engendered at the birth of occidental civilisation. For further information, see ‘Mnemosyne:
Meanderings through Aby Warburg’s Atlas’, Warburg Library, Cornell University, available from:
https://warburg.library.cornell.edu
2 Spanish musicologist Carmen Cecilia Piñero Gil has a PhD in History and the Sciences of Music from
the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and is Director of ComuArte-Spain (http://
comuarte.org/). She has developed research in gender and music with special emphasis on Spanish
and Latin American composers.
3 Sueli Carneiro is a Brazilian philosopher. She has a PhD in Education from the University of São Paulo
(USP), and is the founder of Geledés – Instituto da Mulher Negra, the first independent black and
feminist organisation in São Paulo. An authority on the black women’s issues, Carneiro created the
only Brazilian programme for supporting black women in their physical and mental health, where
more than 30 women are assisted weekly by psychologists and social workers. https://
www.geledes.org.br/sueli-carneiro/
4 Brazillian composer and ethnomusicologist, Laila Rosa, is a Professor at the Universidade Federale de
Bahia, and coordinates the Feminaria Musical reseach and sound experiments group.
5 All interviewees’ answers were received on the specific dates detailed in their responses to question 1.
6 For further information, see bell hooks, 2013. Ensinando a transgredir: a educação como prática libertadora,
trans. M.B. Cipolla. São Paulo: Editora WMF Martins Fontes.
References
Abtan, F., 2016. Where is she? Finding the women in electronic music culture. Contemporary Music Review,
35/1, 53–60.
Adichie, C., 2019. O perigo da história única. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
Butler, J., 2015. Quadros de guerra: quando a vida é passível de luto? trans. S.T.M. Lamarão and A.M. Cunha.
Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, Originally published in 2010 as Frames of
war: when is life grievable? London & New York: Verso.
Green, L., 2001. Música, género y educación. Madrid: Ediciones Morata. Originally published in 1987 as
Music, gender and education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Iazzetta, F., 2014. Entre a pesquisa e a criação: a experiência dentro da sonologia. In: Anais do XXIV
congresso da Associação Nacional De Pesquisa e pós-graduação em música, São Paulo: Unesp, pp. 1–9.
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Isabel Nogueira
Available from: http://www.anppom.com.br/congressos/index.php/24anppom/SaoPaulo2014/paper/

view/3014/763
Nogueira, I. and Campos Fonseca, S. orgs., 2013. Estudos de gênero, corpo e música. Série pesquisa em
música no Brasil, 3. Goiânia/Porto Alegre: ANPPOM.
Nogueira, I. and Neiva, T.M., 2018. Mujeres en la música experimental y colectivos feministas en estudios
sonoros en Brasil. Escena Revista de las Artes de la Universidad de Costa Rica, 78/1, 98–124.
Oliveros, P., 2005. Deep listening: a composer’s sound practice. New York & Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.
Oliveros, P. and Maus, F., 1994. A conversation about feminism and music. Perspectives of New Music, 32/2,
Summer, 174–193.
Rago, M., 2000. Epistemologia feminista, gênero e história. In: J. Pedro and M. Grossi, eds. Masculino,
feminino, plural. Florianópolis: Ed.Mulheres, 21–41.
Rodgers, T., 2010, Pink noises: women on electronic music and sound. Durham & London: Duke University
Press.
Zerbinatti, C., Nogueira, I., and Pedro, J., 2017. A emergência do campo de música e gênero no Brasil:
um tecido de malhas híbridas a partir de reflexões das musicologias e epistemologias feministas.
Descentrada Revista Interdisciplinaria de Feminismos y Genero, 2/1, e034. Available from: https://
www.descentrada.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/article/view/DESe034
176
18
INVISIBLE CANONS: A
REFLECTIVE COMMENTARY ON
THE FORMATION OF MY
PERSONAL CANON OF WOMEN
COMPOSERS
18.1 The Western art-canon and my pedagogical canon

The opportunities afforded to young people through the British education system vary widely
depending on geographical and financial background, alongside household cultural capital.1
This reflection is viewed through the lens of my own path through the British education system
and refers specifically to my experience. My own education through the British state-school
system in the 2000s in a typical Midlands comprehensive school took a rather broad-brush
approach to a range of musical genres, and generally focussed on male composers or song
writers. Crucially, the vast majority of my classmates were not engaged in learning an instru
ment, nor valued music education especially highly. The musical culture of the school was
rather limited; music occupied an hour a week on the timetable and extra-curricular musical
activities were lacking.
When it came to choosing GCSE options, music was only taken by a few students each year.
The course featured few female composers across its study topics: in the Oxford, Cambridge
and RSA (OCR) GCSE examinations during this period (examination in 2006), there was no
reference to women composers in Western European Art Music sections. My experience,
typical of many other state-school pupils, was therefore lacking in the study of female com
posers. Unless blessed by a forward-thinking teacher, who was knowledgeable enough to in
troduce works written by women, very little knowledge would be developed through
mainstream curricula as they were at the turn of the millennium.
This highlights a key issue. If a music education practitioner’s own knowledge is largely
founded on the Western art-music canon, which is itself a social and historical construct that
has, through its very nature, been formed almost entirely by men, then women composers are
unlikely to feature in their teaching (Halstead 1997, p. 3). If curricula do little to develop
practitioner knowledge beyond commonplaces, then a cycle of cultural reproduction sustains a
dominant discourse – that of the Western European Art Music canon. A canon is a set of ever
fluctuating works which embodies values and aesthetics of the people who make and
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-18 177

experience the music, as Ellen Koskoff has laid out (1999, p. 547). For a canon to exist, it needs
to be maintained through a cycle of reproduction with new works being assimilated over time
into this conceptual and collective archive. This cyclic nature allows for new works to enter the
canon or for existing works to become more secure in their place, but whether a work remains
in the canon is down to several factors as laid out by Shreffler (2011, pp. 1–18): frequency of
performance and academic engagement, both of which show a presumption of longevity and
staying power; frequent programming well after an initial honeymoon period; and historical
significance, realised in retrospect.
A canon is, therefore, maintained through multiple agents with shared values determining a
dominant discourse. As Citron perceptively observes, ‘canon formation is not controlled by any
one individual or organisation’ (1993, p. 19). Several offshoot or parallel canons may exist and
overlap, creating canonic discourse with each other.2 The pedagogical canon, therefore, is a
prime example of the power of officially sanctioned knowledge structures. It demonstrates the
knowledge that has been deemed of suitable ‘quality’ and worthiness to be incorporated into
the educational syllabus. Even if we discount the potentially exclusionary points that such
structures create, we should not underestimate the power of this. Indeed, Citron describes the
canon as a ‘narrative of the past and a template for the future’ (ibid., p. 1). By implication, a
canon serves to sustain hegemony.
Continuing to look at examples from my own education reveal how women composers
have been systematically excluded from the organisations I have come into contact with, and
that these composers are not valued sufficiently in our current education system. If we also take
a look at the A-Level examination materials from this time period (2006–08) the same picture
emerges, with no reference to women composers. Edexcel’s Anthology of Music (pre-2016) and
Terry and Bowman’s OCR’s A Student’s Guide to A2 Music (2006), for example, reveal an
extensive list of familiar, common-practice period male composers as study pieces, but no
reference to women composers. Betty Atterbury summarises the impact of such omission thus:
Omission is a powerful teacher. Many readers have been students in music history
courses where not a single woman composer was mentioned. And many youngsters
have come to music class and have been surrounded by a sea of pictures of male
composers. Years of musical experiences that contain very few, if any reference to
‘the music she wrote’ leave a lasting image in the minds of impressionable learners.
The picture becomes very clear for all students – women have not written and do not
write music (Atterbury 1992, p. 26).
Comparing the findings from her 1992 study with my own GCSE and A-level experiences
some 15 years later shows a worrying lack of progress in addressing this issue. Some problematic
aspects of hegemonic power in A-level syllabi, and the extent to which undue weight is placed
on canonic structures for learning significant musical works and history, have been highlighted
by Adam Whittaker (2020).
Since 2016, there have been some significant and necessary changes. Edexcel’s new 2016
syllabus saw criticism in the press, led by A-level student Jessie McCabe in 2015. In response to
this, Edexcel moved to include works by five female composers across the different ‘Areas of
Study’. Two of these appear in the art-music sections with Clara Schumann being placed into
the historical classical works section and Kaija Saariaho being added to represent female con
temporary composers. It is hard to believe that as recently as 2016, even with mounting media
and societal pressure, only small steps in changing pedagogical canons have been achieved for
one of the four main exam boards in the England. As Whittaker notes:
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Invisible canons
[S]ave for the inclusion of Clara Schumann and Kaija Saariaho on the Edexcel syllabus,
and Sally Beamish on the Eduqas syllabus … female composers do not feature on the
AQA and OCR syllabuses for this area of study, a point worth noting given that these
specifications are newly written for the 2016/17 academic year; Western European
Art Music is still a male realm (ibid., p. 23).
As outlined above, the British state school education system of the 2000s offered a very limited
musical curriculum, both in content and contact time. Alongside this, my music education was
fortunately supplemented by private instrumental lessons on flute and piano. As part of this, I
worked through the eight graded exams offered by the Associated Board of the Royal School of
Music (ABRSM). Throughout these formative years, ABRSM was perhaps the most consistent
influence on my musical development, instigated through instrumental pedagogical practi
tioners who themselves had been trained through this model. Its significance on my musical
world view cannot be underestimated – it is only with hindsight that its powerful influence, and
those of other examination boards, has become clear to me. ABRSM is one of the most
prominent and popular instrumental and singing exam boards worldwide, delivering over
630,000 exams across more than 90 countries in 2014, the last year for which figures are
publicly available (ABRSM 2014). The influence on what many global music education
communities perceive to constitute music history, and its embodied values, can probably be
traced back to engagement with an examination board such as ABRSM at some point in most
professional and amateur musicians’ education and careers.
Through an extensive survey of ABRSM’s piano exam syllabi from 1999–2020, a number of
clear patterns in repertoire choices emerge. It is important to note that my discussion here does
not seek to single out ABRSM from the broader graded examinations landscape, rather that its
syllabi are illustrative of a structural problem in graded music examinations as a whole. In
(Figure 18.1), we can see how the overall representation of women composers within their
syllabus for piano grades 1–8 remains low from 1999–2020 with a peak of 11% in 2011–12.
Exploring these data in more detail, we can observe work distribution across ABRSM’s
examination book publications. It is interesting that out of these already low percentages, works
by women composers appear less frequently in the main examination books where most en
trants make repertoire selections. Instead, they appear in alternative repertoire choices included
in the books, which require additional purchase and thus create an additional barrier. It is also
somewhat alarming that there are periods where women composers were entirely absent from
Figure 18.1 Works by Female Composers in ABRSM Syllabi, 1999–2020.
179
the examination publications (2003–06). This is an important point as these books provide a
single point of reference for teachers and students. The significance of the repertoire selected for
these books is of the utmost importance and has powerful unintended consequences which
need to be acknowledged.
Between 1999 and 2020, across piano grades 1–8, only three works by women made it onto
ABRSM piano list A and only two of these made it into the main examination books.3 In two
decades, only 13 works by women composers appeared on list B with just seven of these in the
main examination books. Although historic considerations can partially account for these low
figures, such underrepresentation gives a misrepresentative view of the volume of works
composed by women over centuries. List C has a much more encouraging representation of
women composers with 61 works overall, 19 appearing in the main examination books. The
composers in this list tend to be living composers whose biographies identify them as coming
from educational, jazz and contemporary compositional backgrounds.
Whilst this larger representation in List C is to be celebrated, ABRSM’s engagement with
representing women composers mostly from the present further perpetuates a misrepresentative
view. It sends a message that there are not many historical women composers, and certainly none
of which can be afforded the same status as the great historical musical masters. Such a view fails to
acknowledge the exceptionally high quality of many works by female composers. This is all the
more unjustifiable given that these high standards were both recognised and celebrated in the
lifetimes of many of these composers. Thus, selections seem to come from pre-existent repertoire
banks, and not from more extensive and exploratory research where appropriate repertoire for lists
A and B could be found. Such omission sends out a strong message to students – whether realised
or not – that women composers did not exist historically. This viewpoint encapsulates a significant
part of the problem. If women composers are not introduced to musicians, then they are unlikely
to introduce them to their own future students: thus, the existing hegemony is sustained.
In addition to the number of works, there is a startling lack of representation across the
female composers selected. A small number of women composers appear several times across
the 1999–2020 syllabi. With only 77 pieces between 1999 and 2020 across piano grades 1–8
being composed by women, the impact of general representation is great, but this total is further
reduced when it is noted that the total number of different women composers featured is 37.
The apparent lack of exposure to the rich repertoire by women for anyone learning music
through an established instrumental exam board is a point of concern. I have not consulted
historic syllabi from other organisations but anecdotal evidence suggests a similar landscape. The
impact that examination boards can have on musical education worldwide is not to be un
derestimated. These authoritative and historic bodies have the power to shape the next gen
eration of professional and amateur musicians’ repertoire knowledge.
Having revisited historic syllabi, it is unsurprising that I did not once come across a female
composer during my musical education through ABRSM’s piano exams (1999–2008). During
this time, only 23 works out of 784 in total across this whole period were available to me and
these did not necessarily appear on the examination grade I was taking that year. For example,
across the period of 1999–2008, the highest percentage of works by women across grades 1–8
only reached 4%. Such syllabi hold enormous weight over our views of music. As Citron
asserts, ‘Textbooks and anthologies, the repository of the canon, wield enormous power as
determinants of canonic status’ (1993, pp. 24–25). We might see these educational resources
becoming certified endorsements of what is worthy of being taught. Challenging such hege
mony is important as we move forward.
Moving along my educational journey a few years, my university degree was reasonably
typical of many music degrees in British Russell group universities. As was to be expected, there
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Invisible canons
were modules surveying and reinforcing accepted cultural figures, thus facilitating a cycle of
cultural reproduction as described by Bourdieu, and discussed in relation to A-levels by Robert
Legg (2012). Even modules on twentieth- and twenty-first-century composers saw female
composers as notable only by their absence. The cumulative effect of these different education
spheres has contributed to the pedagogical canon that I was exposed to. This construct is
founded upon highlighting and reifying the contributions of male composers. Thus, the widely
adopted current framework does not necessarily lend itself to the addition of female composers
whose works do not always ‘fit’ what is deemed to be a canonic genre (Green 1997, p. 236).
Such structures have helped to further establish and perpetuate a canon of ‘masterworks’,
though many educators are now more aware of the need to challenge this. My account of a
pedagogical canon demonstrates how cultural reproduction leads to an individual being in
troduced to a largely similar body of work that has, until very recently, been largely
unchallenged.
Different educational boards, institutions and government policies coalesced to outline the
‘right music curriculum … perpetuating the views of the dominant group’ (Wright and Davies
2012, p. 44). Discussion around the introduction of the National Curriculum for music re
vealed ‘a habitus so deeply entrenched that they both implied complete confidence in the form
of cultural capital embodied within it as superior’ (ibid., p. 41). Such an analysis shows theories
of cultural capital unfolding; only those social groups with the prerequisite cultural capital are
allowed access to further opportunities. Within this educational sphere, the collective habitus of
those making decisions, both at local and strategic levels, also exerts a significant influence upon
selections of topics and repertoire. In such a landscape, one might be forgiven for thinking that
‘women have barely played a part in the history of music, other than as wives, mistresses,
mothers and sisters of famous male musicians’ (Green 1997, p. 230). Green goes on to note that
the ‘music curriculum tends to reiterate the canon’ (ibid., p. 237), further serving to perpetuate
a cycle of cultural reproduction.
Therefore, an education system can serve to reinforce what is deemed canonically im
portant, allowing these works to keep gaining cultural capital at the expense of others. With the
historic traditions of the place of women in society, it is small wonder that few women
composers have ever entered the main classical canon and only a handful have entered the
twentieth-century canon. The glaring omission of any formalised teaching of women com
posers within the British education system, certainly as I experienced it, as well as their omission
from conventional views on the established canon, forms the underlying reason why there was
even a need for me to create a personal canon of female composers. Indeed, it draws attention
to a broader problem of gender delineation in music education, especially in the realm of
composition, where gender bias has been shown to impact significantly upon perceptions of
musical skill in education (Green 2012, p. 150). There is something of a feedback loop in that
those now in charge of the musical education of young people were themselves never in
troduced to women composers, and, therefore, consciously or subconsciously, presume that
female students have lower aptitude for composition. Green provides powerful evidence of
these engrained assumptions when she states that teachers comments showed: ‘they regarded
boys as excelling at composition. Contrastingly, they saw girls as dull and lacking in creative
spark’ (ibid.).
These entrenched subconscious biases are damaging and hinder future generations of female
composers. When one listens to music without prior knowledge of the composer, it is im
possible to judge whether it is composed by a male or female: this plain fact seems to have not
filtered into the subconscious of all our educational practitioners. Perspectives on gender un
doubtedly change our response to music.4 There are many modern-day, successful female
181
composers such as Judith Weir, Thea Musgrave, Jennifer Higdon and Kaija Saariaho, all ex
periencing fruitful careers in music despite facing challenges. Yet when a prominent historical
woman composer such as Clara Schumann is mentioned to a student in secondary school, their
reaction is ‘[o]h, I didn’t know women could compose!’ (Lindeman 1992, p. 56). Current
curricula do not reflect the steps forward feminist musicology made in documenting and
making accessible the life and music of many women composers. Lindeman asserts that ‘[t]he
curricula should reflect the research that has been done on women in music as well as the array
of musical materials available’ (ibid.).5 This demonstrates how a better dialogue between re
search and pedagogical practice needs to be established to make real change, both for the sake of
education and our society.
18.2 Invisible canons: towards a canon of female composers

Through looking at pedagogical and broader societal canons, it is plain to see that women
composers were largely excluded. As noted above, canons are both created and sustained
through shared values. We might see the formation of an established societal canon as emerging
from a number of influential individual canons coalescing around a common body of works.
My educational background means I have come to conceptualise any collection of works that
gain significance for me personally or beyond as a canon. The influence of this conceptual
structure is almost inescapable, and I acknowledge this from the outset even as I begin to
critique it. Therefore, when I started to discover works by female composers, I began to
conceptualise these as my personal canon of female composers.
This personal canon has evolved organically through my interests and research for my PhD
in composition. When I started my doctorate, I explored the idea of incorporating, mapping,
encoding and interweaving ideas/concepts from the natural world into different compositional
parameters in much greater depth. As part of my research, I was seeking out living composers
who engaged similarly with extra-musical stimuli, especially from the natural world, and whose
aesthetic approach resonated with me. To establish a richer context, I also investigated historical
approaches to the incorporation of the natural world. This brought me to many widely known
examples such as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 ‘Pastoral’ (1808), Tchaikovsky’s The Tempest
(1873), Debussy’s La Mer (1905) and Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony (1915), reaching further
into twentieth-century with composers such as Webern (especially Ops. 21–31) and Messiaen
with his well-known engagement with birdsong in pieces such as Le Merle Noir (1952) and
Catalogue d’oiseaux (1958).
I was keen to look beyond these often-cited examples for different models. It was in this
search for works engaging with the natural world that the beginnings of my personal canon of
female composers began. Examples of composers and works I explored include: Arlene Sierra
with pieces such as Aquilo (2001) and Insects in Amber (2010); Helen Grime’s A Cold Spring
(2009), Virga (2007) and Near Midnight (2012); Judith Weir’s The Welcome Arrival of Rain (2001)
and Forest (1995); Sally Beamish’s River (1997) and Naming of Birds (2001); Saariaho’s Sept
Papillons (2000) and Cloud Trio (2009); Charlotte Bray’s Upflight of Butterflies (2008 rev. 2016)
and At the Speed of Stillness (2011–12); and Tansy Davies’ Regreening (2015) and Forest (2016). It
was the engagement with the natural world that particularly appealed: they mapped concepts
from the natural world onto a musical structure and offered something different from those
works in the established canon. In this short chapter, I will discuss two brief examples.
The music of Arlene Sierra (b. 1970) was particularly influential in solidifying this idea as a
useful creative direction. Many of Sierra’s works are based on extra-musical material from
different categories, with some based on military strategies and others from the natural world.
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Invisible canons
An interesting example is her Game of Attrition (2009), where two concepts are used in con
junction: game theory and natural selection. In this piece, Sierra uses this Darwinian concept to
influence her instrument choice and the material she attributes to them:
map that [natural selection] onto instruments by thinking of tessitura, … viola versus a
clarinet versus a horn versus a marimba, … all live in that same strata of what their
strongest range is…. So, who would win, what does winning mean – who’s louder,
who’s more agile? (Sierra 2013)
Sierra acknowledges that the establishment of this system defines certain aspects of the piece –
‘so setting up these conditions… got me the structure’ (ibid.) – but sees such parameters as
helpful in the compositional process. This notion of allowing a concept to determine com
positional aspects is something I have developed in my working practice.
Concepts from the natural world also manifest themselves to varying degrees in the works of
Joan Tower, and her Rain Waves for violin, clarinet and piano (1997) particularly captured my
imagination. I found it especially interesting how Tower had used the image of different in
tensity levels of rain, such as drizzling or heavy, undulating sheets of rain that would be created
in a tropical environment, to influence the gestural and textural material of the music and its
structure. I have deployed similar strategies in my own works, with this approach speaking to
my compositional voice in a different way from the mainstream canon.
Both of the approaches outlined briefly above, as well as many others from composers (both
male and female), were models for my own practice. My works use similar strategies to explore
concepts from the natural world as a way to inform musical parameters beyond general in
spiration. My orchestral work Roil in Stillness (2015), for example, takes on the structure of
ripples and waves on micro and macro structural levels; these are integral to the music. The
musical-gestural content is also influenced by this concept as well as the progression of the
harmonic material and pitch-tessitura trajectory, creating an overarching wave across the work’s
architecture. This results in a piece that is influenced by a concept from the natural world
through multiple compositional parameters, with this underlying concept being fully embedded
into my composition.
Through my exploration of works by women, I found something different from the con
fines of a male-dominated construct of musical worth. In a sense, these formed a parallel canon
for me. The wealth of repertoire by these women composers offered new modes of engagement
with the natural world and the use of extra-musical materials in the construction of a piece. I
was also introduced to new role models, something that had been lacking before and whose
omission made it hard to see how I fitted into being a ‘composer’. Broadening my view of
music history opened up new creative possibilities.
These examples demonstrate how I came to develop my personal canon of female com
posers.6 This canon, like all canons, evolved through biases of my own personal taste but also
accessibility of scores and recordings (Citron 1993, p. 25). In many ways, my personal canon has
some of the traits of the ‘canon’ as Citron describes – ‘canons are ad hoc conceptualisations of
paradigmatic repertoire’ (ibid., p. 9). These personal discoveries, and their impact on my work,
perhaps feed into the idea that women composers should not be judged against preexisting
canonic frameworks and structures. Conventional value judgements of musical worthiness do
not necessarily allow women composers work of great quality to enter the canon.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the feminist movement began to affect change in various
disciplines, including musicology. Scholars began researching the lives of ‘half the world’s
population that had been ignored in earlier studies of music history and development’
183
(Pendle 2001, p. vii). McClary explains that there were ‘formidable obstacles’ within the dis
cipline due to outdated methodologies, some of which still remain today (1991, p. 5). During
the 1980s and 1990s, a surge in research on women composers was published forming
something of a ‘counter canon’. Despite this volume of scholarly activity, there has been re
latively little impact on educational systems. This lack of a joined-up approach contributed to
my not being aware of many of these composers until the much later educational stage of my
postgraduate degree.
There are many problems with adding women composers into the existing canon but also in
creating a counter canon. The dominant canonic discourse continues to influence the peda
gogical canon, and so it is important that we support ways for works by women composers to
gradually infiltrate powerful existing canonic structures. This is key to educating audiences,
musicians and organisations who need to ‘discover’ women composers. As Eugene Gates ar
gued, the myth that musical creativity is solely for men damages our knowledge of the past
(1994, p. 27). Green echoes this point when she states that, ‘it is only by allowing individual
women’s works to enter into our courses that canonic presuppositions can begin to be revealed
as having been biased towards men’ (1997, p. 238). Randel further describes hidden criteria for
entry into the canon as the ‘ultimate weapon’ in preventing women from entering the canon
largely due to the vague nature of it (1992, p. 17). Similarly, Citron draws attention to the
current structures of the canon that leads to the ‘exclusion and implied devaluation of works
that do not fit the categories within the system’ (1993, p. 125). Historically, women are more
likely to have written in idioms not usually seen within the canonic system, and it follows that
‘A history of women calls for new categories, new organisation’ (ibid., p. 212).
The alternative counter canon that evolved through academic research provides a frame
work for female composers to be studied on their own terms. It allows us to challenge existing
hegemonies by trying to infiltrate the canon with women’s works. One method to achieve this
effectively could be found through ‘re-evaluating women’s contributions within the paradigms
of an alternative canon that women’s work can be adequately represented’ (Green 1997,
p. 238). Whilst creating a positive space, this is not without drawbacks. By including a separate
Western art music canon of female composers, we might be creating a counter canon, which is,
as explained by feminist literary critic Lillian Robinson, a ‘repertoire made up entirely of works
by women’ (Robinson, cited in Citron 1990, p. 103). Somewhat counterproductively, this
might reinforce the notion of women’s music sitting outside the traditional canon, further
accenting the perceived otherness of this music.
There are still some significant barriers to female composers being accepted into the canon.
We need to challenge the traditional criterion of the canon by restructuring, interrogating and
reconfiguring it.7 The canon in its new form must reflect the values of society more as a whole
rather than just values of social dominant group. As Citron explains, ‘the ultimate goal is not
separatism but integration into the mainstream of Western musical history’ (ibid., p. 104). The
canon does not need to be presented ‘unquestioningly as though its formation was entirely
autonomous from the kinds of social historical conditions to which Citron and Battersby point’
(Green 1997, p. 239). Women composers need to become visible in our pedagogical structures
so that future generations do not need to ‘discover’ women composers. That way, the sub
conscious bias against women composers in our society and educational practitioners begins to
get eroded.
The efforts of academics and musical practitioners are beginning to take hold, with many
initiatives supporting the more accessible dissemination of women’s music. These include in
itiatives such as Illuminate Women’s Music,8 Archiv Frau und Musik, Composer Diversity
Database, Music Theory Examples by Women (MTEW), International Alliance for Women in
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Invisible canons
Music (IAWM), The Daffodil Perspective, A Modern Reveal, Salon Without Boundaries,
Lili Boulanger Initiative, Scordatura and Sounding the Feminists.9 Through discussing pre-
existent canonic structures, the ways they have been sustained and challenged, and the for
mation of my own personal canon, I believe we can make important steps towards meaningful
change in the promotion of women’s music. Programming music by women regularly and
committing to including these works as works of equal status to those by men on the curri
culum through a historically critical lens of the canon are important steps. Influencing personal
canons will gradually feed into a broader societal understanding of the musical canon. Recalling
Citron, we must remember that ‘canons simultaneously reflect, instigate, and perpetuate value
systems’ (1993, p. 19). If we can begin to change what is valued in society, we can begin to
restructure the canon and rightly add women’s repertoire to it instead of allowing an endless
cycle of reproduction.
Notes
1 All-Party Parliamentary Group for Music Education, Incorporated Society of Musicians, and
University of Sussex, Music Education: State of the Nation (January 2019). On cultural capital, see Pierre
Bourdieu, Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste, trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1984.
2 See, for example, Everist (1999).
3 For ABRSM examinations, candidates have to select one piece from three repertoire lists. Pieces in list
A are broadly classified as Baroque or Classical, list B is focused towards nineteenth-century music, and
list C is the home of twentieth-century and more contemporary repertoire.
4 This is analogous with perceptions of visual artworks divided down gender lines. A recent study
assigned gender descriptions to computer generated artworks, and found that survey participants
consistently rated lower the artworks assigned as ‘female’. See Adams, R., Kräussl, R., Navone, M. and
Verwijmeren, P., Is gender in the eye of the beholder? Identifying cultural attitudes with art auction
prices. SSRN Electronic Journal (January 2017), Available from: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/
papers.cfm?abstract_id=3083500
5 See also Sondra Wieland Howe, 1998. Reconstructing the history of music Education from a feminist
perspective. Philosophy of Music Education Review, 6, 98.
6 Male composers were studied within this area of study but for the purposes of this chapter they are not
discussed here.
7 Lucy Green considers this issue in greater detail than I am able to here: see Green (1997, pp. 237–239).
8 See, for example, https://www.rhinegold.co.uk/classical_music/illuminate-shining-light-work-women-
composers-performers/, https://www.walesartsreview.org/spotlight-illuminate-womens-music/ and
https://www.illuminatewomensmusic.co.uk; https://iawm.org; https://thedaffodilperspective.com
9 The web pages for the resources and initiative listed above are: https://www.archiv-frau-musik.de/en/;
https://www.composerdiversity.com; https://musictheoryexamplesbywomen.com; https://
www.amodernreveal.com; http://www.salonwithoutboundaries.com; https://www.boulangerinitiative.org;
https://www.scordaturawmc.com; https://www.soundingthefeminists.com. This is a non-exhaustive list in a
growth area that will continue to develop as more people take on this mission to bring women composers
rightly into sight of audiences.
References
ABRSM., 2014. Exam statistics. Available from: https://web.archive.org/web/20161214070935/https://
gb.abrsm.org/en/about-abrsm/reports-research-and-statistics/2014-exam-statistics/
Atterbury, B.W., 1992. Old prejudices, new perceptions. Music Educators Journal, 78, 25–27.
Citron, M.J., 1990. Gender, professionalism and the musical canon. Journal of Musicology, 8/1, 102–117.
Citron, M.J., 1993. Gender and the musical canon. Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
185
Everist, M., 1999. Reception theories, canonic discourses, and musical value. In: N. Cook and M. Everist
eds. Rethinking music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 378–402.
Gates, E., 1994. Why have there been no great women composers? The Journal of Aesthetic Education,
28/2, 27–34.
Green, L., 2012. Gender identity, musical experience and schooling. In: R. Wright ed. Sociology & music
education. Aldershot: Ashgate, 139–154.
Halstead, J., 1997. The woman composer: creativity and the gendered politics of musical composition. Aldershot:
Ashgate.
Koskoff, E., 1999. What do we want to teach when we teach music? One apology, two short trips, three
ethical dilemmas, and eight-two questions. In: N. Cook and M. Everist, eds. Rethinking music. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 545–560.
Legg, R., 2012. Bach, Beethoven, Bourdieu: “cultural capital” and the scholastic canon in England’s
A-level examinations. British Journal of Music Education, 23, 157–172.
Lindeman, C.A., 1992. Teaching about women musicians: elementary classroom strategies. Music Educators
Journal, 78, 56–59.
McClary, S., 1991. Feminine endings. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
Pendle, K., ed., 2001. Women and music: a history. 2nd ed. Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Randel, D.M., 1992. The canons in the musicological toolbox. In: K. Bergeron and P.V. Bohlman, eds.
Disciplining music: musicology and its canons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 10–22.
Shreffler, A.C., 2011. Musical canonization and decanonization in the twentieth century. In: K.P.M.
Wald-Fuhrmann, ed. Der kanon der musik: theorie und geschichte: ein handbuch. Munich: Hanser, 1–18.
Sierra, A., 2013. Arlene Sierra: the process of evolution. NewMusicBox, New York. Available from:
http://www.arlenesierra.com/biography/interviews.html
Terry, P. and Bowman, D., 2006. A student’s guide to AS/A2 music for the OCR specification, 2nd ed.
London: Rhinegold Education.
Whittaker, A., 2020. Investigating the canon in A-level music: musical prescription in A-level music
syllabi (for First Examination in 2018). British Journal of Music Education, 37/1, 17–27.
Wright, R. and Davies, B., 2012. Class, power, culture and the music curriculum. In: R. Wright, ed.
Sociology & music education. Aldershot: Ashgate, 35–50.
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19
STORYTELLING IN
AUTOETHNOGRAPHY – THE
POETESS
Lucy Hollingworth
In 1983, soon after I had graduated from Manchester University with a Bachelor’s degree in
music, I worked for several months on a commission for a set of pieces for solo piano which
were intended as music to accompany scenes in a one-woman show about the poet Sylvia
Plath. The music was never performed. The writer/performer of the show moved on to other
work soon after I had completed the music, so the project fell through. The score was set aside.
Then, in the spring of 2015, after I had embarked on a PhD in composition at the Royal
Conservatoire of Scotland, I showed the score to my PhD supervisor. He convinced me that we
should try and get it performed. I digitised my hand-written score and began envisaging a
reimagining of the Plath story. I started to write my own script about Plath but the Plath Estate
refused permission for me to use any of her work. My supervisor’s advice was therefore to
‘change all the words’.1
I went home and pondered what to do. Returning to this music after more than 30 years
took me on a journey into my past and I was forced to contemplate all that had taken place in
the interim. Suddenly, I saw a new direction for this work. I searched out old journals and
poetry that I had written during these intervening decades. I created a new fictional protagonist
whom I named ‘the Poetess’. In creating this character, I was able to recount a story which is
based around my own experiences and those of other women whose stories I had encountered
over these many years. As well as incorporating writing from my old journals, I wrote a sig
nificant amount of new text to create a more rounded character and experienced the challenge
of writing new texts to fit existing music.
I also took the opportunity to extend the instrumentation of the work, given that I was now
based at the Conservatoire, and conceived a score in which the first half is for solo piano, much
as it was in the original score, and the second half is for an ensemble of flute, clarinet, bass
trombone, piano, violin and cello. I made use of the new colour palette of these instruments to
create two contrasting worlds – the monochrome world of the solo piano, and the brighter
world of the ensemble which represent different aspects of the Poetess’ character and her
struggle. The piano signifies negative experiences that are causes of the Poetess’ fall into despair,
and the ensemble signifies events in her life that have a positive influence and ultimately lead to
her attempts to move forward and to recover her self-esteem.
The resulting work lasts around 50 minutes and is in the form of a melodrama comprising a
combination of music and the spoken word. I position it as music theatre because the music
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-19 187

Lucy Hollingworth
drives the drama forwards by providing dramatic, emotional and rhythmic structures to which
the actors respond, but I have avoided merely resorting to song-setting or the conventions of
opera. The actors who took part in the premiere performance found themselves challenged in
ways that were new to them. In particular, they discovered that they had to listen to the
rhythms and structures of the music – and to fit their words into them in a manner not dis
similar to the way the words of a song might be delivered – and yet retain the quality of speech,
rather than of song, as required by the text.
At this point, I need to explain a little more about my own life. After I graduated from
Manchester University in 1982, I planned to take a Master’s degree in composition and was
preparing my application and working freelance as a composer and performer when I married my
first husband. We mapped out our life together; work, children, buying a house. He was going to
support me in my developing career as a composer and academic but it did not work out as I had
imagined it would. He had his own ideas about what our life was to be like, which seemed to
preclude many of my aspirations. In my poem ‘You Were Right’, I have drawn on many
women’s experiences, some of them my own, to describe life in a controlling relationship:
Extracts from The Poetess, ‘You Were Right’

You were right when you told me
That it was better if I didn’t get a job,
That it would have made you look
Like a kept man.
So I waited for you to get a job first
But nothing was good enough for you
And we lived in poverty.
I was protected from having money and independence;
I might have met a better man.
You were right to prevent it.
…
You were right to ask me
Not to change my hair.
Your image of me was more important
Than my self-image.
I was wrong to want to change it
And waste money on myself.
…
You were right when you brought home
Leaflets to explain my frigidity.
It was my fault our sex life was not good enough.
I always did something
Just at the wrong moment for you.
…
Sometimes I did not think you were right.
When I told you, you shut yourself in a room,
You sobbed and tore at yourself.
If I tried to speak to you,
You smashed the furniture,
You held your fist in my face,
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Storytelling in autoethnography
You threw things round the house.

It was my fault you did all this.
I knew which buttons to press.
…
You said you were sorry.
That meant we would not mention it again.
But it just kept on happening.2
The continuous music that accompanies the spoken poem is the unrelenting repetition of an
insistent motif which is intended to feel like someone being pounded with instructions and
admonitions, reflecting the situation in which the Poetess finds herself. The percussive quality
of the piano is used to signify this pounding. The frequently repeated three-chord motif mirrors
the endlessly repeated words ‘You were right’ (see Figure 19.1). The relentless music and words
convey the Poetess’ experience – how she has come to blame herself for all the problems in
their relationship, and how her futile attempts to discuss these problems end with violence. The
use of the solo piano in this part of the show is intended to signify these relationship difficulties
in the Poetess’ life.
My own first marriage was problematic and I also encountered difficulties as a woman
composer in what was, and still is, a male dominated field (see McAndrew and Everett 2015). In
the early 1990s, I stopped composing altogether: in fact, I stopped being a musician. For a
while, I kept on trying to write new pieces or imagining that I would. But I spent more and
more time looking at blank sheets of paper and found that I was unable to create anything. I
recall sitting, day after day in my workroom, trying to write anything at all. In the poem ‘I Stare
At The Wall’, I describe the emptiness and the desperation of that feeling:
Extracts from The Poetess, ‘I Stare At The Wall’

I stare at the wall. I look at the page. I am going to write today. My mouth is hot and
dry. I think, get a drink of water, but I do not move.
…
I stare at the wall. I have been this man’s wife for nine years. He goes out. I don’t really
know what he is doing when he is out. Sometimes he has work. Sometimes he just
goes out.
…
I stare at the wall. I think, I will leave him. What will I do? I have no skills, no talents.
My pages are blanks. I am a sad, worthless, childless, middle aged wife.
…
I stare at the wall. I have been here, on this chair, for three years now. When he comes
home I jump up and smile. I say have you had a nice day? I feed him.
I have not moved today. It is very quiet. The sunflowers nod in the garden. I imagine
being able to turn back the clock. I imagine going back and making a different choice.3
I believe that I was suffering from depression for a number of years but at the time I did not
even comprehend that this might be the problem. I thought only that I was failing, day after
day, to do justice to my creative talents. I began to believe that I had none, and my past creative
work seemed to me unreal as though I had never really written any of it. In The Poetess, the
static chords on the piano underpin the passage of long periods of time and the sense of
189
Lucy Hollingworth
Figure 19.1 Piano Part from The Poetess, ‘You Were Right’ (full score, p. 22).
powerlessness and inaction that ‘I Stare At The Wall’ depicts (see Figure 19.2). The percussive
feel of the instrument as I used it in ‘You Were Right’ is a feature here too, with its repeated
chords, but I have transformed it into a bell-like and sustained sound which is just as unrelenting
but now conveys the transformed state of the Poetess’ mind. She has stopped trying to respond
to the situation: now she is empty and in despair.
190
Figure 19.2 The Poetess, Static Piano Chords in ‘I Stare At The Wall’ (full score, p. 27).
191
Lucy Hollingworth
Figure 19.3 Original Manuscript of the Poem ‘Still Life’.
The Poetess ultimately finds a way forward and out of her restrictive relationship, and so did
I. A decade ago, I could not have imagined that I would now be living my own life as a
composer again. In the process of writing the script for The Poetess, I came across the poem ‘Still
Life’ which I wrote in 1997 (Figure 19.3) when I was living through the experience of de
pression. It conveys the conflicting feelings I had at that time.
The music which underlies this poem is intended to convey both the beauty and the pain
experienced by the Poetess as she finds herself feeling alone and trapped in a relationship that
she believes she cannot leave. Yet she is moved to reflect on her relationships and to appreciate
the solace of the natural world through this poetry. Its calm texture is lightened by the violin
pizzicato but the serene melody rises to a point of harmonic tension through the use of a
dissonance which is unresolved, simply falling back downwards at the end (Figure 19.4). The
music speaks of searching and yet not finding a way to move forward. The use of the ensemble
instruments for this section signifies that the Poetess is searching for an answer, and that she is
attempting to find a way to change something for the better in her life.4
The Poetess received its premiere on 5 May 2016 at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland as
part of the ‘Plug 2016’ season of new music concerts. It was directed and staged by music and
drama students with technical support from the Conservatoire. Afterwards, I had some
192
193
Figure 19.4 The Poetess, Instrumental Parts in ‘Still Life’ (full score, pp. 64–65).
Lucy Hollingworth
extraordinary feedback. A number of people thanked me and said that they had lived through a
similar situation. I subsequently heard that someone left their current relationship because they
recognised themselves in the experiences that my work presented. And I received several hugs
without any explanation needed.
The Poetess is a story based, as noted, on my own and other women’s lives, and it draws upon
my previous creative work (prose and poetry) written during the years of my difficult first
marriage. So how have I located The Poetess within my wider PhD studies? My PhD comprises
a creative portfolio and dissertation and was conceived as an autoethnography, about which I
shall say more later. The Poetess sits right at the centre of this idea, encompassing my life, my
creative work as composer and writer, and the social and cultural issues that my written au
toethnography seeks to illuminate (Hollingworth 2020).
The idea for the PhD began in a seminar at Edinburgh University where, having returned to
composition after a period of many years, I read my Master’s degree in 2010. We were listening
to music by male composers and discussing their role as models in contemporary music. A
female colleague turned to me and whispered into my ear, ‘where are the women composers?’
At that moment, it became clear to me that I wanted to discover women composers and find
out how they might fare as models for a contemporary composition student such as myself. I
began listening to art music by women, on CD and online, and obtaining scores and bio
graphies where these were available. I discovered that music history offers many examples of
women composers but that their careers had typically not progressed with the same levels of
exposure as their male counterparts; so they remained largely unknown. I also began to read
feminist writing that engaged with the subject of discrimination against women in the arts. The
first text I studied was Germaine Greer’s The Obstacle Race (1979), which deals with the dif
ficulties encountered by female visual artists, and I subsequently read Marcia Citron’s Gender
and the Musical Canon (1993). Through these and other texts, I learned that this discrimination
goes back many generations and is deeply entrenched in our society. The more I searched, the
more I found stories that reflected my own experiences. I began to understand that what had
happened in my career as a young female composer was by no means unique.
Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979), for example, gave up composition in the face of dis
couragement and criticism. She had taken upon herself the role of breadwinner for her family
after the death of her father and, despite this responsibility and an attempt by the composer
Saint-Saëns to have her disqualified, came second in the Prix de Rome composition compe
tition in 1908, which her father had previously won. There was a great deal of resistance to the
idea of a woman winning the prize and her success constituted a substantial achievement
(Rosenstiel 1982). Ultimately, however, she concluded that her work as a composer was
‘useless’ (Pendle and Zierolf 1991, p. 256), a conclusion that many who know her music believe
to have been harsh self-criticism.
Ruth Crawford (1901–53) stopped writing art music for 20 years. In the 1930s, she at
tempted to forge a career as part of a group of American modernist composers who were hostile
to the presence of women. After her marriage to Charles Seeger, one of the principal pro
ponents of modernism in music at the time, she found herself married to a man who had a very
conservative view of women’s roles in society, and found her career unexpectedly undermined
by him. In an attempt to make the relationship work, she threw herself into supporting his
career in ethnomusicology. She did not resume her career in composition until the 1950s
(Tick 1997).
Avril Coleridge-Taylor (1903–98) stopped composing for seven years as her first marriage
deteriorated and her husband’s business descended into what she described as ‘that graveyard of
my hopes’ (Coleridge-Taylor 1979, p. 118). It is unclear as to whether her marriage to Harold
194
Dashwood was engineered by her domineering mother, but she describes how her relationships
with potential marriage partners were dictated by her mother’s expectations for her. Her
mother had prevented her from continuing a loving and supportive relationship with a young
flautist by refusing to let them see each other. It was only after separating from Dashwood that
Coleridge-Taylor was able to resume her work as a composer.
Bryony Jagger (b. 1948) gave up her opportunity to take her Master’s degree when her
husband moved to Harvard (Halstead 1997, p. 85). After she became a parent, she found herself
unsupported in any practical way by her husband and struggled to continue with her com
position, stopping it completely for some time. Their subsequent divorce had a big impact on
Jagger and caused her to stop composing again. She felt that she had sacrificed her own career
opportunities for his, only to find that he left the relationship.
These life stories had a particular impact on me because these women, too, had stopped
composing: they had clearly felt unsupported and had suffered from mental pressures as a result
of their relationship experiences. I found many other, similar stories besides. The patterns of
experience I saw in the lives of these other women composers were in my mind as I wrote the
new script for The Poetess. As an integral part of my autoethnographic work, The Poetess presents
experiences that are not just my own but shared with others. Its purpose is to engage the
audience member in an active interpretation of particular events.
As I began to piece together how I would integrate creative work with a written auto
ethnography in my PhD, I went initially to the work of Carolyn Ellis, who describes auto
ethnography as ‘research, writing, story, and method that connect the autobiographical and
personal to the cultural, social, and political’ (2004, p. xix). It has evolved from ethnographic
research in the social sciences, and creative writing is a, not uncontroversial, part of its toolkit.
I also studied Autoethnography as Method by Heewon Chang, in which she describes the
benefits as well as the dangers of using imaginative-creative writing of this nature in
autoethnography:
It opens up creative possibilities to you and imaginative participation to readers. You

can express your story in less structured and inhibited formats; readers can be actively
engaged in interpreting your creative expressions. This approach to writing is subject
to criticism for blurring genres of fiction and nonfiction, not engaging sufficient
cultural analysis and interpretation, and dismissing academic or scientific methods.
Despite the criticisms, however, some social science scholars have employed it un
apologetically to breathe creative energy into a portion or the entirety of their au
toethnographies (Chang 2008, p. 148).
The specific approach I am taking is similar to that defined by Laurel Richardson as ‘creative
analytical processes ethnographies’ (Richardson and St. Pierre 2005, p. 962). This refers to a
method that ‘displays the writing process and the writing product as deeply intertwined’, and
Richardson relates it to the more traditionally objective view of ethnography when she writes
that: ‘Science is one lens, and creative arts is another. We see more deeply using two lenses’
(ibid.) As she goes on to explain, ‘I want to look through both lenses to see a “social science art
form” – a radically interpretive form of representation’ (ibid., p. 964). In the approach that I
have taken to The Poetess, I have endeavoured to use both lenses by allowing real events ex
perienced by many women to inform a creative work which reveals rather than describes. In
the written element of my PhD, I use the lens of science to illuminate the connections between
the creative work and women’s experiences. My aim is for a seamless autoethnographic nar
rative which will lead the reader from dissertation to creative portfolio and back.
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Lucy Hollingworth
The material I used to create the script for The Poetess is drawn primarily from three sources.
One is my past journals and poetry written over many years, and another is informal discussions
with my sister to confirm my recollections of childhood and to fill in some details from a time
when I was too young to remember. Finally, I have used material from other women’s stories of
their life experiences, including those of the composers previously mentioned, which connects
with my own story. The resulting work blurs boundaries: it tells an imaginative story about real
events, and it both is the work and is about the work; it is writing about myself and it investigates
the act of writing about oneself. My sources are presented to the audience through the story the
fictional character recounts, and through her I also describe the process of trying to tell one’s
story.
My strategy for investigating the lives of women composers in my dissertation was to explore
those of the twentieth century with whom I feel connected in some way, to engage with their
own words taken from journals, letters, interviews and autobiographies, and to have an ima
gined discussion with them about the similarities and differences in our experiences of being
women and being composers. In this endeavour, I have investigated my own understanding of
their lives and of my own life, and revealed comparisons, which include observations about
those elements that have changed for women over the twentieth century and those that remain
problematic. One aspect of the research that made an impression on me as it progressed was
how similar my own experience was to a composer such as Ruth Crawford, who was born 60
years before me. I was raised in the 1960s and 1970s and it might have been assumed that things
would be very different for a woman living during and after the second wave of feminism.
However, I experienced a similar level of gender discrimination and had similar struggles with
the expectations for married women. I discovered how little society has changed over the
decades.
Once I had freed myself from the oppressive relationship that had prevented me working as a
composer – and discovered that I could still write music and that it was of interest to others – it
became important to me that I should tell my story in some way. In writing The Poetess and
presenting the story to others, I have sought to raise awareness about abusive relationships and
coercive control, and to make a contribution to bringing about change for others, as well as
benefitting from this therapeutic process myself. The Poetess is fiction but it is grounded in
reality and in my personal experiences. In researching the lives of women composers who have
had similar experiences to my own, and in creating this work knowing that it connects me with
them and adds to an understanding of creative women’s lives, I have also found strength and a
determination to speak out and make use of my creative talents once again. The act of creating
an autoethnography has been personally liberating and my hope is that this work might also lead
to the liberation of others who encounter it.
Notes
1 The author would like to thank Dr Gordon McPherson, Dr Christopher Wiley and Dr Marc
Silberschatz for their support during this project, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland for commis
sioning The Poetess, the conductor Adrian Sit and RCS MusicLab, and the director, Zoe Bullock,
actors Amelia Noble and Tierney Nolen and the team who helped stage and record the work.
2 Lucy Hollingworth, ‘You Were Right’ from The Poetess (video), Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
(2016). Available from: https://vimeo.com/328675675/a40ee5a8a2
3 Hollingworth, ‘I Stare at the Wall’ from The Poetess, available from: https://vimeo.com/328680841/f4
08287e47
4 Hollingworth, ‘Still Life’ from The Poetess, available from: https://vimeo.com/328684555/f16170ac3e
196
References
Chang, H., 2008. Autoethnography as method. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Coleridge-Taylor, A., 1979. The heritage of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. London: Dobson.
Ellis, C., 2004. The ethnographic I: a methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira
Press.
Greer, G., 1979. The obstacle race: the fortunes of women painters and their work. New York: Farrar Straus
Giroux.
Halstead, J., 1997. The woman composer: creativity and the gender politics of musical composition. Brookfield, VT:
Ashgate.
Hollingworth, L.A., 2020. A woman who writes music: a creative feminist autobiography. PhD thesis,
University of St Andrews.
McAndrew, S. and Everett, M., 2015. Symbolic versus commercial success among British female com
posers. In: N. Crossley, S. McAndrew and P. Widdop, eds. Social networks and music worlds. London:
Routledge, 61–88.
Pendle, K. and Zierolf, R. 1991. Composers of modern Europe, Israel, Australia, and New Zealand. In:
K. Pendle, ed. Women and music: a history. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
252–313.
Richardson, L. and St. Pierre, E.A., 2005. Writing: a method of inquiry. In: N.K. Denzin and Y. Lincoln,
eds. Handbook of qualitative research, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 959–978.
Rosenstiel, L., 1982. Nadia Boulanger: a life in music. New York & London: W.W. Norton & Co.
Tick, J., 1997. Ruth Crawford Seeger: a composer’s search for American music. New York: Oxford University
Press.
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20
CHEN YI: TRAUMA, MYTHS, AND
REPRESENTATION
J. Michele Edwards
20.1 Experiences into compositional resources

Chen Yi (b. 1953) was bicultural from childhood: linguistically Chinese and musically Western.
Born in Guangdong Province, Chen’s mother tongue was Cantonese; however, she learned
Mandarin starting at age seven in primary school. Chen says, ‘I consider my native language as
both of these’ (personal communication, 18 February 2018).1 They are distinct languages but
each is tonal, which has a significant impact on Chen’s compositional process, especially in
terms of melodic material but also for rhythmic gestures. Wang Xiao-xi, writing in People’s
Music, a Chinese classical music journal, notes: ‘The relationship between Chinese language and
music is the most important feature in Chen Yi’s composition. As a tonal language, reciting a
Chinese poem is [already] a type of music’ (Wang 2006, p. 10).
Both of Chen’s parents were medical doctors and enthusiasts of Western classical music. Her
childhood study of music – piano beginning at age three and violin the following year – was all
from the Western European musical canon, especially major violin repertoire, while early
experience with Chinese traditional music was nominal. In 1957, Mao Zedong’s government
took a repressive turn with an Anti-Rightist Campaign. Because Chen Yi’s parents spoke fluent
English, had friends and patients from foreign consulates, and had accepted supplies from the
British Red Cross, they were branded ‘international spies’ and began to be negatively affected.
The arrival of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) was shattering: trauma, violence in the
streets, dislocation, school closures, loss, the humiliation of public criticisms and severed plans.
Life in China was horrific with many deaths and many suicides. Chen’s home was stormed: her
father lost his leadership position at the hospital and was sent to a rural village to train ‘barefoot
doctors’; her mother was held prisoner at her hospital for ten months.
In October 1968, Chen and ultimately about 17 million youth were sent ‘down-to-the-
countryside’ for re-education and for work among the peasants.2 Chen was deported to the
small village of Shimen where she laboured in the rice and vegetable fields. In addition, for
three weeks in 1969, she and other deportees helped construct watchtowers and underground
bunkers. Using a double basket balanced on a pole across her shoulders, Chen repeatedly hauled
90 pounds of wet concrete up the mountain – about equal to her own weight. Despite these
hardships, Chen’s experience in the countryside was her first encounter with the music of the
peasants, which would later become a significant resource for her compositions. Although folk
198 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-20

Chen Yi: Trauma, myths, representation
music from the pre-Communist era was forbidden and labelled ‘feudalistic’, some of the new
revolutionary tunes the farmers sang were adapted from folksongs. Chen gave the following
retrospective assessment of her countryside experience in a 2001 interview:
Frankly, it was not until then that I found my roots, my motherland, and really
appreciated the simple people on the earth…. I learned to overcome hardship, to bear
anger, fear and humiliation under the political pressure … to learn to hope, to forgive,
to survive, and to live optimistically, strongly and independently, and to work hard in
order to benefit more human beings in society (Chen, cited in de Clef Piñeiro
2001, p. 29).
In January 1970, the Guangzhou Beijing Opera Troupe needed a principal violinist and heard
about Chen’s skills. She was auditioned and then engaged by the troupe, left the farming village
and spent the remaining almost eight years of the Cultural Revolution (from January 1970 at age
16 until spring 1978) leading the 40-member orchestra of both Chinese and Western instruments
in performances of the model operas or model works.3 These revolutionary operas, developed by
creative teams under the direction of Jiang Qing, that is, Madame Mao, were themselves a fusion
of Chinese and Western musical influences. Revolutionary opera had new, politically acceptable
plots but strong musical ties to traditional Chinese opera plus the modernising addition of
Western strings to the traditional Chinese opera orchestra. Chen acknowledged this major genre
of Chinese music as an important influence on her compositions.
Once the Cultural Revolution ended on 9 September 1976 with the death of Mao Zedong,
institutions of higher education began to reopen. With a backlog of over ten years of students
for universities, competition was stiff. Approximately 17,000 people applied for admission to
the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing; Chen Yi was one of the 213 people accepted and
one of only 32 composition students admitted to the first class.4 By the time the programme
officially began in fall 1978, five men had left the programme, leaving 27, six of whom were
actually in the ear training programme.5 Five women were among the 21 composers, who were
divided into two groups by ability in ear training, and Chen was not only in the advanced group
of students but also the student leader for both ear training and counterpoint classes. Her
bicultural education continued at the Conservatory with classes incorporating Western classical
literature (some of it modern) and traditional Chinese music. Her systematic classroom study of
folk music incorporated memorisation of many folksongs, and was supplemented with short
trips to rural villages each school year. Chen embraced the activity of folksong collecting –
material that would become another important element in her future compositions. By the time
she arrived at Columbia University, New York, in 1986 for doctoral composition study, Chen’s
timbral palette was already rich through the multi-directional circulation of Chinese and
Western music and musical influences. In terms of her compositional process, the concept of
fluidity, not fixed national borders, helps us understand her music.
20.2 Chinese Myths Cantata – background

Written as the culmination of Chen’s three-year residency in San Francisco, Chinese Myths
Cantata was commissioned by The Women’s Philharmonic (JoAnn Falletta, conductor) (see
Edwards 2003, pp. 227–228; Chen 1996b) and the 12-voice male vocal ensemble Chanticleer
(Joseph Jennings, Music Director) – two of the three organisations with which she worked
during her ‘Meet The Composer New Residencies’ programme (1993–96). In addition to these
two ensembles, Cantata is scored for four Chinese traditional instruments: erhu (doubling on
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zhuihu), yangqin, pipa and zheng.6 A review describes the Chinese instrument group’s effec
tiveness: ‘Organically embedded in the orchestra, the concertino loses its exotic effect after a
few minutes and becomes a matter of course’ (Zacher 2002). Accessibility for audiences was
enhanced with visual projections, painted backdrops, staging and the inclusion of Chinese
dancers (The Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company for the premiere).7 During an interview, Chen
noted that, ‘When I wrote Chinese Myths Cantata, I wrote down all the program notes first,
including all this lighting design and stage design’ (cited in Miller and Edwards 2020, p. 133).
She had learned these aspects of theatre during her years with the Guangzhou opera company.
For Cantata, Chen selected three of the most popular Chinese myths, which children in
China ‘hear from their grandmas or babysitters’ (Chen, cited in Johnson 2004). The first
movement tells the story of the giant Pan Gu, who was nurtured in a large egg for 18,000 years
before breaking out to create the universe. In the second, the goddess and shape-shifter Nü Wa
creates humans out of mud because she is lonely. Nü Wa has a human face and the body of a
snake. The third movement recounts the thwarted love story of the Weaving Maid, daughter of
a celestial god, and the Cowherd, a human farmer. They were happily married until her father
separated them with the Silver River (or Milky Way). They were forced to live apart as the stars
Vega and Altair, one on each side of the Milky Way, except one day each year (Chen 1996a).
This movement concludes with an a cappella setting of ‘Song of Weaving Maid and Cowherd’,
an anonymous poem from the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.) that reflects on the sadness
of the separated lovers encountered in the main part of this movement.
The opening of the first movement (‘Pan Gu Creates Heaven and Earth’) lays a foundation
for the composition, supplying a fount of material for the entire work and signalling its
transcultural nature. The significance of the ‘chaos’ motive (bars 1-3) goes beyond its pitch
content: a tritone and minor seconds (see Figure 20.1a). Chen had first heard this gesture during
a field trip in Guangxi Province, a mountainous region in southern China. She and a few
classmates had walked 19 miles to reach a small, remote Yao village where they heard an elderly
farmer with a deep bass voice present the story of Pan Gu creating heaven and earth. Chen
notated the tribal leader’s singing and then utilised this intervallic gesture at the beginning of
Cantata. A single bass voice sings the word ‘chaos’, first in English and then in Mandarin
(hùndùn), immediately signalling the transnational dimensions of the work (Johnson 2004). In
addition to using two national languages, the motive not only originated from a Chinese village,
but its intervallic material, E–B♭–E♭–D, is also prominent in modernist Western classical
Figure 20.1a Chinese Myths Cantata, movement 1 ‘Pan Gu Creates Heaven and Earth’, bars 1-3, ‘chaos’
motive.
Figure 20.1b Movement 1, bars 7-9, contrabassoon, variation of ‘chaos’ motive.
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music.8 As Chih-Suei Shaw points out, the use of the tritone or diabolus in musica, as it was
nicknamed in the late medieval era, enhances the text in this situation since the interval can
‘represent a state of “chaos” in Western classical music’ (Shaw 2016, p. 65). I include a brief
analysis using pitch class sets because they facilitate identifying intervallic and motivic unity in
musical materials that sound and look quite different. The opening motive produces the pitch
class set in normal form [0456], or in prime form (0126),9 while the subsequent contrabassoon
gesture retains the opening tritones but is more expansive, highlighting the importance of
motivic variation for the entire work: B♭–E–C–B–F–F♯, yielding (012678) or two identical
trichords (012) (see Figure 20.1b). The opening of the second movement uses the set (0123),
which focuses solely on minor seconds and is only one pitch class different from that in the
beginning of the first movement, strengthening unity for the whole work.
20.3 Movement 2: Nü Wa creates human beings

In overall design, the second movement has two main sections that are separated by a six-bar
transition: a woodblock solo. Each of the main sections is further subdivided in part by reaching
ever broader and more intense climaxes at the end of each subsection (see Figure 20.2). If the
transition bars are grouped with the second main section, this movement is proportioned ac
cording to the Golden Section, that is, the ratio between the small and large segments is
(virtually) the same as between the large section and the whole (Section 1: Section 2 =
Section 2: whole or expressed in bars, 62:100 = 100:162).
Chen’s compositional process usually involves an initial mapping of an overall structure,
which is often based around proportional relationships in general and the Golden Section in
particular. Shortly after arriving in the USA in 1986 for the Columbia University doctoral
programme, Chen encountered the Golden Section while reading about Baban, a widely used
ancient folk tune that has been described as foundational to the understanding of Chinese music
(see Thrasher 2016, pp. viii, ix, pp. 95–115; Miller 2019). Both the Golden Section and its
implementation in Baban – a fixed pattern of beats and a set tune – have very deep roots in
China. Each of these tangible elements of Chinese culture and traditional music has been
exceptionally influential on Chen and her approach to composition. Although not normally
apparent to a listener, Chen’s extensive use of these two aspects of Chinese heritage ground her
philosophically and structurally with her roots. In the Cantata, Chen only utilises the rhythmic
beat pattern of Baban late in the third movement.
The opening subsection (21 bars) is atmospheric – all about the image, gesture and setting
the scene. It is full of marvellous, imaginative sounds, with an orchestration dominated by the
four Chinese string instruments and the four percussionists. The music is like Nü Wa and
suggestive of her movement: unpredictable with snake-like gestures. Chen scores this move
ment for zhuihu (a special type of erhu), which has an amazing capacity to sound like a human
voice – or, in this case, the voice of the goddess Nü Wa. How appropriate that the zhuihu takes
the role of Nü Wa, since its resonator is usually covered with skin of a python or other snake.
Within the sparse texture, the zhuihu (or Nü Wa) takes focus and commands attention.
Throughout this movement, as in many compositions, Chen creates melodies from exaggerated
and inflected speech gestures. For the angular material in the zhuihu’s first melodic gesture,
Chen links this shape to the tonal inflection of the statement ‘wo᷄ shì Nǔ Wá’ (in Mandarin),
meaning ‘I am Nü Wa’ (see Figure 20.3).10
The second subsection (bars 21-42) is closely linked with the first, developing material both
dramatically and musically. Nü Wa continues to slither about and realises she is lonely. The
third segment opens with the zhuihu still playing the role of Nü Wa. The E♭ clarinet mirrors
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Figure 20.2 Chinese Myths Cantata, movement 2, ‘Nü Wa Creates Human Beings’, formal structure with Golden Section.
Figure 20.3 Chinese Myths Cantata, ‘Nü Wa Creates Human Beings’, opening, zhuihu part.
Figure 20.4a Chinese Myths Cantata, movement 2, ‘Changing Faces’ of Nü Wa: b. 1, Yangqin, pitches
reordered to chromatic segment: B C C♯ D (0123).
Figure 20.4b Movement 2, bars 43-45, 49-51, zhuihu mirrored by E♭ clarinet (0123), then echo with
rhythmic augmentation and extension.
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her motive up an octave, reinforcing the idea of Nü Wa seeing herself reflected in the pond –
first, literally (bars 43-45), and then with rhythmic augmentation and extension (bars 49-51 –
see Figure 20.4b). This motive (G♯ A B♭ B) is a disjunct version of the same pc set (0123) heard
in bar 1 as the rising arpeggio by yangqin [B C C♯ D] (see Figure 20.4a), and in so many
different guises throughout the work, reminding us that Nü Wa is a shapeshifter. Figure 20.4
shows four versions from the large range of possibilities for a motive of successive half steps or
the simple pc set (0123) and – by metaphoric linkage – the many changing faces of Nü Wa.
Section 2 is all about Nü Wa creating humanity – first individual humans, and then, when
she grew tired, groups of people via mass production. Section 2 is divided into two segments
that align dramatic and musical elements. The first is further divided into seven phrases of
increasing length and density, demonstrating Chen’s imaginative development strategies. Each
phrase begins with the group of Chinese traditional instruments followed by the entry of the
chorus. Zhuihu remains the chief carrier of melodic material, thus keeping Nü Wa the focal
point. Symbolically, Chen reserves the singers in this movement until the arrival of the first
human (b. 71). Initially, the singers, whose text is exclusively vocables in this movement,
perform one voice at a time only, using repeated pitches with grace notes or glissandi, bor
rowing motivic material heard earlier in pipa and zhuihu. These solo voices also adopt the
timbre of the zhuihu which highlights Nü Wa as the model and source of these living beings. In
the fourth phrase, a bass soloist introduces new prominent material associated with the reciting
style of Beijing opera.11 Choral writing in phrases 5-7 becomes more dense and presents the
first truly melodic singing in this movement starting in bar 98 (see Figure 20.4d). Throughout
this segment (Figure 20.2, 2-E), the Western strings and woodwinds gradually enter to parti
cipate in the accumulation of excitement – first, as short punctuations, and then with longer
rising waves associated with gestures heard in the opening section (Figure 20.2, 1-A). Chen’s
preface to the score describes the final section (Figure 20.2, 2-F) as follows: Nü Wa grew tired,
so she thought of a way to mass produce humans. She dipped a long vine into the
pond, swirled it around, and swung it through the air. When drops of mud spattered
on the ground, they turned into many little people! (Chen 1996a).
Figure 20.4c Movement 2, bars 53-55, zhuihu, reordered to chromatic segment: B C D♭ D (0123).
Figure 20.4d Movement 2, bars 98-99, voice 1, reordered to chromatic segment: G A♭ A B♭ (0123).
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Figure 20.5 Chinese Myths Cantata, movement 2, woodblock solo, bars 62-67.
The portrait of Nü Wa’s swinging and swirling of the vine is heard first in trilled glissandi by the
Western strings, and then by the upward rips of the entire brass section, glissing from lowest to
highest possible note. Everything is building toward the final climax and completion of creation.
Singers who are spread through the audience make their way toward the stage and soon begin
encouraging the audience to add their voices on recited phonemes, such as ‘yo, yo, yo’ or ‘yi, yi, yi’,
or to giggle or speak freely. The instrumentalists, except for the wind players, finally join in with ad
libitum speaking or shouting, creating a climactic ‘swirl of voices’ in the words of Chen Yi (ibid.).
Throughout the movement, links with Chinese traditional music, especially Beijing opera,
are apparent – for example, prominent use of slides, grace notes, large glissandi, reciting style
and the exaggerated singing style of Nü Wa portrayed by the zhuihu. Some of the percussion
patterns also have strong connections with Beijing opera. One of the most striking is the
woodblock solo (Figure 20.5), used during a stop in the action and music of a production to
show that a character is thinking.
Just as in Chinese opera, the pace and dynamics shift, beginning with a tight, ppp trill, and
then a one-bar crescendo to fff accompanied by a sudden shift to a slower rhythmic gesture that
quickly returns to the original trill and a diminuendo (Chen 1997, p. 37). This six-bar transition
occurs while Nü Wa ponders after seeing her face mirrored in the water and recognising
herself. Her action can be viewed as a contemplative exploration of female subjectivity, which
fits with ideas in writings by Simone de Beauvoir (1971) and Luce Irigaray (1985a, 1985b).
Irigaray returns often to the metaphor of a mirror in her feminist critique of the psychoanalytic
approaches of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. According to Australian philosopher Elizabeth
Gross, Irigaray attempts in Speculum of the Other Woman ‘to invert and traverse … the mirror of
self-reflection governing men’s representations of women’ (Gross 1986, p. 65). Springing from
Lacan’s discussion of Alice from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Irigaray attempts ‘to go
through the looking glass … to a Wonderland beyond phallocentrism, in which women may be
able to talk and represent themselves in quite different ways’ (ibid.). Gross summarises Irigaray’s
thinking: ‘Our received images of femininity have been masculine – inverted, projected images of
male ideals and fantasies, images of the male “other” rather than a female subject’ (ibid., p. 68).
Irigaray’s project is to conceptualise woman as a subject in her own right so that she is not
understood only as the inverse of man or as a deficient man. She identifies, metaphorically, the flat
mirror as ‘what privileges the relation of man to his fellow man’ (Irigaray 1985b, p. 154), and a
curved mirror (or speculum) as essential ‘for the relation of woman to “herself” and to her like’,
because it disturbs ‘the staging of representation according to too-exclusively masculine para
meters’ (ibid., p. 155) and allows for woman as an autonomous being.
In this movement, pitch material and timbre have metaphoric significance pointing toward the
all-encompassing nature of Nü Wa and the environment she inhabits, which was the locus for
creation of human life in the mythological story. Chen tweaks some details of the orchestration
for the second movement, beyond the change from erhu to zhuihu, that serve to widen the
overall range and timbre of the orchestra: piccolo replaces both flutes; the clarinets take up E♭ and
bass clarinets; and contrabassoon substitutes for the second bassoon to remind us of the low
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Figure 20.6 Chinese Myths Cantata, movement 2, bars 93-95, Piccolo 1 & 2, E♭ clarinet, Sounding B♭ B
C (012), a Subset of the Main Set (0123).
singing of the village elder at the opening of the first movement. Not only is a wider register
possible, but Chen utilises both high and low extremes which contribute to her expressive timbral
vocabulary. The principal oboe’s first entrance (b. 13) is its lowest possible pitch (B♭ just below
middle C); two bars later, contrabassoon emulates this with its lowest note (also a B♭, b. 15).12 At
the high end of the spectrum, E♭ clarinet and the piccolos have a recurring stratospheric trichord
cluster [B♭ B C] (012) at their highest, or nearly highest, notes with piccolo 1 sounding its highest
note, the C (four octaves above middle C) (see Figure 20.6). In bars 86-95, all three instruments
play interjections as the trichord occurs with less time between each recurrence. Both the
woodwind trichord and brass section rips (mentioned earlier) use a telescoping approach,
sounding closer and closer together to create energy and intensity – something Chen often does,
borrowing from Chinese folk percussion repertoire called shifan luogu.
Another aspect of the inclusiveness of this movement is the frequent presence of all, or
almost all, 12 different pitch classes. Vertical examples occur primarily in the latter stages of the
movement as choral clusters (b. 131 onward). Early in the movement, this event is primarily a
linear array of all 12 pitch classes – for example, the initial long phrase for zhuihu includes all 12
notes (bars 4-11), followed by a second phrase of nine different pitch classes (bars 11-16). This
treatment is not at all conventional 12-tone serialism as pitches repeat and recur and the
standard permutations do not occur.13 However, the impact of Chen’s approach projects
completeness to Nü Wa’s realm.
20.4 Conclusion
In a recent Gramophone article, Kate Molleson wrote very disparagingly about ‘crossover or
fusion’ and called for a paradigm shift that would allow ‘the in-between realms of music to cut
through’ (Molleson 2017). She also noted that ‘porous boundaries between genres are only
interesting when respect for and integrity of both genres is upheld’ (ibid., emphasis added). I
concur and conclude that the approach and work of Chen Yi totally fits this description. As
Chen told critic Joshua Kosman in an article before the premiere of Chinese Myths Cantata:
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I want to speak in a natural way in my own language…. And that is a combination of

everything I have learned from the past – what I learned in the conservatory, and what
I learned in the field collecting folksongs. It’s all a source for my imagination (Chen in
Kosman 1996).
And later in the interview, Chen claims: ‘If you just put them together as Eastern and Western,
then it sounds artificial…. But if you can merge them in your blood, then they sound natural
together’ (ibid.). Chen’s music is revealed as a complex web of influences rather than a simple
blending of East and West. Not only is her music fruitfully heard and analysed through a
transnational lens, but also such an approach seems integral to Chen Yi’s outlook and in the
fabric of her compositions.
Notes
1 I express deep gratitude to Chen Yi for graciously offering insights into her life and compositions as
well as responding to numerous questions with exceptional patience. My thanks and appreciation to
Yunxiang Gao for translations from Chinese, to Jessica Loranger for preparation of musical examples,
and especially to Leta Miller, my co-author for the book, Chen Yi (2020). Portions of this article are
from Chen Yi by Leta E. Miller and J. Michele Edwards. Copyright 2020 by the Board of Trustees of
the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press.
2 Scholars disagree about the number of rusticated youth, ranging from at least 12 to 17 million. See
‘Down to the Countryside Movement’, digital by Dartmouth, https://doi.org/10.1349/ddlp.3749,
which includes relevant photographs and documents.
3 Originally eight model works (five operas, two ballets and an orchestral suite) were created; seven
more works were added in the early 1970s.
4 Huan Li Shi Zhen Xiang, ‘Hái lìshǐ zhēn mào: Deng Xiaoping, 1977, nián pīshì zhīchí zhōngyāng
yīnyuè xuéyuàn kuòzhāo shìjiàn zhēnxiàng’ (Recalling the Real History: Deng Xiao Ping in 1977,
Supporting the truth about the expansion of the Central Conservatory of Music), Boxun.com, 14
September 2007, http://www.peacehall.com/cgi-bin/news/gb_display/print_version.cgi?art=/gb/z_
special/2007/09&link =200709140503.shtml, recounts how the number of high quality applicants
persuaded Deng to increase the size of the first class from 105 to 213. The most recent report (Jones,
2018, p. 6) states that 322 of approximately 17,000 were admitted. In either case, the number of
students accepted is quite small: between 1 and 2%.
5 Many sources give incorrect information on the number of entering and graduating students in the
composition programme. The information presented here comes from Chen Yi (email to author, 8
April 2018), and is verified by photographs of the class at various stages of the programme. In addition,
many sources also site the ‘class of 1977’ even though the programme did not officially commence
until 1978. In general, Chinese sources use 1977 while English-language sources use 1978.
6 An Erhu is a two-stringed fiddle with the bow between the strings, and the performer does not press
the strings against the fingerboard. The zhuihu is a lower pitched relative of the erhu, but with three
strings and a fretless fingerboard against which the strings are pressed while playing. In the premiere
and subsequent recording (and in all performances that Chen is aware of), a zhonghu is substituted for
zhuihu, and it also has a snakeskin-covered resonator and similar timbre. A yangqin is a hammered
dulcimer. The pipa is a four-string fretted lute with articulated fingerboard. A zheng is a zither with
movable bridges.
7 Dance and visual projections are optional and have so far been included in only two performances
beyond the premiere: the 2004 performance in Manchester, England by the BBC Philharmonic, BBC
Singers, Gu Feng Ensemble, and conductor Jason Lai with Bi Ma Dance (2 dancers) and visual
projections; and the 2012 performance in Kansas City, which included visual projections, but no
dancers.
8 Chen Yi had already used this motive as inspiration for Duo Ye (for solo piano, 1984; reworked and
expanded for chamber orchestra, 1984–85 and full orchestra, 1987), and in Symphony No. 2 (1993),
written in memory of her father.
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J. Michele Edwards
9 I follow the nomenclature of Allen Forte, 1973. The structure of Atonal music. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
10 Hear Chen demonstrate the exaggerated inflection of this text line in Johnson, 2004, BBC inter
view, 30:35.
11 The material is also similar to Sprechstimme introduced by composers of the Second Viennese School
and employed by various experimental Western composers since then.
12 Some contrabassoons are capable of producing a low A. Highest possible notes for winds are not
absolutely limited by instrument construction; I am using the current professional upper practical limit.
13 I find some similarity between Chen Yi’s approach here and Anton Webern’s nascent treatment of 12-
tone concepts in Zwei Lieder, Op. 19 (1925–26). Both works include much pitch repetition and
minimal row transposition – traits inconsistent with full-fledged dodecaphonic composition.
References
de Beauvoir, S., 1971. The second sex, trans. & ed. H.M. Parshley. New York: Knopf, Originally published
as Le deuxième sexe, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1949).
Chen, M.-W., 1997. Myths from afar: Chinese Myths Cantata by Chen Yi. DMA thesis. University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. Available from: http://cdm15799.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/
collection/p15799coll3/id/489597
Chen, Y., 1996a. Chinese Myths Cantata, with preface ed. by F. Albinder. Bryn Mawr: Theodore
Presser Co.
Chen, Y., 1996b. The music of Chen Yi. The Women’s Philharmonic and Chanticleer, JoAnn Falletta,
conductor, New Albion, NA090CD. Available online with Naxos Music Library (includes Duo Ye
No. 2, Symphony No. 2, Ge xu (Antiphony) and Chinese Myths Cantata).
de Clef Piñeiro, J., 2001. An interview with Chen Yi. New Music Connoisseur, 9/4, 27–31.
Edwards, J.M., 2003. Women on the podium. In: J.A. Bowen, ed. The Cambridge companion to conducting.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 220–236.
Gross, E., 1986. Irigaray and sexual difference. Australian Feminist Studies, 1/2, Autumn, 63–77.
Irigaray, L., 1985a. Speculum of the other woman, trans. G.C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Originally published as Speculum de l'autre femme (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1974).
Irigaray, L., 1985b. This sex which is not one, trans. C. Porter and C. Burke. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press. Originally published as Ce sexe qui n'en est pas un (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1977).
Johnson, S., 2004. Discovering music – Chen Yi: Chinese Myths Cantata. BBC Radio 3 interview, 6
March. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0202rh4
Jones, S. M., 2018. Crossing the bridge: the story of the class of ’78 and the emergence of new music in
China. World New Music Magazine, 28, 4–15.
Kosman, J., 1996. Classical convergence / composer Chen Yi’s music merges modern with traditional,
East with West. San Francisco Chronicle, 9 June. Available from: http://www.sfgate.com/
entertainment/article/Classical-Convergence-Composer-Chen-Yi-s-music-2978683.php
Miller, L.E., 2019. Beneath the hybrid surface: Baban as a tool for self-definition in the music of Chen Yi.
American Music, 37/3, 328–355.
Miller, L.E. and Edwards, J.M., 2020. Chen Yi. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Molleson, K., 2017. Classical music’s blurred boundaries. Gramophone, 27 June. Available from: https://
www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/classical-music-blurred-boundaries?mc_cid=bbf34b6615&mc_eid=
d52bbc2580
Shaw, C.-S., 2016. Discourses of identity in contemporary East Asian music: Chen Yi, Unsuk Chin and
Karen Tanaka. PhD thesis, University of Oxford. Available from: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/
uuid:ba190cc6-08ee-407d-a507-b4d2c23e619a
Thrasher, A.R., ed., 2016. Chinese music: melodic models in form and practice. New York: Routledge.
Wang, X-X., 2006. Singing your own voice: characteristics of Chen Yi’s work (in Chinese). Unpublished
trans. Y. Gao, People’s Music, September, 9–15.
Zacher, P., 2002. Far from any cliché of porcelain and jade: impressive concert of Dresden Sinfoniker.
Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, 27 May.
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21
CONSIDERING AUTONOMY AND
COLLABORATION IN THREE
CONCERTI BY JENNIFER
HIGDON
Laura Dallman
21.1 Introduction
Over the centuries, composers have forged many different kinds of working relationships with
musicians and audiences. If this could be expressed in a two-dimensional framework, such as a
sliding scale or a grid, one could place these relationships on the framework according to the
control and independence afforded to performers and listeners. For example, you could sketch a
sliding scale with ‘composer-controlled work’ on the left side and ‘performer-controlled work’
on the right side, placing total serialism near the left endpoint and free jazz near the right
endpoint. In total serialism, the composer controls most aspects of performance, determining
not only pitch and rhythm but also dynamics and attack, which is notated in a strict and detailed
score (see Griffiths 2011, ‘Total Serialism’). This limits the amount of interpretive freedom a
performer has because nearly every element of performance is written into the music. In free
jazz, however, the performers are not bound by rigid notation or form (Borgo 2014).
Performers control most aspects of the work during performance, enjoying a large amount of
improvisatory freedom that ultimately creates different iterations of the work each time the
work is performed.
If one continued to consider and place different working relationships on this sliding scale,
they would fall at various points between total serialism and free jazz. The more points created,
the richer one’s understanding of the kinds of relationships between composer, musicians and
audiences would be. This, however, would require much more than a chapter in a book! Thus,
this chapter considers just one possible composer for this hypothetical scale: Jennifer Higdon.
Higdon is one of the most thought-provoking living composers who could be placed on this
scale for two reasons. First, she consciously creates spaces that encourage performer and listener
autonomy, both in her overall aesthetic and in specific works of music. Second, she often fosters
this sense of autonomy through collaboration.
This chapter considers autonomy specifically in regards to performers and listeners of music
by using a rather broad definition.1 Drawing from various dictionaries, autonomy is ‘the ability
to make your own decisions without being controlled by anyone else’, and ‘self-directing
freedom’.2 Musical autonomy, then, involves performers and listeners acting independently
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-21 209

Laura Dallman
from external forces, making choices that draw on their musical knowledge, training, ex
periences or preferences, but not being bound or obligated to make choices by any of these
musical understandings.
21.2 Collaborating with musicians: the soloist(s)

Higdon is a composer who seems to thrive on collaboration. She works on commission and has
made it a habit to familiarise herself with the soloist or ensemble who will premiere her work.3
Performers often have unique strengths or techniques that she likes to showcase, and, as such,
Higdon regularly turns to soloists and ensembles for inspiration. In other words, Higdon’s music
incorporates their skills and highlights their talents, not just her musical ideas (Hahn and Higdon
2009a).4 This creates a sense of ownership for the performers which, in turn, creates finished
works with a collective spirit.
More specifically, Higdon speaks regularly with performers during her writing process,
soliciting thoughts and comments about the current state of a movement or piece. For example,
when composing her Violin Concerto, which was premiered by Hilary Hahn in February of
2009, Higdon sent multiple drafts to Hahn. Hahn returned them with requests to make the
concerto harder, challenging Higdon to push her further. Higdon took these requests to heart,
increasing the level of difficulty to acknowledge and display Hahn’s capabilities (Raines 2014,
pp. 121–122).5 As such, Hahn became an integral part of the compositional process.
Higdon and Hahn invite listeners into a version of these conversations with a series of three
YouTube videos recorded directly after the world premiere of Higdon’s Violin Concerto
(Hahn and Higdon 2009a, 2009b, 2009c). Their conversation ranges from the initial con
ception of the work through to its performance, and it also addresses some of Higdon’s other
works. The approximately 17 minutes of conversation is charming, and provides interested
listeners with insights about composition and performance. The videos also clearly project an
attitude of collaboration. Not only have Higdon and Hahn worked together to create, rehearse
and perform the Violin Concerto, but they are speaking collectively and publicly about it.
Concerto 4-3, a trio concerto for two violins and bass soloists, offers us another view of
dialogue between composer and performer. In both the full score and the piano reduction, we
can see queries directed to specific individuals.6 Written for, and premiered by, the American
group Time for Three, a string trio known for their bluegrass sound and improvisatory style,
Concerto 4-3 was written specifically to showcase the group’s original musicians, violinists
Zachary De Pue, Nicolas Kendall and double-bassist Ranaan Meyer.7 In bar 15 of the first
movement in the full score, Higdon writes to Meyer: ‘Ranaan, try this with both the slaps and
regularly plucked pizz notes on the E and see which sounds better for you’ (Higdon 2007a,
p. 2). In bar 77 of the piano reduction, she asks De Pue, ‘Zach, do you want to try deadening
the strings for some of these notes? Or just leave as is?’ (Higdon 2007b, p. 16). Through these
questions, Higdon allows the performers some musical liberty, asking for their professional
opinion instead of simply choosing techniques she thinks sound best.
Direct communication during the compositional process is critical for collaboration during a
work’s genesis. Concerto 4-3, the Violin Concerto and a third work, Higdon’s Percussion
Concerto, also invite collaboration during performance, specifically through passages where
soloists improvise. In these concerti, soloists are asked to create some or all of the elements of an
improvisatory section, requiring a number of personal musical choices that ultimately result in a
collaborative performance of written and improvised material. In these three concerti, two
types of improvisation occur. ‘Free’ or ‘open’ improvisation includes passages with no per
formative restrictions in the score.8 All elements of performance are left to the soloists’
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Three concerti by Jennifer Higdon
discretion. Higdon indicates these sections either by the word ‘cadenza’, which may appear
above an empty bar with a fermata, or empty bars with a horizontal line above or below the
staff. The horizontal line implies that playing occurs but that the soloist will supply the material.
Occasionally, this type of improvisation occurs over a set number of bars; other times the soloist
chooses the length of the improvisation. ‘Guided’ improvisation includes passages where some
musical elements are notated in the score and some are left to the soloists’ discretion. For
example, Higdon may designate rhythm but allow the soloists to choose pitches. Conversely,
she may provide a general melodic contour but require the soloist to decide what rhythm and
dynamic is fitting. Guided improvisation typically occurs over orchestral accompaniment and is
always a set number of bars.
Concerto 4-3 offers the most examples of free improvisation. For instance, a bass solo with the
‘length to be determined’ by the bassist opens the second movement (Higdon 2007a, p. 26).
Bassist Ranaan Meyer improvises for just over 30 seconds in the recording with the Fort Worth
Symphony Orchestra (FWSO Live 2012). In the third movement, each soloist has a passage of
open improvisation over orchestral accompaniment. From bars 127–142, the bass soloist im
provises over orchestral material in Ab major/F minor.9 In this same section, the first violin soloist
joins the bassist with open improvisation at bar 135. The second violin soloist has a shorter free
passage from bars 151–154.10 Most notable, however, is the end of the first movement. Higdon
marks ‘Cadenza’ in the score but indicates that it is optional. If the cadenza is played, the orchestra
and the soloists decrescendo to nothing, fading out to set up a space for the soloists to begin
improvising in virtually any fashion. Once the cadenza is finished, the first movement is complete:
there is no concluding orchestral passage.11 Alternatively, the soloists could choose to omit the
cadenza and conclude with Higdon’s written fade-out from bars 110-115.
Like Concerto 4-3, the Percussion Concerto includes an improvisatory cadenza set up by an
orchestral decrescendo. Instruments cease playing one by one until only the cello and the bass
are left repeating the final, quiet notes of a D pedal point. The percussion section then begins
playing in earnest, providing a five-bar, notated introduction before the soloist enters. All of the
percussionists play together for 26 bars, a section that includes some freely improvised bars for
the soloist on temple blocks and trap table. Finally, a fermata over a single bar indicates a
cadenza for the soloist. The soloist is expected to improvise freely; Higdon provides no in
dication in the full score regarding length or specific percussion timbres.12 It makes sense,
however, for the soloist to stay at the percussion station with the bongos, timbales and tom-
toms, due to notation leading into, and out of, the cadenza that requires these instruments.
When the soloist concludes, a final orchestral section does occur, which marks the structure of
this work as different from Concerto 4-3. Additionally, the soloist has 19 beats of open im
provisation in the last bars of the work.
While free or open improvisation occurs only in Concerto 4-3 and the Percussion Concerto,
all three concerti include sections of guided improvisation. For instance, in the first movement
of the Violin Concerto, there is a short passage that includes a graphic on the staff, identifying
the direction of the notes but not the exact pitches. Specifically, in bars 94-98, partially shown
in Figure 21.1, Higdon instructs the violin soloist to play intervals of seconds ‘fast and furious,
moving along the general lines of this graph, ending up at the very top of the range’ (Higdon
2008, p. 9). Although there are dynamic markings in the score, the soloist is also instructed to
vary the dynamics widely and wildly. The soloist makes the final decisions on exact pitch
material, dynamic variation and rhythm.
Similar graphics indicating the musical contour appear in the first movement of Concerto 4-3,
specifically in bars 42–45, 49–52 and 96–98. Each graphic also has written instructions. At bar 42,
for example, the first violin soloist is instructed to ‘improvise, tremolos or scales or slides or trills,
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Laura Dallman
in
ei
Figure 21.1 Higdon, Violin Concerto, First Movement, Violin Solo, bars 94–95
ther bowed trem. or in varied rhythms (or any combination of ), all sul pont’ (Higdon 2007b,
p. 9). Before these written instructions and graphic at bar 42, however, Higdon provides a dif
ferent type of guided improvisation. In Figure 21.2, which shows bars 39–42, we can see that
Higdon writes descending thirty-second notes without noteheads, beginning in bar 40. She
supplies the rhythm and contour but no pitches. As a broader section, then, bar 40 allows the
soloist to choose specific pitches while bar 42 allows the soloist to choose specific pitches and
rhythms. As the passage continues, the soloist makes an increasing amount of musical decisions.13
Guided improvisation is also found throughout the Percussion Concerto. In bar 135, where
the soloist is working with temple blocks, Higdon intersperses groups of sixteenth notes with
sextuplets, indicating for the soloist to ‘constantly change pitches where noteheads are missing’
(Higdon 2005, p. 18).14 At bar 138, Higdon transitions to a section where the rhythm is
consistently indicated but all noteheads are missing, allowing the soloist to ‘constantly change
pitch’ (ibid., p. 19). Alternatively, in bar 231, Higdon provides the rhythm and a range of
pitches and instructs the soloist to ‘PLAY any of these pitches at rhythm below’ (ibid., p. 31).15
While some may consider the inclusion of improvisation limiting, as it could exclude
performers uncomfortable with improvising from preparing and performing these concerti,
many musicians seem to find improvisation appealing. Several percussionists have performed
the Percussion Concerto and a handful of violinists have played the Violin Concerto.16
Improvisation can be attractive as performers are encouraged to contribute their own musical
thoughts and ideas, putting a highly personalised stamp on the performance. By giving per
formers choices of pitch, dynamics and other musical expressions, Higdon encourages in
dividualism and allows the soloists to take an active role in completing the compositional
process during performance. By also listening to their comments and suggestions during the
compositional process, Higdon uses their knowledge and expertise to the fullest. Higdon may
be the credited composer of these concerti, but each performance ultimately becomes a col
laborative effort between the performers and the composer, celebrating and encouraging
moments of improvisational autonomy alongside the notated score.
21.3 Collaborating with musicians: the conductor

In addition to her collaborative attitude with performers, Higdon shows concern for conductors
in the way she notates her scores. She clearly marks and edits her scores, not only to make the
212
Figure 21.2 Higdon, Concerto 4-3, first movement, bars 39–42.
music easy to read, but also to reassure musicians as they interpret the score. If Higdon is not
able to be at rehearsals for a performance, she wants the musicians, especially the conductor,
to feel confident interpreting one of her works (Kelly 2013, pp. 43–45). For example, tempo
markings are large to make them easy for the conductor to see (ibid., p. 45).17 There is no
question when the tempo changes or how it changes. All bar numbers are large and provided at
the top of the full score, allowing for easy reference during rehearsals. Further notes about
sound production and performance techniques are also readily visible.
Higdon tries to give conductors a sense of interpretive freedom too. When she is able to
attend rehearsals, she tries to limit her comments. She is aware that each ensemble is different, as
is every hall, so sometimes balance and tempi have to be adjusted to the space. She is also aware
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Laura Dallman
that she has to give the piece over to the ensemble. By the time of the performance, she says she
is able to let the piece go. In fact, in an interview with conductor Jennifer Kelly, Higdon
remarked:
I don’t know if composers are ever the best conductors of their own works. I really
have doubts about that. I actually trust other people much more than I trust my
interpretations (ibid., p. 44).18
This is an attitude that has appeared in written and recorded interviews for many years. Yet in
personal correspondence with a member of Time for Three, it became clear to this author that
there is more to think about regarding Higdon’s approach to performance interpretation.19
Although one may argue that Higdon is setting up a space for autonomy, it begs the question
whether musicians actually feel like they have autonomy when they play. Does her presence at
rehearsals or a concert performance impact feelings or exercises of autonomy? Interviews with
musicians who have performed her works, including soloists, orchestral members, chamber
ensembles and conductors, could shed light on this question.
21.4 Collaboration with listeners: the audience

Just as Higdon asserts there is no single way to perform her works, she also maintains there is no
single way to hear her works. Higdon has stated in interviews that she regards different listener
perspectives or interpretations of her works as valid (ibid., pp. 43–45). In fact, when an en
semble performs a work, she does not rely on audience members knowing the names of pieces
or reading the programme notes. Although she describes having particular thoughts or ideas in
mind, and hopes these come through clearly in performance, she acknowledges that people
have had, and will have, different reactions to her music (Higdon 2005). In fact, in an interview
with Frank Oteri, Higdon describes programme notes going too far in a wrong direction. She
states:
People have written program notes for my pieces, and I’ve looked at the program
notes and thought, ‘Wow, they’re off the mark! They’re really, really off the mark!’
But it’s going to happen. If you’re getting a lot of performances, things like that
happen by mistake, you know: ‘Oh we forgot to put the program notes in’. Or,
‘Someone just wrote something. They thought maybe you were interested in
painting’. For blue cathedral, I was like, ‘Well, I guess that’s not untrue’ (Oteri and
Higdon 2007).
Discerning readers should notice two things in the above quotation. First, although Higdon
does encourage her listeners to have a sense of interpretive freedom, she also implies that her
works were conceived with a particular meaning. There is a range of interpretations that will or
should make more sense than others. Second, Higdon does not seem to dwell negatively on an
interpretation that is unlike hers. Here, she chalks ‘interesting’ programme notes up to honest
mistakes not malicious intents. She also allows for the possibility that while an interpretation
might not describe her intentions, it may not be false.
As listeners, we have the ability to listen to music and think whatever we please. People can
read programme notes or attend pre-concert lectures in order to have a better understanding of
214
what a composer intends, but it is not required that people hear music a specific way. In fact, all
musical listening and interpretation could be considered autonomous. No one monitors the
symphonic aisles to make sure the audience has a united interpretation of a musical perfor
mance. We all have unique ways of hearing and thinking.
The critical concept is the credit Higdon gives to her listeners. She acknowledges that while
listeners’ ideas may not mirror her original intentions, they still have validity. For new or
perhaps infrequent listeners of symphonic music, this affirming attitude can be momentous.
Unfortunately, many people do not attend symphonic concerts because they believe they
cannot understand or hear music correctly (see Harlow 2014, p. 53).20 If these same people
could feel a sense of confidence, knowing that their listening experience is just as valuable as
someone with years of musical training, we might see a very different kind of audience in the
concert hall.
In fact, Higdon dedicates a significant amount of time to creating an atmosphere of inclusion
and openness regarding her music. She regularly speaks to audiences about her music, engaging
in pre-concert and post-concert talks and discussions. She has a strong media presence, giving
interviews for the radio, YouTube and other outlets. She also writes programme notes that are
often included in concert programmes, but that can also be accessed on her website.21 In these
situations, she provides contextual information about her work, not prescribed interpretations.
By offering these opportunities for the public to interact with her, Higdon fosters a sense of
dialogue which mimics the dialogue she creates with performers while composing a new work.
Interested listeners are warmly invited to talk with Higdon, once again placing value on
conversation and, by extension, collaboration.
In sum, Higdon allows and encourages listeners and performers to play an active and col
laborative role in her work. She recognises that people are different, each having unique ex
periences and individual ways of hearing and understanding music, and she welcomes those
differences. And perhaps this is the most convivial aspect of Higdon’s style: her personality
encourages people who encounter her work to feel a sense of artistic independence and
ownership. Higdon is not dogmatic about her work; rather, she consciously creates spaces for
musical autonomy. She openly cultivates relationships and the exchange of ideas between the
composer, the performers and the audience, and, in doing so, invites everyone to fully parti
cipate in her music.
Notes
1 This chapter grew out of research first presented at Bangor University in September 2017. Many
thanks to my colleagues Molly Ryan and Christine Wisch, and also my father, Bruce Dallman, for their
feedback on the latest stage of my research!
2 Cambridge English Dictionary, s.v. ‘Autonomy’, and Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. ‘Autonomy’. The Oxford
English Dictionary also offers this definition: ‘freedom from external control or influence; independence.’ See
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘Autonomy’.
3 Higdon has mentioned this practice on a number of occasions. For a sampling of resources, see Duffie
and Higdon (2004); McKinney (2011, p. 158); Raines (2014, pp. 121–122); Brown and Higdon
(2015); Whitney and Higdon (2019); and Hahn and Higdon (2009a, 2009b and 2009c). See also
Barrett (2014).
4 During the first two minutes of this video, Higdon speaks about considering Hahn’s playing style and
personal tastes while composing the Violin Concerto. In the second part of this interview, Higdon also
talks about writing for larger groups (see Hahn and Higdon 2009b). Outside of musical skills, Higdon
has also drawn on the personality or character of the musicians (see Phillips 2005, pp. 4–5). Having
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Laura Dallman
been a performer herself, she also describes being very aware of performer and instrument limitations
(see Raines 2014, p. 120).
5 Hahn also speaks about this issue in her interview with Higdon beginning at 2:20, remarking that it is
the soloist’s job to communicate with the composer about what is and what is not musically feasible
(Hahn and Higdon 2009a).
6 One direct query for violinist Zach De Pue appears in bar 77 of the piano reduction. Version 1 of the
full score contains two direct inquires for double-bassist Ranaan Meyer in bars 15 and 38; there are
none for De Pue. These same two inquiries to Meyer appear in Version 2 of the full score. These
queries always begin with their first names.
7 Since the premiere of Concerto 4-3, De Pue has left the group and has been replaced by Charles Yang.
8 The designations of ‘free’ and ‘open’, as well as ‘guided’ in the next paragraph, are this author’s own.
9 In bar 127 of the full score, Version 2, Higdon indicates for the bass to ‘improv [in the] Key of Db/use
G natural sometimes’ (Higdon 2007a, p. 65).
10 Additional passages of free improvisation occur in the third movement for the bass in bars 157-162,
and for all the players in bars 65-68 and the final five bars.
11 Time for Three performed a cadenza for its recording of Concerto 4-3 with the Fort Worth Symphony
Orchestra. It lasts about four and a half minutes, comprising just under half the length of the first
movement (FWSO Live 2012).
12 Collin Currie premiered the Percussion Concerto and Higdon dedicated the work to him. His
commercially recorded cadenza lasts about three minutes (LPO 2008). Other professional recordings
by the North Texas Wind Symphony and the U.S. Marine Band feature slightly longer cadenzas at
about three and a half minutes each. A host of student performances are available on YouTube and
their cadenzas often range between three and four minutes. Two recent examples include perfor
mances by Cameron Leach (Eastman Wind Ensemble 2018) and Danielle Gonzales (UMich
Symphony Band 2018).
13 Higdon uses a similar technique in the third movement, setting up open improvisation in bars 65-68
with eight bars of guided improvisation in the violins. The guided improvisation includes rhythm and
note contour but not exact pitches.
14 From bars 135-137, the groups without noteheads are always groups of eight sixteenth notes.
15 In this same bar, the celesta has a similar instruction in all caps above clearly notated rhythm: ‘ANY OF
THE PREV. MEAS.’ PITCHES’.
16 Aside from Collin Currie, Master Gunnery Sergeant Christopher Rose of the U.S. Marine Band is one
of the most significant performers of the Percussion Concerto. Rose premiered the symphonic band
version of the concerto in 2009. As mentioned in endnote 12, many students have also performed the
work. Regarding the Violin Concerto, Holly Mulcahy and Benjamin Beilman have given notable
performances. For sample reviews of Beilman and Mulcahy, see Kosman (2018) and Wilhoit (2015). In
personal correspondence from March of 2019 that this author had with a member of Time for Three,
he stated he was not aware of any other group playing Concerto 4-3. In a personal email from April
2019, however, Cheryl Lawson, Vice President of Lawdon Press, confirmed to the author that other
groups have played the work but not at a professional level. This is interesting to consider in con
junction with the labelling of solo parts in the score. In all versions of Concerto 4-3, the solo parts are
labelled with the original players’ names: Zach, Nick, and Ranaan, giving them a unique sense of
ownership of this concerto.
17 In Higdon’s scores, tempo markings are clearly set off from everything around them by their sizable
font. As Higdon self-publishes her music, this must be her own choice as opposed to an editor’s choice.
18 See also Hahn and Higdon (2009b). Starting at 4:05, Higdon describes enjoying giving performers
artistic freedom. She also mentions that performances without variation would be monotonous. Later,
around 5:54, she describes the pleasure of hearing different interpretations during live performances.
19 In personal correspondence between this author and a member of Time for Three, he addressed
autonomy specifically in regards to rehearsals, explaining that there are times when Higdon encourages
autonomy and times when she pushes for something specific.
20 Personally, this author has heard this sentiment often. Troy Nottingham, founder of the market re
search group Bantam, also describes this sentiment well (Nottingham 2016). Many symphony or
chestras have also worked to assuage attendance fears with online FAQ and etiquette resources.
21 Direct interactions with audiences are important to Higdon. She stated in an interview with Jennifer
Kelly: ‘I think about [being an advocate for music] all the time. I do it by going out with orchestras and
216
talking to anyone who will listen. Six concerts in five days. I did preconcerts for all of them and
postconcerts for quite a few, and then I did a couple of public talks. And then I did a radio show and
newspaper interviews. It was a lot of music, and it was a lot of talking, but I think that’s what it takes’
(Kelly 2013, p. 49). In an interview with Marianne Lipanovich, Higdon describes introducing her
works at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (Lipanovich and Higdon 2010). Higdon has also
described public speaking engagements in bookstores and at colleges (see McKinney 2011, p. 161).
References
Barrett, M.S., ed., 2014. Collaborative creative thought and practice in music. Burlington: Ashgate.
Brown, N. and Higdon, J., 2015. ‘Preconcert interview with Jennifer Higdon’, Library of Congress
webcast. 7 March. Available from: http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6766
Borgo, D., 2014. Free jazz. Grove Music Online. Available from: 10.1093/gmo/978156159263
0.article.A2256589
Duffie, B., and Higdon, J., 2004. Composer Jennifer Higdon: a conversation with Bruce Duffie. 14
February. Available from: http://www.bruceduffie.com/higdon.html
Eastman Wind Ensemble, 2018. Percussion Concerto by Jennifer Higdon (video); Cameron Leach
(percussion), Eastman Wind Ensemble, Mark Davis Scatterday (conductor). 24 July. Available from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=4qxVCoX5VUA
FWSO Live, 2012. Higdon, Concerto 4-3’ on Take Six (2CDs); Time for Three, Fort Worth Symphony
Orchestra and Miguel Harth-Bedoya (conductor), FWSO Live. The five other composers featured on
this release are Gabriela Lena Frank, Kevin Putts, John B. Hedges, Peter Boyer and Behzad Ranibaran.
Griffiths, P., 2011. Serialism. Grove Music Online. Available from: 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.
article.25459.
Hahn, H. and Higdon, J., 2009a. ‘Interview with Jennifer Higdon’, hilaryhahnvidoes. 9 February.
Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRHR6NyVRAA
Hahn, H. and Higdon, J., 2009b. ‘Interview with Jennifer Higdon’, hilaryhahnvidoes. 9 February.
Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWGhLPEblR4
Hahn, H. and Higdon, J., 2009c. ‘Interview with Jennifer Higdon’, hilaryhahnvidoes. 9 February.
Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI8AsoVyOFc
Harlow, B., 2014. The road to results: effective practices for building arts audiences. In: Wallace studies in building
arts audiences. New York: Wallace Foundation. Available from: https://www.wallacefoundation.org/
knowledge-center/Documents/The-Road-to-Results-Effective-Practices-for-Building-Arts-Audiences.pdf
Higdon, J., 2005. Percussion Concerto. Philadelphia: Lawdon Press.
Higdon, J., 2007a. Concerto 4-3. Full score, version 2. Philadelphia: Lawdon Press.
Higdon, J., 2007b. Concerto 4-3. Piano reduction. Philadelphia: Lawdon Press.
Higdon, J., 2008. Violin Concerto. Piano reduction. Philadelphia: Lawdon Press.
Kelly, J., 2013. Jennifer Higdon. In: In her own words: conversations with composers in the United States.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 42–60.
Kosman, J., 2018. Violinist Benjamin Beilman brings joy to Berkeley Symphony season opener. San
Francisco Chronicle Datebook, 5 October. Available from: https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/
entertainment/violinist-benjamin-beilman-brings-joy-to-berkeley-symphony-season-opener
Lipanovich, M. and Higdon, J., 2010. Composer Jennifer Higdon: enjoying an explosive year… and
career. San Francisco Classical Voice, 25 July. Available from: https://www.sfcv.org/events-calendar/
artist-spotlight/composer-jennifer-higdon-enjoying-an-explosive-year-and-career
LPO., 2008. ‘Jennifer Higdon, Percussion Concerto’ (CD); Colin Currie (percussion), London
Philharmonic Orchestra, Marin Alsop (conductor), LPO-0035. Other works featured on this CD are
Ades, Chamber Symphony, Op. 2 and Macmillan, The Confession of Isobel Gowdie.
McKinney, D., 2011. Jennifer Higdon (1962–). In: M.K. Slayton ed. Women of influence in contemporary
music: nine American composers. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 141–189.
Nottingham, T., 2016. Why people don’t go to the Symphony. Bantam Group Blog, 16 February. Available
from: https://thebantamgroup.com/blog/why-people-dont-go-to-the-symphony
Oteri, F.J. and Higdon, J., 2007. Jennifer Higdon: down to earth (interview). NewMusicBox, 1 September.
Available from: http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/jennifer-higdon-down-to-earth/
217
Laura Dallman
Phillips, B.R., 2005. Jennifer Higdon: a stylistic analysis of selected flute and orchestral works. DMA
thesis, Arizona State University.
Raines, R., 2014. Jennifer Higdon. In: Composition in the digital world: conversations with 21st-century composers.
New York: Oxford University Press, 114–126.
UMich Symphony Band., 2018. ‘Jennifer Higdon - Percussion Concerto for Solo Percussion and Band’
(video); Danielle Gonzalez (percussion). University of Michigan Symphony Band, Michael Haithcock
(conductor), 6 October. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJVgPXV6-CA
Whitney, S. and Higdon, J., 2019. Conversation with composer Jennifer Higdon. The Finale Blog, 8
March. Available from: https://www.finalemusic.com/blog/conversation-with-composer-jennifer-
higdon/
Wilhoit, M.R., 2015. Review of Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto. Chattanooga Times Free Press, 13
March.
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22
DECODING THE RIDDLE: THE
TEA-PARTY SCENE IN UNSUK
CHIN’S ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Ji Yeon Lee
ALICE: I know I have to beat time when I learn music.

MAD HATTER: He won’t stand beating.1
The 2007 Munich Opera Festival, held at the Bavarian State Opera, opened with the premiere
of Unsuk Chin’s one-act opera Alice in Wonderland. Adapted from Lewis Carroll’s fantasy novel
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with a libretto co-written by Chin and playwright David
Henry Hwang, the opera is replete with apparent nonsense and illogical situations, dialogue
and behaviour in fairy-tale settings. And just as Carroll’s witty, scintillating wordplay teases
and invigorates readers, the operatic adaptation adds its own layer of meaning and un
conventionality through the dense, expansive, polychromatic musical construction. This
musical-dramatic compounding raises a question central to the aesthetics of adaptations in
general, and about the relationship between Carroll’s text and Chin’s music specifically: how
does the music express – or not – the irony, paradox, palindrome, pun, satire and allegory in the
text? How does the music adopt or play with literary tricks and techniques in the different
medium?
Structurally and narratively, Chin and Hwang’s libretto is faithful to Carroll’s story. The
opera’s eight scenes retain the novel’s overall organisation, with two exceptions: the ‘Lobster
Quadrille’ is omitted, and Alice does not wake up from the dream in the conclusion, creating
an open ending. The organisation of scenes in the opera vis à vis the novel is shown in
Figure 22.1. Likewise, Carroll’s words provide the bulk of the libretto and inform the rest,
preserving the wit and evocativeness of the original tale (see Kibel 1974; Birns 1984;
Beer 2011).
Equal to Carroll’s vivid verbiage is Chin’s score, a kaleidoscopic sound spectrum which taps
into a diverse palette of compositional devices across eras and styles. The opera is a stylistic
hodgepodge, integrating characteristic features and techniques from Baroque to contemporary
musics: the use of harpsichord, countertenor, Fortspinnung passages and the learned style from the
Baroque era;2 the brilliant style of Baroque instrumental music and the Classical concerto; re
citative gestures from Classical opera;3 patter song and rap singing; tone clusters, shifting and
composite metres, and Sprechgesang from twentieth-century masters; a parody of an extremely
familiar tune; faux-improvisatory performance mimicking jazz techniques; and so on. However,
Chin’s compositional language is no mere fusion of diverse stylistic tokens, nor is the opera
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-22 219

Ji Yeon Lee
Figure 22.1 Organisation of the Opera Alice in Wonderland in Comparison with that of the Novel
limited to a random aggregation of its disparate characters and media. In fact, the composer’s
deep-rooted interest in word-music relationship sparked the dizzying array of the musical styles
used.4 Regarding the expression of the textual nonsense in music, Chin says:
For me, it was not an option to reproduce nonsense through aleatoric methods. On
the other hand, I wanted to avoid giving very narrow interpretations of the book –
whether psychoanalytically or otherwise (Chin, cited in Zuber 2011, p. 133).
Chin does not seek to transfer concrete content or feelings of text in music, asserting that ‘music
and literature are strongly autonomous “languages” that often stand in each other’s way in their
relation’ (ibid., p. 138). Chin’s music, therefore, does not imitate the text merely passively or in
the manner of text painting. This does not, however, disavow any coherence or unity between
the music and text in this opera; instead, the essential compositional question regarding that
relationship is how music and text interact and communicate with each other. In the case of
Alice, this is seen in how its capricious and exuberantly random text collides or is brought into
rapprochement with the music.
The mad tea-party scene uniquely encapsulates these essential textual and musical issues as
they are explored in the opera.5 The libretto itself operates on a logic grounded more in how
words sound rather than what they mean, unfolding the story as much for the ear as for a
narrative. The excursion into the nonsensical world – and its words – starts when Alice comes
upon a tea party hosted by the March Hare with the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse in at
tendance. Initially, the March Hare and the Mad Hatter blurt out, ‘No room!’. Alice retorts,
‘There is plenty of room’, setting up a blunt contradiction between the words of the partiers
and the environment seen by the outsider Alice.6 The March Hare goes on to invite Alice to
‘Have some wine!’, but Alice responds that ‘I don’t see any wine’. These brief exchanges
indicate not only the mutability of words in communication, but a disjunction in perceived
realities – both topics that will run throughout the scene.
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Decoding the riddle
The Mad Hatter then asks a baffling question: ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’. Alice and
the March Hare search in vain for an answer. When the Mad Hatter reveals that the riddle does
not have a logical solution, Alice bemoans how he wasted her time with it, leading the Hatter to
discourse briefly on ‘Time’ as a personified force. The partiers then sing a distorted version of
‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’, in which the simple lullaby becomes a cascade of free-association
lyrics revolving around end-rhymes. The subject of ‘Time’ is brought to focus in the Mad
Hatter’s lament on the inescapability of the tea-time space in which Time has imprisoned them;
the gloomy phrases regularly stress the word ‘time’ like a rhymed ending. Finally, the Dormouse
sings a rapid number ‘drawing all manner of things that begin with an M’.
With its through-line of ‘time’ as both subject and sound material, and continuous, riotous
spinning-out of words based on their aural relationships, the tea-party scene weaves a sprawling,
giddy web of sonic excitement. Chin sets this musically charged text primarily in a gradually
devolving, dissolving spiral towards ever-increasing chaos. The Riddle scene, Twinkle parody
and M monologue each unroll in irresistible acceleration: the Riddle scene starts with a strict
text-music coordination that gradually loses coherence until its abrupt halt; the loose strophic
treatment of the Twinkle parody devolves towards gibberish patter singing; the M monologue
is a virtual race towards tumultuous cacophony. A notable, poignant exception to this mode is
the regular rhythm and steady pace towards stasis of the Mad Hatter’s Time monologue.
Figure 22.2 illustrates the organisation of the tea party scene: an orchestral prelude, the four
set pieces and three transitions between these.7 Time is presented from the start as a broken but
reigning force in the tea party through the orchestral prelude and stage pantomime. The lights
come up on the March Hare, the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse, while an array of background
characters attempt to repair the clock on the wall, eternally fixed at six o’clock; a watchmaker,
a mechanic, a scientist, a doctor and nurse, a physicist, a priest and a demolitions worker are
enlisted, but none are successful. The dramatic frame for the scene is thus the distortion of time
in the tea-party space – off-time and out-of-time. Chin realises this bustling opening in an
anachronistic Baroque pastiche, woven through with rapidly ascending and descending six
teenths amplifying the stage business.
The text-music relationship is explored in its greatest variety – from strict to careless co
ordination between word and pitch – in the Riddle number that follows. This set piece consists
of two parts, each of which begins with a recitative gesture in the harpsichord and a pre
sentation of the riddle by the Mad Hatter. The first part (bars 564-648) is set in the gradually
devolving dramatic-temporal mode, the second in recitative texture. The Mad Hatter poses his
question in bar 583, sparking a series of statements on the sameness between spoken sentences
and their meanings.8 At first, the word-pitch coordination is strict: in bars 594-595, the pitch
and rhythm of each word in the Mad Hatter’s statement ‘I am what I eat’ (G, C, F#, Eb, A, in
quarter notes) is retained for the following ‘I eat what I am’ (Eb, A, F#, G, C). Both statements
thus share a pitch-class set (01369). This mirroring principle is reconfirmed in the second pair of
statements given by the March Hare in bar 595: ‘I know what I miss’, and ‘I miss what I know’;
although now given in eighth notes, this pair connects to that prior through the use of the
subset (013). The word-music scheme begins to waver slightly in the third pair of sentences
(bars 596–599), a rearrangement of the first pair: Alice’s statement, ‘I am what I eat’ (A, C, B,
C, A) and the March Hare’s response, ‘I eat what I am’ (C, A, B, A, C) have the same pitch-
class set, but the note values are altered: a dotted half and a half note set to ‘I eat’ in the first
sentence shift to a half and a dotted half note in the second. Nonetheless, the question of
whether the various paired sentences mean the same thing is answered more or less positively by
the shared musical and textual elements.
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Ji Yeon Lee
Figure 22.2 Organisation of the ‘Mad-Tea Party’ Scene
The established pattern starts to veer substantially in bars 604-605. When the Mad Hatter’s
‘I kill what I love’ (B, A, C, B, A) is echoed by Alice and March Hare’s ‘I love what I kill’
(Alice: A, G#, F#, A, G#; March Hare: F#, E, D, F#, G#), there is no predictable alignment
between pitch, rhythm and word; only the Mad Hatter’s pitch-class set (013) is shared by Alice.
From bar 634, per Chin’s annotation, ‘the three [Alice, March Hare, and Mad Hatter] become
crazier, and begin laughing hysterically’. The word-pitch coordination accordingly becomes
increasingly liberated: momentum-generating asymmetrical metric divisions, 2+3 and 3+2,
hack away at the remnants of regularity; musical pitch is dispensed with altogether in bar 639 as
Alice and the March Hare resort to repeatedly shouting ‘same thing’. The Riddle’s final phase
completely degenerates into a raving clamour of increasingly rapid metric alternation, randomly
placed dissonant block chords, and Stravinskian irregular accents, creating an aural collision as
meaningless as the Riddle itself.
As if a curtain coming down on the bedlam, the harpsichord steps in with a recitative gesture
at bar 649 (ad libitum, crotchet = ca. 66), hearkening back to the archaic music heard at the
beginning of the Riddle number, and ushering in the second part of this set piece. Now,
dispensing with the dramatic-temporal mode of verbal devolution and musical chaos, the Mad
Hatter restates the question. This time, instead of playing with words, Alice and the March
Hare articulate their (reasonable) answers using a recitative-like, phrase-emphasizing dialogue
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Decoding the riddle
texture. But the Mad Hatter rejects all of their answers. Tired of the Mad Hatter’s repeated
‘No!’, Alice gives up in frustration, marking the beginning of Transition 1.
This transition is more than a connecting passage between set pieces. Rather than offering
reconciliation or closure, Alice’s annoyed statement – ‘I think you might do something
better with time than wasting it asking riddles that have no answer’ – prompts the March
Hare and the Mad Hatter to expound upon the issue of ‘Time’.9 Set in a dialogue format,
they reveal the background for the dash between tea and time: a quarrel between
the Mad Hatter and Time that occurred ‘last March’ before the March Hare went mad. The
March Hare stresses Time’s personified presence: ‘If you knew time as well as I do you
wouldn’t talk about wasting “it”. Time is a “him”’. Time’s presence, however, materialises
only in the form of music with the introduction of the ‘Time’ motive: a sfffz low C repeated
throughout Transition 1.10 Yet in addressing Time not as an abstract concept but as a
dramatic (albeit unembodied) character, the Hare and Hatter suggest a more sinister un
dercurrent to their tea-party revelry.
Transition 1 concludes with the Mad Hatter moving on smoothly to the next number.
He sets the stage for the following parodic performance with a mannered announcement: ‘At
the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, Where I sing’. Significantly extended from
the novel, the ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ parody is a string of nonsensical derivations
from the original song lyrics and steady devolution of the initial musical theme. The Mad
Hatter’s song of choice here is not an obvious successor to either the Riddle number or the
introduction of Time in Transition 1. Potentially, ‘Time’ leads to ‘Twinkle’ simply by virtue
of the initial consonant – a logical enough connection for the mad-tea party space. The lyrics
are set to loosely strophic music consisting of four stanzas preceded by introduction: Theme,
bars 707-715; S1, bars 716-727; S2, bars 728-739; S3, bars 740-751; S4, bars 752-771. Under
the spell of the tea party, however, the strophic form is far from a mechanical repetition of
musical verses, just as the lyrics depart from, yet remain oddly true to, the original structure;
indeed, as with the Riddle number, the snowballing devolution of melody and text upends
the conventional logic of repetition altogether.
The introduction (minim = ca. 72) is a simple variant of the original song, with added
chromatic alterations (Bb, Gb, Fb, and Eb). Combined with slightly modified lyrics (‘Twinkle
twinkle little bat! How I wonder what you’re at! Up above the world you fly, like an ashtray
in the sky’), these tweaked pitches create a prankish twist on the familiar lullaby.11 The strophic
extension takes on a significantly quickened tempo (crotchet = ca. 120) for an enormously
exciting mood. Opening with the first and second lines of the original lyrics (‘Twinkle twinkle
little star, How I wonder what you are’), the text departs in earnest by the third line: ‘Twinkle,
sprinkle, brittle stew, How I thunder what you are’. The following lines drop the poetic
metre for a flurry of similar sounds: ‘Twinkle, sprinkle, wrinkle, crinkle, triple, treacle scramble,
scribble’. Stanzas 2 and 3 follow the same tea-party logic, perpetually taking off down new
word paths which devolve into gibberish.
The now-expected, unidirectional devolution is halted in Stanza 4, an interjection in an
unexpectedly serious learned style. At bar 752, the Mad Hatter launches a contrapuntal melody
in minims – thus, augmenting the rhythm – against Alice’s quicksilver notes. The March Hare
soon joins in the new stylistic exercise by adding another contrapuntal line at bar 756. This
awkward turn towards gravitas adds a sense of comedy, even as it, too, soon succumbs to the
tea-party logic and to an even greater degree: the out-of-place imitative texture falls by the
wayside at bar 766, when Alice begins rapidly repeating the tetrachord (Bb, A, G, F) in a rap
style; the original ‘Twinkle’ tune now having evaporated completely, the newly awakened
Dormouse takes over Alice’s phrase with patter-style singing; and the song is driven even
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Ji Yeon Lee
further into nonsense over a gradual decrescendo and accelerando in the orchestra accompaniment,
which disintegrates to no more than a sustained D.
Once again, the textual-musical devolution becomes so uncontrollable that it requires an
intervention. This comes from the Mad Hatter and, once again, the stylistic about-face sets off a
transition. Transition 2 is also a narrative resumption of Transition 1 as the Mad Hatter returns
to his scandalous story about Time and how it impacts the tea party: ‘Well! I’d hardly finished
the first verse, when the queen bawled out “He’s murdering time! Off with his head!” And ever
since that, Time won’t do a thing I ask. It’s always six o’clock’. In this moment, Time’s
presence becomes even more palpable with the thunderous sounding of the Time motive as an
accented thudding C ostinato in an extremely low register followed by tone clusters. The
motive is then continued to underlie the structure of the Mad Hatter’s lament, the Time
monologue.
While the Mad Hatter’s sober side was briefly witnessed in the ironic burst of the learned
style at the end of the Twinkle parody, his sudden seriousness in the Time monologue is an
even greater surprise. Indeed, although the monologue opens with some mild wordplay – ‘All
of my life is nothing more than the football of time, the hockey puck of time, the shot-put of
time, slalom course of time’ (bars 777-781) – this is soon left behind for the sincerity of despair
as the Hatter begs Time for release from the tea party’s imprisonment with straightforward
declamation. He first addresses ‘time’ as a concept for invocation, treating the word to motivic
repetition and accented vocalisation: ‘So it is our fate, our destiny, to be arrested by time,
sentenced by time, tortured by time, decomposed by time, judged and juried by time, executed
by time. That’s why I sing’ (bars 782-788). This summoning of time’s spirit allows the Hatter to
then directly address Time as an animated character: ‘Time, oh Time, I beseech you, forgive
my sins, I have not loved you as myself. I have taken in vain thy holy name, worshipped at the
feet of calves and of whores’ (bars 789–799). These cries are heard over the Time motive and its
accompanying tone clusters; at bar 800, Bb replaces C on the downbeat, and C moves to the
third beat to create a steady alternation of bass tones in each bar. This acute regularity in the low
register produces a pounding sound, suggesting both the unrelenting ticking of a clock and the
sweeping gesture that took off Time’s head.12
As if acknowledging the futility of his pleas, the Hatter saplessly repeats ‘Oh, time’ at the
conclusion of his monologue (b. 821). In contrast to the wildly dissolving mode of the Riddle
and the Twinkle parody, the Time monologue ends with a moribund gesture: the regular two-
beat interval between C and Bb in the ostinato increases at bar 822 due to added beats in the
shifting metre (5/4 to 6/4 to 7/4), dragging the tempo and deactivating the rhythm. In bar 826,
the Hatter’s melody descends from Ab3 to G2 through portamento in piano over the sustained C,
muting and thinning out the sound. Rather than devolution, this is a dying motion conjuring
up the image of clock winding down. And, for once, the set piece ends not with a sudden
disjuncture or interruption but when the Mad Hatter simply stops singing in bar 828.
The Mad Hatter’s ontological world is divided according to his contrasting attitudes toward
time. His usual character accords with the flamboyant, eccentric clowning of the tea-party’s
time and logic. Bringing the learned style into the Twinkle parody is typical; although it could
be intended to evoke the seriousness and strictness of the old style, the learned style merely
increases the comedy with its out-of-time and -place effect. The Time monologue, however, is
an unprecedented, Janus-like turn whose honest confession – and the verbal comprehensibility
and regular rhythm which go in hand with that earnestness – is diametrically opposed to the
other set pieces. When the Mad Hatter acts within the tea-party’s logic, he, like the March
Hare and the Dormouse, is both oblivious to and a prisoner of that logic. On the other hand,
when he invokes Time as an entity governing the tea party – as seen in the Time monologue –
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Decoding the riddle
the Hatter is clearly conscious of his situation, and his ‘madness’ momentarily dispelled. In this
brief space where sanity prevails, his narration progresses linearly in regular time and even
unfolds without the conspicuous interruptions found in the previous set pieces. Because this is
antithetical to the sound-oriented babble in devolving time governing the other set pieces, the
Time monologue can feel surreal or even uncanny, an effect mirroring the audience’s rea
lisation of the scene’s dual dramatic-temporal modes.
The gravity of the Time monologue is punctuated with a general pause in bar 828. But over
this silence, the March Hare comments that ‘He [The Mad Hatter] prays each day, like
clockwork, yet nothing ever changes’, bringing the proceedings back into the tea-party present.
This conclusively separates the dramatic-temporal mode of the Time monologue from the
following Transition 3 (at b. 829), and the Mad Hatter’s previous narration is abruptly forgotten
by the characters in favour of the new task of once again rousing the sleeping Dormouse.
Transition 3 sets the stage for the Dormouse’s solo in the same manner in which the Twinkle
parody was presented; and despite his penchant for catnaps, the Dormouse is quick to burst into
energy. Asked by the others to tell a story, he readily offers a formal introduction – ‘Once upon
a time there were three little Sisters. They lived in treacle and drew all manner of things that
begin with an M … such as –’. But where the Riddle and ‘Twinkle’ took time to wind
themselves into a frenzy, the Dormouse launches directly into a dazzling one-man show on
words beginning with the letter M: lightning-fast from the outset, the M monologue (at b. 834)
devolves towards the maximal anarchism that becomes the highpoint of the tea party. The
rapid-fire vocal acrobatics are dispensed with exact pitches in a swift tempo according to the
notation ‘Sprechgesang: Take any pitch. Imitate rap-singing’. This results more in an im
provisatory happening than a realisation of written notes, and the accompanying laxness of
pitch-word coordination produces a rhapsodic race, not towards a goal, but a breaking point.
Although the orchestra tries to keep a grip on this reckless speeding by imposing a repeating
bass pattern (D, E, Bb, E), the unpredictably shifting metre from bar 847 on sweeps away any
centripetal force.
The Dormouse’s delirious performance becomes even more frenzied as Alice, the Mad
Hatter and the March Hare try to shut him up by stuffing him in the teapot (at b. 857); the
addition of an invisible chorus (b. 862), ‘speak[ing] loudly’ and ‘laugh[ing] shrill[y]’ over or
chestral glissandi and a bass B, amplifies the chaos. The partygoers, ‘completely confused and
star[ing in] all direction[s], trying to determine the source of the sounds’, are drowned in sonic
pandemonium. At the same time, the orchestra, too, gives up on exact musical pitch, playing
fluctuating glissandi over bass Bb. Finally, the M-words break down to simple ‘M’ syllables
(‘ma me my mo moo’), disintegrating into literal nonsense just before the tea time is reset to six
o’clock. Where Time was metaphorically evoked by the ostinato figure in the Mad Hatter’s
lament, Time is now incarnated in the rapid alternation between B and G against cacophonic
cluster tremolos (Eb, F, G, A and Ab, Bb, Eb). This onomatopoeic ticking ends with an
explosive crescendo from p to fffff. Far from a proper resolution or closure, this gesture is a big
bang rebooting the tea party. Time, having been wound down, wound up, suspended and run
out, reverts as always to its saved starting point. Even though the reset process is not physically
presented on the stage, and Alice simply exits the enchanted space and moves on to Scene VI
with a lighting change, the audience is aware that the same tea-party scene will unfold again and
again in perpetuum.
Adapting Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland for an opera entails significant challenges, especially
regarding the musicalisation of the many types of nonsense and word play in the text. The mad
tea-party scene is a virtuosic display of Chin’s multi-layered, nuanced, textual-musical co
ordination: each set piece feels unpredictable and whimsical, rather than carefully calculated and
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Ji Yeon Lee
stage-managed; yet the whole is encompassed within a governing logic, a force that exists
beyond the phenomenal dimension of the tea party. That force is a matter of Time. Its mal
evolent omniscience is keenly rendered in an exchange between Alice and the Mad Hatter.
Although cut in the opera, before the partiers sing the Twinkle parody in the novel, Alice
points to the essential temporal nature of music, stating that: ‘I know I have to beat time when I
learn music’. But rejecting the notion of time as fixed and abstract, the Mad Hatter retorts that
‘He won’t stand beating’. Instead, Time beats the partygoers, arresting them in a deadlock
devoid of meaningful progress; although time passes within the tea party, it moves irregularly
and will always be reset, with the party recurring ad infinitum. Having killed Time, the Mad
Hatter and his companions are doomed to a perpetual state of ‘killing time’. Indeed, they never
escape the curse, even when allowed outside the tea-party space: when they are summoned to
the court of Queen of Hearts (Scene 7, Who Stole the Tarts – Alice’s Evidence), the Time
motive accompanies them as a relentless chaperone, or jailer. In this sense, full comprehension
of the seemingly enigmatic tea-party scene cannot be found in the physical and sensory events
heard and seen onstage. For the audience, reflecting on Time’s invisible but conclusive control
of the madness can unlock the existential mechanism of Chin’s tea party.
Notes
1 Lewis Carroll, 2001. Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. Ware, Herts: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., p. 93.
First published in 1865.
2 Here, the terms ‘brilliant’ and ‘learned’ are used in the context of topic theory, where a particular
melodic, rhythmic or harmonic pattern carries extra-musical meaning. The brilliant style features fast
scales and arpeggio passages, allowing a soloist to show off virtuosic technique; the learned style is
characterised by contrapuntal texture. One of many references available on topic theory, Oxford
Handbook of Topic Theory (Mirka 2016), offers a comprehensive study of terms and concepts, history,
analysis, performance and listening.
3 An ascending arpeggio ending with a triad in first inversion, and other similar gestures, signal the onset
of a recitative passage in Classical opera.
4 Chin states that she was immediately mesmerised when she experienced the story of Alice. With
reading Endless Story by Michael Ende, she was inspired to write Akrostichon-Wortspiel (Acrostic-
Wordplay), for soprano and ensemble in 1991 (revised 1993). In her programme note for the piece,
Chin details that ‘the selected texts have been worked upon in different ways: sometimes the con
sonants and vowels have been randomly joined together, other times the words have been read
backwards so that the symbolic meaning alone remains’ (Chin 1991).
5 The exquisite musicality of the mad-tea party scene grabbed critical attention at its premiere: ‘The
best scene by far was the Mad Hatter’s tea party, an enormously skilful Baroque mix, perfectly
sculpted and musically enchanting’ (Leipsic 2007). ‘The Mad Tea-Party is a vigorous instrumental
piece, with bustling counterpart’ (Loomis 2007). For a selection of premiere reviews, see Dobner
(2007); Frei (2007); Kalchschmid (2007); Mahlke (2007); Swed (2007); Thiel (2007).
6 Words from the Alice in Wonderland libretto (Unsuk Chin / David Hwang) © 2007 by Boosey &
Hawkes Publishers Ltd. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Reproduced by
permission of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd.
7 In this essay, the term ‘set piece’ is used loosely; rather than the strict analytical term used for Italian bel
canto opera, it indicates that each number is clearly delineated according to the character singing,
textual subject and melodic material. A transition – usually dialogue or diegetic comment in decla
matory texture – occurs between two set pieces.
8 The scoring of the March Hare for countertenor also contributes to the sense of musical anachronism
in the tea-party scene.
9 Italics mine.
10 Although the opera is not written in tonal or set-theoretical language, C may also be heard as a centric
pitch in certain passages, such as Scene 1 (Dream 1) and Alice’s lullaby in Scene 6 (The Queen’s
Croquet-Ground).
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Decoding the riddle
11 Bold emphasis mine, to indicate words altered from the original lyrics.
12 Reviewing the opera, Alex Ross noted the similarity between the Time monologue and Mussorgsky’s
‘doom-laced Coronation Scene’ in Boris Godunov (Ross 2007). I find another connection to the
modern canon: the sound of the guillotine repeatedly falling in the execution music at the conclusion
of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.
References
Beer, G., 2011. Alice in time. The Modern Language Review, 106 (4), xxvii–xxxviii.
Birns, M.B., 1984. Solving the Mad Hatter’s riddle. The Massachusetts Review, 25/3, 457–468.
Chin, U., 1991. (rev. 1993), Akrostichon-Wortspiel (Acrostic-Wordplay). London: Boosey & Hawkes Ltd.
Available from: https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Unsuk-Chin-Akrostichon-Wortspiel/7177
Chin, U., 2004-2007. Alice in Wonderland. London: Boosey & Hawkes Ltd. Available from: https://
www.boosey.com/cr/music/Unsuk-Chin-Alice-in-Wonderland/57667
Dobner, W., 2007. Fantastisch ist hier nur die szene: Oper München. Alice in Wonderland, uraufführung an
der bayrischen Staatsoper. Die Presse, 3 July.
Frei, M., 2007. Das grinsen und das sein: uraufführung von Unsuk Chins erster oper, Alice in Wonderland.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 5 July.
Kalchschmid, K., 2007. Uraufführung von Unsuk Chins oper Alice in Wonderland zur eröffnung der
Münchner Opernfestspiele. KlassikIinfo.de, 30 June.
Kibel, A., 1974. Logic and satire in Alice in Wonderland. The American Scholar, 43/4, 605–629.
Leipsic, J., 2007. Alice in Wonderland, Münchner Opern-Festspiele. Opera News, September.
Loomis, G., 2007. Alice in Wonderland: a lively tea party turns a bit tedious. International Herald Tribune,
10 July.
Mahlke, S., 2007. Aus einem Puppenhaus. Der Tagesspiegel, 2 July.
Mirka D., 2016. The Oxford handbook of topic theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ross, A., 2007. Alice in Wonderland in Munich. The New Yorker, 30 July.
Swed, M., 2007. Alice in Wonderland triumphs in Munich. Los Angeles Times, 7 July.
Thiel, M., 2007. Zauber ohne bezauberung. Münchner Merkur, 1 July.
Zuber, B., 2011. Musikalische chiffren und strukturen in Unsuk Chins oper Alice in Wonderland.
In: S. Drees, ed. Im spiegel der zeit: die komponistin Unsuk Chin. Mainz: Schott Musik, 134–144.
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23
KATE BUSH’S UNCANNY
HARMONIC LANGUAGE
David Forrest
In her 1993 song, ‘Moments of Pleasure’, Kate Bush reminisces about some of her most cherished
memories. She recalls times with dear friends and family, speaking specifically about her mother
who was sick at the time of recording and who passed shortly after. In a letter
to her fan club, Bush describes the song as a way of ‘saying thanks to those friends of mine who
were fun to be with, some of whom aren’t alive any more – though they are still alive in my
memories’ (Bush 1993). The song’s chorus condenses the experiences into an adage that en
capsulates her reflections on memory, loss and the human experience: ‘Just being alive, it can
really hurt’. As shown in Figure 23.1, Bush harmonises this moment of timeless introspection
with the only chromatic progression in the song: A♭-F♭-G♭-A♭, or I-♭VI-♭VII-I.1 The motion
from major tonic to flat-major submediant, highlighted musically through increased dynamics,
stretching the tempo, and vocal range (E♭5 is the highest note in the melody, surpassing the peak
verse note D♭5), especially right at the word ‘alive’, recalls nineteenth-century use of the same
progression. Richard Taruskin describes how romantic-era music employs this I-♭VI motion to
mark ‘a kind of boundary between inner and outer experience’, to the extent that it ‘came to
signify the crossing of that edge, endowing the music on the other side with an uncanny aura’
(Taruskin 2010, p. 69). The setting in this song displays a high degree of sensitivity to crafting the
emotional narrative. As is common with strong emotional reactions, we typically feel it first, then
try to explain it in words. In this passage, the I-♭VI motion captures the emotional reaction to
everything the word ‘alive’ represents, while the explanation of its significance, ‘it can really hurt’,
follows the emotion to provide rational context.
Several recent studies highlight how certain chromatic chord progressions can be employed
to communicate uncanny affects in tonal music. The typical methodology in these studies is to
take a single progression type and track its use in music by a wide range of (predominantly male)
composers and song writers. This chapter flips that paradigm by examining how a single artist,
228 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-23

Kate Bush’s uncanny harmonic language
Figure 23.1 ‘Moments of Pleasure’, Chorus (1:18-1:26).
Figure 23.2 Terminology Chart for Select Chromatic Progressions.
Kate Bush, employs a variety of chromatic progressions to help communicate various de
scriptions of the ‘uncanny’ in her lyrics. As a result, the chapter reveals the unique level of
subtlety and innovation that Bush brings to the technique.
One challenge in focusing on specific types of chord changes is that these progressions have
collected a wide variety of labels. Figure 23.2 presents a translation chart for the progressions
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David Forrest
presently under examination. The first column of Figure 23.2 adapts Scott Murphy’s (2014)
taxonomy to identify progressions between consonant triads. Under this system ‘M’ denotes a
major triad, ‘m’ a minor triad, and the number between denotes the progression’s ordered
pitch-class interval in ascending half steps.2 For example, a progression from C major to E major
would be labelled ‘M4M’, where a progression from E major to C major would be labelled
‘M8M’. This chapter employs Murphy’s labels in each of the analyses. The ‘Common Name’
column in Figure 23.2 denotes how these progressions might be described in a typical, un
dergraduate music theory textbook. The ‘Nicknames’ column describes how these progressions
have been labelled in recent studies of their extra-musical associations (Cohn 2012b; Bribitzer-
Stull 2012; Forrest 2017b; Heine 2018). Many of these studies also refer to these progressions by
their transformational voice-leading labels shown in the fourth column.3 The next two columns
provide common Roman-numeral and letter-name realisations of the progressions. It should be
noted, however, that the progressions in these two columns are simply examples, and the
Murphy labels can be applied to any letter chord and in any tonal position.4 The last column
describes how frequently these progressions are encountered in popular-music syntax. The
percentages reflect how often each progression occurs in the almost 70,000 progressions be
tween consonant triads in the McGill Billboard Corpus (Burgoyne et al. 2011; Forrest and
Sears 2019).
Of the 48 possible changes between major and minor triads, the progressions in Figure 23.2
represent some of the least often heard in popular music syntax. For reference, the most
common progression, M5M (which includes V-I and I-IV), represents 20% of the progressions
between consonant triads. The least common progression, M8m, represents only 0.01% of the
progressions in the corpus (Forrest and Sears 2019). Studies by Everettt and de Clerq and
Temperley similarly assert that chord progressions in popular music move predominantly by
fifth, and much less frequently by chromatic third (Everett 2004 & 2009; de Clercq and
Temperley 2011). The novelty of these progressions provides songwriters an opportunity to
employ them for close, harmonic painting of lyrics that describe experiences outside of normal,
daily routine.
Richard Cohn’s (2004) study of hexatonic-pole progressions (m4M and M8m) set the
modern trend of finding associations between chromatic progressions and uncanny significa
tion.5 That study highlights examples ranging in style period from Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo
(1607) to Arnold Schoenberg’s String Trio (1946). Since that article, several studies have been
published connecting extra-musical associations with chromatic-mediant motion. In Murphy’s
terms, chromatic mediants include M3M, M9M, m3m, m9m, M4M, M8M, m4m and m8m.
Studies by Cohn (2012a; 2012b), Murphy (2014), Heine (2018) and others identify a wide
range of art- and film-music examples that connect chromatic mediants with descriptions of
uncanny or supernatural phenomena.6 Heine refers to M3M and M9M progressions as
‘Heroes’, owing to the fact that they often show up in heroic movie themes or at specific
moments in a film where a character displays heroic action. Similarly, Heine nicknames m3m
and m9m progressions as ‘Palpatines’ for their sinister associations, most famously in the por
trayal of Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars movies. For similar reasons, Heine refers to M4M
and M8M progressions as ‘Magic’, and m4m and m8m progressions as ‘Vaders’. Cohn labels
M4M and M8M progressions ‘Taruskins’, in reference to Richard Taruskin’s (2010) study of
associations between I-♭VI and descriptions of transcendence in nineteenth-century music.
He calls m4m and m8m progressions ‘Tarnhelms’ in reference to Wagner’s use of the pro
gression to symbolise the magic ring in his Ring Cycle. In a study of these progressions in
popular music (Forrest 2017b), I refer to M4M and M8M progressions as ‘Ids’, a reference both
to the Freudian underpinning of the concept of the ‘uncanny’ (Freud 1955) and to Pearl Jam’s
230
1995 song ‘I Got Id’, which uses the progression prominently to paint the struggles of a man
trapped in the irrational part of his consciousness. In that study, I found that, with very few
exceptions, M4M, M8M, m4m and m8m progressions consistently reference ‘uncanny’ or
supernatural events in popular music, regardless of tonal position. The other progressions listed
in Figure 23.2 have received considerably less attention as text-painting agents. This study
expands on the work cited above by (1) examining these lesser-studied progressions, and
(2) focusing exclusively on the unique sensitivity to these progressions found in Kate Bush’s
songwriting.
Across her ten studio albums released between 1978 and 2011, Bush uses a variety of musical
tools to express uncanniness, including vocal timbre, studio effects and metric disruptions. This
chapter focuses specifically on her sensitive use of harmony. Consistent with popular music
norms, most of Bush’s songs employ diatonic progressions as their normative harmonic lan
guage. This diatonic canvas throws chromatic progressions into sharp relief. In each of the songs
under examination, Bush deploys chromatic chord changes to reinforce descriptions of su
pernatural encounters, psychological confusion or trance-like, out-of-body experiences. To be
clear, Kate Bush is not the only artist to use these chromatic progressions to reference uncanny
experiences. However, the sensitivity with which she links these progressions with her lyrics
makes for a very rewarding study.
Where ‘Moments of Pleasure’ employs an M8M progression from I to ♭VI, ‘Babooshka’,
from the 1980 album Never for Ever, employs the reverse progression, M4M, from ♭VI to I. The
song describes a wife who tests her husband’s loyalty by pretending to be a secret admirer.
Unfortunately, the plan backfires and the husband falls for the wife’s false identity, Babooshka.
The song employs the M4M to describe the husband’s confused reaction to Babooshka’s ad
vances. As shown in Figure 23.3, Verse 1 harmonises his ‘strange delight’ in receiving scented
letters with motion from C♭ to E♭. Notice how the melody highlights the chromaticism by
cadencing on the Picardy third, G natural. At the parallel moment in Verse 2, Bush sets the
same progression to describe his reaction to the moment he sees his wife in disguise: ‘he got
the feeling they had met before’. As the following lyrics reveal, the husband’s attraction to
Babooshka seems to lie not in her unfamiliarity, but in how much she reminds him of his wife
when their love was young. This situation draws out another level of uncanniness for the
audience: in trying to expose her husband’s infidelity, she creates infidelity that might not have
existed.7 Similar to ‘Moments of Pleasure’, both of these passages set the emotional moment just
before the rational explanation. In fact, the first time we hear this progression is in the be
ginning of Verse 1 where the wife first hatches the plan.
‘Moving’, the first track from her 1978 debut album The Kick Inside, combines both M8M
and M4M with an M1m progression, better known as the SLIDE progression, to describe a
momentary, psychological release from reality. The lyrics describe the beauty of a dance
teacher’s movements harmonised by conventional D-minor progressions. By contrast, the
Figure 23.3 ‘Babooshka’, Verse (0:33-39 and 1:31–37).
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David Forrest
Figure 23.4 ‘Moving’, end of Chorus (1:17–1:31).
Figure 23.5 ‘The Saxophone Song’ (0:55–1:13).
chorus culminates in a climactic, out-of-body experience on the words, ‘you crush the lily in
my soul’. Figure 23.4 shows how Bush repeats the word ‘soul’ on a descending half-step
motive. The third iteration of the word ‘soul’ elongates the motive and paints the trans
cendent moment with M8M/M4M oscillation between the dominant chord, A major, and
major leading-tone chord, C# major. Before this moment, the song’s verses feature the
conventional resolution of A-major dominant to D-minor tonic. But here, at the climax of
the piece, resolution to tonic comes not from the dominant but from the major leading-tone
chord by way of a M1m SLIDE transformation. Bush highlights the uncanny resolution
vocally with a long, reluctant slide up to D.
The next track on the album, ‘The Saxophone Song’, describes a similar trance-inducing
moment, this time inspired by a musical performance. Verse 1, in D minor, sets the narrator in a
bar, listening intently to a saxophone player. In the Chorus, set in the parallel D major, she
explains that she feels a deep connection with this particular performer. She then invites the
saxophone to play while she ‘tunes in’. As the saxophone plays its solo, in A minor, we might
imagine the narrator going ‘very quiet’ and succumbing to its trance. As shown in Figure 23.5,
the saxophone solo is harmonised by three repetitions of a diatonic Am-F-Dm progression
(i-♭VI-iv). The trance becomes tangible at the end of the solo as the singer attempts to imitate,
or ‘tune in’, with some imitative scat singing (‘da, da, da, doo, ooh’). This phrase is harmonised
first by an M11M progression from F to E (notice the ‘tuned-in’ parallel-octave motion be
tween voice and bass) and climaxes with a deceptive cadence to a tonally foreign F#-major
chord, highlighted by a chromatic 4-3 suspension in the voice. The distance between D-minor
reality and this transcendent F# major chord is retraced by the M8m progression that takes us
back to the next verse.
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In 1985, Bush released one of her most commercially successful albums, Hounds of Love.
While side one of the album features some of her most popular singles, Bush named the second
side ‘The Ninth Wave’ and designed it as a miniature concept album of seven songs that tell the
story of a person drifting in and out of consciousness while alone at sea. These songs exemplify
Bush’s highly theatrical style and penchant for studio experimentation, elements that earned her
the moniker the ‘Mistress of Mysticism’ (Tannenbaum 1986, p. 467). ‘Hello Earth’, the pe
nultimate song in the set, represents the lost person’s fading grip on reality. The song is in
terrupted twice by a distant men’s choir singing a Gregorian-style hymn (at 1:21 and 3:27).
Similar to ‘The Saxophone Song’, the transition between the hymn’s F minor and the verse’s
C# minor, a m8m progression at 2:01 and 5:35, marks the boundary between two states of
consciousness for the song’s protagonist.
Of all the chromatic progressions examined in this chapter, chromatic-mediant motion
between minor triads by minor 3rd (m3m) are likely to be the subtlest. The m3ms in the song
‘Feel It’, from side two of The Kick Inside, capitalise on that subtlety to capture a sense of
playful seduction. The trance this time is induced by a romantic liaison. The use of just voice
and piano brings an intimacy to the song which foregrounds the subtle harmonic changes.
Perhaps the locus classicus for m3m/m9m alternation in a rock song is found in the verses to
‘Light My Fire’ (1967) by The Doors, where it is similarly used to underscore romantic
flirtation. Imagining ‘Light My Fire’ as a backdrop, ‘Feel It’ serves as an exploration of the
expressive potential for m3m progressions as they occur in different tonal positions and at
different structural levels. Where the previous songs examined in this chapter reserve their
chromatic motion for singular moments, ‘Feel It’ uses a variety of m3m progressions to
highlight specific turns in the plot.
The verses feature regular alternation between fifth-related Dm7 and Gm7 chords as Bush
narrates the events. As shown in Figure 23.6a, the second phrase of Verse 1 features a single, brief
m3m from Dm7 to Fm7, painting a sense of anticipation – ‘a little nervous laughter’. As the
events of the story pick up pace in Verse 2, so do the m3m changes. The same Dm7-Fm7 m3m
paints the anticipated ‘glorious union’ in the second phrase. The verse then ends with an addi
tional m3m, not present in Verse 1, this time between Gm7 and B♭m7 (Figure 23.6b). Up to this
point in the song, the lyrics have been set syllabically. By contrast, the lyrics ‘it will be…’ are set to
a rising melisma that climaxes on the chromatically altered pitch D♭5. The unexpected chro
maticism in both melody and harmony might be heard as the rush of emotion she feels as she tries
to find the right descriptor for the pending encounter. The parallel moment in Verse 4 sets a
similar melisma on the last syllable of ‘synchronise’ in the phrase ‘synchronise rhythms now’.
Where Verse 2 is clearly set in the future tense, the chorus represents the ‘glorious union’
itself. The first two lines of the chorus are set to Gm7-F-C progressions. An attentive listener
Figure 23.6a ‘Feel It’, Verse 1, Phrase 2 (0:11–0:37).
Figure 23.6b ‘Feel It’, Verse 2, Phrase 4 (0:37–1:08)].
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David Forrest
might anticipate the same progression in the third line. However, the expected Gm7 chord is
replaced by its m3m partner, B♭m7, projecting the chromatic exchange at a deeper phrase
level. This harmonic change is highlighted by a subtle change in lyrics, from ‘Oh, feel it’ to
‘Oh, I need it’. In a sense, this deeper-level m3m switch produces a deeper, more powerful
emotional affect.
For the final analysis in this chapter, we turn to Bush’s debut hit ‘Wuthering Heights’. It is
hard to overstate this song’s importance to Bush’s career. Its immediate success made it the first
self-penned song by a female singer/songwriter to hit the number-one spot on the UK charts.
In fact, EMI wanted to release the more mainstream sounding ‘James and the Cold Gun’ as her
debut single but Bush insisted it should be ‘Wuthering Heights’ (Gaar 2002, p. 222). In this
light, and in combination with the song’s portrayal of a strong female protagonist, ‘Wuthering
Heights’ represents an important feminist statement in popular music. In many ways, the song
charted Bush’s subsequent career, introducing to the world her unique musical style and,
pertinent to this study, her singular use of harmony to convey an uncanny story.
Where each of the songs analysed so far save their chromatic progressions for specific moments,
‘Wuthering Heights’ starts boldly with a highly chromatic verse. In fact, we do not hear a firm
tonal footing in this song until the chorus at 0:46. Based loosely on Emily Brontë’s eponymous
novel, Bush sings to Heathcliff as the ethereal ghost of Catherine. The verse’s otherworldly
progressions, ||: A | F | E7 | C#:||, set the stage for the supernatural encounter. In fact, as
shown in Figure 23.7, this excerpt offers several possible hearings depending on how
a listener attends to the chord changes. Listeners who focus on each chord change will notice
the saturation of chromatic progressions, ||: M8M, M11M, M9M, M8M:||. However, tonally
minded listeners might hear a functional progression, especially if they attend to the
downbeat-to-downbeat, tonic-dominant relationship between A and E7 chords, with the inter
vening chords serving as chromatic elaborations on an otherwise conventional progression. Still
others might hear this passage another way. One feature of the M8M progression is that when used
in sequence, it can provide a cyclical, symmetrical division of the octave. A wide range of
composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries exploit this symmetry.8 In contrast to the
tonal hearing which treats the F and C# chords as prolongations of the fundamental A-E7 motion,
Figure 23.7 ‘Wuthering Heights’, beginning of Verse 1 (0:06-0:23).
234
listeners who attend to this M8M cycle might hear the E7 chord as an elaboration of a more
foundational F-C#, M8M motion. An additional layer of chromaticism is found at the formal level
since the A-major verses traverse M4M space to the C#-major choruses. This multidimensional
progression, with one foot in chromatic syntax and one in diatonic, paints the appearance of
Catherine quite appropriately since she, as a ghost, has one foot in reality and one in the afterlife.
I conclude by making a brief comparison between this chapter and similar studies in
film music. Bribitzer-Stull (2012), Murphy (2014) and Heine (2018) make compelling ar
guments that film-music syntax has developed a fairly reliable set of associations between
chord-progression type and extra-musical topic. The nicknames in Figure 23.2 hint at these
associations. By contrast, these associations appear to be less specific in popular music. For
instance, both ‘Moving’ and ‘The Saxophone Song’ describe similar kinds of trances:
however, one uses M8M-M4M-M1m while the other uses M11M and M8m. Similarly, the
M4M in ‘Babooshka’ describes an uncanny recognition/unrecognition of the husband’s
disguised wife. This moment clearly references the uncanny but is not captured by the film-
music label ‘Magic’. I have found a similar lack of specificity in music by other popular-
music artists (Forrest 2017b; Forrest and Sears 2019). While some tenuous associations exist,
it seems that, in popular music, any chromatic progression might serve equally well to de
scribe a variety of supernatural or reality-bending situations. This lack of specificity might
be due to a popular-music syntax where tonality is often less defined. Another important
difference between film music and popular music is that film music, like virtually everything
else in the film industry, relies in part on consistent tropes to assist the story-telling potential
of the score. Films have developed a kind of intra-opus vocabulary of sounds and images.
While these chromatic progressions retain some clear association with the uncanny in
popular music, the diversity of styles and artists might contribute to the relative lack of
consistency in the specific references.
Finally, this chapter makes an important, if subtle, contribution to the study of harmonic
practice. The 126 concert-, film- and popular-music examples examined by Cohn (2004),
Bribitzer-Stull (2012), Forrest (2017b) and Heine (2018), collectively represent a wide range
composers in terms of style, genre and national origin, and cover over 400 years of history.9
The diversity of examples in these studies provides a kind of empirical evidence of the
tradition and suggests a shared perceptual phenomenon that transcends stylistic barriers.
However, only seven of the 126 examples in these studies were composed by women.10
While this disparity says more about the historic, social barriers placed on women than it does
about the researchers themselves, a survey of this literature does little to combat those barriers
in modern academic discourse. As with any examination of human language, a given com
munication pattern that holds among a more diverse group of composers, performers and
audiences is likely a more profound representation of the shared human experience.
Hopefully, studies like the one, and books like this one, that celebrate the important con
tributions to music by gifted, underrepresented composers, can begin to establish a deeper
understanding of harmonic practice and a better balance to the conversation.
Notes
1 All transcriptions are by the author. The author of this chapter has prepared a Spotify playlist to
accompany the musical examples, which can be accessed by scanning the QR code at the start of this
chapter. The following URL can also be used to access the playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/
0KwISV2DVnrXQyV1w9bLsd?si=n_Foz8RAT5O4yisa1nsZOA
2 This ‘ascent’ is measured in pitch class space, regardless of whether the actual pitches under ex
amination rise or fall in pitch space.
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3 Capuzzo (2004) provides a useful description of each of these voice leading labels.
4 This usage of the MnM labels differs slightly from Murphy (2014). In his study of film music, Murphy
assigns tonic function to the first ‘M’ in each label. However, this paper avoids specific tonal labels to
increase the label’s flexibility, especially in a style where tonic is often less easily defined.
5 For more on hexatonic-pole progressions see Cohn (2006) and Heetderks (2015).
6 For more on ‘Tarnhelms’ and ‘Ids’ in Wagner, see Hunt (2007); for more on ‘Tarnhelms’ in
nineteenth-century music and film scores, see Bribitzer-Stull (2012); for more on ‘Magic’, Vader’,
‘Hero’ and ‘Palpatine’ progressions in film music, see Heine (2018); and for more on ‘Tarnhelms’ and
‘Ids’ in popular music, see Forrest (2017b); for ‘Ids’ in Britten, see Forrest (2017a).
7 It is hard for me personally to absolve the husband in this situation since he agrees to meet this secret
admirer, thinking it is another person. However, in a 1980 interview with the Australian TV series
Countdown, Bush holds that the husband is innocent in the story.
8 The locus classicus is found in Felix Salzer and Carl Schachter’s analysis of the Sanctus from Schubert’s
Mass in E♭. They describe the M8M chain of E♭-C♭-G-E♭ as a ‘suspension of tonal gravity’ (Salzer and
Schachter 1969, p. 215).
9 Cohn (2004) examines 17 concert-music excerpts ranging chronologically from Monteverdi’s Orfeo
(1607) to Schoenberg’s String Trio, Op 45 (1946); Bribitzer-Stull (2012) analyses 26 nineteenth-
century concert-music excerpts and 24 twentieth- and twenty-first century film-music excerpts;
Forrest (2017b) investigates 42 examples from popular songs from 1956-2016; and Heine (2018)
surveys 17 selections from twentieth- and twenty-first century film scores.
10 Bribitzer-Stull (2012) lists Lili Boulanger’s Faust et Hèlène in the Appendix; Forrest (2017b) examines
songs by Janelle Monae, Lil Mix, Kate Bush, Celine Dion and St. Vincent; the first example in Heine
(2018) is Enya’s ‘Anıron’ (theme for Aragorn and Arwen) from Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of
the Ring.
References
Bribitzer-Stull, M., 2012. From Nibelheim to hollywood: the associativity of harmonic progression. In:
L. Sala, ed. The legacy of Richard Wagner. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 157–184.
Burgoyne, J.A., Wild J., and Fujinaga, I., 2011. An expert ground-truth set for audio chord recognition
and music analysis. In: C. Leider and A.P. Klapuri, eds. Proceedings of the 12th international conference on
music information retrieval, Miami, 633–638.
Bush, K., 1993. The Red Shoes, part 1, Kate’s interpretations. Red Shoes Magazine, Novercia Ltd./
Kindlight. Available from: http://livinginthepast-audioweb.co.uk/index.php?p=red_shoesa
Capuzzo, G., 2004. Neo-Riemannian theory and the analysis of pop-rock music. Music Theory Spectrum,
26 (2), 177–199.
de Clercq, T. and Temperley, D., 2011. A corpus analysis of rock harmony. Popular Music, 30/1, 47–70.
Cohn, R., 2004. Uncanny resemblances: tonal signification in the freudian age. Journal of the American
Musicological Society, 57, Summer, 285–324.
Cohn, R., 2006. Hexatonic poles and the uncanny in Parsifal. Opera Quarterly, 22/2, 230–248.
Cohn, R., 2012a. Audacious euphony: chromaticism and the triad’s second nature. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Cohn, R., 2012b. Peter, the Wolf, and the hexatonic uncanny. In: F. Worner, U. Scheideler, and
P. Rupprecht, eds. Tonality 1900-1950: concept and practice. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 47–62.
Everett, W., 2004. Making sense of rock’s tonal systems. Music Theory Online, 10/4. Available from:
https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.04.10.4/mto.04.10.4.w_everett.html
Everett, W., 2009. The foundations of rock: from blue suede shoes to suite: Judy blue eyes. Oxford & New York:
Forrest, D., 2017a. Britten and the supernatural. In: D. Forrest, Q.P. Ankrum, S. Jones, and E.A. Yates,
eds. Essays on Benjamin Britten from a centenary symposium. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publications,
181–206.
Forrest, D., 2017b. PL voice leading and the uncanny in pop music. Music Theory Online, 23/4. Available
from: https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.17.23.4/mto.17.23.4.forrest.html
Forrest, D. and Sears, D. 2019. Rock slides and other uncommon progressions in popular music. Presented
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at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory, Columbus, OH. Available from:
https://legacy.societymusictheory.org/files/2019_handouts/forrest-sears.pdf
Freud, S., 1955. The ‘uncanny’. In: J. Strachey and A. Freud, eds. The standard edition of the complete
psychological works of Sigmund Freud, 17. London: Hogarth Press, 217–252. Originally published in 1919
as ‘Das Unheimiliche’, Imago, 5/5–6, pp. 297–324.
Gaar, G.G., 2002. She’s a rebel: the history of women in rock & roll, 2nd ed. New York: Seal Press.
Heetderks, D., 2015. From uncanny to marvelous: Poulenc’s hexatonic pole. Theory and Practice, 40,
177–204.
Heine, E., 2018. Chromatic mediants and narrative context in film. Music Analysis, 37/1, 103–132.
Hunt, G., 2007. David Lewin and valhalla revisited: new approaches to motivic corruption in Wagner’s
ring cycle. Music Theory Spectrum, 29/2, 177–196.
Murphy, S., 2014. Transformational theory and the analysis of film music. In: D. Neumeyer, ed., The
Oxford handbook of film music studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 471–499.
Salzer, F. and Schachter, C., 1969. Counterpoint in composition: the study of voice leading. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Tannenbaum, R., 1986. Review: Kate Bush – Hounds of Love. Rolling Stone Magazine, 13 February, 467.
Taruskin, R., 2010. The nineteenth century: the Oxford history of Western music, 3. Oxford & New York:
237
PART IV
Performance and reception

24
NOTIONS OF VIRTUOSITY,
FEMALE ACCOMPLISHMENT,
AND THE VIOLIN AS FORBIDDEN
INSTRUMENT IN EARLY-MID
NINETEENTH-CENTURY
ENGLAND
Bella Powell
24.1 Introduction
Until the latter half of the nineteenth century, an informal and largely unspoken prohibition
existed on women playing the violin. This prohibition was in evidence across Europe but
appears to have been particularly pervasive in England; the female violinists who performed
there in the first half of the century were almost exclusively from the Continent. Existing
scholarship on the topic is limited and discusses the prohibition in varying degrees of certitude;
the most extensive study, by Paula Gillett, refers to an ‘informal ban’ (2000, p. 77), while Simon
McVeigh’s work on women violinists at the end of the century describes the instrument as
‘forbidden territory, the instrument of male domination’ (2010, p. 233). Nineteenth-century
sources typically took an approach most akin to McVeigh’s, citing a ‘prejudice’ against female
violinists, and the use of this term throughout the century is indicative of the longevity of the
phenomenon. In 1818, The Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review remarked: ‘We cannot help
regarding the exclusion of females from the violin, as a prejudice, and nothing but a prejudice’
(‘Madame Mara, Nee Schmelling’ 1818, p. 171). Over 50 years later, in 1869, The Musical
World echoed their sentiments that ‘[t]here is a strong and scarcely unnatural prejudice against a
female fiddler’ (‘Monday Popular Concerts’ 1869, p. 797).
Nineteenth-century discourse on the ‘prejudice’ – or effective social prohibition – pre-
dominantly cited aesthetic objections to women playing the violin. However, recent literature
has explored more subtle underlying causes, including the homoerotic connotations of women
playing an instrument ascribed as female, and the violin’s occult links. I propose another un-
derlying reason for the prohibition: the conflict between nineteenth-century ideas on virtuosity
and the narrow parameters of what was thought to constitute ‘appropriate’ female performance.
The violin was a popular instrument for many of the male virtuoso-composer performers who
toured Europe and visited Britain. The careers of Tartini in the eighteenth century and
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-24 241

Bella Powell
Paganini at the dawn of the nineteenth – who both used previously unseen tricks and technical
feats, pushing instrument and performer to their limits – firmly established the violin as a
virtuoso instrument in the public imagination. The violin was a central component of
nineteenth-century musical life, and a string of celebrated virtuoso soloists passed through
London, including de Bériot, Ernst, Vieuxtemps and Joachim. However, ideas regarding
‘correct’ female performance were strict; the display of virtuosity was incompatible with the
style in which women were expected to play, and ideas about female intellectual capacity also
deemed women unsuitable to play technically challenging repertoire and instruments, effec-
tively barring them from playing the violin.
24.2 The female realm

The nineteenth-century preoccupation with gender roles was reflected in the publication of
numerous books and essays on female education, etiquette and behaviour during the period.
Despite many of these dispensing advice on learning music and ‘correct’ modes of performance,
few publications explicitly discussed the culture of socially proscribed instruments. Some al-
lusions were made; Eleanor Geary’s Musical Education asserted that ‘The three principal in-
struments which the sanction of custom allots to female performers are, the piano-forte, harp,
and guitar’ (1851, p. 75), and Elizabeth Appleton’s Private Education listed the prescribed in-
struments for women as being pianoforte, pedal harp and voice (1815, p. 135). Explicit
counselling against playing particular instruments was unusual, but the memoir of the oboist W.
T. Parke provides a rare example, with the objection primarily focused on the aesthetics:
Minerva happening to look into the stream whilst playing her favourite instrument, the
flute, perceiving the distortion of countenance it occasioned, was so much disgusted that
she cast it away, and dashed it to pieces. Although I would not recommend to any lady
playing on a Cremona fiddle to follow the example of the goddess, yet it strikes me that if
she is desirous of enrapturing her audience, she should display her talent in a situation
where there is only just light enough to make ‘darkness visible’ (Parke 1830, pp. 129–130).
However, most texts did not make any reference to the culture of proscribed instruments and
instead provide evidence of the prohibition through their failure to discuss any form of women’s
music-making beyond keyboard instruments, singing and occasional mentions of the harp or
guitar. Rita Steblin suggests that ‘gender division between instruments reflected the roles of the
sexes in society: the men (soloists or leaders) held the positions of power while the women
(accompanists or followers) did as they were told – were subservient’ (Steblin 1995, p. 139).
Consequently, a woman taking up a virtuosic instrument such as the violin would have disrupted
both musical and social norms, and openly challenged the allocated roles of the sexes.
24.3 Education
Music, and the piano in particular, played a key role in upper and upper-middle-class
nineteenth-century female life from early childhood to the extent that, as late 1871, H. R.
Haweis was able to remark that, ‘A girl’s education is as much based on the pianoforte as a boy’s
is on the Latin grammar’ (1871, p. 525). Most girls had daily lessons; Appleton’s Private
Education recommended an hour’s lesson per day, with an additional hour that might be used
for maintaining older repertoire (1815, pp. 160–161). These lessons would often take place
with the family governess who would provide basic tuition. The alternative was employing a
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Virtuosity, female accomplishment, violin
music master, which demonstrated wealth and social prestige and offered a higher level of
accomplishment to the student. This was not, however, without issue, and Elizabeth Morgan’s
work on the subject highlights an element of social unease about young women refining their
arsenal of accomplishments intended for the marriage market under the ‘male gaze’ of a
working musician (Morgan 2009, p. 138-140). The conflict between the prestige of employing
a music master and the perils of leaving one’s daughter alone with him consequently generated a
significant level of anxiety in the upper echelons of society. The practical step of finding a
suitable teacher to learn from would, therefore, have provided an immediate obstacle for any
young woman who wished to learn the violin, an instrument not taught by governesses.
24.4 Music as accomplishment

Music was one of a number of ‘accomplishments’ that young ladies of the upper and upper-
middle classes were expected to attain. Nineteenth-century etiquette manuals indicate a range
of motivations for being musically accomplished. Maria and Richard Edgeworth’s Practical
Education lays out the ‘value’ of accomplishments in the main:
They are tickets of admission to fashionable company… they are supposed to increase
a young lady’s chance of a prize in the matrimonial lottery. Accomplishments also
have a value as resources against ennui, as they afford continual amusement and in-
nocent occupation (Edgeworth and Edgeworth 1815, p. 174).
The author of Euterpe suggested similar motivations for young women to learn music, with an
additional moral element:
To amuse their own family, and for that domestic comfort, they were by Providence
designed to promote; – to relieve the anxieties and cares of life, to inspire cheerfulness,
and elevate the mind to a sense and love of Order, – Virtue, – and Religion (Euterpe c.
1778, pp. 18–19).
Other nineteenth-century publications reflect the same themes: music as an accomplishment

was regarded as a force for social and moral good, keeping young ladies occupied and providing
suitable entertainment for young men. Piano playing, in particular, was a useful social tool,
which formed part of a raft of accomplishments intended to attract suitors and which also
operated as a form of social currency.
Although music-making was expected of young ladies, its function was not to be the centre
of attention, but rather to form part of a requisite backdrop for social interaction and contribute
some of the general entertainment in company. Ladies were expected to take their turn at
providing the amusement and were warned both against refusing to perform or monopolising
the piano for an entire evening. These accomplishments were not to be learned with the goal of
professionalism – they were a means through which to acquire the tools of life. Maria
Edgeworth’s Letters for Literary Ladies provides insight into the intentions and aspirations for the
female skill-set, and the limits placed on it:
I do not desire to make my daughter a musician, a painter, or a poetess; I do not desire

to make her a botanist, a mathematician, or a chemist; but I wish to give her the habit
of industry and attention, the love of knowledge and the power of reasoning
(Edgeworth 1795, pp. 73–74).
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A woman would be expected to run and organise her household after marriage, and the ‘habit
of industry and attention’ alludes to this, as well as suggesting the capability to keep herself busy
while her husband was away or occupied. Edgeworth’s writing reinforces the function of ac-
complishments as a productive pastime, with a tacit reminder of their rightful place within the
female realm. However, musical accomplishment was not universally regarded as a positive
attribute. There was concern from some quarters that excessive accomplishment would lead to
vanity and corruption of character. The writers of both an 1831 article in The Kaleidoscope
entitled ‘Female Education’, and Remarks on the Use and Abuse of Music As Part of Modern
Education (c. 1778) explicitly warned against this, with the former stating that, ‘There is so much
for vanity to feed upon, so much of enchantment, so much of illusion, that delightful as it is I
cannot but look upon it as a dangerous accomplishment’ (‘Female Education’ 1831, p. 251),
and the latter concurring, ‘she sacrifices at the altar of vanity, and too often becomes ridiculous,
by affecting to be thoroughly accomplished’ (Euterpe c. 1778, p. 7).
Books on education and etiquette for ladies were keen to highlight both the need for young
women to learn music and the importance of partaking in socially appropriate modes of per-
formance. Most recommended that women should only play well enough to entertain
themselves and their social circle, declaring that anything more was likely to fuel vanity:
Young ladies should play, sing, and dance, only so well as to amuse themselves and
their friends, than to practice those arts in so eminent a degree as to astonish the
public…as this consists in an exhibition of the person, they are liable to be attended
with vanity, and to extinguish the blush of youthful timidity; which is in young ladies
the most powerful of their exterior charm (Darwin 1797, p. 12).
Similarly, the comments from the author of A Legacy of Affection, Advice and Instruction on
desirable female behaviour also explain why women might not have wanted to present
themselves as virtuoso performers, or to draw attention to themselves by playing a non-
prescribed instrument:
The retiring grace, the gentle force, the winning modesty, are the qualities, the true
characteristics of our sex…. We lose every thing if we assume a boisterous manner,
talk loud, laugh with the head divided into two ugly parts, and ape the coarsest of the
other sex, or the vulgarest of our own (A Legacy of Affection, Advice and Instruction
1827, p. 145).
These remarks were again echoed in Erasmus Darwin’s Plan for the Conduct of Female Education,
which suggests that: ‘The female character should possess the mild and retiring virtues rather
than the bold and dazzling ones’ (Darwin 1797, p. 10). In the context of these expectations,
both repertoire and performance style required careful thought. Music and etiquette books
reflected this, and advised playing simple pieces well, rather than attempting more technically
challenging music. Euterpe offers a classic example:
Let our daughters then be taught Music so as to understand what they perform, and
perform no more than what falls within the easy compass of their execution; nor ever
attempt any thing but select pieces of familiar, easy, simple construction, such as may
delight the ear of their friends, and contribute to improve their own Hearts by di-
recting its influence to the proper object (Euterpe c. 1778, pp. 13–14).
244
However, while women musicians were expected only to play simple pieces which they were
thought capable of understanding, and which would not attract excessive attention, their re-
pertoire choices also had to be substantial enough to avoid being criticised as being trivial or of
little artistic value. Appleton’s Private Education remarks:
Trifling tunes, and rondos with variations, and songs ... are as improper, and as ill
calculated, to form the taste to good music, as common story books and novels are to
ennoble the style and to raise the mind to dignified and generous views of general
literature (1815, p. 147).
Reasonably proficient women pianists were expected to play repertoire such as Dussek,
Cramer, Hummel, Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart, and some sources, including The Young
Lady’s Book (1829, p. 370), also recommended playing chamber music in order to develop
musicality. Any woman wishing to play the violin would have faced the same difficulties in
navigating appropriate repertoire choices, but without the plethora of educational guidance as
to what constituted acceptable pieces of music.
24.5 Female intellect

Alongside rules of social propriety, late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century concepts of
female intelligence also influenced ideas about women’s capacity for virtuosity, and by extension,
their suitability to play an instrument with virtuosic associations such as the violin. The notion of
innate differences between male and female brains permeated much discourse during the period,
which often concluded that woman could never hope to possess the intellectual power of her
male counterparts. A useful discussion of the issue is found in Edgeworth’s Letters for Literary Ladies
which employs letters between two different characters to express different views of the day.
The first letter argues that the female mind is innately inferior to the male mind:
In the course of my life it has never been my good fortune to meet with a female
whose mind, in strength, just proportion, and activity, I could compare to that of a
sensible man…. It is not possible that women should ever be our equals in knowledge
(Edgeworth 1795, pp. 5–6).
The responding character’s letter describes the changing attitudes to women’s attainment:
‘Many things, which were thought be to above their comprehension, or unsuited to their sex,
have now been found to be perfectly within the compass of their abilities’ (ibid., pp. 64–65).
Although the second letter reflects gradually changing thought in some quarters about the
nature and capabilities of the female brain, treatises on women as creators frequently took a less
progressive view. Haweis’ Music and Morals asserts that:
The woman’s temperament is naturally artistic, not in a creative, but in a receptive,

sense. A woman seldom writes good music, never great music…. Most women reflect
with astonishing ease, and it has often been remarked that they have more perception
than thought, more passion than judgment, more generosity than justice, and more
religious sentiment than moral taste (Haweis 1871, pp. 112–113).
Haweis cited the lack of female composers in support of his argument that women’s defi-
ciencies in intellectual faculty rendered them more suitable as interpreters than creators.
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Women were consequently precluded from composition, harmony and counterpoint classes
at conservatoires until the latter part of the nineteenth century, limiting their opportunities
to learn the requisite skills for composition, musical theory (including harmony and coun-
terpoint) or advanced musical interpretation. A woman’s role in composition was that
of muse and therefore, as Nancy Reich remarks, ‘the nineteenth-century woman who
defied convention by attempting creative work was presumed to be “unwomanly”’ (1993,
pp. 133–134).
These ideas about the limits of female intelligence had a two-fold impact on the scope and
scale of female performance. First, as discussed in Euterpe, it placed limits on the repertoire
women could be thought to ‘understand’ and successfully perform. Second, it barred them from
the traditional model of the virtuoso-composer, modelled in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries by Chopin, Thalberg and Liszt on the piano, and numerous players including Tartini,
Paganini, Joachim, Vieuxtemps and De Beriot on the violin. If a woman could not be a creator
of great musical ideas, she could not fit the composer-virtuoso model. Of course, some women
did make names for themselves as piano virtuosi. However, their careers were not without
issue. Katherine Ellis’ work on women pianists in nineteenth-century Paris particularly high-
lights the conflict caused by the virtuoso-composer model. Ellis remarks that ‘to critics who
clung to older models of the composer-virtuoso … women could never qualify as top-flight
artists’ (1997, p. 384).
24.6 Musical culture and virtuosity

Nineteenth-century concerns about vanity, materialism and ego in the inherent nature of the
virtuoso are also likely to have shaped ideas about appropriate musical roles for women. Dana
Gooley’s work on anti-virtuosic sentiment in the nineteenth century quotes Wilhelm Triest’s
list of the virtuoso’s ‘immoral characteristics’, which includes ‘lack of modesty, strange moo-
diness, and an addiction to sensual indulgences such as gambling, women, and drink’ (Gooley
2006, p. 89). This is echoed in Haweis’ Music and Morals, which asserts that: ‘The life of a
successful singer or an illustrious instrumentalist is full of peril – peril to virtue, peril to art, peril
to society’ (Haweis 1871, p. 67). The characterisation of the virtuoso in nineteenth-century
imagination was dark and corrupted, driven by an addiction to the sensual and forbidden, with a
total disregard for any moral code – the antithesis of everything that women were meant to be –
and this partly explains why so many treatises warn against over-accomplishment and virtuosity.
Haweis continued:
As a rule, women have been far more valued by society for their personal virtue than
for their gifts; and as an eminent writer has observed, society condones in men certain
offences which it deems almost unpardonable in women, because it values men, and
needs them for their intellectual, imaginative, or administrative powers quite in-
dependently of their morals (ibid., p. 85).
Haweis’ unexpectedly insightful perspective reveals the crux of the issue of virtuosity for
women: moral conduct was a woman’s primary attribute in her social standing. Although
men could afford to demonstrate virtuosity at risk of losing moral standing, women could not.
The Young Lady’s Book makes a similar point: ‘accomplishments, however desirable and at-
tractive, must always be considered as secondary objects, when compared with those virtues
which form the character and influence the power of woman in society’ (The Young Lady’s
Book 1829, p. 23).
246
The concerns of the anti-virtuosic movement related to broadly the same themes found in
discussions about women’s music-making, particularly the negative consequences arising from
the elevation of the individual. In conjunction with treading a careful line between playing
‘meaningful’ repertoire and being advised by instructional literature to conform to ideals of
appropriately modest performance, it is likely that women were also hesitant to undertake
displays of excessively skilled performance for fear of their character, morals and virtue being
called into question. Where piano playing had an entrenched role in domestic music-making –
away from the concert stage, and with an established, socially sanctioned, domestic repertoire –
the violin had no such respectable alter-ego, or sanctioned repertory to be played in the home.
The violin, therefore, remained intrinsically linked with the public, virtuoso performer in a way
that the piano did not, and consequently remained problematic for female players.
24.7 The publicly performing woman musician in the nineteenth century

Aside from navigating notions of virtuosity and musical education, some further issues impacted
the performing activities of both amateur and professional female musicians. Professional
women performers usually came from families of the artist-musician class, and defied cultural
norms to earn money to support their families. In contrast, amateur middle-class women had
the luxury of time and tutorage to gain significant levels of skill in music but were prevented
from performing publicly for the sake of their family reputation. As Reich has explained:
The upwardly-mobile middle-class male may well have feared that accepting money
for work performed by the women of his family would weaken his control of the
household and reflect on his ability to provide…. The appearance of a woman on the
concert stage could undermine the hard-won social status of her bourgeois family;
consequently, even the most gifted were expected to confine their musical activities to
the home (Reich 1993, p. 132).
As a result, there was an absence of role models and support networks for women musicians,
and this is likely to have significantly impacted the numbers of women considering developing
their musical skills to virtuoso level. The importance of this support has been highlighted by
Elizabeth Wood, who argues that:
Female systems of kin, friendship, and mentorship are crucial not merely for emo-
tional interaction but for formal skill sharing and career shaping…. Courageous older,
established women mentors, role models, musical mothers, effective and generous
“patrons,” have forced access for women to musical education, maturation and career
options (Wood 1980, p. 294).
Women who pursued careers as professional musicians had to strike a careful balance between
their art and their reputation. Most were pianists; very few women performed on the violin in the
first half of the nineteenth century, and it is consequently difficult to gain an accurate picture of
how they were regarded or the issues they faced. However, the experiences of female pianists can
shed some light on those of female violinists; Ellis’ work on the topic noted that a number of
women pianists, who started their careers as touring virtuosi, recast themselves as chamber
musicians around the age of 20. It is likely that at this age they might have been starting to
contemplate marriage; at some level, they might have felt that that a career as a chamber musician
would be more palatable to suitors, sitting more comfortably in the realm of acceptable female
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behaviour than that of the itinerant touring lifestyle, as well as being more compatible with family
life. However, women did not play the violin even within the private confines of domestic
chamber music and they were, therefore, at a disadvantage compared to players of the piano, since
women pianists could partake in chamber music with male musicians unproblematically.
However, the same was not true for women violinists until much later in the nineteenth century.
This may have discouraged some women from pursuing a career on the violin, knowing that
there would be limited opportunities for playing once they reached a marriageable age.
24.8 Conclusions
Existing work on women violinists in the first half of the nineteenth century has identified a range
of contributing elements which rendered the violin problematic for women to play during the
period, as outlined at the start of this chapter. However, an examination of late eighteenth and
early nineteenth-century source materials reveals that, in addition to the factors most frequently
cited in relation to the prejudice against women violinists, socio-musical conventions around
the ‘correct’ scope, setting and nature of women’s music-making are also likely to have been a
significant and so far under-recognised factor in prohibiting female violin playing.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, the allotted instruments and performance con-
texts for each gender reflected social structures and conventions of the period. Contemporary
sources, including books on etiquette and female education, cautioned against women becoming
excessively accomplished or making a spectacle of themselves, and warned of the corruptive dangers
of vanity and self-absorption. Women’s instrumental activities were mainly confined to the piano
and venturing outside the realm of socially allocated instruments presented a number of issues.
Pervasive underlying gender roles were a key factor with the broader societal gender divide,
and allocated roles of the sexes, echoed in the instruments and performance contexts considered
to be appropriate for each gender; just as women were expected to play a supporting social role to
their male counterparts, rather than acting in a leading capacity, their musical roles were corre-
spondingly to accompany and to remain seated at cumbersome instruments which confined them
to the home. Furthermore, ideas on female intelligence and concerns around vanity created
further challenges and shaped the limits of women’s music-making. Debates surrounding whether
women musicians had the requisite intellect to interpret the work of the ‘great’ composers,
alongside the dark glamour of the nineteenth-century virtuoso, are likely to have reinforced
underlying resistance to women playing instruments other than those socially allocated to them.
As music formed a crucial role in courting and social interaction, it is understandable that many
women did not want to shock or endanger their prospects by playing a socially prohibited in-
strument. However, further research is needed into this area; by the end of the nineteenth
century, violin playing became hugely fashionable for women, marking a stark contrast to the
‘prejudice’ against female players earlier in the period. Fully understanding the socio-musical
environment which prohibited women from accessing the instrument before this point is crucial
in building a full understanding of the violin’s history as an instrument played by women.
References
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frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Appleton, E., 1815. Private education or a practical plan for the studies of young ladies. London: Henry Colburn.
Darwin, E., 1797. A plan for the conduct of female education in boarding schools. Derby: printed by J. Drewry
for J. Johnson.
Edgeworth, M., 1795. Letters for literary ladies: to which is added, an essay on the noble science of self-justification.
London: printed for J. Johnson.
Edgeworth, M. and Edgeworth, R.L., 1815. Essays on practical education. London: printed for J. Johnson.
Ellis, K., 1997. Female pianists and their male critics in nineteenth-century Paris. Journal of the American
Musicological Society, 50/2–3, 353-385.
Euterpe; or remarks on the use and abuse of music as part of modern education, c. 1778. London: unsigned and
printed for J. Dodsley.
Geary, E.M., 1851. Musical education: with practical observations on the art of piano-forte playing, 2nd ed.
London: D’Almaine & Co. Originally published in 1841.
Gillett, P., 2000. Musical women in England, 1870–1914: “encroaching on all man’s privileges”. Basingstoke:
Macmillan.
Gooley, D., 2006. The battle against instrumental virtuosity in the early nineteenth century. In:
C.H. Gibbs and D. Gooley, eds. Franz Liszt and his world. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Haweis, H.R., 1871. Music and morals. London: Strahan & Co.
‘Madame Mara, Nee Schmelling’, 1818. The Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review 1, April, 171.
McVeigh, S., 2010. “As the sand on the sea shore”: women violinists in London’s concert life around
1900. In: E. Hornby and D.N. Maw, eds. Essays on the history of English music in honour of John Caldwell:
sources, style, performance, historiography. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 232–258.
‘Monday Popular Concerts’, 1869. The Musical World, No. 47, 20 November, 797.
Morgan, E.N., 2009. The virtuous virtuosa: women at the pianoforte and in England 1780–1820.
PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles.
Parke, W.T., 1830. Musical memoirs: comprising an account of the general state of music in England, from the first
commemoration of Handel, in 1784, to the year 1830. Interspersed with numerous anecdotes, musical, histrionic,
&c, vol. 1. London: Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley.
Reich, N.B., 1993. Women as musicians: a question of class. In: R. Solie, ed. Musicology and difference:
gender and sexuality in music scholarship. Berkeley: University of California Press, 125–146.
Steblin, R., 1995. The gender stereotyping of musical instruments in the Western tradition. Canadian
University Music Review, 16/1, 128–144.
The young lady’s book: a manual of elegant recreations, exercises, and pursuits, 1829. London: unsigned, Vizetelly,
Branston & Co.
Wood, E., 1980. Women in music. Signs, 6/2, 283–297.
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25
VISITORS FROM ‘THE MERRY
TOWN BY THE DANUBE’:
VIENNESE LADIES’ ORCHESTRAS,
PUBLIC IMAGE AND VARIETY
SHOWS IN FINLAND FROM
1870 TO 1914
Nuppu Koivisto
25.1 Introduction
This chapter discusses the public image of itinerant ladies’ orchestras in the Grand Duchy of
Finland. It aims to show that the transnational nature and gendered stereotypes of European
variety culture formed a crucial part of the context in which ladies’ orchestras performed and
vice versa. What kinds of marketing strategies did the bands utilise to attract an audience, and
how were the orchestras received and represented by their audiences? I aim to answer these
questions by analysing a wide range of late nineteenth-century sources such as photos, post
cards, lithographs and newspaper articles.1
As has been demonstrated in previous research, the term ‘ladies’ orchestra’ or ‘women’s
orchestra’ may be used to denote a myriad of different ensembles (see Keil 1998). In this
chapter, however, the concept refers to a specific cultural phenomenon in late nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century Europe. These bands were small, itinerant orchestras that performed in
restaurants, cafés and other urban entertainment venues all over Europe (Myers 1993;
Kaufmann 1997; Keil 1998; Myers 2000; Babbe 2011; Tibbe 2011; Tibbe 2012; Babbe 2017;
Bagge 2018). A typical ladies’ orchestra – Damenkapelle in German – would consist of about ten
to 15 members, most of whom were women (see Figure 25.1). The bands mostly played salon
music such as polkas, waltzes, mazurkas, overtures, potpourris and military marches (Myers
1993, pp. 162–276, 263–272; Kaufmann 1997, pp. 113–125; Koivisto 2018, pp. 260–264;
Koivisto 2019, pp. 144–177). The musicians usually came from Central or Eastern Europe
(Kaufmann 1997, pp. 21–25; Babbe 2017, pp. 305–308).
It should be noted that the term ‘variety’ is used in this chapter in an extremely broad sense to
describe a type of entertainment based on a wide spectrum of different performers, magicians,
singers and orchestras (see also Günther 1981, p. 11). I am aware of the ambivalence of terminology
here. In the United Kingdom, for example, these performances were dubbed ‘music hall’ and
250 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-25

Viennese ladies’ orchestras in Finland
Figure 25.1 Gustav Richter’s Ladies’ Orchestra performing at the Prater Amusement Park in Vienna
(Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 67.416C).
included distinctive local elements (Bailey 1986; Kift 1996; Maloney 2016). As the entertainment
form was called ‘varietee’ or ‘varieté’ in Finland, I have decided to consistently use the term ‘variety’ as
an English translation. Geographically and chronologically, this chapter concentrates on late
nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Finland. Itinerant ladies’ orchestras first arrived in
the area in the late 1870s and the last band of this type was last seen in the country during the Great
War.2 During this period, Finland was officially an autonomous part of the Russian Empire.3
Connections across the Baltic Sea ensured that Finland’s coastal areas were in continuous cultural
interaction with Saint Petersburg as well as Scandinavian cities (Lappalainen 1994, pp. 27, 52).
Music-wise, the influence of Northern Germany was substantial (Kurkela 2017, p. 48). This was
also the case with the ladies’ orchestras. Most of the bands travelled to Finland from Saint
Petersburg, Stockholm, Lübeck or Hamburg by steamboat (Koivisto 2018, pp. 256–258; Koivisto
2019, pp. 102–127). As I have shown in my dissertation, they usually remained in Finland’s most
important coastal cities during their visits (Koivisto 2019). Thus, the data presented in this chapter
concerns their activities in these coastal areas and does not include inland cities.
The methodological approach in this chapter is a feminist one. When analysing the public image
of ladies’ orchestras, I will apply a strategy of ‘reading against the grain’, a term utilised by such
influential scholars as Jill Dolan (2012, p. 47) and Susan McClary (1991, p. 31). By such careful,
critical and contextualised source work, I will be able to track down traces of patriarchal hierarchies
of nineteenth-century European society. In addition, this feminist method makes it possible to
analyse women musicians as independent historical actors, not just as passive victims of gendered
stereotyping. Unfortunately, ladies’ orchestras have remained in the margins of music historiography.
The topic has been previously studied in depth by Dorothea Kaufmann (1997) in Germany and
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Nuppu Koivisto
Margaret Myers (1993) in Sweden. Recent publications by Annkatrin Babbe (2011, 2017) and
Maren Bagge (2018) in Germany have shed light on the early stages of the ladies’ orchestra phe
nomenon as well as their advertising strategies. In Finland, ladies’ orchestras have not been studied at
all due to nationalist, patriarchal and elitist traditions of local musicology.4
The outline of this chapter is as follows. First, a brief analysis on ladies’ orchestras’ marketing
strategies will be conducted. The second section will deal with visual and literary representa
tions of these musical groups. In the third and final part, the reactions of Finnish music critics
and journalists will be examined. As this chapter is based on the source work I have done for the
final chapters of my doctoral dissertation, a more detailed analysis on the materials presented
here may be found in that publication (Koivisto 2019, pp. 193–262).5
25.2 Different marketing strategies for ladies’ orchestras

When critically analysing the marketing strategies of ladies’ orchestras, the first issue that needs
to be considered is that of revenue logic. The musicians worked in an environment of emerging
cosmopolitan capitalism and mass consumerism. As variety and popular music industries rapidly
grew, competition for jobs became heated. There was considerable pressure for ensembles as
well as individual musicians to distinguish themselves from the competition (Kaufmann 1997,
p. 158; Rühlemann 2012, pp. 402–410). Based on an analysis of European variety industry’s
prominent mouthpiece Der Artist, I have been able to discern two important strategies that
ladies’ orchestras used in their advertising.6 The first could be called a strategy of localism as the
orchestras often utilised national or regional elements in branding themselves. Second, ban
dleaders could utilise gendered stereotypes to catch the attention of potential customers and
employers. Both strategies were meant to differentiate the orchestras from their competitors.
National and regional elements may be encountered in the ensembles’ names, repertoire,
line-up and even the musicians’ costumes (see Bagge 2018, p. 22; Koivisto 2019, pp. 214–215,
219). When browsing through lists of ladies’ orchestras in Der Artist, one may find a myriad of
‘Italian’, ‘Russian’, ‘German’ or ‘Polish’ ladies’ orchestras, to name just a few.7 These bands
were often labelled as so-called Trachtenkapellen, which meant that the musicians would wear
national costumes or play traditional instruments from the region they represented.8 However,
the most popular ensemble type was that of a Viennese ladies’ orchestra (Wiener Damenkapelle).
These bands accentuated the cosmopolitan elegance of the Kaiserstadt by wearing long white
evening gowns like those featured in Figure 25.1 (see also Kaufmann 1997, pp. 155–157).
Regional and national emphases in advertising did not mean that the musicians actually came
from the areas that they represented on stage; often quite the opposite was true. As Margaret
Myers has shown, ladies’ orchestras were international working communities (Myers 1993,
pp. 279, 286). Thus, an intriguing contrast may be found between the transnational touring
culture of ladies’ orchestras on the one hand, and their use of localised advertising strategies on
the other. National and regional labels were primarily marketing tricks and they could be used
in concert-planning as well. The orchestras would try to ensure a positive reaction from the
audience by learning and playing pieces from that particular region. In Helsinki, for example,
several ladies’ orchestras presented a well-known Finnish repertoire such as the famous military
march of the Pori Regiment (Porilaisten marssi) or the hit waltz ‘Summer Evening’ (Kesäillan
valssi) written by the composer Oskar Merikanto (1868–1924).9
In addition to strategies of localism, ladies’ orchestras utilised contemporary gender stereotypes
for their own benefit. A woman performing on stage was a controversial phenomenon among the
urban bourgeoisie of late nineteenth-century Europe, and a career in the entertainment industry was
unthinkable for most ‘properly’ brought-up girls (see Suutela 2005, pp. 126–127). As for symphony
252
orchestras, women were still very rarely allowed to perform in these predominantly male en
vironments, with the exception of harpists (Reich 1991, p. 118). Thus, a female orchestral musician
was something new for late nineteenth-century audiences. Ladies’ orchestras used these gendered
prejudices to their advantage. As Dorothea Kaufmann (1997, p. 146) has pointed out, the bands
would primarily recruit ‘young and beautiful’ (junge und hübsche) musicians. Long, white evening
gowns, in turn, were used to accentuate the innocence and respectability of the musicians (ibid.,
p. 156). This stark contrast between conventional gender roles and the debaucheries of urban
nightlife was meant to intrigue potential customers. Another strategy was to incorporate costume
changes into the performances. Some orchestras would boast as many as eight different costumes
(ibid., p. 123). According to Kaufmann, it is not entirely clear whether the changes occurred during
performances or between concerts (ibid.). In any case, the musicians had to sacrifice a considerable
amount of time and money to maintain their wardrobe (ibid., p. 133). The emphasis on visual
elements also meant photographs and postcards became vital means for advertising.10
25.3 Visual and fictional representations of ladies’ orchestras

Finding the lost voices of women musicians within the variety industry is challenging since there
is a serious lack of first-hand sources (ibid., pp. 16–17). In the case of ladies’ orchestras, the task is
further complicated by the bands’ stereotypification in the early twentieth-century press, fiction
and visual arts. Since the musicians performed in restaurants, they were consistently labelled demi-
mondaines (ibid., pp. 169–170). This does not, however, suggest anything about how the women
themselves felt about their careers. Thus, it is vitally important that the stereotypes be recognised
and deconstructed by historians working with source material on variety shows. Apart from press
photos and advertising material, the most typical visual sources on ladies’ orchestras are caricatures.
Musicians were not in these cases depicted as complex individuals. Rather, they were objectified,
anonymised and treated as extensions of their instruments (see Figure 25.2).11 The caricatures
often relied on an interplay between what could be described, in stereotypical terms, as the
bourgeois, well-respected woman on the one hand, and the morally corrupt prostitute on the
other.12 Prevalent nineteenth-century dichotomies of women’s role in society may easily be
discerned in these representations (see also Myers 1993, pp. 12–24, 203–205).
In my research, I have identified three crucial ways of objectification that may be repeatedly
found in representations of ladies’ orchestras. First, the ensembles were often depicted as quirky
but generic background elements of urban entertainment scenes. In these cases, the orchestras
were simply meant to illustrate a jolly café or restaurant atmosphere. Normally, the authors would
use little space to describe the orchestras. Again, the musicians’ individuality was not emphasized
and the band members remained anonymous for the reader.13 The second way of utilising ladies’
orchestras as a literary element was to present the musicians as objects of amused admiration. This
approach is evident in the short story Pekka Hirvonen (1896) by Helsinki-born author Gösta
Sundman (1854–1914). The comic nature of the text stems from the contrast between the
protagonist Pekka, a young and naïve student from the Finnish countryside, and the violinist with
whom he becomes infatuated during an evening at the prestigious Hotel Kämp (see Koivisto
2019, pp. 249–251).14 At the same time, Pekka’s romantic dreams serve to illustrate disparities
between the attitudes towards music-making women from different social backgrounds:
There were, of course, beautiful girls in the countryside as well the vicar’s daughters,
for example, oh! oh! how beautiful they were when they danced at balls, and one of
the two played the piano…. But it is still more elegant to play the violin, I could not
help pointing out. Yes, said Pekka, she could be the president of our musical society
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Nuppu Koivisto
Figure 25.2 ‘An Evening at the Restaurant Princess’ (En afton på Princess).
(Fyren, No. 11, 16 March 1907, p. 15).
and she can also speak German and Hungarian and soon she could learn Finnish as
well, since Hungarian and Finnish are so alike…. Well, I did not want to argue with
that and Pekka gulped down more liqueur.
[Nog fanns det vackra flickor på landet också, t. ex. prostens döttrar, aj! aj! hvad de voro vackra
när de voro på danser, och den ena spelade piano. / Men nog är det finare att spela viol, kunde
jag icke underlåta att infalla. Ja, sa’ Pekka, nog skulle hon bli ordförande i vår musikförening och
så kan hon tyska och ungerska och snart skulle hon lära sig finska med, för ungerska och finska
15
ä’ så lika hvarandra. Nå jag ville icke motsäga och Pekka slog i mera munk.]
The third and final type of literary representations aims to show ladies’ orchestras as objects of
moral concern. In these cases, the women musicians were depicted as passive victims of heartless
restaurant owners and impresarios.16 As I have shown, these fictional accounts were closely re
lated to discussion on the so-called white slave trade, which was associated with variety show
culture at the time (Koivisto 2019, pp. 202–210). It was suspected that variety show agents
practised ‘girl trafficking’ (Mädchenhandel), luring innocent girls from the countryside by
254
promising them lucrative work in ladies’ orchestras, when in reality the women would be shipped
off to remote countries and forced to work as prostitutes (see Kaufmann 1997, pp. 102–104;
Wingfield 2017, pp. 237–286). For some orchestras, this was indeed the case.17
25.4 Journalism and music criticism: case Finland

The social position of ladies’ orchestras was also discussed in newspapers and periodicals. The
first question that this source material raises is the role of music criticism. Both the variety show
label of the orchestras and the musicians’ gender made them quite an exceptional target for
critics. Thus, it is of crucial importance to find out how critics reacted to ladies’ orchestras. In
Finland, music criticism was still in the middle of its institutionalisation process during the last
decades of the nineteenth century. There were few active critics and publishing platforms, and
the writers’ interest lay primarily in local and national enterprises (Sarjala 1994). Furthermore,
late nineteenth-century music criticism was an overwhelmingly male-dominated area of
writing.18 The fragmentary nature of music criticism was further accentuated by the political
differences between newspapers for Finnish- and Swedish-speaking readers. The latter tended
to endorse more liberal views towards variety entertainment.19
As I have demonstrated in my dissertation, prominent music critics did not typically
comment on ladies’ orchestras, as their performances were considered to be of low artistic and
moral value. For example, the only public comment on ladies’ orchestras uttered by the re
nowned critic and composer Oskar Merikanto reads as follows: ‘[these are] the kinds of concerts
… that one would not care to hear, even if one got free chocolate in return!’.20 This being the
case, the orchestras often received no more than a short description in the ‘Varia’ section of
daily newspapers.21 At the time, this was a common space where other types of variety en
tertainment were reviewed.22 It was deliberately left outside established criticism and granted
little exposure. In addition, ladies’ orchestras were mostly compared to each other. I have gone
so far as to argue that these bands formed a closed category within music journalism, even
though some orchestras could be described to be of exceptional quality (Koivisto 2019, p. 182).
As a rule, the musicians’ physical appearance formed a significant part of newspaper com
mentaries (see Myers 1993, pp. 161, 180–187). In the eyes of male journalists, elegant apparel
and attractive looks were considered an essential part of the performances.23
Journalistic representations of ladies’ orchestras were, however, not limited to concise de
scriptions of their performances. For one, ladies’ orchestras were often mentioned in travel logs.
As the orchestras were itinerant by nature, this is not exactly surprising. In Finland, the travel
depictions were normally written in a mundane and cosmopolitan tone. Ladies’ orchestras’
performances were an essential part of urban entertainment life in European cities.24 In addition,
ladies’ orchestras had a crucial role in columns describing urban nightlife in Finland. On several
occasions, the musicians were referred to as visitors from ‘the merry town by the Danube’
(den glada Donau-staden [sic]), meaning Vienna.25 A typical description of this type may be found
in an article ‘A Gentlemen’s Evening in Hotel Kämp’, written by the columnist Passepartout:
The first half of the programme would have been suitable for any gala evening, il
lustrated as it was by such excellent artists…. Their performances caused thunderous
applause, as frenetic and rumbling as if the god Thor himself had sat there as a cla
queur…. Afterwards the programme continued with supper, which the greater part of
the audience ate, for the sake of variety, at the downstairs café, in which the ladies’
orchestra Anna Frankl executed lively Viennese melodies. It was even more crowded
here than upstairs, but … a cheerful atmosphere was dominant.
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Nuppu Koivisto
[Programmets första afdelning hade anstått hvilken gala-soirée som helst, illustrerad som den var
genom så utmärkta konstnärer…. Äfven framkallade deras uppträdande applådåskor, så fre
netiska och bullrande som hade guden Thor själf suttit här som klakör…. Härpå upptog pro
grammet supé, hvilken större delen af publiken för omväxlings skull intog nere på kaféet, hvarest
damkapellet Anna Frankl exekverade sprittande wiener-melodier. Här var om möjligt än trängre
än uppe, men … den gladaste stämning var rådande.]26
Third, ladies’ orchestras were typically mentioned in connection with scandals and rumours.
The musicians’ itinerant lifestyle and their close ties to the entertainment industry undoubtedly
evoked the interest of a number of contributors to yellow journalism publication. An inter
esting example of this text type – with striking similarities to the storyline of Billy Wilder’s 1959
film, Some Like It Hot – may be found in a piece of news published in the Turku-based
newspaper Åbo Underrättelser in 1877:
The Viennese Ladies’ Orchestra stays for the time being in San Francisco and forms a
veritable’attraction’, especially after a romantic event has made the already well-known
orchestra even more famous. A while ago, the son of a Boston millionaire, Mr. Hadley,
disappeared and the secret police looked for his whereabouts in several countries, while
a generous reward was promised for the person who could find him. His musical talent
and feminine looks led a detective in San Francisco on the right track; the young Hadley
was found to be the first violinist in the ladies’ orchestra and he was duly arrested…. As
it was stated, it was not only art that made the young banker’s son change professions,
but also love for one of the orchestra’s attractive members.
[Det Wienska damkapellet vistas för närvarande i San Francisko [sic] och utgör en
allmän’attraction’, i synnerhet sedan en romantisk händelse gjort det berömda kapellet ännu
mera omtaladt. För någon tid sedan försvann från Boston sonen till millionären Hadley, och det
hemliga polisen efterspårade i flere land hans vistelseort, emedan ett stort pris var utsatt på hans
återfinnande. Hans muskaliska begåfning och qvinliga utseende ledde en detektiv i San
Francisko [sic] på rätta spåret; unge Hadley upptäcktes vara förste violinist i damgruppen samt
fasttogs…. Såsom det uppgifves, var det icke konsten allena, som förmådde den unge bank
irsonen att byta yrke, utan äfven kärleken till en af kapellets fagra medlemmar.]27
25.5 Conclusion
Overall, the evidence on the public image of ladies’ orchestras suggests that they had close ties to
European variety culture. Based on both the marketing materials of the orchestras, as well as literary,
journalistic and visual representations, we may argue that ladies’ orchestras formed an important
sociohistorical part of European variety culture on several levels. First, musicians in ladies’ orchestras
had to forge their careers in the context of the modern entertainment business. To make a living,
the bands had to brand themselves. For this reason, their advertising materials often included
national or regional and gender-related elements. Thus, there was a strong contrast between the
musicians’ cosmopolitan life on tour and the bands’ nationally oriented public image.
Second, the use of contemporary gender stereotypes in marketing accentuated visual aspects
in the orchestras’ performances. Similar to other variety artists, ladies’ orchestras were stereo
typed in the eyes of their audiences. In art and fiction, the musicians were generally described as
passive background characters with undertones of moral concern. These anonymous characters
were primarily meant to represent an atmosphere of urban entertainment.
256
Third, ladies’ orchestras were excluded from music criticism. This was also the case with
other types of urban entertainment that were not granted column space in the art section of
newspapers. Comments on the bands’ concerts were succinct and contained allusions to the
musicians’ attractiveness rather than their musical abilities. In most cases, journalists chose to
write about ladies’ orchestras in connection with travel logs or entertainment columns, in
which the bands were meant to illustrate the urban nightlife of European cities. Furthermore,
ladies’ orchestras held a certain curiosity value in journalistic texts.
These three aspects demonstrate the importance of carefully examining sociohistorical as
pects of the whole ladies’ orchestra phenomenon. On a broader historiographical scope, the
study of ladies’ orchestras offers a critical perspective on the canons of traditional music history.
By reading materials on the bands’ public image ‘against the grain’, we may identify gendered
power hierarchies and observe the impact that those hierarchies had on the careers of women
performers. On the other hand, this type of analysis helps us see the performers as individuals
and actors, not only victims of gendered prejudice. This process, in turn, helps us understand
the complex nexus of gender and social class in late nineteenth-century music-making.
List of Finnish, Swedish and German‐language newspapers and periodicals consulted:
Der Artist
Hufvudstadsbladet
Karjala
Måndagen
Nya Pressen
Program-bladet
Päivälehti
Sosialisti
Uusi Suometar
Wasa Tidning
Wiener Hausfrauen-Zeitung
Wiborgs Tidning
Åbo Underrättelser
Östra Finland
Notes
1 The photos and postcards have been examined at Forschungszentrum Musik und Gender, Hannover
(FMG), which houses a collection of 423 advertising postcards in total (Bagge 2018, p. 6). Lithographs
and fictional representations have been found in individual novels and short stories as well as in
feuilletons published in the press. A list of newspapers and periodicals consulted has been provided at the
end of this chapter. All Finnish newspaper materials cited here may be perused on the Internet, as
Finland’s newspapers and periodicals up to 1917 have been digitised by the Finnish National Library,
available from: https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/. For a more detailed analysis on the sources, see
Koivisto (2019, pp. 22–30).
2 For the earliest (1877) and the last (1916) ladies’ salon orchestras in Finland, see Wiborgs Tidning, no.
115, 2 October 1877, p. 4, and Hufvudstadsbladet, no. 117, 30 April 1916, p. 6.
3 The Grand Duchy of Finland came into existence in 1809, as the area was annexed to Russia. After the
political turmoil of the October Revolution, Finland gained its independence. For a concise overview
on the political history of nineteenth-century Finland, see Jussila et al. (2009).
4 On ladies’ orchestras in Finland, see Koivisto (2018, 2019). Elisa Määttänen Boynton (1988) has
written a short paper on the Helsinki Women’s Orchestra (Helsingin naisorkesteri / Helsingfors
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Nuppu Koivisto
damorkester) which was founded in 1938. However, this orchestra differed from the earlier ensembles
described in this chapter. Its members mostly came from the urban bourgeoisie and the orchestra
did not offer the musicians full-paid employment.
5 In the dissertation, my approach was engrained in transnationalism rather than feminist musicology.
6 See also Koivisto (2019, pp. 211–217). Der Artist: Central-Organ der Circus, Variété-Bühnen, reisenden
Kapellen und Ensembles was published in Düsseldorf from 1882 onwards. For the purposes of my
research, I have consulted the volumes 1885–87 (Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian
Senckenberg, Frankfurt-am-Main, sig. MF 24261), 1892–96 and 1898–99 (Bibliothek, Carl-von-
Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, sig. F 61 mus 545 VT 0076).
7 A similar trend may be found in Finnish newspaper advertisements. For example, the women’s brass
band, Hansa, advertised itself as ‘German’ in 1892 (Östra Finland, no. 46, 25 February 1892, p. 2),
whereas the ladies’ orchestra, Kazimira, was labelled ‘Polish’ (Karjala, no. 86, 16 April 1912, p. 2).
8 For example, the ‘Scottish’ ladies’ orchestra, MacGregor, performed in ‘national costumes’ while
touring in Finland (nationalkostymer [sic], Måndagen, no. 40, 1 October 1906, p. 3).
9 This information is extracted from the concert database for my dissertation (see Koivisto 2019,
pp. 144–148). It includes 1,340 concert programmes for 11 different ladies’ orchestras that performed
in Helsinki between 1895 and 1905. All the programmes were published in the local weekly
Program-bladet.
10 For a detailed analysis of postcards as a means for advertising ladies’ orchestras, see Bagge (2018).
11 This attitude was typical in journalistic texts as well (see, for example, Program-bladet, no. 19, 13 October
1897, p. 2).
12 An evident example of this dichotomy is Heinrich Kley’s caricature ‘Die Damenkapelle’ (1909 [1961]),
which I have analysed in my dissertation (Koivisto 2019, pp. 244–246).
13 See Louis Levy’s short story The Invalid Club (Invalidklubben), Nya Pressen, no. 160B, 17 June 1900, p. 2.
14 The story was published both in both the newspaper Wasa Tidning (no. 102, 3 May 1896, p. 2)
and the compilation Karin Eksten med flere konturteckningar (Sundman 1896). On Hotel Kämp,
see Kolbe (2016).
15 Gösta Sundman, Pekka Hirvonen (Sundman 1896, pp. 69–70). See also Koivisto (2019, p. 250). All
translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.
16 A good example of this attitude is provided by the story Bei der Damenkapelle by Max Wundtke,
published in Wiener Hausfrauen-Zeitung, no. 21, 26 May 1907, pp. 322–325. I have conducted an
analysis of the text in my dissertation (Koivisto 2019, pp. 252–253).
17 See, for example, Sosialisti, no. 249, 28 October 1911, p. 7.
18 So far, only one prominent late nineteenth-century Finnish woman critic, Anna Ingman (1851–1930),
has been identified (Biograafisia tietoja Suomen naisista eri työaloilla, 83; Konttinen 2008, pp. 159–161).
19 See, for example, Hufvudstadsbladet, no. 319, 24 November 1901, p. 6, and Päivälehti, no. 152A,
1 December 1901, p. 3. See also Koivisto (2019, p. 180).
20 ‘[…] sellaisia’konsertteja’ […], joita ei viitsisi kuulla, vaikka saisi suklaatia ilmaiseksi!’ in Uusi Suometar,
no. 26, 1 February 1891, p. 2. See also Koivisto (2019, p. 178).
21 See Hufvudstadsbladet, no. 327, 2 December 1898, p. 4.
22 See Hufvudstadsbladet, no. 333A, 8 December 1901, p. 7.
23 See Program-bladet, no. 72, 16 February 1898, p. 3.
24 See, for example, a travel log from Egypt published in Måndagen, no. 2, 11 January 1909, p. 4.
25 See Program-bladet, no. 37, 30 November 1898, p. 2.
26 Passepartout, ‘En Herr-Afton å Hotel Kämp’, Program-bladet, no. 28, 1 November 1896, pp. 2–3.
27 Åbo Underrättelser, no. 40, 11 February 1877, p. 3.
References
Babbe, A., 2011. “Ein orchester, wie es bisher in Europa noch nicht gesehen und gehört worden war”: das “erste
Europäische damenorchester” von Josephine Amann-Weinlich, Schriftenreihe des Sophie Drinker Instituts 8.
Oldenburg: BIS Verlag.
Babbe, A., 2017. Von ort zu ort. Reisenden damenkapellen in der ersten hälfte des 19. jahrhunderts. In: C.
Philipsen and U. Omonsky eds. Populares und popularität in der musik, XLII Wissenschaftliche Arbeitstagung
Michaelstein, 6. bis 8. Mai 2016. Augsburg & Blankenburg: Michaelstein, 303–317.
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Bagge, M., 2018. “Am besten, wie sie sehn, tut uns die pfeife stehn”: werbung und inszenierungsstrategien
von damenensembles um 1900 auf postkarten. In: A. Kreutziger-Herr et al., eds. Wege: festschrift für
Susanne Rode-Breymann. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag.
Bailey, P., ed., 1986. Music hall: the business of pleasure. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Dolan, J., 2012. The feminist spectator as critic. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Günther, E., 1981. Geschichte des varietés. Berlin: Henschelverlag, Kunst und Gesellschaft.
Jussila, O. et al., 2009. Suomen poliittinen historia 1809–2009 [The political history of Finland, 1809–2009].
Helsinki: WSOY.
Kaufmann, D., 1997. ‘…routinierte Trommlerin gesucht’: musikerin in einer damenkapelle zum bild eines ver
gessenen frauenberufes aus der kaiserzeit. Karben: CODA Musikservice und Verlag.
Keil, U.B., 1998. Von wandermusikanten zum damenorchester: professionelle damenkapellen und
frauenorchester um die jahrhundertwende. Das Orchester, 46/11, 18–25.
Kift, D., 1996. The Victorian music hall: culture, class and conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Koivisto, N., 2018. “Wienin pääskyset” Pohjolassa: kansainvälisten naisorkesterien kiertuereitit ja ohjel
mistot Suomen kaupungeissa 1890-luvulla’ [“Viennese Swallows” in the north: the touring routes and
repertoires of international ladies’ orchestras in Finnish cities during the 1890s]. In: M. Lamberg et al.,
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Koivisto, N., 2019. Sähkövaloa, shampanjaa ja Wiener damenkapelle: naisten salonkiorkesterit ja
varieteealan transnationaaliset verkostot Suomessa 1877–1916. [Electric lights, champagne, and a
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the middle ages until the dawn of modernism]. Helsinki: Tammi.
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1917’ [The formation of Finland in musical culture: orchestral music and publicity in Helsinki, 1860-
1917]. Musiikki, 47/1–2, 41–85.
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Helsinki ladies’ orchestra, 1938-1988]. Helsinki: Helsingin naisorkesteri.
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B. Diamond, eds. Music and gender. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 189–213.
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music: a history. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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populären kultur in München ende des 19. jahrhunderts, München: Meidenbauer.
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lehdistössä 1860–1888 [The standardization of musical taste and the public opinion: music criticism in
Helsinki-based newspapers, 1860-1888], PhD thesis, University of Turku.
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theatre]. Helsinki: Like.
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Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag.
Tibbe, M., ed., 2012. Marie Stütz: aufzeichnungen einer reisenden musikerin. Quellentexte und kommentare.
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Wingfield, N.M., 2017. The world of prostitution in late imperial Austria. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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26
WOMEN SONG COMPOSERS AND
THE LONDON BALLAD
CONCERTS
Maren Bagge
26.1 Introduction
‘Why are there no women composers?’, a question that was already raised in the nineteenth
century and debated more intensively in connection with the second wave feminism (Rosen
1973), seems to be still relevant today.1 According to the headline of an article published in the
Guardian in 2018, ‘[f]emale composers [are] largely ignored by concert line-ups’. The article refers
to statistics, compiled by the Donne – Women in Music project, that have illustrated ‘the “in
excusable” fact that only 76 classical concerts among 1,445 performed across the world from this
year to 2019 include at least one piece by a woman’ (Brown 2018). This chapter will take this
current issue as an occasion to analyse the participation of women composers at concerts at the
second half of the nineteenth century.2 As Scott has stated, ‘the amount of concert promotional
activity taking place in Britain multiplied rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century’
(Scott 2001, p. 120; see also McVeigh and Ehrlich 2002). In 1867, the first concert of a significant
series of ballad concerts was given – organised by the publisher John Boosey – at St. James’s Hall
in London. The London Ballad Concerts were extremely prominent in the second half of the
century and played a pioneering role: the concerts were the first to be organised in a continuous
series and continued for nearly 70 years. At around the same time, women song and ballad
composers such as Virginia Gabriel (1825–77), Charlotte Helen Sainton-Dolby (1821–85) as well
as ‘Claribel’ (1830–69) and ‘Dolores’ (1819–78), who published their songs under a pen name,
started to gain success particularly through their vocal music. This was a large and profitable
market. Boosey was one of several London publishing firms that had a large share of popular
ballads in their catalogue. As the genre of so-called drawing-room ballads was especially regarded
as quintessentially feminine (Scott 2003, p. 25), one can assume that music by women made up a
large portion of the London Ballad Concerts’ vocal music.3
To investigate this issue, a brief overview of the series is given by answering the following
questions: what was the publisher’s intention to initiate such a series?; when, how often and
where did the concerts take place?; who attended the concerts?; who was singing and whose
music was played and sung? The last question then leads to the main part of this chapter: how
works by women composers were included in this popular concert series. Answers to these
questions can be found in the archives of the publisher and concert manager, Boosey, and the
library of the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London holds a nearly complete collection of
260 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-26

Women composers and London Ballad Concerts
programmes of the London Ballad Concerts from its first concert in 1867 until the last one in
1933.4 The information presented below was obtained mainly from a comprehensive analysis of
these programmes. Other consulted sources were contemporary articles from newspapers and
periodicals as well as printed sheet music, and recent research literature on concert life in
nineteenth-century Britain.
26.2 The London Ballad Concert series

The London Ballad Concert series, which lasted for eight decades, was a flourishing concert
format. An analysis covering the whole period of the series risks not doing justice to the di
versity of the phenomenon as individual developments and manifestations are easily lost in an
overall examination. Therefore, the present study is based on a threefold segmentation. In a first
step, programmes of the first 28 seasons, from 1867 until 1894, were examined. The year 1894
was chosen for the first cut because several changes occurred. The concert director, John
Boosey, died just one year before, and the concerts moved to another venue: furthermore, this
was the year the publishing firm Chappell initiated another ballad concert series (Bagge 2020a),
which certainly affected both series because of the competitive situation. The second cut was
made in 1914 with the beginning of World War I. Nancy Kinsey Totten gives a reasonable
explanation for choosing this incident as the second boundary:
Although the ballad concerts of both Boosey and Chappell continued into the fol
lowing decades, the relevance of the concerts to the middle class was changed irre
vocably by the war, and publishers’ attempts to reclaim their former success ultimately
failed (Totten 1997, p. 5).
The third period ends with the closure of the series in 1933. Because of the focus of this chapter
on the ‘long nineteenth century’, only the first two periods will be discussed in more detail.
The first 28 seasons of the London Ballad Concerts organised by publisher John Boosey
were held at St. James’s Hall, London’s principal concert hall in late nineteenth century. The
concerts were held in the larger hall which offered more than 2,000 seats. Huge crowds of
people gathered to listen to these concerts at this location. The concert hall was in the fash
ionable London West End, a hot spot and very profitable location, where several music
publishers were running their businesses. In 1894, the concerts moved to the newly completed
Queen’s Hall in Langham Place, Regent Street, and after returning for one season to St. James’s
Hall, the concerts took place in the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington from 1907. Changes in
concert venue were accompanied by an extension in the potential size of the auditorium. The
Queen’s Hall, which became London’s principal concert venue at this time, had a capacity of
3,000.5 The Royal Albert Hall had even greater proportions and held 8,000 people. What did
the audience have to pay to attend a London Ballad concert? Tickets could be purchased at
various points of sale, such as the principal music sellers and at the official Boosey and Co.’s
Ballad Concert Office in Regent Street. There had been several increases of the ticket prices,
including a price adjustment after the change of venue to the Queen’s Hall. The individual
ticket prices for a ballad concert, as labelled in the printed programmes, ranged from one
shilling for gallery and orchestra tickets to seven shillings, six pennies for tickets in the stalls.
Summing up for the entire period, the ticket prices for Boosey’s London Ballad Concerts were
comparable to similar musical events in these locations (Totten 1997, p. 65). Featuring cheap
tickets for even one shilling contributed to the large crowds and packed houses at concerts that
reviewers spoke of.6
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Maren Bagge
Based on several contemporary sources, it can be assumed that the overall number of the
people attending these concerts were male as well as female music lovers from the middle class.
A glance at the programmes and, in particular, at the advertisements printed in the concert
programmes confirms this assumption. Advertisements for music instruments can be found as
well as those explicitly addressed to ‘the private gentlemen’7 or to the ‘Ladies’.8 Promotion for
sheet music sold by Boosey constitutes the largest part of the advertisements printed in the
concert books and programmes. There is often a correlation between the advertised works and
the songs performed at the most current concert. The concert promoter advertises ‘New Songs
and Ballads’ and ‘Songs that are sung’ from his own catalogue.9 Thus, the music lover in the
audience knows where, and at what price, he or she could acquire the scores to play and sing
the music heard on the stage on the piano at home. This also refers to the purpose of the
concerts: promoting the new ballads from the publisher’s catalogue.
The number of concerts per season varied. On average, there were about 14 concerts
spread over the months between November and April. Initially, the concerts were held on
Wednesday evenings; later, they were held on Saturday afternoon. But there were also some
special concerts that were given – ‘in answer to numerous applications’10 – besides the usual
days and times, like the so-called Monday ‘morning’ concerts (at 2 pm). Other, extra concerts
were given on the occasion of a special subject, singer or composer. For example, there was
a ‘Grand Concert of Sacred Music’ held on Ash-Wednesday Evening in 1872. John Sims
Reeves’ (1818–1900) Annual Benefit Concert was also organised by Boosey and had a similar
programme structure and design as the usual concerts of the series.
In general, the concerts were divided in two parts with a short break. A typical ballad concert
featured between 15 and 23 solo vocal numbers, sometimes a vocal duet, some glees, part-songs
or choruses and two to five instrumental numbers. The central focus of the concert was always
the songs and ballads of the publishers’ catalogue. To avoid a too excessive duration of the
concerts, the publisher announced in the printed concert programmes from time to time: ‘Owing
to the length of the Programme, the Public is respectfully requested not to encore any of the
Songs’.11 However, this attempt was hardly successful according to newspaper reviews.12
The concert programme for the 4th concert of the 25th season in 1890 provides an
impression of the schedule (see Figure 26.1). The programme featured, for example, some
newly arranged ‘old songs’, like ‘Jess Maepharlane’ by Lucy Etheldred Broadwood (1858‐1929);
some newer songs (about five to ten years old) identified as audience favourites, like James
Lynam Molloy’s (1837–1909) ‘London Bridge’, which was already in the programme at the
concerts ten years earlier;13 and new, just published songs such as Maude Valérie White’s
(1855–1937) ‘Love me, sweet, with all thou art’.
This leads to the question of the different protagonists of the concerts. Who was involved?
The programmes provide answers to this question. Besides the promoter and director (John
Boosey and later Messrs. Boosey & Co.), who organised the concerts, conductors and ac
companists, like Sidney Naylor (1841–93), usually remained the same for several concerts and
seasons in a row. A typical London Ballad Concert featured eight or nine singers, one choir or
vocal ensemble, usually under direction, and one or two instrumentalists. Among the perfor
mers were popular and celebrated concert singers of their time like Antoinette Sterling,
Charlotte Helen Sainton-Dolby, John Sims Reeves and Charles Santley. The important role
of the singers is reflected in the prominence given to their names in announcements printed
in the book of words of preceding concerts, where usually the singers were listed but not the
performed works and their composers. In this respect, the announcement format thus followed
the conventions of the time. In music journals and newspapers, the concert promoter also
advertised for the concerts by giving the names of their successful vocal performers.
262
Figure 26.1 Programme of the London Ballad Concert (10 December 1890).
But how were women composers represented at the concert series? The large number of
programmes allows for the use quantitative analysis.14 A dataset was created from the concert
programmes and books of words held by the RCM library, from which a list with all per
formances of women’s works in the first 28 and the following 19 seasons of the London Ballad
Concerts could be extracted (Figure 26.2).
In the first period, more than 180 different works and, all in all, 570 performances of works
by 39 women composers could be identified. These works were mostly classified as songs.
Compositions for more than one voice with piano accompaniment, such as duets, part-songs or
choruses as well as instrumental music that were also part of the concerts, are hardly found
among them. Detailed analyses have shown that more than two-thirds of the concerts featured
at least one work by a woman composer.15 Particularly in the first five years, many works of
women composers were performed: in the 1870–71 season, works by women composers
comprised the highest percentage of the programme. 18% of all performances in the 4th and 5th
seasons were based on works composed explicitly by women. In the first 28 seasons of the
London Ballad Concerts, the percentage of women’s work performances ranges from 1 to 18%.
The percentage of women’s work performances per season in the second period is slightly
higher. While it was on average 6% per season in period 1, it now was an average of 14% per
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Maren Bagge
Figure 26.2 Composers with more than two performances at the London Ballad Concerts in period 1
(seasons 1 to 28) and period 2 (seasons 29 to 48).
season. This trend, which initially appears positive, can be explained by the relatively sizable
amounts of larger works performed, such as song cycles and sets. In season 42 (1907–08), Amy
Woodforde-Finden’s (1860–1919) A Lover in Damascus and her On Jhelum River were per
formed, as well as selections from Liza Lehmann’s (1862–1918) light romantic opera The Vicar of
Wakefield. This explains why both composers were the most performed women composers in
the second period, followed by Alicia Adélaïde Needham (1863–1945), Frances Allitsen (i.e.
Mary Frances Bumpus, 1848–1912) and Maude Valérie White.
26.3 Popular women song composers at the London Ballad Concerts,

their songs and singers
The composer Charlotte Alington Barnard, who published under the pen name Claribel, leads
the list in the first 28 seasons of the concert series. Hope Temple – pen name of Alice Maude
Davis (1859–1938) – Virginia Gabriel, Charlotte Helen Sainton-Dolby, who was also a per
former at the concerts, and Elizabeth Philp (1827–85) rank in the top five, too. While some
(biographical) research on these composers has been done (see Fuller 1998, 2005;
264
Scott 2001, pp. 61–77), hardly anything is known about the composer Henriette. She published
several songs in Boosey’s catalogue in the 1870s and the publisher advertised ‘Henriette’s Most
Popular Songs’ in his concert books.16 Ten different songs from her oeuvre were part of the
London Ballad Concert’s repertoire and among them was ‘Always Alone’, her most performed
song in this concert series.
‘Always Alone’ was introduced at the London Ballad Concerts and had a total number of 12
performances over six years. It was first sung at Boosey’s 6th Saturday Ballad Concert on 19
March 1870 by Janet Monach Patey (1842–94) and was encored.17 The song was reviewed in
The Examiner a few days later:
[W]e can hardly speak in terms of sufficient favour of a new ballad, ‘Always alone’,
bearing the signature of Henriette. The verses are true poetry, and such a feeling and
pathetic melody, so simple in form, yet so expressive, has not been heard for some
time. It found a fitting exponent in the sympathetic tones of Mdme Patey’s voice. An
encore could not be avoided, and we could well have borne to have heard it even a
third time.18
The song was first published by Boosey & Co. in 1870 – in two keys ‘to suit all voices’.19 An
advertisement in The Illustrated London News claimed that 14,000 copies of Henriette’s
‘Always Alone’ had been sold in August 1875.20 Another edition was published only a few
years later by the London publisher Patey & Willis. How closely the singer Patey was con
nected with the composition is reflected in the design of the title page of this edition (see
Figure 26.3).21 It bears the name of Patey in printed letters on the top and is also signed with a
facsimile of Janet Patey’s initial letters. An analysis of the relations between all of Henriette’s
songs performed at the London Ballad Concerts (ten) and their singers (nine) clarifies which
singers were the most important for distributing Henriette’s songs at this concert series.
Besides Patey, it was Miss Enriquez who appeared seven times with Henriette’s works.
Enriquez performed ‘Always Alone’ only once but had a second Henriette Song (‘Sympathy’)
in her repertoire, and Patey sung ‘Always Alone’ in 11 concerts but did not go on stage with
any other Henriette song.
Comparing these results with another composer from the second period suggests that this
performance practise is one reason why Henriette and her work disappeared from concert
platforms and into oblivion soon. The Irish composer Alicia Adélaïde Needham provides an
appropriate example for comparison. Both Henriette and Needham (predominantly) published
their works at Boosey & Co., who extensively promoted their compositions as printed sheet
music or in newspaper adverts. Although considerably more works by Needham were per
formed at the concert series – 32 different works by Needham were performed 82 times al
together, and 10 different works by Henriette were performed 36 times – their most performed
songs (‘Always Alone’, ‘The Donovans’) were roughly equally heard at London Ballad Concerts
between 1896 and 1914. As well as Henriette’s ‘Always Alone’, Needham’s ‘The Donovans’
was reprinted in a new edition.22
‘The Donovans’ was performed at the concert series by five male singers:
• Harry Plunket Greene (1865–1936)

• Henry Lane Wilson (1871–1915)
• Denis O’Sullivan (1868–1908)
• Robert Radford (1874–1933)
• Frederick Ranalow (1873–1953)23
265
Maren Bagge
Figure 26.3 Front cover of an 1880s edition of ‘Always Alone’ by Henriette.

(Forschungszentrum Musik und Gender (FMG), Hanover).
266
Three of these singers had one or more compositions by Needham in their London Ballad
Concerts repertoire. Besides ‘The Donovans’, Lane Wilson sung ‘Who’s that Calling’ as well as
‘Who Carries the Gun?’, and Denis O’Sullivan also twice performed ‘The Exile’s Return’ to
gether with Needham, who accompanied her own song at the piano. Green performed ‘The
Donovans’ most frequently. On 2 January 1897, the song was introduced at the London Ballad
Concert by this Irish bass-baritone whose remarkable powers of interpretation, particularly the
beauty of his enunciation attributed by the critics, made him one of the leading exponents of
English song (Shawe-Taylor and Blyth 2001). Greene and Needham had been in exchange with
each other during the compositional process. On 30 June 1896, Needham wrote in her diary:
Met Plunket Greene at Boosey’s in the morning + came home half pleased + half sorry.
Have to simplify the whole acc[ompaniment]. He’s to sing it at next Ballad concert, that
is grand! + he says it will be a 2nd ‘Off to Philadelphia’ + will run all over the country.24
Four months later, Needham ‘gave him [Boosey] the Donovans – arranged for P.G. [Plunket
Greene] + altogether we were both very serene + pleased with each other’.25
For nearly 15 years, Needham’s ‘The Donovans’ was sung on the stage of the London Ballad
Concerts. How can this success be explained? Maybe the audience was pleased that it was a
‘truly Irish song’,26 especially because it was an old Irish air (‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’)
that was arranged by an Irish composer, set to a text by an Irish poet and first sung by an Irish
singer.27 Furthermore, there were some performance-related, extra-musical circumstances, in
the narrow sense which were not immanent in the work, that contributed to the long-lasting
success. Compared to Henriette, Needham had more than twice as many works performed at
the concert series. This suggests that quantity and continuity of performances were crucially
significant to success. The more singers that had one or more songs of the composer in the
repertoire, the greater the likelihood that they were repeatedly performed.
However, the importance of the individual singers should not be underestimated. Singers were
often strongly associated with particular songs. Both Patey and Plunket Greene were used as
influential advertising figures for the songs, as can be seen in the sales promotion technique used
by Boosey by listing the names of the singers on the title pages and in the printed advertisements.
The audiences expected these songs to be on the programme when they heard those singers. As it
was part of their ‘brand’, it is very probable that the singers identified themselves with the songs
and, therefore, had committed themselves to performing them regularly. It was also a particularly
lucrative area of business – the so-called royalty system. Paying the singers ‘a fixed royalty for a
term of years on each copy of a ballad sold, on condition that they plugged it at all their concert
engagements’ (Scott 2001, p. 127), seems to have been an effective strategy for disseminating the
music and increasing the demand for the printed sheet music (Bagge 2020b). While there is no
corresponding entry for Henriette’s ‘Always Alone’ in the publisher’s ledgers concerning the
royalties, three people are mentioned in connection with Needham’s ‘The Donovans’: The poet
Fahy, who got a half shilling for every copy sold, and Needham, as well as Greene, who both
were intended to get three shillings for every copy sold.28
26.4 Conclusion
These examples not only show the popularity of the women composers in these days but also
the marketing strategies of the concert promoter and music publisher Boosey. The main
purpose was probably the sale of sheet music from the publisher’s catalogue. To promote their
products, they founded concerts, hired the most popular singers of the day to perform the
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Maren Bagge
music, and offered affordable tickets to attract a large audience of potential buyers. Popular
and established ballads, like the songs by Needham and Henriette, as well as the singers,
became crowd-pullers. In this regard, the publisher benefitted from the popularity of the
women song composers in the second half of the nineteenth century. Whereas, those women
composers who were active in this segment of the musical world particularly benefitted from
the concert series. Through performances by renowned singers and further marketing in the
printed concert programmes, the concert practice contributed to the ongoing success of
women composers and made them even more widely known. Thus, women could achieve
high commercial success.
Concert performances, as well as high sales figures and publications in new editions, show
that both composers examined in this chapter achieved great popularity (of different duration),
but their works and lives are nearly forgotten today. Certainly, one reason for this is the fact that
they concentrated almost exclusively on songwriting.29 On the one hand, this seemed to be a
successful strategy in their lifetime – songwriting was one of the few ways of making money
through composition, achieving (commercial) success and popularity, and, not least, partici
pating actively in a specific part of British musical life. On the other hand, it contributed to their
exclusion from (British) musical historiography. The intersection of genre and gender plays a
non-negligible role in this context. As a consequence, the sheet music in particular, but also the
(comprehensive) concert programmes of this popular – and therefore, in a historiographic view,
less artistic and insignificant – series, can only be found in a few libraries and archives such as the
Research Centre for Music and Gender in Hanover, as part of the legal deposit requirement in
the British Library,30 and in contemporary (publishers’) collections, which, in this case, have
been taken over by the RCM library. However, concert programmes like these are valuable
sources that tell us far more than who composed or performed what, when and where. The
music performance ephemera and mass-produced sheet music give as everyday documents and
artefacts (most attended for one-time or short-term use) unique glimpses into social and eco
nomic aspects of musical life in the past (see Ridgewell 2003, p. 8; Wiermann 2018). Above all,
they show that women composers formed the public musical taste of their time and that their
music became part of the mainstream. Thus, they were active participants and developers of
British musical culture.
Notes
1 With her question ‘Why Haven’t Women Become Great Composers?’, Rosen (1973) ties in with
Sophie Drinker’s Music and Women. The Story of Women in their Relation to Music (New York: Coward-
McCann, 1948).
2 Siobhan McAndrew and Martin Everett investigated the representation of works by women com
posers at the BBC Proms. See McAndrew & Everett, ‘Symbolic versus Commercial Success among
British Female Composers’ in N. Crossley, S. McAndrew, P. Widdop (eds.), Social Networks and Music
Worlds (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), pp. 61–88.
3 The Research Centre for Music and Gender in Hanover, Germany (Forschungszentrum Musik und
Gender, FMG) holds a collection of about 890 printed songs composed by women in late nineteenth-
and early twentieth-century Britain. The large number of these surviving musical sources provides
evidence that these women achieved a significant degree of success during their lifetimes.
4 In addition to the concert programmes from the former Boosey & Hawkes collection, the RCM
library also holds an extensive collection of books of words from 1867 to 1933, available from: http://
admin.concertprogrammes.org.uk/html/search/verb/GetRecord/2790. My thanks to the staff of the
library, especially to Michael Mullen and Peter Horton for their assistance with the collection and
valuable hints.
5 See ‘The new Queen’s Hall’, Musical Standard, 2 December 1893, p. 442.
6 The Musical World wrote about the concert on 22 February 1871: ‘Mr Boosey’s last concert in St.
268
James’s Hall attracted a great crowd, every seat being occupied, and many persons compelled to stand
throughout the performance’ in ‘London Ballad Concerts’, The Musical World, 11 March 1871, p. 143.
7 See the advertisement for the ‘Electro-magnetic Billiard marker’ which ‘adds to the great convention
of Gentlemen’ and was ‘especially adapted for private gentlemen’ in the book of words of the 11th
concert of the 8th season (25 February 1874), RCM Library.
8 See the advertisement for ‘Indiana Cloth Or “Cashmere Oriental”: ‘Ladies … should purchase
INDIANA CLOTH’ in the book of words of the 6th concert of the 16th season (18 January 1882),
RCM Library.
9 In, for example, the book of words of the 3rd concert of the 9th season (20 January 1875), RCM
Library.
10 See the announcement in the book of words of the 7th concert of the 5th season (22 February 1871),
RCM Library.
11 See the book of words of the 11th concert of the 10th season (22 March 1867), RCM Library.
12 Of a concert held on 6 February 1878, a reviewer wrote: ‘The usual enthusiasm was exhibited by the
audience who insisted on ‘encoring’ a number of pieces; in other words, obtaining two songs in place of
one set down in the programme’ – ‘London Ballad Concerts’, The Musical World, 9 February 1878, p. 105.
13 See the handwritten index for the book of words of the 13th season. It was sung as a ‘new song’ on the
7th concert of the 13th season (18 December 1878), RCM Library.
14 There are a few critical points regarding the reliability of the sources that should be kept in mind: some
programmes are lost or rather incomplete. This does not lessen the essential findings of the present
study because it is unlikely that the lost programmes different systematically from the preserved ones.
Furthermore, the programmes may not have been performed as printed, which means that the data
relate to the intended and not the real performances.
15 More detailed results will be published in the dissertation of the author (Bagge 2020b).
16 The British Library holds 14 songs composed by her as well as some transcriptions and arrangements.
For the advertisements see e.g. the last page in the book of words of the 2nd concert in season 7 (11
January 1873), RCM Library.
17 Boosey took advantage of this and assigned the attribute ‘always encored’ to the song in the adver
tisements. See the advertisement ‘Always Alone’, London Evening Standard, 18 March 1871, p. 8.
18 ‘St. James’s Hall. Boosey’s Ballad Concerts’, The Examiner, 26 March 1870, p. 200.
19 ‘Madame Sherrington’s, Madame Patey’s, and Miss Edith Wynne’s new and successful Songs’, The
Illustrated London News, 24 September 1870, p. 324. For a detailed analysis of the song see Bagge (2020b).
20 See ‘New Music’, The Illustrated London News, 14 August 1875. Only one month later a similar ad
vertisement was titled ‘16th Thousand of Always Alone’, The Illustrated London News, 11 September
1875, p. 256.
21 Copy held by the Forschungszentrum Musik und Gender (FMG) in Hanover: D-HVfmg, Rara/FMG
NO Henriette (320).1.
22 See the copy in the archive of the FMG: D-HVfmg, Rara/FMG NO Needham, A (320).22.
23 Frederick Ranalow had stood in for Thomas Thomas at the concert on 17 March 1900 and performed
Needham’s ‘The Donovans’ instead of the scheduled song ‘Good Company’ by Stephen Adams. See
the handwritten annotation in the programme of the concert, RCM Library.
24 Alicia Adélaïde Needham, diary entry, 30 June 1896, GB-Cu, MS Needham A.103. The diaries are
located in the archive of Joseph Needham, biochemist, sinologist and historian and son of Alicia
Adélaïde Needham at the Cambridge University Library. Greene referred to the song ‘Off to
Philadelphia’ by Walter Battison Haynes (1895-1900) which he sung.
25 Alicia Adélaïde Needham, diary entry, 8 October 1896, GB-Cu, MS Needham A.103.
26 ‘Evening Concert by Miss Maude Lupton’, The Kilburn Times, 5 November 1897.
27 For ‘The Donovans’, Needham set a text by Francis Fahy and adapted ‘the fine old Irish melody…
[and] transformed the forgotten old Hibernian ditty into a capital modern song’. ‘London Ballad
Concert’, The Era, 9 January 1897, p. 13. For a detailed analysis of the song, see Bagge (2020b).
28 See the ‘Ballad Concert Index’, Boosey & Hawkes Collection, RCM Library.
29 Needham also published some piano and choral music.
30 Although the national copyright deposit should take care of assembling an archive of music published
in the UK since the seventeenth century, the collection is by no means complete – as Malcolm Turner
and Arthur Searle have stated. See Turner & Searle, ‘The Music Collections of the British Library
Reference Division’, Notes, vol. 38/3 (1982), pp. 499–549, especially pp. 510–511.
269
Maren Bagge
References
Bagge, M., 2020a. My most popular song. Verbreitung Englischer songs und ballads um 1900. In: K.
Holtsträter and T. Widmaier, eds. Lied und populäre kultur / Song and popular culture, no. 65. Münster &
New York: Waxmann, 131–150.
Bagge, M., 2020b. Favourite songs. Populäre Englische musikkultur im langen 19. jahrhundert. PhD
thesis, Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media.
Brown, M., 2018. Female composers largely ignored by concert line-ups. Guardian, 13 June: https://
www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jun/13/female-composers-largely-ignored-by-concert-line-ups.
Fuller, S., 1998. Women composers during the British Musical Renaissance, 1880–1918. PhD thesis,
University of London.
Fuller, S., 2005. Representations of British women composers. In: C. Brüstle and H. Heldt, eds. Music as a
bridge. Musikalische beziehungen zwischen England und Deutschland 1920–1950. Hildesheim, Zürich &
New York: Georg Olms, 173–186.
McVeigh, S. and Ehrlich, C., 2002. The modernisation of London concert life around 1900. In: M.
Talbot, ed. The business of music. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 96–120.
Ridgewell, R., 2003. Concert programmes in the UK and Ireland: a preliminary report. London: IAML & the
Music Libraries Trust.
Rosen, J., 1973. Why haven’t women become great composers? High Fidelity: The magazine for music
listeners and musical America, 23, February, 46, 51–52.
Scott, D.B., 2001. The singing bourgeois: songs of the Victorian drawing room and parlour, 2nd ed. Aldershot &
Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Originally published in 1989.
Scott, D.B., 2003. From the erotic to the demonic: on critical musicology. Oxford & New York: Oxford
University Press.
Shawe-Taylor, D. and Blyth, A., 2001. Greene, (Harry) Plunket. Grove Music Online: https://doi.org/10.1
093/gmo/9781561592630.article.11708
Totten, N.K., 1997. The English Victorian drawing-room ballad: a product of its time. PhD thesis,
Indiana University.
Wiermann, B., 2018. musiconn.performance – Musikalische ereignisdaten im fachinformationsdienst
musikwissenschaft. In: A. Bonte and J. Rehnolt, eds. Kooperative informationsinfrastrukturen als chance und
herausforderung. Festschrift für Thomas Bürger zum 65. Geburtstag. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter, 398–415.
270
27
SARA GONZÁLEZ: A DIFFERENT
SONG ABOUT WOMEN
27.1 Introduction
Sara González (1951–2012) is an essential name in the history of the Cuban nueva trova. This
iconic woman, along with a group of male trovadores such as Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés,
Noel Nicola, Eduardo Ramos, established and developed this new song conception in the 1970s
in Cuba. These aforementioned musicians had the opportunity to converge on a project that
allowed for the institutionalisation of the nueva trova: the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria
Cinematográficos (ICAIC) Sound Experimentation Group – Grupo de Experimentación Sonora
del ICAIC (GESI). Although the mention of González is recurrent in Cuban musical historio-
graphy, there are few analytical reflections on her compositions and on the process of the shaping
of her style during her time with the GESI.
González’s integration into the GESI is understood in this study as a significant biographical
event in her life story. This conception is derived from the theorisations of French mathe-
matician and sociologist Michele Leclerc-Olive (1997; 2009). In her research, a biographical
event is understood to be those points of the biography in which life undergoes a change that
marks all subsequent development: ‘Morphologically, a significant event is visualised as a change
of situation: from the moment the event takes place, this situation can no longer be described
through the same predicates’ (Leclerc-Olive 2009, p. 19). The event is itself the object and
trigger of the story. Therefore, I take as a guideline the testimonies of González and her
contemporaries, registered in several press interviews (Águila 1982; Lam 1989; Sarusky 2005;
López Sánchez 2008; Pérez Vidal 2010). The stories told by González trigger a process of
intrapersonal reflections on her career and relevance in the Cuban sociocultural context. As
Leclerc-Olive has noted (2009, p. 19):
Significant events become the nodal points of the biographical experience: it is the
moment in which the incorporated representations of oneself, of society and of the
world, are altered; situations in which the subject questions, interprets, tries to find a
meaning, produce new representations.
The musical historiography of the nueva trova and the memories of its members highlight, as a
distinctive feature of this music, the presence of political themes in the lyrics of their songs. The
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-27 271

political issue was approached from two different perspectives: one of these perspectives was the
historical allusion, such as tributes to heroes or revolutionary events; and the other was the
exposition of discursive evidence about progress in the transformations of daily life. The lyrics
of the songs spread the repertoire of collective actions that should be established as legitimate
and common in the ‘social imaginaries’ of the new nation (Taylor 2004, p. 23).
In the musical aspect, the nueva trova was considered a field of multiple, generic-stylistic
confluences. Several songs employ musical statements from jazz, pop, concert music, protest
songs and many other expressions. All these resources were used with the intention of effec-
tively communicating the poetic message of the song. As Robin D. Moore has observed
(2006, p. 167):
The most successful examples of nueva trova composition demonstrate a high degree of
creativity, poetics, stylistic synthesis, and political awareness. Drawing on diverse
sources of inspiration, including music from the United States, Europe, and Latin
America, they nevertheless represent an implicit critique of capitalist culture.
González’s songs, written between 1970 and 1978, responded to the political theme and to this
integrating generic matrix that GESI’s musical practice conferred on the nueva trova. As pre-
viously mentioned, GESI was important for the establishment of the Cuban nueva trova. Their
work was fundamental in shaping the ‘style features’ of this type of music. The style features are
indicators derived from the Cuban musicologist Danilo Orozco’s theorisations about musical
genres. He explains that these features ‘are derived from the creative-participatory action of the
cultivators who provide specific musical characteristics and behaviours (always fluctuating),
regularities (dynamic and changing)’ to the music (Orozco 2010, p. 66).
This chapter examines the different style features that González experienced and developed
during her formative years, and her first experience as a professional nueva trovadora in GESI.
The articulation between the stylistic features of her song and her committed lyrics in the 1975
song ‘¿Qué dice usted?’ will be shown as an analytical example. In this song, González proposes
a new horizon of expectations in relation to gender discourse. The feminine figure is re-
presented from a different perspective, the epic vision of the woman who demands her rights
and adopts a new position of emancipation before society.
27.2 Formative confluences: popular music and art music

The trajectory of Sara González shows the most dissimilar nuances and interconnections be-
tween a deep knowledge of the dynamics of classical music and her devotion to popular
creation and its teaching. González began to learn the guitar as a student of Nene Enrizo,
guitarist of the traditional trova. She later studied the viola, which introduced her to a different
sonorous and technical universe, at the Amadeo Roldan Conservatory, Havana. It was in this
conservatory that she formed a youth group of women instrumentalists and singers called Radix
7, with an interest in modern popular music. Members of this group included Margarita
(drums), Lucía Huergo (piano), Ana Nora Calasa (saxophone), Anisia Bustelo (bassoon) and
González (guitar and voice) (Pérez Vidal 2010).
With the purpose of becoming a teacher in music education, González entered the National
School of Art Instructors/Escuela Nacional de Instructores de Arte (ENIA), where she received
classes from Leopoldina Núñez and Vicente González-Rubiera, guitar pedagogues recognised
for their work as arrangers. Reflecting on her time in this School, she recalled that:
272
Sara González: a different song
I was studying at the ENIA very seriously to be a teacher. I had no idea that I had a
voice to sing or that I could do it. I had sung and had some technique thanks to the
choir and the classes at the School; I even received classes in choral, bass and drums; I
was learning to play everything (González, cited in López Sánchez 2008, p. 135).
From her relationship with the nueva canción and its scene, she formed an occasional duo with
Pedro Luis Ferrer. She then went on to form part of Los Dimos with Georgina Guerra and Jesús
del Valle (Tatica), with whom she sang works by Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés, the
benchmark of the youth of those years. Later, she was invited by Rodríguez and Milanés to
participate in some recordings within the GESI, a group in which her creativity was amplified.
27.3 Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC: the incidences of the female
voice in an experimental project
The GESI was created in 1969. As its leader, Leo Brouwer (b. 1939), pointed out in his 1970
essay ‘La música en el cine cubano: un año de experimentación’ (Music in Cuban Cinema: A
Year of Experimentation), the Group considered the ‘study-research-development-creation of
the musical problem, not only inserted in the cinema but also, and fundamentally, as art-music
per se’ (Brouwer 1970, p. 105). The GESI brought together dissimilar creative individuals,
including its director, Brouwer, a leading figure of the Cuban musical avant-garde of the 1960s.
Of her formative experience with Brouwer, and in the tribute to the twentieth anniversary of
the group, González recalled that, specifically, her interaction with him provided a conceptual
approach to address musical production: ‘Leo is present in our work. He taught us that ev-
erything in music should be done through concepts. He was the seed of those of us who started
the ICAIC Group’ (González, cited in Lam 1989, p. 18).
Several singer-songwriters, such as Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, Noel Nicola and
Eduardo Ramos, interacted within the GESI. They stood out as exponents of the nueva canción,
and, before the GESI was created, their main diffusion space was Casa de las Américas in
Havana. This institution promoted the Encuentro Internacional de la Canción Protesta
(International Protest Song Meeting) in 1967. These young trovadores participated in this event,
and later became associated in the Centro de la Canción Protesta. Hence, a significant part of
the GESI repertoire consists of songs. On the other hand, GESI members also included the
instrumentalists Leonardo Acosta (saxophone), Sergio Vitier (guitar), Emiliano Salvador (piano)
and Pablo Menéndez (electric guitar) – musicians more linked to jazz, rock and other popular
genres. The workshops were conducted by professors Federico Smith, Juan Elósegui and
Jerónimo Labrada, who collaborated with Brouwer in teaching courses in Solfeggio,
Counterpoint, Orchestration and Acoustics.
The nominal mark of experimentation designates how GESI members carried out a creative
process of constant sound research where the collective task was key, so that they synthesised
procedures of both academic and popular music in the resulting sounds. On this dynamic of
collective creation, González recalled that:
We all participate in these experiments, because that is one way a very positive
method, [and] it contributes a lot to creation, to spontaneity, to collective work. I
learned a lesson: you never fully achieved what you wanted. That unfinished work
was the one that taught me in every way (cited in Sarusky 2005, p. 77).
273
The emergence of this Group was supported by Casa de las Américas and, as its name implies,
by the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos/Cuban Institute of
Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC). This latter institutional support allowed a space of
free creation and experimentation for the musicians of the Group. What was the projection of
Cuban cinema at that time, however, with which this group of musicians was associated? The
president of the ICAIC, Alfredo Guevara (1925–2013), defined the new mission of Cuban
cinema in the Revolution: ‘Cuban cinema exists, and exists as a revolutionary art of search and
real contribution, as an instrument of culture and weapon of combat’ (Guevara, cited in Pereira
1972, p. 27). Cinema focused on showing social changes – that is, the social progress promoted
from 1959, and the historical relationship of that moment with the expressions of national
liberation of the nineteenth century. It was cinema interested in establishing a line of con-
tinuity, a coherent dialectical sense, that justified the armed revolutionary triumph as a logical
outcome. To summarise, Cuban fiction cinema at this time showed great interest in epic
discourse and historical validation, producing films such as Historias de la Revolución – Histories
of the Revolution (1960); El joven rebelde – The Rebel Young (1961) and La odisea del General
José – The Odyssey of General José (1968). Documentary films, however, tended to focus on
promoting social changes and progress as evidence of the everyday epic: examples in this ca-
tegory include La nueva escuela – The New School (1973), No tenemos derecho a esperar – We
Have No Right to Wait (1972) and Nace una comunidad – A Community is Born (1975). This
presupposition highlights an epic, committed type of discourse that was replicated by all GESI
musicians.
Although there were conflict zones and dilemmas when González started in the Group, the
trovadora herself recognised that these tensions took place because of her novelty on the song
scene – rather than any gender issues. Their performance before GESI was limited to informal
meetings and presentations in educational institutions. González was one of the last people to
join the Group, and Alfredo Guevara was one of those who tested her worth. As González
recalled in one of her last interviews with Amaury Pérez Vidal:
PÉREZ VIDAL: And was there was some resistance for being a woman? You do not have to say
names because you don’t need to.
GONZÁLEZ: Look Amaury, things are said or not said, or they remain silent forever … people
have to have the courage to say things, because what can’t be killed is history, and history is
there, and sooner or later will be known. For example, I was against, not against – let’s tell
the truth, I encountered a person with reservations. Will this work? Because I really didn’t
come from nothing, I came from studying music…. Half the world aspired to be in the
Sound Experimentation Group of the ICAIC, that was the biggest thing. Everyone wanted
to be there. And then I, the ‘silly one’ who had not sung anything and who nobody knew,
suddenly arrive and … make a television programme with Pablo Milanés….
PÉREZ VIDAL: And then who was against this, who said no?
GONZÁLEZ: Alfredo Guevara. With all my respect … he never showed in life that he did not
like me. He said: ‘I do not know this person, she does not bring any story, let’s wait.’ What
he said was, ‘let’s wait!’ He did not say a resounding no – if he had said a resounding no,
you would not have seen me in this story. But he did not say no, he said: ‘Let’s wait, let’s
try, let’s wait’. Until that concert at the Cinemateca, which was for meetings of Latin
American Music that took place in the Casa de las Américas, and there I sang for the
public. The next day I was hired, but I had to show that I had something to give, or
something to teach, or something to share (Pérez Vidal 2010, author’s translation).
274
González overcame these situations with enriching exchanges with the members of the
group. Therefore, we can agree with the reflections of the researcher Julianna L. Graper, who
affirms that the feminist discourse adopted by González in some of her songs is due to her
appropriation of the social dynamics that were being modified in Cuba (and in the world) in
terms of the relationship of genders, rather than from her own formative and professional
experience. As Graper states: ‘Sara’s drive towards a feminist bent, then, came not out of her
own experience, but from the surrounding social dynamics that she observed in Cuba and the
rest of the world’ (2014, p. 54).
For Sara González, the creative interaction with the musicians of the GESI was a significant
biographical event that consolidated her professionalism and gave her the confidence to value
herself as a woman composer and performer. She reflected about this in an interview:
Whenever a job is started, the help of others and shared experiences are decisive and
formative. If, when I started singing, I hadn’t had a Silvio and a Pablo by my side, or a
Leo, an Elósegui, a Sergio Vitier, with all the criteria that their names imply, I’m
almost sure that I would have been halfway there (González, cited in Águila
1982, p. 7)
During her time in GESI, she reaffirmed her place in a musical scene that she would contribute
to founding: the nueva trova. In an interview titled ‘A destination for Sara González’, the tro-
vadora continued highlighting GESI’s transcendence and biographical signification for her
career:
[The Group] has been decisive for who I am. To have ideas of my own, [and] of what
I was going to do with my life; that was also part of the formation of those years in the
Group. And I’m already talking more about artists, people, for me it was essential; the
fundamental school of my life from the human point of view. And as for artistic
accomplishment, it was decisive. For everything I have done afterwards, I have always
had to resort to what I learned there… A school, a method, a way of being, of facing,
also, my own creation, my own life. It defined me in every way. I left there with the
seed, with the base, firm and secure, that I did not have. And from there everything
can come out (González, cited in Sarusky 2005, pp. 81–82).
The Group’s project was ambitious. The diversity of references of its members and creative
concerns led to music production reflecting those different, aesthetic musical criteria. These can
be defined in two creative conceptions: on the one hand, instrumental jazz and experimental
composition and, on the other, the creation of songs. These conceptions, which promoted
dissimilar genres, at times, produced a fracture in the demarcation of objectives to manage
collective productions. The presence of González also marked a point of tension regarding the
creative ways of the Group for its alignment with those most interested in enhancing the songs.
Her inclusion was considered, at the beginning, to be an imbalance in the orchestral design of
the Group, as expressed by the composer Sergio Vitier:
When Sara [González] came in, there was a lack of vision from me. I did not want Sara
to join the Group. I wanted that place for a trumpet. I wanted to make arrangements. I
needed a trumpet to sound, not Sara’s voice. I said, we already have three singers, we’re
going to have one more. I did not have the vision of who she was, who she was going
to be. She was a chubby, little girl, who sang well, but I still did not know, and I would
275
have liked to take Chapottín, a trumpet, a nephew of Chapottín, the member of NG La

Banda, who is a virtuoso (Vitier, cited in ibid., p. 39).
The tension experienced with the insertion of the new singer was synthesised in several col-
laborative works between Vitier and González. The vocal flexibility of González and her open
attitude towards improvisation allowed for a poetic-musical dialogue between the two that was
recorded in the work ‘Corales’ (1970–73).1
27.4 A different voice: a women representing an epic discourse in the song

Female songwriters and singers have marked their presence in Cuban culture, from María
Teresa Vera (1895–1965), to Marta Valdés (b. 1934) and Tania Castellanos (1920–88). It is a
fact that the number of women is lower with respect to male participation in Cuban song’s
music scene. However, in the cultural sphere of the 1960s and 70s, the figure of women was re-
dimensioned by participating directly in actions for social transformation. In the international
field of the nueva canción, singers such as Barbara Dane (b. 1927), Violeta Parra (1917–67) and
Isabel Parra (b. 1939) stand out as women who assumed a position as creators, and whose work
potentiated an ideological discourse of progress and social criticism.
Around 1960 in Cuba, the roles socially assumed by women began to change for a greater role
in the political and social field, with the promulgation of laws on gender equality in the Cuban
workplace. By assuming positions of power, such as public office and hard work, women were
placed in traditionally masculine spaces, leading to the transformation of value judgments on the
imaginary of the feminine. An example of a leading woman of that time was Haydée Santamaría
(1922–80), who was in charge of Casa de las Américas, a cultural institution that, to this day,
promotes exchange with institutions and writers, visual artists, musicians and playwrights around
the world.2 The direct participation of Santamaría in the stage of the armed struggle of the 1950s
led her to demonstrate a high level of loyalty and militancy, these leadership attributes being the
most recognised at that moment in the history of Cuba. Her legitimacy as the leading manager of
these political processes meant that, when moving in the cultural field, she could give life to
artistic and musical projects that did not take place in other diffusion spaces, as was the experience
of the beginnings of the nueva trova. Santamaría is an example of how women who became
exemplary and reached positions of power were consecrated by their level of commitment and
identification with the discourse of the revolutionary nation promulgated from 1959. This
competence-attribute was essential to catalyse the career of Sara González in a national context.
The GESI produced much of its work in tune with the fundamental lines of the epic
discourse: the story of the great battles; the tribute to heroic personalities; the epic epoch; and
the romantic exaltation of the future. Much of its song repertoire has as a central topic the
revolutionary epic, examples of which are the songs:
• ‘Granma’ (1971)
• ‘El mayor’ (1973)
• ‘Vocación Revolución’ (Vocation Revolution, 1973)
• ‘Desde entonces la batalla empezó’ (Since then the battle started, 1973)
• ‘Cuba va’ (Cuba va, 1970)
• ‘Los caminos’ (The ways, 1972)
• ‘El programa del Moncada’ (The Moncada programme, 1973)
• ‘De padres a hijos y juntos a la Revolución’ (From parents to children and together to the
Revolution, 1973)
276
• ‘Girón, la victoria’ (Giron, the Victory, 1974)

• ‘¿Qué dice usted?’ (What do you say?, 1975)
The last four songs were composed by Sara González. Specifically, in the song ‘¿Qué dice
usted?’, the composer presents the epic construction from a gendered perspective, as the woman
who proclaims her skills in order to achieve the new horizon of expectations designed by the
socio-political instances of the moment – expectations that opened new spaces of experiences,
projecting actions for the equality of gender rights, especially in the work space (Koselleck
2006, p. 306). Experiences concretised in the key actions of ‘build, analyse and fight for life’
were expressed by González in ‘¿Qué dice usted?’.
González composed most of her songs with an epic theme while she was a member of GESI,
and this had an impact on the ways in which her music was received. Her artistic personality
gradually became a model of political commitment. In the interviews of some trovadoras who
collaborated with González, such as Teresita Fernández (1930–2013), Yamira Díaz (b. 1976),
Heidi Igualada (b. 1964) and Liuba María Hevia (b. 1964), these trovadoras highlighted the social
relevance of her singing, her ability to summon the crowd, to convey a message of commitment
to her time and her epic gesture as a style feature in her interpretation:
FERNÁNDEZ: Sara … I don’t think Sara herself knows it, but my first and greatest respect for her
is her absolute fidelity to the Revolution…. Regardless of the quality of her songs, her
voice, and even one thing that some have criticized, but I applaud her: it is that way, let’s
say warlike, [that she interprets] her songs, of expressing herself (Fernández in López
Sánchez 2008, pp. 153–154).
DIAZ: Sara is that artist who has social strength, social repercussion, [which is] very hard to
achieve…. I have seen Sara’s social repercussion in few artists (Díaz in ibid., p. 64).
IGUALADA: [González is] ‘The song made homeland’ (Igualada in ibid., p. 78).
HEVIA: Sara is a wall-breaking monster. A woman with a force that is not controlled even with
ten cells. Sara transmits a lot of strength when she sings, and at that time it was necessary for
a person like her to come to the musical field. Everyone was different in the Sound
Experimentation Group…. And Sara was undoubtedly a very important point in that place
where so many great ‘barbarities’ got along. Sara is a necessary woman for Cuban culture. I
tell you, a wall breaker, because it is not only the word or the song, it is an indescribable
beyond. Like when you talk about Chavela Vargas and Bola de Nieve, each in their own
way, because Sara is that in trova; that of breaking schemes, of expressing oneself with a
greater force (Hevia in ibid., pp. 111–112).
González, as Hevia described her, was an artist within the trova who ‘broke schemes’. ‘¿Qué
dice usted?’ is one of the songs that synthesises that distinctive presence of González in the
cultural and political panorama. In this song, she makes explicit her ideas about the transfor-
mative roles that Cuban women were taking on in the new times. The song integrates the
criteria previously exposed in González’s artistic work, such as the elaboration of style features
of the nueva trova, her scenic and vocal strength to thrill the audience – as ratified in the stories
narrated by her peers – and her explicit speech about the new genre relations.
The construction of this new woman is synthesised in the lyrics of ‘¿Qué dice usted?’, which
speak of the transformations that women experienced at that time: this represented a new
subject, a new vision of gender within the Cuban music of those years.3 The lyrics of
González’s song are an expression of that thought – of that new conception of women – which,
in a certain way, attacks sexist principles. An example of this is found in the first lines of each
277
verse with provocative questions towards the interlocutor, dismantling, with a historical ar-
gument, the functional stereotypes of the woman. In the first verse, for example, González asks,
‘What do you say that the woman is the flower/From that Eden, of the sweet home and to
make love’, but ends with the words, ‘If history shouts another truth’. Similarly, the second
verse begins: ‘What do you say a woman looks good/In the portal or in the armchair weaving
her boredom’, only to end, again, with the words, ‘If history shouts another truth’.4
González’s song proposed an optimistic vision about gender relationships in Cuba in the
1970s, connoting the figure of the woman as an active participant in a process of social change.
The feminine action that gained autonomy, differing from the masculine definitions within the
epic speech as constructed by Sara González, was not always characterised by this positioning.
On the other hand, the transformations in women’s roles were submerged in the generalisation
of a collective imaginary in favour of the national-revolutionary identity that concealed all
interest in creating spaces that differentiated gender. As demonstrated by one of the studies on
women entitled ‘The Cuban Woman Now’ by Margaret Randall:
Perhaps one of the greatest differences between the Cuban woman and her sisters with
an awareness of the liberation of the developed countries is that she works, studies and
carries the rifle, not to liberate herself, but to liberate her homeland from under-
development and of the imperialist attacks. And if she is liberated in the process, this is
an indirect effect very well received, although it is not the aspect that she focuses
fundamentally in these moments (1972, p. 10).
González, as an essential participant in the definition of the style features of the nueva trova of the
1970s, sums up the explosive expression of singing of the historical and everyday epic. She was a
versatile singer who also participated in the instrumental improvisation sections of songs and
instrumental themes, making melodic statements with stylistic references to jazz, rumba and son.
An example of this is the counterpoint that she establishes with the saxophone in ‘¿Qué dice
usted?’. Here, González uses her voice with extreme freedom, inserting screams, exclamations
and expressions of exaltation – freedom that is explicit in the text of the song. González places
male and female competencies on an equal level in the textual narrative and in the musical
treatment of her song.
Through analysis of her songs, it is also possible to notice that the singer effectively con-
figured the textual and musical dramaturgical plan of her performances. González used various
nuances of her voice timbre according to the content of the lyrics, and prepared the concluding
sections by inserting vibratos and by holding the end of the sentences to give greater emphasis
to the last word. In this way, she induced her listeners to reflect and participate in the message of
the song which ended in an explosive and intense climax. ‘¿Qué dice usted?’ and the iconic
song ‘Girón, la victoria’ are examples of the sonorous-performative monumentality that Sara
González inscribed in the nueva trova.
The musical production of Sara González during her time as a member of GESI was part of a
process of change in the ‘social imaginaries’ (Taylor 2004, p. 23) that demanded the re-
presentation of revolutionary conceptions about the place of the new woman in post-1959
Cuban society. Among these configurative practices of what we call a new woman, or a new
gender position, is the construction in González’s poetic discourse of the epic female character.
This is demonstrated in two types of fundamental social actions: the challenge to the regulations
of the private space and the transit and registration in public life as a workforce; and the
configuration of a military-defensive attitude as a shared duty in the gender relationship.
278
Notes
1 This piece is included in the LP Grupo de Experimentación Sonora/ICAIC 3 (GESI: LDA-3460), which
was recorded in Havana between 1970 and 1973, and released on 1 April 1975. It is the second of the
five anthological records that were released under the supervision of Pablo Menéndez. A fragment of it
is available from: https://www.cancioneros.com/nc/6861/0/corales-sergio-vitier
2 In the 1960s, when all the governments of Latin America, with the exception of Mexico, broke relations
with Cuba, the Casa de la Americas helped to prevent the total destruction of cultural ties between the
island and the rest of the continent. For more information, see: http://www.casadelasamericas.org
3 The song ‘¿Que dice usted?’ (1990) is available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lknzgC1UCiU
4 The English translation of the lyrics to ‘¿Que dice usted?’ is provided by the author. The original lyrics
(in Spanish) can be found at: https://www.cancioneros.com/nc/6869/0/que-dice-usted-sara-
gonzalez.
References
Águila, V., 1982. La Sara de su casa. El Caimán Barbudo, August, 6–7.
Brouwer, L., 1970. La música en el cine cubano. Un año de experimentación. Cine Cubano, 63,
September–November, 104–106.
Graper, J.L., 2014. “¿Qué Dice Usted?”: discourses of femininity in nueva trova Cubana. Master’s thesis.
University of Oregon.
Koselleck, R., 2006. Futuro passado: contribuição à semântica dos tempos históricos, Contraponto Ed. Rio de
Janeiro: PUC-Rio. First published (in German) in 1979.
Lam, R., 1989. Ges: taller y semilla. Clave, 13, April–June, 17–19.
Leclerc-Olive, M., 1997. Le dire de l’événement (biographique). Lille: Presses Universtaires du Septentrion.
Leclerc-Olive, M., 2009. Temporalidades de la experiencia: las biografías y sus acontecimientos. Iberofórum.
Revista de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Iberoamericana, Año IV/8, July–December, 1–39.
López Sánchez, A., 2008. Trovadoras. Santiago de Cuba: Editorial Oriente.
Moore, R.D., 2006. Music and revolution. Cultural change in socialist Cuba. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Orozco, D., 2010. Qué e(s)tá pasando, ¡Asere!… detrás Del borroso “qué sé yo y no sé qué” en la génesis y
dinámica de los géneros musicales: Géneros musicales/procesos y problemáticas socioculturales.
Espacio-tiempo en los géneros, performance-discursividad, cuerpo, significados. Clave, No. 1, Year
12, 60–90.
Pereira, M., 1972. En busca del sonido americano. Cuba Internacional, 29/4, 22–27.
Pérez Vidal, A., 2010. Sara González: “El pedazo de Patria que me toca lo voy a asumir, con todos y por
todos”. In: Con 2 que se quieran, 11 August. Available at: http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2010/
08/11/sara-gonzalez-el-pedazo-de-patria-que-me-toca-lo-voy-a-asumir-con-todos-y-por-todos/
Randall, M., 1972. La mujer cubana ahora. El caimán barbudo, II Época, November, 5–10.
Sarusky, J., 2005. Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC. Mito y realidad. Havana: Letras Cubanas.
Taylor, C., 2004. Modern social imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
279
28
CHANGING ROLES OF WOMEN
IN THE GOSPEL MUSIC
PERFORMANCE SPACE IN
GHANA
Grace Takyi Donkor
28.1 Introduction
In the 1980s, Ghana experienced a state of political instability as a result of constant military
interventions. A burgeoning local music industry characterised by various musical activities and
highlife music performances experienced a steady decline. Nonetheless, it created a space for
gospel musical activities to flourish. There was a continued and sustained incorporation of local
popular dance music (highlife music) into the worship and outreach activities of the church as
many secular musicians began to move into the churches. According to Collins (2004), gospel
music exploded around this period as the church, led by the separatist churches in the country,
began tapping into the new musical experience these highlife musicians had brought on board,
thus establishing commercial recording and production facilities. Consequently, these activities
led to the emergence of what came to be known as ‘gospel highlife’ music – that is, highlife
music performed in the church with biblical themes and narrations.
In the church, the musical experience has, over the years, encouraged female participation in
music-making activities but, as within the indigenous communities, there continued to be re-
strictions on what women could do and what they could not do during musical performances.
Likewise, within the broader popular entertainment scene in the country there were some forms
of restrictions which appeared to have dampened the urge of women to participate in the scene.
Collins acknowledges that women performers or musicians were not allowed to join many
highlife bands in the country because of societal perceptions of these women. He points out, for
instance, that ‘up until the 1990s, female [vocal] parts were practically always performed by men’
(2007, p. 47). However, the emergence of gospel highlife music led to the lifting of these re-
strictions as many women began to participate in the music-making and performances in the
country. This chapter examines the roles and activities of female gospel musicians over the past
decade in Ghana, and explores in what ways a changing society continue to influence their
activities. Data for the study were gathered through fieldwork in both Accra and Kumasi (since
2012) and continuous engagement with key actors in the Ghanaian gospel music scene. Accra and
Kumasi were vital to this study as these two cities exemplify the locations where Ghanaian gospel
280 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-28

Women in gospel music in Ghana
music has mostly thrived. Nonetheless, it did not prevent a reading into the activities which
continue to take place in other major cities and towns such as Takoradi and Sunyani.
As a precursor to understanding the historical narrative of gospel music in Ghana and its nuances,
it is essential to first engage in a discussion of the meanings and explanations of some key terms
earlier mentioned and which are referred to again later in the chapter. Many authors on gospel
music in Africa have attempted definitions of gospel music which point to, what Carl describes as, ‘a
conglomerate of styles with no clear-cut boundaries to other musical genres’ (Carl 2012). Atiemo
on the other hand, writing on the ‘Story of Gospel Music in Ghana’, refers to gospel music within
the stylistic essence of ‘gospel highlife’ as defined by the text of the song rather than the rhythm or
any other musical characteristics. He notes that the text may cover a wide range of themes including
encouragement, prosperity, thanksgiving or petition prayers to God, often set to popular highlife
tunes – hence the term ‘gospel highlife’ (Atiemo 2006, pp. 142–143). Atiemo acknowledges that
the notion of gospel music predates what he terms ‘gospel highlife’, as singing hymnals, as well as
other songs in the church, were also termed gospel (ibid.). However, highlife music took over the
performance idea and style of the music tradition when it emerged in the church in Ghana.
The term ‘gospel highlife’ itself is a contested one as noted by Emielu and Takyi Donkor
(2019), and they thus present the phrase as an ambivalent one. Their article presents gospel
highlife music among other terms such as ‘Christian music’ and ‘church music’, all with the
possibility to be used interchangeably, thus addressing the need to conceptualise the under-
standing of these styles. Regardless of the performance context, church music is seen as music
by the church and for the church – a characteristic which applied to music with Christian text
(Adedeji 2001). It thus suggests that Christian-themed songs, which are increasingly becoming a
dominant feature on the music scene in Ghana, fit into this classification of gospel music. This
description does not take cognisance of the producers and/or performers, but focuses on what
the text says. The songs described are mostly produced by musicians who do not refer to
themselves as gospel musicians, and are mostly performed not only in the context of the church,
or primarily for Christians, but in other social gatherings and events.
The term gospel music, as used in Ghana, is an imported term. Collins (2004, p. 418) traces
its emergence to African-American churches where there was a fusion of black religious music
with secular jazz, blues, R&B and ‘hot gospel’. This musical form became very popular in
Ghana between the 1950s and 1960s mostly amongst the many emerging Pentecostal move-
ments. Historically, new converts to Christianity were segregated from their ‘barbarian’ roots,
thus suppressing the affinity to worship with music and dance in Ghana. By the 1950s, apart
from the Pentecostal movements, there was the popularisation of African Independent
Churches (AICs) or Separatist churches, whose worship included dancing, clapping and going
into a trance accompanied by traditional African instruments. Atiemo captures these changes,
and observes that a ‘series of conflicts and compromises between custodians of Western mis-
sionary heritage and that of the African Christian groups and individuals who saw no contra-
diction between African musical forms and biblical notions of Christianity’, has characterised
the evolution of gospel music in Ghana (Atiemo 2006, p. 144). These engagements and
compromises would lead to the popularisation of gospel highlife music in the 1980s.
28.2 A brief historical note on gospel music in Ghana

The popularisation of gospel music in Ghana can be attributed to a combination of religious,
political and economic factors – and not necessarily musical. Although the notion of gospel
music existed in the country, the early 1980s saw a rise in its performances, a situation not only
particular to Ghana. According to Parsitau (2008), Kenya experienced a period of social,
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Grace Takyi Donkor
political and economic hardships in the 1990s that occasioned the rise of gospel music in the
country. The arrival of European missions in the country introduced new forms of music-
making and instruments, and these musical forms found their expression during service. The
music in these mission churches in Ghana followed nuances of liturgy similar to those in
Europe. In the early Ghanaian mission churches, it was a taboo to worship with the body –
hence, musical forms reflected expressions which local converts were not familiar with: for
instance, the singing of hymns did not require any kind of bodily expression. Collins (2004)
observes that the emergence of Spiritual and Pentecostal churches between the 1950s and 1960s
led to the breaking of these taboos. He notes that the churches began to embrace and in-
corporate highlife music melodies in their liturgy and mode of service. They introduced in-
struments which otherwise were used by the ‘secular’ highlife groups and considered not
‘sacred’ enough into the church. The result was a music performance style which was similar to
highlife music of the time, eventually assuming its characteristics. The introduction of new
modes of expression in the church service attracted people to these churches as the music and
performances served a cathartic purpose of relieving them from the pressures of urban life.
Amongst the political factors were the fact that these churches also had, what Collins has de-
scribed as, ‘a quasi-commercial business orientation’ (2007, p. 418). This provided an entrepreneur
role in a revolutionary period in Ghana’s history when music and other art forms were given low
priority by the then Provisional National Defense Council government in the late 1970s and early
1980s. As was very characteristic of this revolutionary period, there was an imposition of a two-and-
a-half-year curfew on the country. This period witnessed a decline in musical performances as many
of the ever-growing, popular highlife bands performed at night. The results of this, as documented
by the corpus of historical research conducted by Collins, was that many of these highlife musicians
left Ghana for other countries, including Germany and Nigeria. For those that stayed behind,
however, the church became the available safe space where they practised and performed their
music, but with different texts. The church presented an untaxed space as part of the policies by the
then government where musical instruments imported for church purposes remained untaxed.
Even though the above factors influenced the popularisation of the music genre, a key reason for its
acceptance in the country, I argue, was the economic hardships the country experienced in late
1970s because of the many coup d'états and curfews – which served as a blessing in disguise.
The general collapse of the music industry led to the emergence of gospel highlife music.
Commenting on the importance of gospel music in Ghana, Nana Banyin Dadson, arts editor of
the Mirror newspaper (Accra), remarked that the most pleasant thing that had happened to the
country since the hunger and hardship that occurred in 1983 had been the mass production of
gospel music in the country (Dadson 1990, p. 11; see also Emielu and Takyi Donkor 2019,
p. 35). This observation is evident in the role that gospel music plays within the Ghanaian
society. In the same article, Dadson also appeared to question the potential of the gospel music
tradition becoming a contemporary musical genre (1990, p. 11). The fact that Ghanaian gospel
highlife music has gone on to become one of the most popular and patronised music traditions
in the Ghanaian music industry seems to have answered such fears. Today, the music tradition
enjoys more airplay than any other musical tradition in addition to the growing number of
gospel musicians on the scene. Since the 1980s, its fast-growing nature has led to its prominence
in the religious and social life of the Ghanaian (Atiemo 2006).
28.3 Women enter gospel music

In this chapter, Ghanaian gospel music has been contextualised either as ‘gospel highlife music’ or
just ‘gospel music’, which reflects an orientation that is not necessarily the musical essence but the
282
text (Atiemo 2006; Carl 2012). ‘Gospel music’ is often associated with the music performances
that occur in church in the form of praise songs, which are faster in nature, and slower worship
songs that evoke a sense of contemplation or deep thought in the process of worship. The
programmes discussed here (which are organised by women) engage both with praise and
worship but often tilt toward the worship frame of songs. This offers an opportunity for inter-
action between the audience and the musicians, who are mainly women embracing reflective and
contemplative approaches which may include sharing their life stories, telling stories of the in-
fluences on some of their songs as well as their challenges as women, mothers and wives.
An essential feature of the development of gospel music in Ghana remains the influx of
women performers onto the popular music stage. Traditionally, the roles of men and women
within the context of music-making, amongst other activities, have been described as com-
plimentary. Whereas the men supported dances or singing practices mainly performed by
women with drumming, the women will often support male-dominated performances as either
dancers or background musicians. However, the transition from a traditional performance space
to a modern/popular performance space posed many challenges for women in most African
countries. Highlife music and its associated concert party become one of the first popular
musical traditions of Ghana that presented different modes of performance, with the most
important being the contexts for performances that required movement from one place to the
other. Most of the highlife bands travelled the country – hence, it raised many questions for any
woman who might have been travelling with these musicians. Sutherland reports that the brand
of a girl on stage was one without morals (1970, p. 15). This report can be read in tandem with
the traditional beliefs on menstruation held quite firmly among many Ghanaian societies. Such
an understanding in the early part of the musical development of popular highlife music led
many highlife musicians to the belief that when women were in their period of menstruation,
they carried with them bad energy and luck. Consequently, women were either barred from
touching their musical instruments or joining the performances of bands in the era. It is in-
sightful to also point out that many royal families prevented their royals from joining highlife
bands, especially if they were women. A case in point was that of Adelaide Buabeng who was
born into the royal family of Efutu in the Fante area of Ghana. Although she was a good actor,
her family considered the kind of acting and performance tradition to be not of royal status.
Despite the hindrance, Buabeng’s mother would secretly perform some form of rituals, or
appease the elders with drinks, so that her daughter could continue playing. At the time, she
was one of the key actors in the Workers Brigade Concert Party which was supported by
Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of the country (Collins 2007).
Another reason for this lack of respect for early Ghanaian entertainers directly links to their
lifestyles. For instance, many highlife musicians were known to be susceptible to drunkenness, a
phenomenon that Collins notes has been associated with the guitar and womanising (ibid.,
p. 48). Despite these challenges, however, and as noted earlier, there were a few women who
ventured into the popular music performance space in Ghana. In the early years of the highlife
music tradition, some of these women were sparingly acting as backing vocalists. Following the
independence era of the late 1950s onwards, this status changed and women slowly began to
appear on the popular and commercial entertainment circuit in the country. For instance, male
impersonators of female characters in concert party performances were replaced with women.
In addition, there were efforts to promote female performances in the country and across the
continent, which led to a historic representation of women at The Second World Black and
African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in 1977, with female performers such as South
Africa’s Miriam Makeba, Ghana’s Dina Reindorf and the Dwenesie Choir as well as the Les
Amazons from Guinea.
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Grace Takyi Donkor
An important dynamic that also led women into gospel music in the country was the at-
traction presented by the Pentecostal and Spiritual churches, itself primarily dominated by a
congregation of women who were mostly part of choral groups in the church. When highlife
musicians moved into the churches, women saw an opportunity to join their bands and
showcase the new experimentation they brought on board as they acquired new statuses as
musicians. Christian families no longer objected to their daughters joining the gospel bands, a
situation which also resulted in the emergence of individual women performers in the late
1980s and early 1990s. The new crop of female artists included the Tagoe Sisters, Mary
Ghansah, Stella Dughan, Esther Nyamekye, Daughters of Glorious Jesus, Helena Rabbles,
Diana Akiwumi, Stella Dugan, Mavis Sackey, Amy Newman, Marian Anquandah, Getty
Oduro, Naana Frimpong, and Suzzy and Matt. I argue that the economic and political situation
of the 1970s and 1980s created a situation which led to the emergence of a new group of female
musicians onto the popular performance stage. Pastors, as well as business-minded people in the
church, identified potential female musicians and started promoting them as solo acts. Despite
the involvement of these women in gospel bands, they gained popularity as solo performers. In
these bands, women mostly assumed leading roles, with some often serving as backing vocalists
to their male counterparts. The difference between the groups at the time was that even though
they were popular and toured the country, many of them were still confined to the church,
whereas breaking out as a solo musician offered more opportunities that extended beyond the
church. A few exceptions to this rule included the Kristo Asafo band of the Christ Reformed
Church (Kristo Asafo) and the Sekyeredumase Gospel Bands from Sekyeredumase in the
Ashanti region of Ghana, who managed to survive and still produce records with support from
the church and the community respectively.
As solo musicians, these female musicians served as role models for fellow women and
society. For others, it was an opportunity to pursue their dreams regardless of not getting the
support of their family. The Tagoe Sisters, for instance, tell of how they were forced by their
mother to choose between music and sewing, and of the difficulty in following a musical
journey that did not guarantee a future that would be secure (Takyi Donkor 2013, p. 53). They
recalled, however, how happy and proud their mother felt upon their appearance on TV when
people pointed out to her that her daughters were on national TV. This narrative attributes the
challenges that many female musicians mainly faced with regard to social consciousness within
the country, which paid little attention to musicians. The ever-growing number of women on
the gospel scene in Ghana, however, suggests that although these challenges may have served as
an initial hindrance to fulfilling their careers, their solo careers allowed them to use music as
support for their families financially.
28.4 Changing roles of women in the gospel music scene in Ghana

The preceding sections established the evolution of women’s roles in the popular music and
entertainment scene in Ghana with a focus on gospel music. The narratives reveal the roles of
women as evolving from being backing vocalists to become individual solo, commercialised
gospel musicians amid challenges from both society and family. Over the past decade, these
roles have developed, further signifying the changing nature of the gospel music tradition in the
country. Amongst these changes are the predominance of concerts organised by individual
gospel musicians, as well as programmes that feature only female gospel musicians, and the
setting-up of Christian ministries among other philanthropic gestures in communities. For
instance, in their bid to give back to the society, the Tagoe Sisters established the Tagoe Twin
Foundation, a non-profit organisation to help needy twins in the community. Their main
284
reason for setting up the foundation was founded on a religious premise. They point out that
‘God dropped in our spirits that there were others like us who needed our help to become like
us or even better’ (cited in Takyi Donkor 2013, p. 55). This next section describes changes in
the roles female gospel musicians have assumed within the context of their activities, and cites
examples of influential gospel musicians and the different activities they spearhead.
28.5 The Experience with Diana Antwi Hamilton

A new wave of Charismatic movement emerged in the early 1990s, adding to the Pentecostal
and Spiritual movements that had swept throughout the country a decade earlier. It has led to a
broader nuance of gospel music performances in Ghana that is characterised by the organisation
and patronage of gospel music, showing especially those that feature international and other
popular gospel artistes from the African continent. Although this is not peculiar to gospel music,
the phenomenon seems to have become an established one in the country. For instance, a 2019
concert held at the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC – Spintex Road, Accra)
featured gospel musicians from South Africa and Zimbabwe. As a strategy to attract a broad
audience, the tendency has been to cash in on the popularity of these gospel artists.
On the other hand, there have been shows organised by local musicians in a bid to refocus
the attention of the audience on the country’s gospel musicians. Diana Antwi Hamilton has
been very relevant in the gospel music scene in Ghana over the past five years. One thing that
has contributed to her popularity is a show which she has been organising annually since 2015.
Except for the first event, which was held in London at the Fountain Gate Tabernacle audi-
torium in Dagenham, London (her base), the rest have been organised in Ghana and dubbed
‘The Experience with Diana Hamilton’. This event has since featured other gospel musicians,
both male and female, in concert. Various locations in Ghana – including the National Theatre
in 2017, the ICGC Temple and the Church of Pentecost – have hosted the show. She has been
successful in parading some of the notable and influential female gospel musicians in the country
such as the Daughters of Glorious Jesus and Mary Ghansah.
Antwi Hamilton is one of Ghana’s longstanding female gospel musicians and has, over the
years, evolved from backing gospel musicians (like Francis Agyei) to pursuing a career in
nursing while developing her career in music. Growing up as a teenager, her parents recognised
her gift as a singer but urged her to pursue her education as a backup plan should her music
career not pick up. She recounts those moments in these words:
My parents didn't want to see me go hungry in the likelihood that I was not invited to
perform at events or was unable to sell my music and so asked that I pursue nursing, as
that will put food on my table every day while I practice my music on the side (Antwi
Hamilton 2017).
Since then, Antwi Hamilton has gone on to complete her nursing studies and practices as a
nurse in the UK while remaining actively involved in her work as a gospel musician (see Antwi
Hamilton 2019). The ICGC temple in Sakumono, Accra, hosted the 2019 event on 10
February, and another at the Church of Pentecost in Bantama in the Ashanti region of Ghana.
One significant feature of these concerts is the opportunities it offers for entrepreneurs to cash
in by displaying their products and services for interested patronage. Entrepreneurs can buy
spaces at the church premises where they showcase their services – with the most common of
these being the sale of food and drinks (mostly fruit juices). Another feature of the events is the
donations made to orphanages and hospitals. The most recent of these was the donation of an
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examination table and blood pressure monitors to the South Suntreso Hospital in Kumasi – the
result of Antwi Hamilton’s enquiry about some of the needs of the hospital and fulfilment of her
ministry’s social responsibility.
28.6 Women in Worship

Women in Worship is a yearly event which has been organised by Georgina Nettey since 2017.
The event aims to bring female gospel musicians across the nation together for a worship
experience and also to create awareness of cervical cancer: part of the proceeds from the event
goes into organising cervical cancer screening for less privileged women from communities
across the country. It also offers the opportunity for some upcoming, female gospel musicians to
serve as opening acts to the leading performers, who are mostly longstanding, female gospel
musicians in the Ghanaian industry. Among the musicians who have participated in Women in
Worship are Ohemaa Mercy, Ceccy Twum, Diana Antwi Hamilton, the Tagoe Sisters, Amy
Newman and Jackie Mpare, Cynthia McCauley, Becky Bonnie and Sinach, a renowned gospel
singer from Nigeria. Since its inception, the event has mostly been held at the Perez Dome,
Accra, and also features popular female radio presenters as MCs.1 The 2018 event, for example,
featured Jeremie Van-Garshong as the MC, who made her entrance onto the stage after a
praises and worship section led by the choir of the Perez Chapel, the host church. Van-
Garshong introduced the brain behind the event, Georgina Nettey, who, in a pre-recorded
message, gave the reasons that led to the institution of the concerts. She also used the op-
portunity to express her appreciation to the participating women and the church for hosting
them. Performances by various invited female gospel musicians followed, with sermons by
female pastors Rev. Christy Doe Tetteh and Rev. Dr Joyce Aryee, and the night ended with a
performance by the guest from South Africa. It is significant to note that majority of the
audience at the last two concerts were women, and that proceeds from the ticket sales, as well as
sponsorships for the event, went into organising cervical screening and health education for
young women at selected places in Accra.
28.7 The Tehillah Experience

Ohemma Mercy (also known as Mercy Twum Ampofo) is a trained teacher and a gospel
musician. She released her first album in 2004 and has since been very prominent on the music
scene in Ghana. The Tehillah Experience started in 2014, with the 2019 Experience marking
the sixth event since its inception. The 2019 event was hosted by the Calvary Temple of the
International Central Gospel Church on the Spintext Road, Accra, and featured Lebo
Sekgobela from South Africa as well as Minister Michael Mahendere from Zimbabwe. Previous
events had featured Juanita Bynum who ministered together with Ohemaa Mercy during the
2018 show. The 2018 Tehillah Experience began with praises and a worship session led by
popular gospel musician Francis Amo, which was followed by a choreography session by
teenagers of the Calvary Temple. Performances from guest artistes, including Ceccy Twum,
followed. Much like the other gospel events discussed here, this event also featured time for a
sermon by the pastor of the church, after which Ohemaa Mercy herself mounted the stage.
Exciting features of her performance were the customised drum set with the logo of her
ministry, the Ohemaa Mercy Ministry. Her team of backup singers were made up of more
women than men, even though the instrumentalists were all male. The ministry is the brain
behind the Tehillah Experience and it also serves as a platform for nurturing upcoming gospel
musicians. In a Facebook post preceding the 2018 Experience, Ohemaa Mercy introduced one
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such talent, a woman, by calling on her audiences to watch out for her during the programme.
Her ministry and role as a gospel musician extends to engaging with her audiences in sharing
God’s word through live broadcasts and radio broadcasts on stations like the Accra-based Neat
FM. Other activities of the ministry include prison ministrations where they engage with in-
mates of various prisons in the country.2
28.8 Women Called to Worship

The Women Called to Worship is an annual, gospel music event (founded in 2009), which is
organised by The Standpoint and held at the Trinity Baptiste Church. The Standpoint is a
programme (Ghana TV) hosted by female broadcaster Oheneyere Gifty Anti which addresses a
host of women- and children-related issues in Ghana. The host notes that the event aims to
bring its viewers and women together to worship and express their gratefulness to God for
seeing them through the year. The 2017 event had as its theme ‘Woman; You have a
Testimony. You will be Motivated and Encouraged to Keep Trusting in God for your
Testimony’. Amongst the female gospel artistes featured on the show that year was Nana Yaa,
who is known more within the secular popular music circles than gospel music. However, she
had a testimony which she shared through some popular gospel songs, one of which she had
recorded with Sonnie Badu, a Ghanaian gospel musician. According to her, the songs reflected
her struggles as a mother, wife and musician.
The 2018 event featured Diana Antwi Hamilton as well as other female artistes such as Selina
Boateng, Cynthia Macauley and Becky Bonnie. In her ‘ministrations’ – as has become a
common term in Ghana regarding worshipping in songs – Antwi Hamilton shared her ex-
perience of going through the loss of her second child after waiting six years for her first child –
which turned out to be a set of twins. To the audience (of mainly women) she shared the story
of how she almost went on antidepressant drugs after this loss but for the grace of God. Bringing
Antwi Hamilton on board was a strategic move by the event organisers as her story resonates
with her audiences or their families with similar experience. Her role as a popular gospel
musician – some refer to her as ‘mummy’ – makes such situations more relatable as well as
providing a sense of hope when discussed in the context of worship in songs. Some female
audience members were moved to tears by her story – something which resulted in the second
stanza of her song ‘Mo Ne Yo’ (Well Done). Other female gospel musicians at this show
included upcoming, female gospel musicians who had the opportunity to present some of their
songs. Among the sponsors for the event were Kasapreko Drinks, Awake Mineral Water, Yebb
Cleaning Services, Dream Oval and Cake Tekniks, Makeup and More School of Cosmetology.
28.9 Conclusion
The above events are presented here as representations of the changing roles of female gospel
musicians in Ghana, and give rise to a few questions. What are the reasons and need for such
events, for instance, and what lessons do they offer for the gospel music industry in the country?
The other question relates to whether these activities are a reflection of the changes that could
happen in the future. In response to the first question, Anastasia Mensah and members of her
church band observed that audiences love to see some of these musicians in person (Mensah,
personal communication, 10 June 2019). However, Mensah also noted that these events only
happen when churches invite them – something which often incurs costs for the churches.
Furthermore, even though these churches may charge gate fees for such programmes, the
musicians may not show up. An event hosted by the musicians, on the other hand, whether
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Grace Takyi Donkor
charged or free, is enough assurance that they will be there, live on stage. Thus, instead of
waiting for such invitations, these musicians engage and sustain themselves on the music scene
in Ghana by hosting events.
The other advantage of these events is the fact that they have helped improve the perfor-
mance practice of gospel musicians, by keeping them on their feet with rehearsals and causing
them to diversify their performances to maintain the interest of audiences. These performances
are a source of entertainment for audiences but the events also encourage upcoming, female
gospel musicians – which suggests, perhaps, that the future of gospel music in Ghana will be led
by women. Unlike the economic situation that surrounded the popularisation and emergence
of women on the gospel music scene in earlier decades, these contemporary women are ne-
gotiating their share of the space by providing business avenues for other women to display
their wares in an age where entrepreneurship is becoming an everyday phenomenon: most
women vendors who acquire spaces to display their wares focus on bead-making, African
clothing and fresh juices, while others are in the fast-food business. Beyond the performances,
these female gospel musicians also engage with society through donations, working with
women in need through education and the provision of healthcare for female-related illnesses.
Notes
1 See ‘Women in Worship Concert – Highlights’, GhanaWeb TV, 2017, available from: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTIEEelwdsM
2 See ‘Ohemaa Mercy’s Tehillah Experience 2018’, Ghana Entertainment, available from: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruGqlud1_D0
References
Adedeji, S.O., 2001. Definitive and conceptual issues in Nigerian gospel music. Nigerian Music Review,
2, 46–54.
Antwi Hamilton, D., 2017. I make 26K a year as a nurse. Ghanaweb, 27 April. Available from: https://
www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/entertainment/I-make-26k-a-year-as-a-nurse-Diana-Hamilton-532
956
Antwi Hamilton, D., 2019. Interview with Abeiku Santana on ATUU. UTV Ghana Online, 7 February.
Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iecBRDz-hdc
Atiemo, A., 2006. 'Singing with understanding', the story of gospel music in Ghana. Studies in World
Christianity, 12/2, 142–159.
Carl, F., 2012. “Never go back”: Ghanaian gospel music, born-again Christianity, and the nonconformity
of the ethnographer. Norient, 23 May. Available from: https://norient.com/academic/ghanaian-
gospel/
Collins, J., 2004. Ghanaian Christianity and entertainment: full circle. History in Africa, 31, 389–391.
Collins, J., 2007. The entrance of Ghanaian women into popular entertainment. In: A.V. Adams and E.
Sutherland-Addy, eds. The legacy of Efua Sutherland: pan American cultural activism. Bandbury: Ayebia
Clark Publishing Ltd., 47–54.
Dadson, N., 1990. On gospel music road. The Mirror (Accra), 21 April, 11.
Emielu, A. and Takyi Donkor, G., 2019. Highlife music without alcohol? Interrogating the concept of
gospel highlife in Ghana and Nigeria. Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa, 16/1–2, 29–44.
Parsitau, D.S., 2008. Sounds of change and reform: the appropriation of music and dance in political
discourse in Kenya. Studies in World Christianity, 14/1, 55–72.
Sutherland, E., 1970. The original Bob: the story of Bob Johnson Ghana’s ace comedian. Accra: Anowuo
Educational Publications.
Takyi Donkor, G., 2013. The development of gospel music in Ghana: a study of the Tagoe sisters.
Master’s thesis, University of Ghana.
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29
MĀORI WOMEN AT THE
FOREFRONT OF AOTEAROA/
NEW ZEALAND MUSIC IN THE
MID 1980s AND EARLY 1990s
Maree Sheehan
29.1 Introduction – contemporary popular Māori music

Ngoingoi Pēwhairangi, Moana Maniapoto, Hinewehi Mohi, Emma Paki, Mahinaarangi
Tocker, Maree Sheehan and Ngatai Huata (Black Katz) were some of the most well-known
Māori women composers and performers in the mid 1980s and early 1990s to make a significant
contribution to the Aotearoa/New Zealand popular music scene. This chapter explores some of
the more recognised Māori women composers and performers of contemporary popular waiata,
examining an overview of thematic narratives and music practices as a means of exploring how
Māori cultural identity and political commentary were expressed by them at this time. The
adverse effects of British colonisation on Māori, which include urbanisation, land loss and
language shift, resulted in the loss of transmission of te reo Māori (Māori language) which
occurred within many whānau (family group), hāpu (sub-tribe) and iwi (tribe). Since British
colonisation in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the political and cultural landscape has changed and
this has impacted on every facet of traditional Māori knowledge (Ka’ai-Mahuta 2010, p. xii).
Contemporary popular waiata is one way that these issues are expressed. Recently, at the 2016
Australian Performing Rights Association (APRA) Hall of Fame induction ceremony, recipient
Moana Maniapoto stated that ‘When you’re Māori, you’re a walking, talking political state-
ment’ (Maniapoto 2016), which illustrates that the impact of colonisation is still very significant
today. Rachael Ka’ai-Mahuta interviewed Hana O’Regan, who explains that:
[C]omposition has been one of the ways that we’ve been able to articulate ourselves
and inspire our fellow tribe’s people, our fellow Māori. So, it’s been a way of engaging
people in the issues (cited in Ka’ai-Mahuta 2010, p. 188).
Māori women composers and performers were revolutionary in the way they utilised Westernised
popular music, such as hip hop, jazz-folk and dance within a contemporary popular musical
context as a vehicle to express cultural identity through their voices, at times, utilising taonga
puoro (traditional Māori instrumentation) and articulating their beliefs and knowledge through
their lyrics.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-29 289

Maree Sheehan
29.2 ‘Poi E’
There was none more esteemed than Ngoingoi Pēwhairangi (tribal affiliation – Ngāti Porou),
who contributed to the empowerment and strengthening of te reo Māori and Mātauranga
Māori in a distinctively Māori form of popular and political music. By the mid 1980s, Māori
language revitalisation efforts were growing steadily through the Māori Language Act of 1987,
the development of Kōhanga Reo (Māori language pre-school), Kura Kaupapa (primary school
operating under Māori custom) and many other initiatives, including Māori music. The Māori
language had survived having seemingly returned from the brink of extinction. The compo-
sition of ‘Poi E’1 by Ngoi Pēwhairangi and Dalvanius Prime was a conscious decision by
Pēwhairangi to write about her love of te reo Māori, to raise awareness about the language, and
to promote Māori culture among young Māori people (Ka’ai 2008, p. 87).
The music of ‘Poi E’ was scored and produced by Dalvanius Prime (ibid.). In the 1980s,
mainstream pop music commonly used digital recordings, associated with the use of synthesisers
with synthpop music, which was employed by Prime. It was a collaborative decision by
Pēwhairangi and Prime to incorporate synthesised music with the sound of waiata tira (choral
song, and songs sung as a choir without actions) performed by Pātea Māori Club et al. (ibid.,
p. 88), and this gives the waiata a distinctive Māori sound. It was a popular, contemporary
music mix that provided a platform which Māori youth could relate to, and to feel proud to
hear and see te reo Māori being performed on mainstream radio and television. The action
taken by Pēwhairangi to use mainstream pop music as a vehicle to reach young Māori was
significant because Māori, in both urban and rural areas, were not represented in mainstream
media domains. When ‘E Ipo’ – with lyrics written in te reo Māori by Pewhairangi (1979) and
performed by Prince Tui Teka (1982)2 – reached number one in the New Zealand music charts
in 1982, and subsequently ‘Poi E’ in 1984, they traversed into mainstream territory for the first
times in history. These contemporary waiata were supremely successful in promoting te reo
Māori and positive reinforcement of Māori culture. ‘Poi E’ reached number one in the New
Zealand Top Ten music charts and remained there for 4 weeks (ibid., p. 87). It remains an
iconic, contemporary waiata Māori in Aotearoa/New Zealand, supremely successful in pro-
moting te reo Māori and Māori culture throughout New Zealand in the mainstream music
scene (Sheehan 2016, p. 77). However, te reo Māori was still limited in its public reach do-
mains, particularly on New Zealand radio which did not play Māori music (O’Regan 2012,
p. 312). For many Māori composers and performers, this remains an issue that needs to be
addressed today. According to Maniapoto, ‘it’s been thirty years, stuff all has changed’ (2016).
29.3 Songs of protest

By 1981, the adverse effects of colonisation was evident in race relations in Aotearoa/New
Zealand. Māori activism by groups such as Nga Tamatoa and the Polynesian Panther
Movement (Johnson 2002, p. 22) protested over many racial inequalities for Māori and the
adverse effects of colonisation. Protests aimed at the New Zealand Government for historically
dishonouring the Treaty of Waitangi (Orange 1987) were visibly noticeable. None more,
decidedly, than the contentious South African rugby tour to Aotearoa/New Zealand in 1981
which divided the New Zealand public. Many protested against the rugby tour going ahead as it
represented and symbolised South Africa’s political system of apartheid, while others vehe-
mently believed politics had no place in sports.
Standing up for your rights has long been linked to singing for your rights. In the late 1980s
and early 1990s, the voices of protest were heard in the lyrics and music of ‘Devolution’ (1986),
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Māori women in Aotearoa/New Zealand music
composed by Ngatai Huata (tribal affiliations – Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti
Porou), who was one of the founders of the group Black Katz.3 The song expressed the concern
of Māori about how the New Zealand Government was selling off state-owned assets, and the
deregulation and dismantling of Māori Affairs Department (Huata, cited in Hauiti 2010). Black
Katz is a collective of Māori women writers, songwriters, composers and pioneers of kaupapa
music (music with purpose). As explained by Huata: ‘Mana is the People – Rangatira is to be
Māori – Aroha is Our Gift – Māuri is Woman – Mana Wahine Motuhake’ (Huata 2011). We
were, once again, to see racial conflict in New Zealand when public opinion was galvanised
over Hinewehi Mohi (tribal affiliations – Ngāti Kahungunu, Tuhoe) singing the national an-
them in te reo Māori before an All Blacks match during the 1999 Rugby World Cup at
Twickenham (Shiels 2002).
29.4 Mahinaarangi Tocker and Moana Maniapoto

Artists contributing to innovative musical works that provided a significant cross-cultural
context of hybridity – with a conscious inclusion of contemporary musical genres mixed with
traditional Māori concepts of music and instrumentation – included Mahinaarangi Tocker
(tribal affiliations – Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Maniapoto) and Moana
Maniapoto (Ngāti Tuwharetoa, Tuhourangi, Ngāti Pikiao). Tocker was particularly known for
her distinctive jazz-pop, heartfelt vocal performances, often being likened to Joni Mitchell. She
sang and wrote in a jazz-fusion, folk-pop style, integrating beautiful melodies with lyrics that
were provocative, and raised controversial issues such as Māori rights, gay rights, mana wahine
and mental health (see Yates 2019). Both of her parents were involved in Kapa haka, and her
culture permeated throughout her contemporary waiata. As Tocker explained in a 1997 in-
terview on Radio New Zealand:
[I like] listening to kuia and koroua with their waiata, and [have] an incredible fas-
cination with pātere (chants) and the rhythms of our old people, and that’s not just a
vocal rhythm, it’s a physical rhythm…. There’s an absolute passion and emotional
stance that happens where you’re absolutely captivated (RNZ Music 1997; 2018).
Having written about pain, sorrow and anger, Tocker describes ‘These Tears are Wasted’
(1997), one of the most heartfelt and honest songs she had ever written, and which spoke about
rape and violence (ibid.): the song is on her album, Te Ripo.4 Tocker consistently wrote and
expressed herself through her contemporary waiata in a truly original style that expressed an
intense connection to her deepest feelings and her identity (Yates 2019). Mahinaarangi Tocker
died on 14 April 2008.5
Moana Maniapoto has been regarded as one of the most significant women’s voices in the
Aotearoa music scene since her first release in 1982. She is a trial-blazer and political activist
who continues to write and produce contemporary Māori music that legitimises and brings
Māori language and culture into the mainstream. Her solo career started in the 1980s when she
released her first single ‘Kua Makona’ (1986).6 She formed Moana and Moahunters in 1990 and
they released their first waiata, ‘AEIOU’, in 1991.7 This waiata has both Māori and English
words, and conveys a message for all New Zealanders to engage in learning te reo Māori, with
the chorus of ‘Akona te reo’ (learn Māori language). This came after the release of the feminist
anthem ‘Black Pearl’ in 1990, which climbed to number two in the New Zealand music charts.
Both songs appear on her 1993 album Tahi, and the album Rua followed in 1998 (Sheehan
2016, p. 81).8
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Maree Sheehan
The waiata ‘Tahi’ (roots mix), which Maniapoto co-wrote with Ruia Aperehama and
Angus McNaughton (1993), provides an innovative cultural context of musical hybridity.9 It
utilises contemporary musical genres and incorporates te reo Māori and the use of taonga
puoro. In the 1980s, the revival of taonga puoro was being heard primarily through the work of
the late Hirini Melbourne and his colleagues Richard Nunns and Brian Flintoff (Sheehan 2017,
p. 10). The taonga puoro used in this waiata signify the sound of the ocean, the tempo of the
waka (canoe), the stars, the wind, the sails and the movement of water. The incorporation of
tauparapara (incantations, spells, charms) by Aperehama at the beginning of ‘Tahi’ infuses
karakia (prayer, chant) into this waiata. Simultaneously, the rhythmic patterns of haka (tradi-
tional Māori dance) and the sounds of the poi were incorporated to create a unique beat. The
waiata ‘Tahi’ recalls the unity of Māori tūpuna as they travelled on waka from Hawaiki to
Aotearoa and the hope that, one day, Māori will reclaim the sense of belonging together that
has been lost through colonisation (Maniapoto 2019). The positioning of te reo Māori as a
central thread in the waiata ‘Tahi’ recognises the relationship between language and culture.
Two and a half decades on from the 1990s, Moana Maniapoto and the Tribe are still
performing domestically and touring internationally, having been invited to perform in Korea,
Germany, Scotland, Poland, Australia, Budapest and Italy, to name a few. In 2016, Moana’s
significant contribution to music and her impact on culture in New Zealand was recognised
with her induction into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame at the Australian Performing
Rights Association Awards (Maniapoto 2016). Aside from the public recognition, it is her
strength, courage and voice that is heard in her music, which is very much grounded in her
whakapapa (genealogy, ancestry), her connection to the whenua (land), and the relationships
she upholds in her iwi, hāpu and whānau (Sheehan 2016, p. 82). Throughout her musical
career, she has remained true to composing and performing kaupapa-driven waiata.
29.5 Hinewehi Mohi, Emma Paki and Maree Sheehan

As mentioned earlier, Hinewehi Mohi has been recognised by many for her heroism in per-
forming the New Zealand national anthem in te reo Māori in 1999. However, her talent could
be seen and heard several years earlier when she wrote released her debut single, ‘Kia U’, in
1992.10 This waiata was significant for its time as it is one of the earliest contemporary popular
waiata written all in te reo Māori, with kaupapa-driven lyrics that articulated the mistreatment
of Māori by Tauiwi (foreigner, European), and spoke of the need for Māori people to stand up
and fight. It poses the question in its lyrics, ‘if the wairua is not well, then how can we as Māori
people be well?’ (cited in Sheehan 2016, p. 80), and blended together popular music forms and
style that appealed to a mainstream audience. Mohi went on to release her first album, Oceania,
in 1999. The album achieved platinum status, and was a collaboration with Jaz Coleman of
Killing Joke that fused te reo Māori lyrics, melodies, harmonies and taonga puoro with modern
dance beats.11 The album yielded the highly successful single ‘Kotahitanga’.12 This waiata, once
again, used a popular genre of house music beats and contemporary popular musical progres-
sions and structures, layered with te reo Māori, sung by Mohi, that spoke of unity, solidarity
and freedom for Māori people (ibid., p. 85).
It is estimated that 100 million people worldwide witnessed Hinewehi Mohi singing the
New Zealand national anthem before an All Blacks match during the 1999 Rugby World Cup
at Twickenham (Shiels 2002). At the time, this incident galvanised public opinion in New
Zealand and abroad, with viewers complaining that this was inappropriate because most New
Zealanders did not speak (or understand) Māori. The incident sparked public debate about how
people reacted to the singing of the anthem in general. Because of their high profile, the All
292
Blacks were singled out for particular attention and were criticised for being unable (or un-
willing) to sing the anthem (ibid., p. 81). At the time, Mohi recalled that the last thing on her
mind was stirring up bitter controversy. Even though she did not see her actions as radical, what
she did, in fact, changed the whole way in which ‘God Defend New Zealand’ was perceived.
By singing the ‘E Ihowa Atua’ lyrics – the te reo Māori version with lyrics written by T.H.
Smith (1878)13 – Mohi dispensed with the English language version, and its representation of
the dominant culture in New Zealand, and located the Māori language as the first language of
tangata whenua (indigenous people) in Aotearoa.
Alongside Hinewehi Mohi and Moana Maniapoto, and at the forefront of Aotearoa/New
Zealand music in the early 1990s, were artists such as Emma Paki and Maree Sheehan. The
songs ‘System Virtue’ and ‘Greenstone’ were composed by Emma Paki. The thematic content
explored in ‘System Virtue’ has an overtone that particularly relates to Māori.14 The idea
behind the song’s title can be interpreted as the system letting Māori down, but rather than
fighting system, Paki invokes a sentiment of hope that remarks on turning the system around,
finding peace, love and humanity (Sweetman 2012, p. 131). Furthermore, Paki’s song
‘Greenstone’ features Māori cultural understandings of taonga (treasure, prized possession), and
the association of how people are the most precious thing in Te Ao Māori (the Māori world).15
It is a sonic memory that reverberates with the sentiment of a very well-known whakatauki
(Māori proverb):
He aha te mea nui o te ao. He tangata, he tangata, he tangata
[What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people]
In 1993, Emma Paki won ‘best songwriter of the year’ (for ‘System Virtue’), and ‘most pro-
mising female vocalist’ at the New Zealand Music Awards. Her next single, ‘Greenstone’,
produced by Neil Finn, climbed to number five on the New Zealand music charts, and she
went on to win ‘best female vocalist’ in 1994. In 1996, Paki released her debut album, Oxygen
of Love, winning ‘best album of the year’ and the Mana Māori Award for best Māori album.16
She has toured extensively and supported international artists such as Sheryl Crow and
Crowded House.
Maree Sheehan (Ngāti Maniapoto, Waikato, Ngāti Tuwharetoa) is perhaps best known for
her contemporary waiata ‘Kia tu mahea’ (To be Free)17 and ‘Hei konei te wā o mua / Past to
the Present’,18 both co-written with her mother, Mata Ruki-Sheehan, and released con-
secutively in 1994 and 1995. For Sheehan, the process of writing ‘Kia tu mahea’ involved a
conscious decision to write in both te reo Māori and English, with her mother helping to
translate the sentiments in her songs. Sheehan’s incorporation of te reo Māori, as heard in the
chorus, was a way of expressing her cultural identity. Her lyrics expressed an idea of love, light,
joy and the importance of whānau, with the concept of making positive choices in life bringing
about change and a sense of freedom. When discussing the chorus of ‘Kia tu mahea’ with her
mother, it became clear that this saying was one her mother, speaking in te reo Māori, had used
when she was a young child; it was a way of talking about ‘being free’ or ‘being clear in the
mind’. During the writing of ‘Kia tu mahea’, one unintended outcome of the creative process
involved a renewed connection with Sheehan’s grandmother and with linkages to whakapapa
(Sheehan 2014, p. 25).
Sheehan utilised the genre of house dance music beats in ‘Kia tu mahea’, layering these
rhythmical patterns with synthesised chord progression of C major, F major and G major. In
order to support the theme and sentiment of this waiata, the sound of waiata tira that was sung
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Maree Sheehan
and performed by the well-known Māori kappa haka group, Te Waka Huia, was utilised in the
chorus and bridge. Ensemble singing creates particular harmonies and rhythms as well as
providing vocal dynamics unique to a choral group. This vocal sound in the ‘Kia tu mahea’
chorus and bridge, coupled with the lyrics and a repetitive four on the floor dancebeat, pro-
vided a sense of strength and unity (ibid., p. 6).
Sheehan’s waiata ‘Hei konei te wā o mua / Past to the Present’ originated in the desire to
create a contemporary waiata about the connection to her whakapapa. The lyrics reflect a time
when she made a conscious decision, as a 15-year-old, to journey back to her tūrangawaewae
(place where one has rights of residence and belonging through kinship), and to when she
visited an extended whanau, located in Te Kuiti, New Zealand, for the first time. The sense of
disconnection to her cultural identity as Māori, and the loss of te reo Māori through the inter-
generational transmission of English, provoked a conscious engagement to learn te reo Māori,
and, importantly, a pathway to learn about whakapapa, which she writes about in this song. The
lyrics in the chorus express this sentiment:
Kawea mai te wā o mua, hei konei, hei āpōpō, kawea mai te wā o mua, hei wha-
kapakari te katoa, hei āpōpō, hei āpōpō
[Bring the past to the present for the future, bring the past to the present make us stronger, for the
future] (Sheehan 2014, p. 4).
The creation of ‘Hei konei te wā o mua’, both musically and lyrically, is an expression of
cultural knowledge and identity. This waiata utilises a contemporary pop song format, ex-
perimenting with hip hop beats and synthesised musical sounds of the bass line and piano. The
layering of an acoustic guitar and flute riff provide an organic, humanistic style to the song,
alongside recording a rap in te reo Māori performed by Valance Smith. The sentiment in the
waiata resonated with audiences, with the English version ‘Past to the Present’ remaining in the
New Zealand charts for several weeks.
29.6 Conclusion
In the 1980s and early 1990s, contemporary waiata was a powerful medium that acted as an
artistic agent for change and, significantly, as a way for many Māori women composers and
performers to express Māori knowledge and culture through kaupapa-driven lyrics and Māori
instrumentation. It was an important era that saw the renaissance of Māori language re-
vitalisation efforts, and this was amalgamated with many Māori protesting for land rights and
against social, political and economic struggles. There has continued to be a strong cohort of
Māori wāhine composers expressing their identity and cultural knowledge through con-
temporary popular waiata: these artists include Whirimako Black, Toni Huata, Wai 100%,
Anika Moa, Maisey Rika, Ria Hall and groups such as Maimoa. There are still contentious
political, social and cultural issues in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and contemporary popular waiata
remains a vehicle for expression, protest and a means of exploring Māori cultural identity.
Glossary of Māori words19
Aotearoa New Zealand

Haka Performance of the haka, posture dance – vigorous dances with actions
and rhythmically shouted words
294
Hāpu Kinship group, clan, tribe, subtribe – section of a large kinship group and
the primary political unit in traditional Māori society
Iwi Extended kinship group, tribe, nation, people
Kapa haka Concert party, Māori cultural group, Māori performing group
Karakia Prayers, chant, incantation
Kaupapa Topic, policy, matter for discussion, plan, scheme, proposal, agenda,
subject, programme, theme
Kaupapa Māori Māori ideology, a philosophical doctrine, incorporating the knowledge,
skills, attitudes and values of Māori society
Kohanga Reo Māori language pre-school
Koroua Elderly man
Kuia Elderly woman
Kura Kaupapa Primary school operating under Māori custom and using Māori as the
medium of instruction
Mātauranga Māori Māori knowledge – the body of knowledge originating from Māori an-
cestors, including the Māori world view and perspectives, Māori creativity
and cultural practices
Poi A light ball on a string of varying length which is swung or twirled
rhythmically to sung accompaniment. Traditionally the ball was made of
raupō leaves wood, stone or bone attached to a long string
Tahi One, single, 1 – as in counting out things, in which case each number is
preceded by ka
Tangata whenua Local people, hosts, indigenous people – people born of the land
Tangi Sound, intonation, mourning, grief, sorrow, weeping, lament, salute, wave
Taonga Treasure, anything prized
Taonga puoro Traditional Māori instruments
Tauparapara Spells, charms, incantations
Te reo Māori Māori language
Tūpuna/Tipuna Ancestors, grandparents
Wahine Woman, female, lady, wife
Waiata To sing, song, chant
Waiata tira Choral song – songs sung as a choir without action
Wairua Spirit, soul, quintessence – spirit of a person
Waka Canoe, vehicle, conveyance, spirit medium
Whakapapa Genealogy, genealogical table, lineage, descent
Whānau Extended family, family group, a familiar term of address to a number of
people – the primary economic unit of traditional Māori society
Whenua Land, country, state
Notes
1 N. Pēwhairangi and D. Prime, ‘Poi E’ (1983), 7″ single (New Zealand: Maui Records, 1983): https://
nzhistory.govt.nz/media/video/poi-e
2 N. Pēwhairangi and T. Teka, ‘E Ipo’, 7″ single (New Zealand: Tui Records/RCA Victor, 1982):
https://www.audioculture.co.nz/people/prince-tui-teka
3 N. Huata and Black Katz, ‘Devolution’ (New Zealand: TWM Records, 1986).
4 M. Tocker, Te Ripo, album (New Zealand: Columbia Records, 1997): https://www.discogs.com/
artist/258045-Mahinarangi-Tocker
295
Maree Sheehan
5 See ‘Musician Mahinarangi Tocker dies age 52’, New Zealand Herald, 15 April 2008: https://
www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10504255
6 D. Prime (producer, composer), ‘Kua Makona’ vinyl, 12", EP (New Zealand: Maui Records, 1986):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAwdr6T5bY&list=RD1IAwdr6T5bY&start_radio=1&t=7
7 M. Maniapoto and Moana and the Moahunters, ‘AEIOU’, 12″ single (New Zealand: Southside
Records, 1993): http://www.moananz.com/
8 Maniapoto and Moana and the Moahunters’ albums Tahi (Southside Records, 1993) and Rua (Tangata
Records, 1998): http://www.moananz.com/
9 M. Maniapoto, R. Aperehama and A. McNaughton, ‘Tahi (roots mix)’ single (New Zealand:
Southside Records, 1993): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUQiG56hs0M
10 H. Mohi, ‘Kia U’, 7" single (New Zealand: Tangata Records, 1992): https://www.nzonscreen.com/
title/kia-u-1992
11 Mohi and J. Coleman, Oceania, album (Europe: Point Music, 1999): https://itunes.apple.com/us/
album/oceania/251530868
12 Mohi and Coleman, ‘Kotahitanga’, single (Europe: Point Music, 1999): https://itunes.apple.com/us/
album/oceania/251530868
13 For Māori lyrics, see ‘E Ihowa Atua’, New Zealand Folk Song: http://folksong.org.nz/e_ihowa_atua/
index.html
14 E. Paki, ‘System Virtue’, 7" single (New Zealand: Tangata Records, 1993): https://
www.audioculture.co.nz/people/emma-paki
15 Paki, ‘Greenstone’, 7" single (New Zealand: EMI Records, 1994): ibid.
16 Paki, Oxygen of Love, album (New Zealand: Virgin Records, 1996): ibid.
17 M. Sheehan and M. Ruki-Sheehan, ‘Kia tu mahea’ CD single (New Zealand: Tangata Records,
1994): https://itunes.apple.com/nz/album/kia-tu-mahea-to-be-free-single/1205020983
18 Sheehan and Ruki-Sheehan, ‘Hei konei te wa o mua / Past to the Present’, CD single (New Zealand:
Village Roadshow, 1995): https://itunes.apple.com/nz/album/hei-konei-te-wa-o-mua-feat-valance-
smith/1205030389?i=1205030537
19 All Māori words are taken from the Te Aka Māori Dictionary: http://www.teipukarea.maori.nz/
projects/te-aka-maori-dictionary/
References
Hauiti, C. (producer), 2010. Waiata Whawhai (TV documentary), Māori Television. New Zealand: Front
of Box Productions.
Huata, N., 2011. Black Katz. Facebook. Available from: https://web.facebook.com/BlackKatz10/
Johnson, M., 2002. Land of the wrong white crowd: Pakeha anti-racist organisations and identity politics
in Auckland. Master’s thesis, University of Auckland.
Ka’ai-Mahuta, R., 2010. He kupu tuku iho mō tēnei reanga: a critical analysis of waiata and haka as
commentaries and archives of Māori political history. PhD thesis, Auckland University of Technology.
Ka’ai-Mahuta, R., Ka’ai, T., and Moorfield, J., eds., 2013. Kia rō naki: the Mā ori performing arts. Auckland:
Pearson Zealand.
Ka’ai, T., 2008. Ngoingoi Pēwhairangi: a remarkable life. Wellington: Huia Publishers.
Kāretu, T., 1993. Haka!: the dance of a noble people = Te tohu o te whenua rangātira. Auckland: Reed.
Maniapoto, M., 2016. Induction into the New Zealand Hall of Fame (video), Australian Performing
Rights Association, 29 September. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5
Kmi7q4jQXM
Maniapoto, M., 2019. Moana website. Available from: http://www.moananz.com/
McLean, M., 1996. Māori music. Auckland: Auckland University Press.
O’Regan, H., 2012. The fate of customary language: Te reo Māori 1990 to the present. In: D. Keenan, ed.
Huia histories of Māori: nga tāhuhu kōrero. Wellington: Huia Publishing, 297–323.
Orbell, M., 1991. Waiata: Māori songs in history: an anthology. Auckland: Reed Publishing.
Orange, C., 1987. The treaty of Waitangi. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books. Available from: https://
www.bwb.co.nz/books/the-treaty-of-waitangi
Papesch, T., 2013. Waiata. In: R. Ka’ai-Mahuta, T. Ka’ai and J. Moorfield, eds. Kia rōnaki: the Māori
performing arts. Auckland: Pearson, 117–128.
296
RNZ Music, 1997. ‘Mahinarangi Tocker on Into the Night’ (radio interview). Radio New Zealand, 19
April.
RNZ Music, 2018. Celebrating “super-hero” songwriter Mahinaarangi Tocker 10 years on. Radio New
Zealand, 15 April. Available at: https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/nat-music/audio/201
8640511/celebrating-super-hero-songwriter-mahinaarangi-tocker-10-years-on
Sheehan, M., 2014. Kawea ma te wā o mua, hei konei, hei āpōpō: Bring the past to the present for the
future. Master’s thesis, Auckland University of Technology.
Sheehan, M., 2016. Mana Wahine: Māori women in music. Te Kaharoa, 9/1, 76–90.
Sheehan, M., 2017. Contemporary popular waiata provide a place of belonging. MAI Journal, 6/2,
197–207. doi: 10.20507/MAIJournal.2017.6.2.13
Shiels, R., 2002. The Oceania dimension. Christchurch Press, 28 December.
Smith, V., 2003. Colonising the stage: the socio-cultural impact of colonisation on kapa haka. Master’s
thesis, University of Auckland.
Sweetman, S., 2012. On song: stories behind New Zealand’s pop classics. Auckland: Penguin.
Yates, C., 2019. Mahinaarangi Tocker profile. AudioCulture, 7 March. Available at: https://
www.audioculture.co.nz/people/mahinaarangi-tocker
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30
THE STEREOTYPICAL IMAGE
AND BODY REPRESENTATION
OF TAIWANESE FEMALE
MUSICIANS
Li-ming Pan
30.1 Introduction
Due to its association with the hegemonic cultural and imperial domination of the West,
Western classical music is considered the embodiment of progress and civilisation in Taiwan. As
Mari Yoshihara states, in Asian countries, ‘Western classical music carries additional value
because of its Western-ness’ (Yoshihara 2007, p. 144), adding that, ‘familiarity with and training
in Western classical music are associated with middle-class status and Western-style modernity’
(ibid., p. 147). Taiwan is no exception. Additionally, purchasing instruments and the required
long-term economic investment makes classical music training intimately connected to the
middle and upper classes. Such training also needs parents’ devotion in terms of time and energy
and the whole family’s co-operation. Studying music, therefore, invariably represents a high-
class activity in Taiwan. These long-term expenditures make the Taiwanese realise that
studying Western classical music is definitely related to ‘class’. That is to say, ‘classical music
becomes an important status marker or status symbol. It can strengthen the position of the class
and make clear the boundary against other classes’ (ibid., p. 97). All of these practical conditions
place female musicians in a seemingly privileged position. Moreover, female musicians are
deemed a group within high class, and tend to have a fixed, appealing image regarding their
appearance.
This image is usually composed of many elements, including gentle, big eyes, long and
straight hair, fabulous clothes, and the most admired quality – her special disposition and classy
appearance; how she speaks and how she laughs are also considerations. The ‘fixed’, feminine
image of Taiwanese women musicians has been prevalent and has gradually become the ac-
customed view. It has formulated an important criterion for assessing whether an individual can
be considered legitimate as a female musician. The degree to which she is ‘like’ or ‘unlike’ a
female musician tends to be judged by viewing her exterior ‘performance’, and the visual
‘performance’ is even more fundamental than the musical performance on many occasions.
Consequently, being a female musician in Taiwan does not require merely engaging in a music
circle, but also living in a complicated, male-looking mechanism full of stereotypes: female
298 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-30

Taiwanese female musicians
musicians not only have to learn about the music profession, but also about the image to which
they are supposed to conform.
The specific image needs to be scrutinised, but the related analysis or discussion has not yet
appeared in the academic field or the general reviews. This research explores how the ste-
reotype may affect female musicians’ careers and physical representation, how a female musician
negotiates the social norm/control and her subjectivity, and how much self-awareness she has
with regard to the practices of daily life. The chapter approaches these issues by interviewing 19
Taiwanese female musicians about their experiences.1 Based on the interview data, this study
exposes a range of socio-cultural pressures that work to create an ideal definition of what and
how a female musician should ‘perform’. According to the participants, maintaining an in-
telligible image, which can be effortlessly recognised as that of a female musician, becomes
critical in order to secure the achievable benefits from her career and social status. Through
using the interview data materials and Judith Butler’s theory of performativity (2006), the
chapter discusses the endeavours which the female musician makes in order to fit in with the
stereotype, revealing that the accustomed image is never a ‘natural’ one. I also consider how
female musicians interiorise social pressures and regulations and use these criteria to examine
themselves.
30.2 The stereotype and the visuality

The stereotype of the Taiwanese female musician is closely associated with visuality. According
to the participants’ experiences, when a female musician announces her occupation in Taiwan,
she is seldom to be believed based on this verbal statement alone. Her appearance and behaviour
are the convincing references for examining the legitimacy of her status. In other words, it is
primarily through a visual investigation that the identity of a female musician will be approved
or discredited. In the interviews, 19 informants were asked what other people’s first reaction
was when their musician status was revealed. According to their statements, people’s responses
were almost the same. They always said to the female musician: ‘No wonder, you are so classy
(qi-zhi)!’2 In fact, it was hard to find a different response. The comments of Participant J (PJ) are
a faithful description:
No matter what people’s age, gender and occupation, the first sentence immediately
uttered by everyone who heard that I study music is identical. They always say, ‘you
are very classy!’ (PJ, personal interview, 28 February 2013).
Participants J and N are both music teachers in their twenties. The following conversation
between this author (LM) and participant N (PN) is also a typical experience of the participants.
LM: What is the usual reaction when you tell people that you study music?
PN: ‘Wow! No wonder! [You are] very classy (qi-zhi)!’
LM: Do you think that the reply would be the same if you told them that you study another
subject, such as literature, engineering or any other subject?
PN: No [shakes her head]. I do not think that they would say it.
LM: So, they already saw you before you told them your specialty, but they would not say
anything about classy (qi-zhi) if you did not study music. In your opinion, what is the
reason for this?
PN: The stereotype! The stereotype is that all female musicians are beautiful, all female
musicians are classy! Anyway, there is already a stereotype in everyone’s mind. The truth is
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Li-ming Pan
that they saw you and they found out that you study music in the conversation. Then they
probably started to imagine the female musician’s image and then compared you with that
image. If your image is not far from the stereotypical one, then you will hear ‘No wonder!’
(PN, personal interview, 11 March 2013).
As participant H (an assistant university professor) described, the image of the female mu-
sician in Taiwan is ‘constituted from every aspect. It is like the apotheosis’ (PH, personal
interview, 2 March 2013). The mass media is the source that most participants mentioned. As
they specified, the content and titles of newspapers or magazine articles invariably use ‘classy’
and ‘beautiful’ to formulate the attractive image. Participant J commented that: ‘Whenever a
female musician is reported, “beautiful” is like a necessary word to add, such as a beautiful
violinist, beautiful flautist’ (PJ, interview, op. cit.).
The image of the female musician presented in the media, newspaper, television, concert
posters – in other words, what Taiwanese people hear, read and see about the female musician –
is invariably the image of a classy beauty. As an active producer in making the image, the female
musician is, simultaneously, the passive carrier, absorbing information from Taiwanese society
which inculcates her how to be a ‘normal’ or ‘standard’ female musician. Only if some aspect of
her appearance and performativity can be associated with the stereotypical image will the status
of the female musician be legitimatised by the viewers; this was noted by four participants (PF,
PJ, PM, PN). Since visuality has reinforced its influence on the female musician, conforming to
the stereotypical image becomes a critical way to manifest authority as a female musician.
30.3 The influence of the image on life

This stereotype has profoundly influenced and formed female musicians’ careers and lifestyles in
various ways. The female musicians thus present the typical image and ‘perform’ it in their daily
lives, or on special occasions, because of the numerous advantages this brings such as the le-
gitimacy of the musician status and the self-satisfaction of being a commonly accredited,
‘beautiful’ musician. The majority of the participants in this study are not immune from these
pressures. Take participant I (a piano teacher and accompanist) as an example. Her long, straight
hair, elegant clothes and beautiful make-up often lead to her being described as a classy and
beautiful musician. Her behavioural performance also highlights her classy status: she often
smiles sweetly and speaks in a soft voice. When she complained to me about how the female
musician’s appearance had been fetishised, her own appearance naturally became the interview
topic. The following statement was her response to this question:
You ask why I perfectly conform to the stereotype of the female musician? My answer
is, what I look like in people’s eyes, I do not deliberately present this image … I have
never thought about this issue before! I never thought of it [pause]! I have always had
long hair. As for my tender character, my personality is quiet and calm! It is probably
not related to the stereotype. It happens to be like this … these are two separate
things. One is the stereotype of the female musician, which you know. [The other] is
that you should find out which appearance suits you. This style suits me. There is no
need for me to be un-pretty (PI, personal interview, 16 March 2013).
Participant I eliminated any possible influence of the stereotype on her external presentation,
although her appearance is similar to what she herself described as the typical image of female
musicians. A few of the participants thought that their conformity to the ‘standard’ image was
300
indeed a coincidence, and how they appeared was a natural presentation of their inside.
Nevertheless, from participant I’s later interview comments, which are examined in the fol-
lowing section of this chapter, it is clear that she chose to ‘perform’ this exterior in order to
secure her job opportunities; this was also the case for some other participants. The continual
and consistent acts make them accustomed to the performing image. The stereotypical image
resonates with Butler’s observations on gender (2006, pp. xv–xvi):
What we take to be an internal essence … is manufactured through a sustained set of

acts, posited through the … stylization of the body. In this way, it showed that what we
take to be an ‘internal’ feature of ourselves is one that we anticipate and produced
through certain bodily acts, at an extreme, a hallucinatory effect of naturalized gestures.
On the other hand, participant G (an orchestral instrumentalist) admitted that she had fully
enjoyed the favours which her ‘standard’ appearance brought:
In most people’s eyes I am already classy. In my opinion, I learned what image is

beautiful [for me] in people’s judgments over the years…. It is very helpful to perform
the image which people think the female musician should have! It bears fruit when I
search for funding for concerts! (PG, personal interview, 6 March 2013).
Participant G’s comments about her appearance are credible. She looks like a ‘standard’,
beautiful musician, and acknowledged that she formed her classy look through others’ repeated
comments. She has interiorised this praise and represented it as if she is ‘naturally’ a classy
musician. The situation is, as participant D (an associate university professor in her forties)
concluded: ‘For Taiwanese female musicians, the stereotype is a bonus point!’ (PD, personal
interview, 21 February 2013). Whether the musicians realise the relationship between them-
selves and the stereotype, the interview data reveal that the specific image presented by the
overwhelming majority of female musicians in Taiwan is no coincidence.
30.4 The forces of the stereotype

The experiences of the participants clearly demonstrate that the ‘ideal’ image is the result of the
negotiation between the female musicians and the powerful influence of the outside world. The
following analysis focuses on the cultural regulations which exert their power on bodies. In
interview, Participant F (an orchestral instrumentalist) illustrated that her musician status had
been often doubted, principally because of her short hair and loud laugh. These elements
apparently do not belong to a typically ‘classy’ female musician.
PF: In the summer vacation before I went to university, I worked part-time in a non-musical
business. My colleagues told me that I was not like a musical student. I myself clearly
knew that.
LM: What kind of appearance do you think is like a female musician?
PF: It must be long hair [tone extended and stressed], long hair [tone extended again]. She
should look classy (qi-zhi).
LM: But you have had long hair for many years?
PF: It is now! It is now! Because people always said that a female musician is classy and has long
hair. I certainly changed my hair length for this reason! Besides, I have taught students
during my university period, so I must have the image [word emphasized] since then.
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Li-ming Pan
From that image, people will think that I am capable of teaching well, because people
always consider that music teachers look like that, you know (PF, personal interview, 9
March 2013).
Participant F presented a realistic problem in the career of the female musician. Since most
Taiwanese people think that only a specific image is appropriate for a female musician, any
appearance that deviates from this image will easily give rise to queries or criticism. Thus, for
many female musicians, having a standard image becomes a necessity on many occasions.
Participant F mentioned an example of this:
First, the impact of long hair in my job is that when people see me for the first time, I
am undoubtedly a music teacher. I tally with the image of the female musician in their
mind. Second, when we play music on stage, the long hair image is much classier. It is
more like a musician for the viewers (PF, ibid.).
Like most other music students, participant M has taught at several private music studios. She
has had experiences similar to those of participant F:
I had short hair in the past, but the bosses of the studios asked me to grow it longer
and wear more lady-like clothes. Otherwise, in their words, I cannot obtain the
parents’ trust (PM, personal interview, 9 March 2013).
Participant M had no choice but adjust to the reality: she still has short hair but has to wear it longer
than before. Many of the participants also expressed that they had been asked by the owners of the
music studios to have long hair or to dress well to present an appearance of female musicians. This
phenomenon indicates what image the female musician should present and how they can earn
people’s trust. Even though they were forging their careers, what was required of them was linked
primarily with their surface appearance. Hence, multiple powers push and demand female musicians
to conform to a ‘standard’ image. In this sense, the way in which Butler (2006, p. 34) analyses gender
provides a faithful instruction on the stereotyped image: ‘[It] is performatively produced and com-
pelled by the regulatory practices of … coherence…. [The image] proves to be performative – that is,
constituting the identity it is purported to be’. Hence, the image is always a ‘doing’, a performativity,
an educated and cultural product, never an expression of inherited nature.
In addition to teaching jobs, performing music at occasions is another popular way of making a
living in Taiwanese musical circles. Many musicians join an ensemble to perform at weddings or
corporate events, for instance. Participant N (a music teacher in her twenties) has had plenty of
experiences of this, and described how her image has affected her career development:
After all, the hirer merely wants to enhance the wedding ceremony. The requirement
for you is to provide a high-class air! All you need to do is to be beautiful. The music
you play will be fine if it isn’t too terrible. Actually, the hirers and guests are incapable
of appreciating classical music. You do not need to be very professional, but you need
to look [word emphasized] like a professional (PN, interview, op. cit.).
Since the primary function of the female musician is to be ‘viewed’, participant N emphasized
the importance of clothes: ‘[When performing at the banquets or ceremonies], you should wear
dresses or gowns. You shouldn’t wear trousers’ (PN, ibid.). She further noted that appearance
and clothes are a prerequisite when hirers choose musicians: ‘It is like a natural elimination. If
302
you do not have the right image, you won’t be hired again. Other female musicians will not
seek you out for cooperation either’ (ibid.). Similarly, as Butler (2006, p. 190) has argued:
Hence, as a strategy of survival within compulsory systems … [the stereotypical image]

is a performance with clearly punitive consequences…. [I]ndeed, we regularly punish
those who fail to do their [image] right.
As a music teacher, piano accompanist and freelance musician, Participant I had also played at
these occasions. She made similar observations:
LM: If a female musician does not conform to the stereotype, would she face more difficulties in
the music business?
PI: If she conforms to the image, then, absolutely, she has an advantage. For example, now a
lot of wedding banquets or opening ceremonies need an ensemble. People will not hire
ugly women to perform. These women, at the very least, must have a nice face and body
so people can see the classy beauties playing in the string quartet.
LM: Right.
PI: I despise this phenomenon. It’s like fetishising women…. However, what can you change?
Men definitely love to see this! I do not like this feeling but I still do this kind of job
because of the money.
LM: Could you describe your unpleasant experiences?
PI: The unhappiest part is when people merely deem you as background. No one is listening
to the music!… People just want several beautiful, well-dressed and well-made-up women
sitting there, like an adornment.
LM: How do they ensure that the musicians they hire are beautiful?
PI: The hirers will select them. To hire a classy musician is a common view or an unwritten
rule (PI, interview, op. cit.).
In this circumstance, it seems clear that what the female musician is primarily expected to
bring to these occasions is her appearance – and not her music. It is obvious that musical
professionalism in Taiwan – for women, at least, – has been deeply connected to the visual
image. The image, in Butler’s words, is formulated by ‘the tacit collective agreement to per-
form, produce, … and the punishments that attend not agreeing to believe in them’ (2006,
p. 190). Whether when teaching students, performing at concerts or on other occasions, image
in Taiwan is a vital element in the career of the female musician. To develop a successful career,
one needs not only the professional ability but also a classy image.
Participant C, a postgraduate from a renowned UK academy, is a lecturer who teaches at
universities in Taiwan. Even though she has continually given concerts at the National Recital
Hall, she is still questioned in her daily life because of her visual image:
There have been a lot of these experiences, especially when having meals. They
usually politely ask, ‘You are classy. But don’t you musicians wear skirts and have long
hair?’ I reply – ‘why must female musicians have long hair?’ (PC, personal interview,
10 March 2013).
Participant C often made excuses to divert the topic at these occasions. She felt embarrassed and
uncomfortable when she had to answer questions which had no relation to music but were
tightly bound to the stereotype. She could not work out why a professional female musician has
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Li-ming Pan
to ‘perform’ a specific appearance and behaviour, although in people’s minds, the image is not
‘performed’ but naturally expressed due to the inner traits of female musicians. Compared to
most other female musicians who represent the image, and obtain the ‘deserved’ advantage,
participant C was depressed about the situation in Taiwanese society:
Consequently, all I can tell you is that I had a terrible time when I first returned to
Taiwan. At that time, I very much wished to return to the United Kingdom. I
yearned for those simple days in the United Kingdom where I could be myself. Now,
I have gradually become accustomed to the phenomenon [laugh] (PC, ibid.).
According to the interview data, some musicians are not entirely conscious of the pressures to
conform but follow the image norm; others feel these forces but still choose to perform the image.
However, they were all aware of it – as participant H argued: ‘In the current situation, only if you
present the [standard] image will people respect your music’ (PH, op. cit.). As insiders in the
music business, female musicians learn how to obtain the advantages of the environment in which
they exist. They also realise what they will probably lose if they do not perform the standard
image. Participant I’s analysis faithfully illustrates the male-gaze mechanism:
PI: The stereotypical image is classy, tender, submissive and with long hair, so you must follow
the image. If you want to get a job easily, you have to perform the image….
LM: Since you mentioned the fetishisation of women, do not you think that this is also a kind
of fetishisation? How you ‘look’ has no relation to your musical ability.
PI: There is nothing we can do about this reality!… You should devote yourself to your field.
Therefore, I do not think that it is fetishisation. Presenting the image is a professional
performance now … I consider that it fetishises women. It is troublesome! However, if I
want to get better and brilliant work, I have to perform that image [word emphasized].
LM: You feel impotent about this situation?
PI: It all depends on what you demand of yourself. You can still insist on having short hair and
wearing gender-neutral clothes. However, if you have high expectations for yourself, you
will know that it is obligatory to perform that image. Because you realise that the image
will bring you benefits such as more income. After all, it is not prostitution. It is just [raises
voice, then pauses] your choice! Especially once you have enjoyed the sweetness of the
benefits, you will feel that insisting on some belief is unnecessary. You will weigh the gains
and losses of your situation (PI, op. cit.).
Participant I sometimes made inconsistent statements. She argued earlier that she merely
chose an image which suits her, but the above quote shows that she actually forced herself to
perform an advantageous image. She occasionally revealed her disapproval of the current si-
tuation, whereby female musicians have little choice but to perform the widely recognised
image, but she simultaneously insisted that performing the stereotype is evidence of pro-
fessionalism. At some level, she realised that she is also one of those female musicians who obey
the rules. To solve the dilemma, she transferred obedience into a professional act, declaring that
performing the stereotypical image is a requirement for being a professional female musician.
From participant I and others’ experiences, it can be seen that image is a construction which
‘“compels” our belief in its necessity and naturalness’ (Butler 2006, p. 190).
When participant I defended the performance as not being the same as selling one’s body,
she certainly sensed that an element of trade was indeed involved in the representation. They
are just different trades. Prostitution means selling one’s body, body contact and the direct
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satisfaction of carnal desire. Performing the image means treating the self as the ideal object in
the phallocentric custom and satisfying the male-gaze mechanism. In other words, to ‘perform’
as a female musician is also to sell a body: for the female musician, her body is not her own. In
this instance, the body is ‘sold’ in order to conform to social regulation and cultural practices.
The female performer needs to wear smart clothes, look beautiful and make classy movements.
The performer also sells the freedom of how to use her body. Although no ‘body’ can be
entirely free from cultural inscriptions, the bodies of female musicians in Taiwan seem to have
more regulations and be subject to more forces than others. Considering their possibly pros-
perous career development, many female musicians submit themselves to the stereotypical
image, as has been shown by the highly identical performativity amongst the group of inter-
viewed female musicians. It can also be found in the daily lives of many participants, such as
participants M and F, who decided to grow their hair.
30.5 Conclusion
The status of being a female musician who engages in Western classical music is often a dis-
tinction in Taiwan. Nonetheless, the stereotype means that intelligible performativity becomes
necessary if she wants to grasp the profits. The everyday happenings remind her of whether she
is like or unlike a ‘real’ female musician. According to the interviews, the way in which the
participants negotiate the stereotype can be considered a conscious use, but different levels are
allowed. Generally, the participants knew what the ‘normal’ image of their group was. Some
participants pointed out how their performances have been formulated because of their ex-
periences in the past. Others have realised the importance of their image but have not thor-
oughly thought about their relative experiences; therefore, they have had difficulty in locating
their meanings clearly. Numerous participants were conscious of the phenomenon at some level
but refused to confess to this; some of them were still in a dilemma about their own in-
dependence and the pursuit of benefits. On the other hand, a few participants who had at-
tributed their performance to their own interior nature admitted that the interview had caused
them to question their assumptions. In sum, at whatever stage they were in their careers, almost
all of the female musicians understood the influential position of their image in their lives and
profession. Accordingly, they have developed different tactics to deal with it.
Thus, the female musician is prepared to publicly perform the image which has been ac-
cepted as ‘natural’ and ‘normal’. Nonetheless, the powers and regulations pushing her to
perform the stereotype simply uncover the fictional essence of the image. The continual and
consistent performativity on the female musician’s body reinforces its naturalness. Their images,
in Butler’s words, ‘have constituted the stable point of reference’ (2006, p. 175). The ‘stylized
repetition of acts’ (ibid.) institutes the effect of the stereotypical image. In Taiwan, it constitutes
a recognisable and valid female musician. The stereotypical image extends to the behavioural
performance and appearance of female musicians. The public easily think that the stereotype is a
natural expression, since every medium around them promotes similar images of female mu-
sicians. The social regulation and cultural powers are the driving forces that push female
musicians to perform the particular image. For many female musicians, the repetitive and
continual performance makes them think that the performing image equals their natural ex-
pression. Take the participants as an example: many of them consider that there are special
qualities in them which probably make them different from ordinary women.
Nonetheless, even though they consider that the classy trait is shared amongst female mu-
sicians, the demands from their bosses and hirers, and the enquiry from any viewer when they
do not show the stereotypical image, certainly reveal the gap between the ideal image and their
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own. The endeavours which the female musician devotes to fit in with the image demonstrate
that the accustomed image is not a ‘natural’ one. The gap itself, in this aspect, creates an
opportunity for female musicians to realise the fictional nature of the ‘natural’ image. To ex-
amine whether their presentation conforms to the stereotype is a process of ‘creating’ the
‘natural’ self. The process evidences that the image is an artificial and intentional product.
Participant C is an example of someone who destabilises the stereotyping fiction. As a real
female musician, she has sometimes been questioned by people about her appearance. She did
not perform the image but is a successful female musician. Her authority can be proved by her
academic background, teaching experience, performance career and musical ability. She has
studied at a music department in Taiwan and at a musical college in the UK. She teaches in
universities, has given concerts at the National Recital Hall in Taiwan, and is frequently en-
gaged in musical activities. Undoubtedly, she ‘is’ a female musician. Hence, when people ask
the question of whether she is ‘like’ or ‘unlike’ a female musician, the fictional essence of the
status of female musicians is revealed. The seemingly stable identity fails to keep its unity. It can
be seen that there is no ‘original’ or ‘true’ image of female musicians. The so-called originality is
a stereotyping fiction. Taiwanese female musicians imitate a myth, and now this fictional
product has become a ‘fixed’ identity through continual imitations of it. The identification of
female musicians is, therefore, ‘constituted by a fantasy of a fantasy’ (Butler 2006, p. 188).
In addition to making up for a deficiency in the research field regarding how the visual factor
influences the female musician, the potentiality of this study is to activate the dynamics of
revolutionary possibility. It intends to make the female musicians aware of how the mechanism
functions on their bodies and how the compromises are processed. From the case of participant
C and some other participants, it can be found that female musicians can sense the existence of
the compulsive power and driving forces through touching on and discussing the related issues.
To sense how the image works is an initiation into the long journey of change.
Notes
1 In this chapter, interview methodology is utilised to gain an in-depth understanding of the situation of
Taiwanese female musicians. In consideration of the privacy of the participants, the data presented in this
study contains no identifying factors. For ease, and to ensure in-depth discussions, all of the interviews were
undertaken in Mandarin: the translations are the author’s own. Their names were kept anonymous, sub-
stituted by the first 17 letters of the English alphabet. The aim was for the participants to provide long
descriptions of their individual experiences. The primary criteria for selecting the subjects were that they had
undergone a formal Taiwanese musical education, and that they were currently engaged in the music
profession in Taiwan: their roles include university professor, orchestral instrumentalists, composer, musi-
cologist, piano accompanist, music teacher and students enrolled in music institutes. The selection criterion
aims to reflect the common condition amongst most Taiwanese female musicians. The interviews were
held over years to track the life progress of the female musicians, from 2013 to 2019, and still continue.
2 Qi-zhi (氣質) is a trait which is the most common word when the Taiwanese describe female mu-
sicians. This Mandarin word is close to the English word ‘classy’, but it also involves the denotation of
beauty. Generally, qi-zhi embraces the qualities of being beautiful, well-educated and properly be-
haved. This study thus adopts ‘classy’ as the translation of qi-zhi in the interview data.
References
Butler, J., 2006. Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Yoshihara, M., 2007. Musicians from a different shore: Asians and Asian Americans in classical music.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
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PART V
Opportunities and leadership in the

music professions
31
CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN
Jessica Duchen
31.1 Introduction
All I have in common with the UK’s former Prime Minister, Theresa May, is that I love
walking in the mountains – though sometimes I can also be a ‘bloody difficult woman’ (May,
cited in Shipman 2018). I have been working in music journalism since 1989. I edited a piano
magazine for five years (1993–98), and then was a music critic and feature writer for the
Independent from 2004 until 2016. I’ve written librettos, biographies, plays and novels, some of
which take a long, hard look at the challenges facing women musicians in eras as diverse as the
1800s and the 1930s. That was not a primary intention when I began work on them, but it
turned out that the topic is simply unavoidable. In the 2010s, some things had changed – but
not nearly enough.
In 2012, I had an ‘enough is enough’ moment. I was at an industry awards dinner in which
the presenter made what seemed to my ears a wholly inappropriate remark while introducing a
famous soprano who was to entertain us with an aria. I was astonished he would consider such a
thing acceptable, but worse still was that everybody tittered sycophantically over their cham-
pagne. Later, the award-winners assembled on stage for a photo: a row of men in suits. The
next morning, I phoned my editor to suggest an article about how extraordinarily sexist the
classical music industry was. To his credit, he said that he would take 1,000 words if I could do
it by lunchtime. That set the stage. This is my sisters’ fight and my fight: I am in (see Duchen
2012). Soon afterwards, I went to see Jude Kelly and Gillian Moore, who were then respec-
tively Artistic Director and Director of Music at the Southbank Centre. Partly as a result of our
discussions, Jude, who had launched the Women of the World Festival in 2011, initiated a
series of breakfast meetings for women in music so that we had a forum in which to talk,
explore ideas and be spurred into action. Some of the most positive developments in this sphere
have been hatched in that forum.
During one walking holiday, I began on the typically writerish pastime of thinking about
metaphors. Mountain hikes are wonderful, but they can be hard work. You tramp uphill for a
long time, you sometimes have to scramble over rocks and avoid waterfalls and deal with sheer
drops on one side or both. Yet just when you are exhausted and wondering why you bother,
you round a corner – and you catch your breath because the landscape in front of you is so
beautiful … and full of other mountains to climb. At school, we used to sing a song about a bear
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-31 309

Jessica Duchen
who went over the mountain to see what she could see. She saw … another mountain. Life in
music can feel that way. We work hard, we manage to climb, and then another peak appears
and we have to start all over again. Sometimes we fail to appreciate how far we’ve gone; it
can be difficult to see the bigger view because we are concentrating so intently on the task
in hand. Therefore, in the best traditions of the Internet age’s passion for clickbait, I’ve put
together some listicles. One is ‘Four Favourite Landmarks for Women in Music’, and the other
is the ‘Five Big Mountains We Still Have to Climb’. They combine ultimately into numerous
‘Complete Paradoxes that Can Do Your Head In’. First, here are some favourite mountains
with superb views.
31.2 Four favourite landmarks for women in music
1. The Conference on Women’s Work in Music at Bangor University in 2017 was, of

course, a peak. It was the first of its kind; we hope there will be more and that it will spark
initiatives that set us off together to find new, higher, unexplored summits. It provided a
wonderful moment to take stock and to plan ahead: to look at some of the achievements of
the past years since this explosion of consciousness took off in earnest, and to consider
some of the challenges ahead. As you know, the most successful mountaineers are those
who work together. They rope themselves into a team; they function as one; they help
each other; they inspire each other. Events like this and the Southbank breakfasts are prime
examples of good, strong rope.
2. The Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) Women Conductors’ Programme. The brainchild
of the conductors Alice Farnham and Andrea Brown, this started in 2014 at Morley
College as a positive step in response to the question – why do so few women become
conductors? The idea was to begin redressing the balance at an early stage and one problem
was that there were too few role models. Young, talented girls aiming to become musicians
rarely used to consider taking up conducting, because when they saw a conductor it was
generally a man. This is something instilled subconsciously – a matter to which we will
return later. Looking back, I regret never having tried my hand at conducting, but when I
was a music student in the 1980s it never crossed my mind. Quite simply, I never imagined
that I could. The programme initially aimed to attract teenagers who were considering
studying music and wanted to try their hand. It has grown incrementally, and since the
RPS took it over in 2016, it has been holding sessions up and down the country, targeting
musicians at various different stages of their studies and careers. The RPS’s statistics tell a
story of their own:
Only one British orchestra has a female principal conductor. Only six women con-
ductors have titled roles amid the several hundred conductors on the staff of profes-
sional British orchestras. At our last count, only 22 of the 371 conductors represented
by British agents were female. That’s 5.5% (RPS Women Conductors 2019).
When Marin Alsop became the first woman ever to conduct the Last Night of the Proms, she
said in her speech that she could scarcely believe that in 2013 we should still be facing such
‘firsts’.1 Partly thanks to the RPS courses, more people in the industry have begun to wake up to
the fact that women need to be strongly present on the top-level podiums, rather than only
conducting supposedly nice little things like choral rehearsals, school orchestras and ballet (all of
which, it so happens, are in fact extremely difficult to do well). Around the world similar
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Climb every mountain
schemes to encourage female conductors have taken root, notably at Dallas Opera.2 The arrival
of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s principal conductor
has made perhaps the biggest impact of all: since her appointment in 2016, she has established
herself as a much admired, musically courageous and idealistic presence, as well as a highly visible
role model for young women in the UK and beyond. Other appointments are creeping in: Xian
Zhang as principal guest conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (2016–19) and the
BBC Symphony Orchestra appointed Dalia Stasevska in 2019 as principal guest conductor.
There is still a long way to go.
3. In 2011, Vanessa Reed, then CEO of the PRS for Music Foundation, spearheaded a grants
scheme entitled Women Make Music. This was the organisation’s response to the re-
cognition that a ridiculously small number of their funding stats were accounted for by
women. Only 13% of their members were women in 2010 (this has since risen by a modest
3%) and 16% of grant applicants. Their research shows the difference this fund has made. It
is changing lives. The report in 2016 found that 79% of the selected music creators said the
fund had helped their confidence. In financial terms, the funding had generated a 100%
return and an average 27% increase in income for grant recipients. A staggering 78% of
those applicants interviewed said they had experienced sexism and/or felt pigeonholed in
the music business. The programme has a target to reach 50:50 gender parity among music
creator grant applicants by 2022. One grantee said simply:
The fund addresses the imbalance in how things have worked for so long. It sheds light
on people who are doing something. This needs to become normalised. Hopefully
one day it won’t be needed (PRS Foundation 2017).3
Since then, the PRS Foundation has led a large-scale cooperative project across Europe called
Keychange, asking music festivals to pledge their aim to achieve full gender equality across line-
ups, conferences and commissions. At the time of writing, Keychange has signed up more than
300 festivals and organisations internationally. Its efforts have been recognised with celebratory
awards across the industry, and the EU Commission has provided it with a grant of over €1.4m.4
4. If there’s an ideal in this field, it is that gender should be irrelevant. All of this work is done
with the precise aim of making itself someday obsolete. Yet when this issue is treated as
obsolete now, progress often tends to unravel. On a panel discussion involving seven
women composers of different generations, which I chaired for the BASCA in 2014, some
senior speakers remarked that they recalled more parity and more general acceptance of
women as composers back in the 1960s than there is today.
To encourage hope, however, here is a personal story. I wrote my first opera libretto for
Roxanna Panufnik’s ‘people’s opera’ Silver Birch, which was commissioned by Garsington and
premiered there in 2017. Our creative team – director, designer, choreographer, video designer
and producer – were also women. The general manager of Garsington is a woman, unusually
for an opera house. The conductor was a man and he was terrific. Together we made an opera
for 180 participants about the impact of war on soldiers and their families – and to the best of
my knowledge, no fuss was made about the fact that most of the creative team were women.
We loved working together, not because we are women but because we are creative people on
the same wavelength who enjoy collaborating on a worthwhile project. The gender balance
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Jessica Duchen
was not planned; it simply turned out that way. That is ideal. Creating this opera was the most
exciting, fulfilling experience of my professional life so far.
31.3 Five big mountains we still have to climb

Here, though, is my second listicle: five issues that urgently need to be addressed, since they
indicate situations that risk worsening if ignored. Most have a paradox at their core, often a
potentially dangerous one.
1. Most sexism is unconscious. Most men are horrified if you suggest they’ve said something
offensively sexist. But do you remember ‘Dumpygate’? In 2014, a number of male critics
savaged Tara Erraught, a fabulous, young mezzo who was singing a trouser role in an
unflattering costume in a Glyndebourne production of Der Rosenkavalier. One writer
declared that the singer looked ‘as if she’d been at the biscuit barrel’ (Letts 2014). A Twitter
storm ensued. Some of the critics apologised. But some did not – because they did not
believe they had done anything wrong (see Rayner 2014). It seemed not to have occurred
to those others that perhaps they should have been questioning something other than this
young woman’s physical appearance: in particular, the director’s aims. It’s more interesting
to consider that by casting a particularly curvy mezzo as Oktavian, he might have been
deliberately making a point about the fluid nature of gender and sexuality in Der
Rosenkavalier. It is a cause for some sorrow that, instead, so many critics found it easier to
‘fat-shame’ a gifted young singer whose voice suited the role.
Similarly displaying an ongoing lack of awareness are certain orchestra managers who
sometimes give a sigh and remark something like ‘so, who can we get to fill the Marin Alsop
slot?’ The idea seemed to be, for a while, to book one female conductor per annum to satisfy
the noise-makers. Today it is perhaps to find … two. The same roughly goes for the place of
composers in concert programmes, whether dead or alive. Perhaps the middle-aged men who
manage most orchestras genuinely do not believe it’s important. Another mountain to climb …
2. This leads us on to the shocking scarcity of women in the ‘musical canon’. This is not an
accident. It is the ongoing result of about 1,000 years of history – and it is only just over
100 years since the first tranche of women were accorded the vote in Britain (and in
Switzerland women didn’t have the vote until 1971). As Daniel Barenboim said in a
speech at the 2017 Proms, one of the biggest problems facing society in general at the
moment is poor education.5 Too many people lack thorough, quality, reliable in-
formation; some have not been encouraged to develop enquiring minds or self-
motivation; thus they are ready to swallow the disinformation that spreads readily on
social media and beyond. This is why we sometimes find individuals insisting that if
women had some kind of natural capacity to compose, they would have been equally
represented for centuries. They either do not know what the societal attitudes to women
were – or they find it convenient to forget. Furthermore, they seem eager to attribute the
ability to genetics rather than talent and education – not because it is correct, since it is
not, but because it is convenient to them.
We do know that it was desperately difficult for women to shine because of societal and
political factors. Just think of all that music unwritten, all those spirits unfulfilled, all that potential
that died young or withered away because other people said ‘No, you can’t, because you’re a
girl’. Just imagine what music we might have had. Maybe three volumes of sophisticated song
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cycles by Clara Wieck? 32 piano sonatas by Fanny Mendelssohn? Essential partitas for every cello
student by Anna Magdalena Bach? Perhaps even nine symphonies by one Minona Stackelberg,
whose photo bears an uncanny resemblance to a man her mother, Josephine Brunswick, may
have loved beyond wedlock, a composer named Ludwig van Beethoven.6
But still there are men who insist this isn’t the case. There is documentation: there is proof;
there are historical facts explaining it; but, as with climate change, people refuse to believe the
evidence because it would appear they do not want to. We need to be armed against that – with
facts. We need to be able to challenge them and win the arguments – and because the other side
is sometimes irrational, this is not easy. The paradox here is that by squashing women’s desire to
develop their talents and be professionals without being regarded as aberrations or tarts, societies
have denied themselves much fine artistic fruit. It is in men’s interest to support work by
women, because it will increase the range of music that enhances all our lives.
3. Here’s a quote from an article in The Spectator entitled ‘There’s a good reason why there are
no great female composers’. The writer says: ‘That’s because creative geniuses are rare and,
in the past, so few women wrote music’ (Thompson 2015). Quite a sweeping dismissal,
that. In the course of the article, he manages to savage Judith Weir, Fanny Mendelssohn
and Clara Schumann, and to accuse the latter of cutting and pasting her husband’s work –
even though the truth, extremely well documented, is that it was Robert Schumann who
most often quoted in his own works music that Clara had written (see Reich 2001,
pp. 225–226). Why should any self-respecting journalist go on the attack to this degree?
No doubt those that do have reasons of their own, but something or someone encourages
them: at a broad level across the media, the sorry truth is that provocative pieces often
attract attention and clicks, which in turn can attract subscriptions and advertising revenue.
Unfortunately, provocation, or contrarianism, attracts and encourages trolls; indeed, it can
be read in itself as a form of trolling.
We can view trolls as mountain mosquitos and try to swot them – but at the extreme end of
this is the online anonymity which means that they are heard, spread, sometimes allegedly paid to
troll, and can make ever more violent threats against individuals and demographic groups,
especially women. We have to combat this urgently, both in music and beyond. The fightback
has begun, but the freedom to troll until now has done phenomenal amounts of damage. I
would plead with everybody to lobby anything and anyone they can to hold the anonymous
deplorables to account, report and block them on social media, deny them their below-the-line
platforms, and punish them with the force of law.
4. This is a topic closely related to clickbait: pornography. Unlikely though this may sound, it
is indeed relevant to the classical music industry. Do you want to attract traffic to your
website? Then use images of scantily-clad women with good physical attributes doing
something that stands out – like playing the piano, violin or cello, or perhaps singing. The
traffic proves its worth, so visuals take over; quality musicianship is neither here nor there.
One of today’s most prominent young piano soloists is also a great beauty, and in a highly
visual society maybe it is inevitable that her image has sometimes tended to eclipse her
playing. She is gifted, yet sometimes I’ve witnessed her give car-crash performances that
would slay any ordinary-looking male pianist. It can often seem as if the greater artistic
development of her talent is being ignored, perhaps even squandered, for the sake of a
saleable ‘extreme personality’. The male trolls who stalk the classical music internet attack
her even while, one suspects, drooling over her glamorous photos. Meanwhile finer
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musicians who lack physical attractiveness can sometimes find it impossible to build the
careers they possibly deserve. One of the best cellists I ever heard was at a music summer
school when I was 18. When she played, everyone smiled – they couldn’t help it. She was
astounding. But she was short and plump, with thick glasses and sensible shoes. Sadly,
I have not heard her since.
Here’s the paradox: of course, image management must be every individual’s own
decision. Some young women are strong-minded enough to resist the industry pressure to
play on their image – several soloists have told me all about this. Others are not. The
problems start when ‘sex sells’ creates trouble for other people, not least because gradually
audience expectations begin to change. They start expecting not only to hear good
playing, but to see someone gorgeous. This in turn can reinforce the widespread idea that
women musicians are not as good as men – because it’s entirely possible some are not, if
they are booked primarily for their looks and only second for their playing. Consider this:
if the industry promoted only those young male musicians who looked like fashion
models, we wouldn’t be enjoying performances by the current generation of brilliant 20-
or 30-something male pianists, some of whom habitually look as if they’ve been dragged
through a hedge backwards.
The image focus on young female soloists is a perennial problem, but the question is
whether it’s even possible to tackle it without sounding inordinately proscriptive. We can’t
dictate a modest dress code. But perhaps we need to take a fresh look at some of the artistic
checks and balances that exist – or don’t, and if they don’t, why they don’t – and at least
encourage promoters to reflect on the unwelcome long-term results if they push those
who are easy on the eye, yet less satisfying to the ear. When the backlash comes, and
frequently it does, those young people’s careers can be damaged for good, an outcome that
is cruel and wasteful: a squandering of a long-term life in music for the sake of short-term
financial gain. Addressing this issue, might organisers of music competitions consider, for
example, holding their first rounds behind screens, as certain American orchestras do? The
contestants are judged first purely on sound. One existing example is a singing competition
called By Voice Alone in which exactly this happens; it was won in 2019 by the soprano
Jennifer Witton.7 It was warmly welcomed and makes sense. After all, have you ever
found a piece of music that is not primarily about sound? Me neither.
5. I came back from a walking holiday in the mountains with tendonitis in both my Achilles
heels. Someone suggested I take up yoga. It is all about finding the inner balance within
ourselves. We attempt this by learning to keep still and breathe in some astonishing postures;
and often one does feel better afterwards. If you feel balanced within yourself, you feel better
as a person which means, theoretically, that you can act better towards other people. That’s
the microcosm. But take the macrocosm: we can all see that there is a truly alarming lack of
balance in the world around us and that it’s reflected in many areas. If you lose your balance
on a mountain, you’re in a lot of trouble. And that’s possibly the biggest paradox of all. We
need to fix our balance, but not by tipping over the other way instead. We need to create
better representation for women without actually throwing out the men with the bathwater.
My personal choice tends to be ‘everything in moderation’. I like chocolate, but I try not to
gorge a whole slab in one go. And in the music world, I’d like to repair the gender and racial
balances without losing wonderful works that happen to be by dead white men.
Again, the problem is historical. The known geniuses of Western music mostly were
European men, at least until the twentieth century. That does not mean their music is not
relevant to us. Indeed, we need to change the discourse around exactly what makes music
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‘relevant’. Taking things to extremes, if you define yourself by identity politics alone, nothing
can be relevant unless it was written by someone exactly like you. This would be unbelievably
limiting, anti-creative and counter-productive. For instance, the assumption would be that, for
me, only music by Jewish women could be ‘relevant’; although I admire Fanny Mendelssohn
and Erika Fox, the notion seems ludicrous.
I would like to think that our gender, racial and religious identities can be the start of who we
are, but certainly should not be the end as well. It is only a launching pad from which we can
develop ourselves in all manner of exciting and individual ways. For example, I am a Jewish
female musical writer living in the twenty-first century, but I cannot think of any composer more
‘relevant’ to me than Beethoven. He’s a dead white man from another century and another
country – and his music is about giant human issues such as strength, resilience, thanksgiving,
recovery, exploration, tenderness, drama, loneliness, consolation, conversation, thought and
spiritual unity. If all of that is not seen as ‘relevant’ to us, we have a very big problem indeed.
A few years ago, I went with my violinist husband to the occupied West Bank to interview
some Palestinian music educators and see for myself the realities of life there. We met a dynamic
woman called Sharifa in Hebron. Her English was good, but not great, and at one point we
found ourselves explaining the meaning of the word ‘inspiration’. When she understood, she
turned to my husband and asked him to play some Beethoven. She told us that Beethoven was
her favourite composer and that she found his music an ‘inspiration’. There we were: a Jewish
woman from twenty-first-century Brexit Island and a Palestinian Muslim in the troubled
flashpoint that is Hebron, sharing a musical hero who was a deaf, cantankerous bloke from
Bonn, 250 years old in 2020. This is how music unites us all at the spirit level. And it shows
us the serious limitations of ‘identity politics’.
All of this points towards the fact that we need to present more music written by women
in our concert programmes, but without insisting that we must reject the best of the men.
We can celebrate Clara Schumann without destroying Robert. At the moment, shockingly
little music written by women is being heard. We could leave it alone, arguing – as people
often do – that progress will ‘evolve’ naturally. The trouble is, it does not, because this is not
‘evolution’. Evolution is about genes and it takes place over millennia. This is something
different: it is about profound cultural change, which requires thought, awareness and
conscious action. Because it is a human creation, it cannot somehow just happen by itself.
The challenge is to find a balance and right the wrongs without being proscriptive and
dictatorial. We need to give people’s artistry room to grow, because art feeds the human soul
and that is what music is for.
Climbing every mountain, like the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music, we need our feet
on the ground in good, strong boots. We need sensible sustenance: good nutritious protein and
maybe even some carbs. We need to build up stamina. We pack plasters and painkillers. We
need to look at where we’re going and where we’ve been without getting vertigo. Then we
round the corner and what do we see? A cable car? You know that feeling when you have
slogged up the mountain for hours, you are sweaty, exhausted and scared of losing your balance
amid the sheer drops and narrow ridges – and then at the top there is a restaurant in which a 100
people are feasting on burgers, chips and sugar-rush fizzy drinks. How did they get there? They
didn’t walk. They took the cable car. Are they lazy? Maybe, but not always. Are they as well
prepared as we are for life in the mountains? Not necessarily. I know some fantastic women –
mainly composers – who say that the extreme discipline with which they have to work benefits
their productiveness and makes them stronger as people, which in turn feeds their music. But
goodness, it’s tough.
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Jessica Duchen
Do we need to build some more cable cars for ourselves? Well, sometimes it doesn’t hurt.
The PRS Foundation built a cable car for musical creators who are female. The RPS has a cable
car to tempt women onto the conductor’s podium. We need cable cars for other things too:
matters from attitudes to women soloists to practical things such as child care – making this tax-
deductible for the self-employed would be a good start. A centralised, well-funded, well-
publicised information centre with a library of books, scores and recordings to help people
research, access and present music by women composers is another thing I would love to see
brought into existence; at the moment there are plenty of organisations and associations, but in
fragmented, spread-out format. We need a cable car to encourage the programming of music by
women as a matter of course, week in, week out, not just ‘special focus’ events.
There has been progress: with suitable role models and positive actions by some significant
and influential organisations, consciousness is being raised. Building cable cars is becoming a
little bit easier. Consciousness-raising is vital because much bias is unconscious. Only once you
become aware of it can you start to make others aware too. Perhaps it needs a policy of zero
tolerance. I was on a panel recently in which respected colleagues were about to vote forward
an all-male shortlist for a prize. Several of us fussed and we fixed it. It’s possible the others found
it a bit of a bothersome bore. Isn’t it about standards? Yes, it is exactly about standards. It’s about
ensuring that the women of the highest artistic standards are noticed and recognised as much as
their male equivalents. And if we have to be bothersome bores about it, then so be it. We will
keep up the reminders. We will keep on for as long as we need to.
I agree that the ideal is that cable cars for women musicians should not be necessary. But
we are still far from a situation in which women are well enough represented to feel really
free in this profession. Auditions behind screens helped to increase the number of women
in orchestras, especially in the States. Now, it’s seen as perfectly normal that the majority of
orchestras are roughly half and half, so few orchestras here use screens. But do we perhaps need
soloists to be auditioned behind screens too, and competitions to take place at least partly
behind them? We can dream that it will be so usual to see a woman’s name as the composer, or
a woman conducting an orchestra, or a plump female soloist in a cardigan, that only their
musical artistry is the point. That’s the ideal world. We are not in one yet.
But to achieve the balance, we need the men to be on board. I am reliably informed that it’s
rather difficult to get men to play music by women. Yet, sometimes when they want to, other
elements in the industry stand in their way. I remember the great Polish pianist Krystian
Zimerman telling me about his compatriot, the composer Grażyna Bacewicz, over 25 years ago.
He was eager to record and programme her music, but apparently it wasn’t considered com-
mercial enough. It was not until 2008 that he finally performed her Piano Sonata No. 2 at the
Salzburg Festival, and in 2011 his recording was released, to great acclaim. In 2017, a disc of her
string quartets won a Gramophone Award – it was played by the all-male Silesian Quartet. That
is good progress because this is, I think, the next big mountain to climb: getting more men to
accept, play and promote music written by women, and also to agree to consider the manner
in which they present and assess female performers. It takes a sizeable, conscious effort to begin
the process – but in a decade or two, might the equality of women become something that the
music business, and the world at large, can take for granted in the best possible way? If that is to
be the case, we need to climb the mountains and find the balance together.
Notes
1 See Marin Alsop’s BBC Proms speech 2013, available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
o9Lxk7LRiBI
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2 The Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors was launched in 2015. See Dallas Opera
Hart Institute, available from: https://dallasopera.org/community/artist-development/hart-institute/
3 Further information about the PRS Foundation’s Women Make Music can be found at: https://
prsfoundation.com/funding-support/funding-music-creators/all-career-levels/women-make-
music-2/
4 For more information, see Keychange blog 2019, ‘Keychange receives over €1.4 million from the EU
Commission’, available from: https://keychange.eu/blog/keychange-receives-over-e1-4-million-
from-the-eu-commission/
5 See Barenboim’s 2017 BBC Proms speech, available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-
lxmEA8CjPg
6 For further information about Brunswick and Beethoven, see Marie-Elisabeth Tellenbach, Beethoven
und seine “unsterbliche Geliebte” Josephine Brunswick: Ihr Schicksal und der Einfluss auf Beethovens Werk
(Zürich: Atlantis-Musikbuch-Verlag, 1983).
7 Further information can be found on the By Voice Alone website, available from: https://
byvoicealone.com
References
Duchen, J., 2012. Sexism with strings attached. Independent, 6 October: https://www.independent.co.uk/
arts-entertainment/classical/features/sexism-with-strings-attached-8197972.html
Letts, Q., 2014. Sorry, but it looks like she’s been at the biscuit barrel, we critics have to report it: The
Mail’s QUENTIN LETTS weighs in on opera’s great ‘fat lady’ furore. Daily Mail, 22 May: https://
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2635677/Sorry-looks-like-shes-biscuit-barrel-critics-report-
QUENTIN-LETTS-weighs-operas-great-fat-lady-furore.html
PRS Foundation, 2017. Women make music: evaluation 2011–2016. Available from: http://
www.prsformusicfoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/PRS-Foundation-Women-Make-
Music-evaluation-report-2017-FINAL.pdf
Rayner, G., 2014. Singers point finger at critics in Glyndebourne Opera Festival sexism row. Daily
Telegraph, 21 May: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/10845186/Singers-point-
finger-at-critics-in-Glyndebourne-Opera-Festival-sexism-row.html
Reich, N.B., 2001. Clara Schumann: the artist and the woman. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. First
published in 1985.
RPS Women Conductors, 2019. Available from: https://royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk/performers/
women-conductors
Shipman, T., 2018. Theresa May on her Brexit showdown: I am still ‘a bloody difficult woman’. Times, 16
September: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/theresa-may-on-her-brexit-showdown-i-am-still-a-
bloody-difficult-woman-dvv3xp066
Thompson, D., 2015. There’s a good reason why there are no great female composers. The Spectator, 16
September: https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2015/09/theres-a-good-reason-why-there-are-no-great-
female-composers/
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32
CELEBRATING WOMEN
COMPOSERS ON BBC RADIO 3
Edwina Wolstencroft
32.1 Celebrating International Women's Day (IWD)

In 2014, when I was serving as an Editor at BBC Radio 3, I realised that there was potential
audience interest in women classical composers,1 and so decided we should plan for a major
statement – an ‘all-women composers, all day’ – on International Women's Day (IWD) 2015.2
This wasn't the first time we’d touched on women in classical music. In 2012, Radio 3 had
marked IWD in our ‘Breakfast’ show with an all-women range of performers as well as
composers,3 and more than five decades earlier the radical producer Hans Keller had suggested a
day of broadcasts called ‘Women on Three’. However, the ‘Women on Three’ day (30
September 1973) also included poetry by women, the view at the time being that there were
few women composers. In the review meeting afterwards, one powerful individual pronounced
‘the theme of Women too restricting and there had been times during the day when he
personally had been bored’ (Carpenter 1997, p. 288).
The assumption there are ‘few women composers’, and that when they do exist their work
might be ‘boring’ or not up to standard, was still very much part of industry discourse over 50
years on. In fact, there are several thousand women composers in history,4 and various questions
started to preoccupy me. Why did many music lovers not know more than a handful of names
of women composers? And what was the general conversation about the quality of music by
women? There was a continuing negative attitude in the music industry towards women
composers in 2014 that seemed to me to be borne out of ignorance and naivety: of not only the
music, but also of the way human culture is created. Who decides what ‘quality’ is? Is it
measurable? Can there be such a thing as a completely rational assessment of a work of art? Ideas
of cultural relativism, or an awareness that unconscious bias might affect value judgements,
didn't seem to have permeated the music industry at all: ‘excellence’ at this time was exclusively
defined by canonical music written by male geniuses. In contrast, prevailing attitudes within the
industry towards music written by women seemed to have two main narratives:
• If the music was good enough it would have survived, and we’d be hearing it
• There isn’t a female equivalent to Mozart or Beethoven, so it's not worth performing
318 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-32

Celebrating women composers on BBC Radio 3
The first assumption fails to acknowledge the now, better-known cultural history of women's
achievements in any discipline – how, in any sphere beyond the domestic, women's work was
ignored, judged more harshly than men's and was, therefore, much less likely to be preserved for
posterity. The second assumption is laughable; being ‘not as good as Beethoven’ hasn’t prevented
a vast number of male composers having their work heard. These and related topics would need
to be addressed through our programming, and I decided to work to three principles:
• Celebrate historic women composers as well as living composers

• Change perceptions and actively challenge the established canon of classical music
• Create legacy – encourage our ‘Breakfast’ and other programmes to broadcast a piece by at
least one female composer each day from 8 March 2015 onwards
I gathered together a small group of like-minded colleagues, notably lead producer Olwen
Fisher, who did a huge amount of work for this first year of IWD and subsequent years. We had
to work speedily as plans would need to be in place by December 2014 to be ready for Radio
3's New Year press launch in early 2015.
32.2 IWD 2015

There were challenges. Some Radio 3 colleagues were not particularly interested in the topic,
but nonetheless supportive; others had more serious concerns, several of which aligned with the
general view about music by women. I recall producers – men and women – being uncertain
about whether there was enough material to broadcast an entire day of music and whether that
music was good enough; even if it was, were there enough decent recordings available? The
latter issue was certainly something to consider as there were indeed fewer recordings available
to choose from. But there were enough.
It's important to say that producers are primarily interested in creating the highest quality
programmes, so in those discussions about editorial for our Women's Day, it's not that the
production group were being deliberately anti-women. People live as part of wider society, and
the belief that ‘enough quality isn't there’ was symptomatic of attitudes within the entire music
industry. Producers weren’t to blame for this – we all grew up with virtually no women
composers in classical music education programmes or academic examinations – and so it was
completely understandable that some of our conversations included whether the focus should
be broadened to include women performers. I was always keen to remind everyone that we
broadcast women soloists on a regular daily basis already and, therefore, there was no issue to be
addressed in this field. Furthermore, we risked diluting the impact of a clear message to our
audience. We needed to draw attention to the fact that women can write, and always have
written, classical music of excellence.5
There was also pushback elsewhere, with some female composers not keen to be identified
by their sex but by the quality of their work alone. This added to the uncertainty felt by some
producers. The response from those composers was entirely comprehensible from the point of
view of a creative artist, but to wish for such a thing seemed to ignore the weight of history
which pushed against women even being on a level playing field to start with. We needed to
move the conversation on from value judgements about any individual composer to a broader
conversation looking at systemic issues of the relative invisibility of female composers as a
group. History tells us that even when women were considered highly successful in their own
lifetimes, performances of their music tended to cease once they died: examples include
Marianna Martines (1744–1812), Johanna Müller-Hermann (1878–1941) and Barbara Strozzi
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Edwina Wolstencroft
(1619–77), the latter only rediscovered centuries after her death. Could the same happen to
composers now unless we remain vigilant? Very little music by women was being played
regularly in concert halls in 2014. It still isn’t.
As a station, we knew we couldn't solve all the historic imbalances in classical music, which
inevitably reflect historic societal attitudes to women generally. By drawing attention to them,
however, we wanted to make a contribution, to stop history repeating itself for composers of
today and the younger composers of the future. So, we planned a day which included a wide
range of composers, both historic and contemporary, including Emily Hall (b. 1978), Jennifer
Higdon (b. 1962), Elzbieta Sikora (b. 1943) and Sally Beamish (b. 1956) amongst many others,
and we spread out the theme of women composers across the two weeks surrounding the date.
In the week running up to 8 March 2015, ‘Composer of the Week’ (COTW produced by
Steven Rajam) put the spotlight on the life and work of French harpsichordist and composer
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665–1729), whose Céphale et Procris (1694) was the first opera
written by a woman to be performed in France. In complementary programming each day in
the week following IWD, producer Steven Rajam arranged for five contemporary composers
under the age of 35 – Charlotte Bray, Anna Clyne, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Hannah Kendall and
Dobrinka Tabakova – to be featured in COTW. In addition to these programmes, we created a
bespoke website, ‘Celebrating Women Composers’, which raised awareness by profiling a
range of women composers, both historic and contemporary. We also had a studio concert at
the Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House, London, hosted by Suzy Klein, which had a great
atmosphere created by the live audience. As I recall that day, only one individual on social
media said he was ‘switching off on principle’. Radio 3 production teams did a superlative job,
with producer Olwen Fisher and others taking enormous time and trouble to seek out excellent
music and recorded performances, planning the programmes with passion and creativity.
The impact in the press and media outlets was hugely positive. My colleagues in the
communications team did first class work, and we received coverage across mainstream and
specialist media – for example, from the Guardian (Duchen 2015), BBC ONE's ‘Andrew Marr
Show’, as well as media outside the UK such as the Huffington Post. Our press team arranged for
the Telegraph to have an article written for a general readership, so I outlined the way composers
need societal support and used the relatively well-known composer Fanny Mendelssohn as an
example (Wolstencroft 2015). To improve their craft, composers needed to hear their work
performed so that they can learn, but women of her class were not encouraged to engage in
public life. Her father told her that he would tour Europe with her brother, whilst she had to
remain at home and restrict her musical activities to performances at private houses.
Consequently, Fanny's opus is mainly chamber 'domestic sized’ music, whilst Felix was able to
hear his orchestral work and improve his orchestral writing.
The Telegraph headline – ‘You can’t be a composer, you’re a girl’ – was a quote from an
exchange in March 2015 involving composition students. The mother of a student composer
studying at one of the UK's conservatoires had contacted me to relay an incident. A male
student had said to her daughter, ‘you can’t be a composer, you’re a girl’, and – possibly
referencing Ethel Smyth – then added, ‘you must be a lesbian’. This choice of words spoken by
a teenage male seemed to me, at least, intended to remind his fellow student that what she was
doing was not ‘normal women's work’: she was occupying a male space she was not entitled to
occupy. Suddenly, here in 2015, Fanny Mendelssohn's world seemed alarmingly close. The
student and her female friends pointed him towards Radio 3's IWD programming to prove that
there had, throughout history, always been a wide range of women composers. Clearly,
however, there was more work to be done to change perceptions in order that the younger
generation of female composers could expect the same level of collegial support as males.
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There was more impact a few months later when the Independent, amongst other news
outlets, reported in August that 17-year-old music student Jessy McCabe had created an online
petition to persuade an education examination board to change their A-level music syllabus –
on which there were 63 male composers and zero females (McCabe 2015; Gallagher 2015). In
her petition, McCabe used Radio 3's IWD broadcasts as evidence that women fully deserve
their place in the established canon. As she stated:
Surely, if BBC Radio 3 can play music composed by women for a whole day, Edexcel
could select at least one to be a part of the syllabus alongside the likes of Holborne,
Haydn and Howlin’ Wolf? (McCabe 2015).6
This leadership from the next generation makes me alternately thrill and despair. Why did it
take a 17-year-old to draw attention to the fact that a list of 63 male composers and no females
perpetuates the myth that only men write music worthy of study? Wasn't there an adult around
to ensure that budding teenage composers, of both sexes, had role models?
32.3 IWD 2016

In the Autumn of 2015, we started planning for IWD 2016 and focused on a theme of
‘Inspiring Women’ of the past, present and future. Again, all the music we broadcast 24/7 on
the day was composed by women – including the Italian composer Maddalena Casulana
(c.1544–c.1590), who was the first woman to have her music printed and published in 1568.
Casulana’s aim was:
to show to the world … the foolish error of men who so greatly believe themselves to
be the masters of high intellectual gifts that [these gifts] cannot, it seems to them, be
equally common among women (Casulana, cited in Bridges 2001).
We showcased orchestral music by contemporary Welsh composers in a concert given by the

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, including Rhian Samuel’s Clytemnestra and Hilary Tann’s
The Open Field, and also broadcast the world premiere of Judith Bingham’s The Orchid and its
Hunters. In addition, we included a live broadcast of ‘In Tune’ from London’s Southbank
Centre (as part of their Women of the World Festival), featuring a Royal College of Music/
BBC Proms ‘Inspire’ workshop for young composers aged 12 to 20, and an interview with Jessy
McCabe about her recently successful petition. The media coverage, managed by the BBC
Radio 3 press team, continued to be positive and was more reflective. Kate Chisholm in The
Spectator, for example, asked:
Why has classical music been gender-biased for so long? For last year’s International
Women’s Day, Radio 3 played 24 hours of music by female composers – and it was a
revelation (Chisholm 2016).
32.4 IWD 2017

For IWD 2017, we decided to hear directly from some of the composers whose work we were
celebrating and invited six renowned female composers to guest-edit and curate parts of Radio
3’s schedule: Alissa Firsova took over parts of ‘Breakfast’; Sally Beamish took the reins at
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Edwina Wolstencroft
‘Essential Classics’; Tansy Davies was in charge of ‘Afternoon on 3’; Errollyn Wallen curated ‘In
Tune’; Annette Peacock was in the studio for ‘Late Junction’; and Kerry Andrew shared her
own ‘Late Junction Mixtape’. We also broadcast several world premieres, including music by
Dobrinka Tabakova and Sasha Johnson Manning, courtesy of Truro Cathedral’s recently
formed girl choristers.7 Thanks to Sheila Hayman, a direct descendent of Fanny Mendelssohn,
we revisited Mendelssohn’s world (Hayman 2017). Fanny Mendelssohn’s Easter Sonata, written
in 1828 and unpublished in her lifetime, was discovered and attributed to her brother in 1970,
but an examination of the manuscript and a mention of the work in her diary established (in
2010) that the work was hers. It was debuted in her name on 8 March 2017 on Radio 3 and
accompanied by a new work inspired by her Sonata – Scherzo by violinist Joo Yeon Sir.
We also decided we wanted to have an impactful Radio 3-commissioned work.8 The
gender imbalance and lack of diversity in published music and new commissions in the UK had
been revealed in research by one of our presenters, Sara Mohr-Pietsch,9 and Sound and Music’s
CEO Susanna Eastburn.10 I really wanted to commission some new music inspired by an iconic
figure in women’s rights, and needed someone very high profile who could resonate across
generations. Our then assistant producer, Sophie Vilcins, had the brilliant idea of approaching
Malala Yousafzai. We got permission to use the text of Malala’s historic 2013 UN speech,
demanding every girl’s right to an education, and approached composer Kate Whitley to write
the music. Whitley’s composition, Speak Out, was premiered and broadcast on 8 March 2017
by the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales and the Côr y Cwm Children’s Choir.
This made the news, with one reviewer remarking: ‘the impact of the whole is as a rallying call,
an aural illumination of Malala’s words’ (Barton 2017).
32.5 IWD 2018

The following year promised to be even more significant. 1918 had been the first year when
(some) women received the right to vote in a UK general election. Other parts of the BBC
would be marking this 2018 Suffrage Centenary, and there would be a national focus with
many UK cultural institutions running suffragette-related exhibitions and activities. Having
briefly met the writer and campaigner Helen Pankhurst, great-granddaughter of the Suffragette
leader Emmeline Pankhurst, I now thought it would be inspirational to ask her to be part of a
new Suffragette-related commission for 2018.11 Producer Olwen Fisher suggested composer
Lucy Pankhurst to write the music, and Helen wrote a text based on words of her great-
grandmother, Emmeline. We asked the BBC Singers and folk singer Eliza Carthy to record
different versions. We wanted as many singers, choirs and ensembles as possible – amateur and
professional – to make it a part of their repertoire in Suffrage Centenary year 2018. On 14
December 2018 (the actual centenary date of women first going to the polls), The Pankhurst
Anthem was sung at the inauguration of the statue of Pankhurst in Manchester. This anthem
became the most frequently performed Radio 3 new commissions in a single year. We also had
a call-out via the ‘BBC Music Introducing’ website – where people can upload their own
performances – asking for female composers to send their own compositions, and artists to send
performances of music by female composers.12 This was initiated by producer David Gallagher,
and provoked the biggest number of submissions to date – over 400 – to any specific project on
the ‘BBC Introducing’ site.
Planning ahead for 2018, another initiative was our ‘Forgotten Female Composers’ project
with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).13 COTW is a daily, one-hour
show, and one of the issues the COTW team had been finding was that although there were
lots more recordings of women’s music, they needed five hours of music per composer to do
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the life story across a week. They were, however, finding it difficult to source this volume of
commercial recordings for more than a handful of individual women composers. The BBC had
the resources to make a difference in this area as we have our own orchestras and choirs who
could potentially make bespoke recordings. Radio 3 already had a partnership with the AHRC
for our speech programming (‘New Generation Voices’), and we were delighted to partner
with them again on a search for academics who were uncovering forgotten women composers
of the past. At an event held at Broadcasting House in February 2017, Dr. Graham Griffiths
presented Leokadiya Kashperova (1872–1940), a Russian pedagogue and pianist who taught
Stravinsky; Professor Jeremy Llewellyn chose Marianna Martines (1744–1813), an Austrian
who enjoyed fame throughout Europe in her lifetime; Dr. Shirley J. Thompson put forward
Florence Price (1887–1953), an esteemed African-American symphonist; Dr. Anastasia Belina-
Johnson proposed Augusta Holmès (1847–1903), a French-Irish writer of large-scale oratorios
and operas; and Carola Darwin presented Johanna Müller-Hermann (1868–1941), an Austrian
whose works range from chamber music to orchestral tone-poems and oratorios.
The academics gave their presentations to BBC staff, and after the presentations one pro-
ducer (male) said to the panel of academics: ‘So today we’ve learned that more women than we
thought wrote music, but it’s seems like it’s mostly men one way or another who stopped them
getting the recognition they deserved’. To which Jeremy Llewellyn replied: ‘Well yes, … after
all, who wrote dictionaries?!’ Who has – or seizes – society’s permission to tell humankind’s
‘official story’ was uppermost in many minds. I thought back to Carmen Callil’s founding of
Virago Press – in 1973, the same year as the original ‘Women on Three’ day, and not long after
the Equal Pay Act of 1970 – and of her aim to ‘publish books which celebrated women and
women’s lives, and which would, by so doing, spread the message of women’s liberation to the
whole population’ (Callil 2008). Classical music was catching up.
A huge amount of work went on accessing and, in some cases, recreating the scores and
parts.14 The following pieces were performed by soprano Ilona Domnich and the BBC Concert
Orchestra, conducted by Jane Glover, at a live broadcast concert from LSO St Luke’s on 8
March 2018:
• Florence Price, Concert Overture No. 2

• Marianna Martines, Two arias from the ‘Sant Elena’ Oratorio
• Augusta Holmès, Allegro Feroce
• Johanna Müller-Hermann, Drei Gesange
• Leokadiya Kashperova, Symphony in B minor, Op. 4
Reviewing the concert for the Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy, the eminent American
musicologist Dr. Deborah Hayes noted that: ‘the BBC did a very great service in featuring these
forgotten works and in bringing their excellent performing forces and a group of scholars
together for this memorable and significant occasion’ (Hayes 2019).
32.6 IWD 2019

For IWD 2019, we again devoted our entire schedule to music by women composers.
However, I decided now was the time to draw attention to the other major area in classical
music where women have traditionally been given fewer opportunities to succeed. As well as
learning about the women behind the music, we also would hear from some of the women in
front of it – orchestral conductors. Although it’s not as rare to see women on the orchestral
podium as it was in the past, the number of women conductors in the UK is still comparatively
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Edwina Wolstencroft
small.15 One historical reason for that had previously been mentioned in Kate Chisholm’s
interview with conductor Jessica Cottis:
Growing up in the 1990s, Cottis never thought of herself as a conductor, because she
had never seen a woman on the podium (apart from when she played in the school
band). ‘I didn’t realise women could conduct’ [Cottis]. You only have to look at the
photos used to promote the recordings of conductors like Herbert von Karajan to
realise that conducting is ‘an archetypal male discipline … focusing on strength, power
and virility’ (Chisholm 2016).
This absence of role models resonated. Many years ago, a (now retired) colleague had informed me,
with the weight of all the expertise he’d acquired working for decades in the classical music in-
dustry, that ‘women can’t conduct orchestras’. When I asked why not, he told me he’d ‘once seen a
woman conduct and she wasn't very good’. What a shame that one individual damned the rest of
womankind! As opposed to the many young males who are also ‘not very good’ at first, but who
are encouraged to learn from their mistakes and, like any endeavour, improve by being given
another opportunity. Despite my then colleague’s ‘mansplaining’, with his personal opinion pro-
nounced as incontrovertible fact, we now know that women, given the chance, are equally capable.
For IWD 2019, Radio 3 presenters were joined by eight women conductors and music directors
from various backgrounds and generations. Throughout the day, we heard the perspectives and
experiences of these eight women in musical leadership, all at different stages in their careers – from
conducting doyenne Marin Alsop to 19-year-old Stephanie Childress, whose robust confidence
throws a cheering light on how her generation are dealing with verbal knock-backs:
When I was about 12 or 13, I had a conducting teacher tell me I would never make it
because I was a woman … I thought it was total BS, although I didn't say it at the time
…. The perception that the conductor is a man is still very much ingrained in
management, orchestras and even audiences. [But] we’re in the middle of a change.
Things will eventually balance out, and the world will be a much nicer place for all
conductors (Childress 2019).
We also asked the conductors to choose for broadcast a selection of original performances of
works by women composers from the BBC Archives, and their choices included Madeleine
Dring (1923–77), Lili Boulanger (1893–1918), Susan Spain-Dunk (1880–1962) and Elizabeth
Maconchy (1907–94). In addition, we featured a concert by the BBC National Orchestra of
Wales, conducted by Valentina Peleggi, which included music by Florence Price, Joan Tower
and the world premiere of Augusta Holmès’ symphony, Roland Furieux (1867).16
32.7 Conclusion
Since we started IWD in 2015, there has been a flurry of new initiatives designed to support and
encourage women to take up roles in musical leadership as both composers and conductors.
However, as progress for women working in music is made, another narrative has emerged.
Overt verbal (‘women just can’t’) sexism has gradually started to disappear as people have
become more aware that it is no longer acceptable to articulate these thoughts. Now, I hear
some people in the music industry saying things like (I’m paraphrasing) – ‘of course, it used to
be bad but it’s fine for women now … there’s loads of them’, and ‘women are favoured and we
must make sure that they’re not just put there out of tokenism’. Also overheard amongst
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orchestral planners (not in the BBC, I’m happy to say) in 2019 was: ‘Is it more important to
programme a piece by a woman – or a piece that’s good?’ The answer being, of course, that it’s
perfectly possible to do both, simultaneously.
Whilst quality should remain the industry’s highest priority, and tokenism does no favours to
anyone, I do wonder why these ‘no tokenism’ statements are only ever made about women and
diverse groups. Such comments and questions are never posed about male composers. Women,
too, are affected by living in a patriarchal society and can, therefore, undervalue their own
contribution. Organisations are part of that history, but they can embrace change if people lead
them to do so. And in the UK, we all stand on shoulders of women such as Nicola Lefanu and
Diana Ambache, who have done so much pioneering work advocating, performing and re-
cording music by women.
Our work in this area now reaches out beyond the UK. I was, for example, contacted by a
National Public Radio station in New York who had plans to broadcast classical music by
women on IWD 2019, and I have had conversations with classical colleagues at the European
Broadcasting Union about music by women.17 To keep the change permanent, however,
requires vigilance and continuing action from programmers, commissioners and artistic lea-
ders.18 We need to perform music of the past by women as well as new music, and to put an
end to the narrative that ‘women have only come to this recently’ – with its concomitant
undertone of a lack of expertise. Previous waves of awareness died away, as seems to repeatedly
happen with gender equality: ‘it’s all sorted now’. But it isn’t. A useful parallel is the Equal Pay
Act – passed in law in 1970 – which still needs work to become a reality.
It would be great if we no longer needed IWD, but we do seem to, as women are still,
literally, undervalued. Let’s hope that, with other movements such as #MeToo, the changing
narrative about equality and both sexes being equally entitled to tell humanity’s story – in all
endeavours – becomes permanent. I’m told our broadcasts have made a difference by raising
awareness of women’s work in music, and I sincerely hope that’s the case. Being an Editor at
BBC Radio 3 has been a privilege, both challenging and interesting. I didn't ‘have’ to do this
work for women’s music to fulfil the requirements of the normal editorial day job, which
involved editing a range of programme strands and managing production teams at Radio 3. It’s
been a privilege to work at the BBC, full stop, but it’s even more of a privilege to have been
able to lead a part of it in a different direction. Hopefully, we have come some way to
highlighting the forgotten or neglected women in music history, and perhaps this will make
things easier for all composers of the present and future by ensuring that their music will be
supported sufficiently to thrive, blossom to fruition and live on. No one in any large organi-
sation does this kind of work alone. One needs people who understand the reasons why this
matters and who support the change; people making inspiring suggestions and doing great
work. Profound thanks and much appreciation to my wonderful colleagues at BBC Radio 3
and the BBC Orchestras and Choirs who have embraced this cause and delivered it with
brilliance. I have named several key people in this text, but there are many others.
Notes
1 In 2013, I had collaborated with Radio 3’s Head of Communications, Alexandra Heybourne, and
‘Composer of the Week’ (COTW) producer Chris Taylor in plans for the 70th anniversary of
COTW. We chose Louise Farrenc, who was the most suggested female composer by Radio 3 listeners.
2 In Autumn 2014, there was no BBC Radio 3 Controller in post. Roger Wright left the BBC in
summer 2014 and Alan Davey arrived in January 2015. Both supported diversity; Wright was, for
example, the first Controller to book a woman conductor, Marin Alsop, for the iconic Last Night of
the Proms in 2013.
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Edwina Wolstencroft
3 BBC Radio 3 ‘Breakfast’ show presented by Sara Mohr-Pietsch and produced by Elizabeth Funning (8
March 2012). Mohr-Pietsch was also playing living women composers in some of her contemporary
music programmes.
4 Estimates vary, but some sources, such as Cohen’s International Encyclopedia of Women Composers (1987),
cite nearly 6,000. See also Rob Deemer’s online ‘Women Composer Database’: https://adaptistration.
com/2018/01/02/an-operational-women-composers-database/
5 I’m grateful to Radio 3’s Head of Speech Programming, Matthew Dodd, who understood both the
need for editorial clarity and the issues involved and supported those aims throughout Autumn 2014.
6 McCabe’s petition was successful, with Edexcel changing their 2016 syllabus to include some women
composers.
7 The premieres by Tabakova and Johnson Manning were broadcast in ‘Choral Evensong’ on 8 March
2017. See also ‘First girl choristers for Truro Cathedral’, BBC News, 11 October 2015: https://
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-34499665
8 The BBC Radio 3/Proms Commissioning team had, in recent years, been all-male. They added Ann
McKay, BBC Symphony Orchestra producer, to the group in 2017.
9 When researching an item for BBC Radio 3’s ‘Music Matters’ for IWD 2015, Sara Mohr-Pietsch
discovered that in the catalogues of six major publishers, music by women percentages ranged from 4%
to just 17%. See Mohr-Pietsch, ‘Women composers: genius is gender blind – and so should we be’,
Guardian, 5 March 2015: https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/mar/05/women-
composers-genius-radio-3-international-womens-day
10 On 26 March 2016, Susanna Eastburn launched Sound and Music’s Active Encouragement Programme,
an initiative to address the lack of gender diversity in new music: http://www.soundandmusic.org/
projects/pathways-active-encouragement-programme. See also Katy Wright, ‘Sound and Music laun-
ches initiative to address lack of diversity in new music’, Classical Music, 22 March 2016: https://
www.rhinegold.co.uk/classical_music/sound-music-launches-initiative-address-lack-diversity-new-
music/
11 I first met Helen Pankhurst at a 2017 event held as part of an initiative to build a statue of Emmeline
Pankhurst in her home city of Manchester. Councillor Andrew Simcock led the WoManchester
project and sculptor Hazel Reeves won the Pankhurst statue commission.
12 See the ‘BBC Music Introducing’ website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/introducing
13 See ‘Forgotten Women Composers to be recognised in International Women’s Day Concert’, Arts and
Humanities Research Council, 25 January 2018: https://ahrc.ukri.org/research/readwatchlisten/features/
forgotten-women-composers-to-be-recognised-in-iwd-concert/. Colleagues in BBC Wales, notably
Luke Whitlock and Amy Wheel, did great work on this project.
14 Boosey & Hawkes went on to publish the Kashperova Symphony. See ‘B&H publishes work by
Russian female composer’, Boosey & Hawkes, February 2018: https://www.boosey.com/cr/news/B-
H-publishes-works-by-Russian-female-composer/101137
15 In orchestral conducting, as I write, women’s representation as conductors is still under 15%.
16 This concert was broadcast on ‘Radio 3 in Concert’, 8 March 2019: https://www.bbc.co.uk/
programmes/m0002zyf
17 Much international work was also done by Vanessa Reed during her time at the PRS Foundation with
Keychange. See Andre Paine, ‘‘It’s creating a big debate’: PRS Foundation’s Vanessa Reed talks ambitions
for Keychange campaign’, Music Week, 27 February 2018: http://www.musicweek.com/live/read/it-s-
creating-a-big-debate-prs-foundation-s-vanessa-reed-talks-ambitions-for-keychange-campaign/071602
18 Some artistic leaders have done outstanding work in this area, for example, Helen Wallace’s Venus
Unwrapped at Kings Place. Details of Venus Unwrapped 2019 can be found at: https://
www.kingsplace.co.uk/magazine/genre/venus-unwrapped/
References
Barton, C., 2017. IWD | BBC NOW: Kate Whitley sets Malala: Speak Out. Wales Arts Review, 12
March: https://www.walesartsreview.org/iwd-bbc-now-kate-whitley-malala-speak-out/
Bridges, T.W., 2001. Maddalena Casulana [Mezari]. Grove Music Online: https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/
grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000005155
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Cohen, A.I., 1987. The international encyclopedia of women composers, 2nd ed. New York: Books &
Music USA.
Callil, C., 2008. The stories of our lives. Guardian, 26 April: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/
apr/26/featuresreviews.guardianreview2
Carpenter, H., 1997. The envy of the world: fifty years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3, pbk ed.
London: Phoenix Giant.
Childress, S., 2019. We’re in the middle of a change. BBC – Celebrating Women Composers, IWD 2019:
Women in Front. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5fxf3MD237WLvgrzcHL8KfR/
iwd-2019-women-in-front
Chisholm, K., 2016. Why has classical music been so gender-biased for so long? The Spectator, 12 March:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/03/why-has-classical-music-been-so-gender-biased-for-so-long/
Duchen, J., 2015. Why the male domination of classical music might be coming to an end. Guardian, 28
February: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/feb/28/why-male-domination-of-classical-
music-might-end
Gallagher, P., 2015. Jessy McCabe: Teenage girl launches petition calling for more women to be re-
presented in A-level music exams. Independent, 19 August: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/
crime/jessy-mccabe-teenage-girl-launches-petition-calling-for-more-women-to-be-represented-in-a-
level-10462293.html
Hayes, D., 2019. Best of 2018! International Women’s Day Concert – London, UK – 8 March 2018. Women’s
Philharmonic Advocacy, 19 January. Available from: https://wophil.org/best-of-2018-bbc-international-
womens-day-orchestral-concert/?doing_wp_cron=1556452540.2592539787292480468750
Hayman, S., 2017. A Fanny Mendelssohn masterpiece finally gets its due. Guardian, 8 March: https://
www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/08/fanny-mendelssohn-easter-sonata-premiere-sheila-
hayman
McCabe, J., 2015. Edexcel: ensure the representation of women on the A-level music syllabus, Petition.
Change,org. Available from: https://www.change.org/p/edexcel-ensure-the-representation-of-
women-on-the-a-level-music-syllabus
Wolstencroft, E., 2015. You can’t be a composer, you’re a girl – Radio 3 fights back. Telegraph, 10 March:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/11461185/BBC-Radio-3-composer-of-
the-week-Meet-the-young-women-fighting-back.html
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33
CONTESTED SPACES: GENDER
DYNAMICS IN INDEPENDENT
RADIO STATIONS IN LONDON
Miia Laine
33.1 Introduction
Independent radio stations have received a lot of media attention and are seen as ‘changing
the face of London’s airways’ (Sigee 2016). The years following 2011 have seen a rise in new,
music-oriented online stations, such as NTS, Radar and Soho Radio, that complement ex-
isting stations like Rinse and Reprezent. Alongside the continuing growth of digital radio
audiences in the UK, online radio has demonstrated an alternative to traditional broadcasting
by avoiding established gatekeepers and accessing audiences directly. Meanwhile, a number of
issues concerning ongoing sexism in UK media and music industries have come to light. As a
2013 report by Sound Women found, only 20% of solo-presenters on BBC breakfast shows
were women, which led to the BBC declaring the intention to increase the percentage of
female presenters to 50% by the end of 2014 (see O’Carroll 2013). Similarly, industry figures
have publicly addressed sexism in the music industries and DJ culture, where, in addition to a
lack of representation, female DJs face outright misogyny in their working environment
(Lhooq 2014).
The internet is a crucial factor in today’s rapidly changing media landscape and online
radio remains an under-researched subject (Rubin 2012, p. 199). I posit that due to their
situation within an alternative mediascape, which is more democratic, accessible and
community-minded, independent online radios have the structures and potential to create
a more gender-equal space than mainstream broadcast industries (Atton 2001, p. 143). In
this regard, I ask how, and to what extent, can independent radios in London provide
gender-progressive spaces? This chapter arises from my MA dissertation (Laine 2016), in
which I conducted qualitative interviews with individuals working at three independent
radio stations in London: Radio X (anonymised), Radar Radio and Roundhouse Radio.1 I
interviewed seven women and five men from management, host and volunteering posi-
tions, most of whom asked to be anonymised (marked *). Since the time of writing, Radar
Radio closed in July 2018 because of sexual assault allegations unrelated to any of the
informants, and Roundhouse Radio has been renamed Transmission Roundhouse.
328 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-33

Gender dynamics in London radio stations
33.2 Literature review: gender in music, media and

alternative media studies
In order to understand gendered experiences in independent radio, essential texts may be drawn
from three different disciplines; gender in music, gender in media, and alternative media studies.
A considerable body of work explores the experience of women in musical contexts. It can be
said that the music industries ‘revolve around the structural subordination of women’ (Whiteley
2000, p. 152), mostly seen in the strong notions of femininity and masculinity, the gendering of
jobs and the overall absence of women. Within the music business, too, roles are ‘highly gender
segregated’ (Negus 1992, p. 58). Women here are often assigned to ‘facilitating roles which
support the creativity of others’ (Whiteley 2000, p. 152), whereas decision-making roles are
dominated by men. Through the erasure of ‘female participation in technological pursuits’
(Moisala and Diamond 2000, p. 284), technology has become one of the most heavily male-
connoted domains in both music and media industries. As most of the interviewees are both DJ
and radio producers, technology is relevant and the radio studio can be related to the recording
studio. The recording studio has been described as a place of power and hierarchy, a ‘male space
of creativity’ (Negus 1992, p. 86), where women are excluded from the recording process. The
atmosphere of an ‘all-lads-together camaraderie’, combined with intimidation towards women,
has built a ‘formidable barrier to women musicians and female recording industry personnel’
(ibid., p. 87). Music presenting on the radio has been portrayed as ‘the last bastion’ for women to
break into. Female music presenters on commercial radio, an exception to the rule, have de-
scribed the pressure to adopt on-air personas of ‘bubbly girlie’ or ‘sexy late-night siren’ (Michaels
and Mitchell 2000, p. 246).
There have been notable efforts by women to overcome their marginalised status. Advocacy
groups have pushed for public policy changes and for women’s voices to be heard (Byerly and Ross
2006, p. 185f). These efforts have been described as women-only feminist groups, such as the Riot
grrrl movement, who were trying to tackle the issues by reclaiming spaces literally or metaphorically
(Björck 2011, p. 18; Farrugia 2012, p. 19). Radio has been the medium of choice for feminist
groups for a number of reasons (Mitchell 2000, p. 189; Byerly and Ross 2006, p. 145): women in
radio experience less discrimination than in other media or music fields (Cramer 1993, p. 145;
Hesmondhalgh and Baker 2015, p. 24). The roles are less distinct, with the presenter, studio op-
erator, editor and researcher often combined in the same individual, the ‘multiskilled radio pro-
ducer’ (Hendy 2013, p. 66). The less clear-cut roles can thus lead to shallower power hierarchies.
Furthermore, the microphone ‘can become a powerful vehicle of the I: a process of self-defining,
identity asserting’ (Greene 2005, p. 9), while being in a safe space undisturbed by the so-called ‘male
gaze’. For these reasons, independent radio has been found to be more accessible to women. As
Mitchell has argued, however, ‘in mixed stations, maintaining that space… is often hard fought for
and has to be continually asserted’ (Mitchell 2000, p. 199).
33.3 Data analysis: the spaces of independent radio

The spatial dimensions of gender issues identified in the literature review above present a useful
lens through which to explore experiences of people working in independent radio.
1. The Offices
The first angle concerns the offices as everyday workplaces. All three stations have full-time staff
who deal with finances, branding, programming, and manage volunteers and studio operations.
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Miia Laine
At Radio X, 15 people work full-time, of whom three are women, while at Radar there are 14,
which also include three women. Both of these stations have one woman among their core staff
of four. Roundhouse Radio has four full-time, female staff who work within the wider
Roundhouse team. As hosts, Radio X and Radar both have about 30% women to 70% men.
Due to their policy, Roundhouse radio has a 50/50, male/female gender split on air.
The financial situation of the three stations is remarkably different. Radio X began as a
community station and has grown quickly, financing themselves with investments, brand
partnerships, events, merchandising and funding. Radar Radio has, so far, been privately
funded. The fact that the founder of Radar is the son of Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley was
described as ‘an open secret that no one talks about’ (Sara*, personal interview, 27 July 2016).
Roundhouse Radio, which is a subsidiary of The Roundhouse, is a not-for-profit organisation,
funded by Arts Council England and individual donations.
At Radio X and Radar, the management structure was described as loose and even un-
professional at the beginning of their existence. The core staff mostly consists of people who
have been involved since the beginning, or have worked their way up from volunteering; a
state of affairs that sometimes contributes to unclear roles and structures within the stations.
Roundhouse deals with a distinctly different circumstance; the radio station emerged within a
well-established organisation.
The different financial pressures have an impact on the ethos and possibilities of the radio
stations. At Radio X, one of the managers was notably outspoken in addressing gender issues
and said it significantly affected her everyday work, especially when booking DJs for events. She
talked of her daily fight to push for better representation among the male managers:
Now they’re a bit more aware, they might say … ‘we should try and get a female DJ
for this’. But it’s taken me years … of having to be forced into the role of the bitchy
female to get them having that attitude (Mona*, personal interview, 19 July 2016).
The implication that the team’s only woman feels it necessary to adopt a ‘bitchy female’ role to
address gender inequalities illustrates how issues of inequality are contrived as women’s re-
sponsibility, whilst also reflecting a general reluctance to address gender. Often, the decision not
to book women was justified on commercial grounds. As Mona* noted: ‘I get the same ar-
guments – this person is not gonna sell as many tickets. So you have to balance pushing for
gender equality and brand interests’ (ibid.). The alleged commercial interest in such cases are
claimed to directly contradict gender inclusivity. Thus, the under-representation of women in
the wider industries have a direct impact on the representation within the station.
The process of becoming involved appears distinctly informal at both Radar and Radio X.
Anyone may submit a demo and management decides whether it suitably fits the station. At
Roundhouse, there is a call-out every six months for new shows and the process is far more
structured. This emphasizes how the scouting of talent, which comes from management decisions,
has an impact according to the genres they support. Management at Radio X and Radar did not
follow a consciously feminist ethos, nor were openly dedicated to diversity within their personnel
– unless they were women themselves. For there to be a system to ensure gender diversity,
that would really take them acknowledging that there’s a problem, which I don’t
think they’d ever do … because of where Radio X is situated in the… music land-
scape …. [I]t’s … cool, underground, indie, very left. … [T]hey think they could
never be sexist or racist because we’re Radio X and really independent (Mona*, ibid.).
330
This illustrates the situation of the stations within independent music scenes, and the as-
sumption of alternative music automatically being progressive in terms of gender and race.
Radar does not have an official gender policy either, but Ben, one of the four managers,
explained that his team does try to advocate female talent. One example he recounted was
how they pushed for their primetime slot to be fully occupied by female hosts. It was a
conscious decision by management but did not appear to come from an acknowledgement
of inequality:
It just naturally [came about] … there were two girls in that slot and then, we were
like, if we can fill it for the whole week, that slot being all-female. … [B]ut we’re not
sitting down and looking specifically (Ben, personal interview, 29 August 2016).
The hosts at Radar reported to feel well supported by the staff, something that might have a
connection to the offices being immediately outside the studio:
The reason our office is designed like this [is] so anyone can tap me on the shoulder
and say something, pitch me an idea, we are … a community as well, a very open
platform, and a free space for people to say whatever they want to say (Ben, ibid.).
The contact between hosts and managers at Roundhouse and Radio X was much less than that
at Radar, possibly an effect of the offices being located in a different building than the studios.
One of the hosts at Radio X felt she was being unfairly treated by management and not being
booked for events:
The culture is very laddy… the communication between the DJs and the people who
actually run Radio X is really minimal. A lot of the DJs feel like a bit disenfranchised
I think. … I’m just trying to figure out why I’m receiving this kind of treatment …
I do think it probably does stem a bit from sexism (Laura*, personal interview,
25 July 2016).
Roundhouse Radio’s remit extends to 16–25s only, and is part of a bigger project within
Roundhouse that provides training and inroads into the music and media industries. The
Roundhouse management team are all women, which was not a conscious decision. Marie, the
head of the radio, decided a few years ago to write a regulation, making sure that at least 50% of
the people on air identify as female, a promise that is embedded in the larger efforts of
Roundhouse to ensure diversity. Roundhouse is able to do this because they are a charity and
have a responsibility towards the funders to be equal opportunity employers; thus, they have an
economic motivation. But even at Roundhouse, gender dynamics within the offices were
apparent, as station manager Niccy recounted:
I did feel it more when I was working alongside a male station manager around other
people, because they would actively … look more towards him than me because they
would just assume that he was in charge. … It wasn’t anyone doing it consciously but,
you know, white man in space, he must be in charge (Niccy, personal interview, 26
July 2016).
This subtlety of power hierarchies that are reinforced in everyday, small interactions were a big
factor for the paid staff of the radios. Even at Roundhouse, with conscious gender equality
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Miia Laine
objectives, patriarchal structures had an impact. The supportive environment, however, enabled
Niccy to address these issues, due to Roundhouse being a place that ‘actively wants to talk
about sexism, diversity and racism’ within its structures (ibid.).
This examination of the office spaces revealed that women are largely under-represented in
leadership positions. An awareness of gender inequalities was only expressed by female station
managers who actively attempted to challenge the status quo, something not always supported
by the male managers. For some staff, the assumption existed that alternative music auto-
matically brings about better diversity. The lack of conscious measures from management thus
led to a reinforcement of the existing inequalities within the radio structures.
2. The Studios
The radio studio is usually an acoustically isolated room with mixing desks, computers, mi-
crophones and other equipment. At Radar and Roundhouse, the newly renovated studios have
white or purple walls with the occasional ‘No filming allowed’ sign, while the Radio X studio
is full of stickers. At all three stations, the minimal decoration makes the technical equipment
define the atmosphere. The stations broadcast live most of the day, meaning DJs are present in
the daytime, while pre-programmed material is played at night.
The studio can mostly be seen as a private space as the hosts are usually alone, or with one
producer. Occasionally, other individuals, such as technicians or people who are ‘hanging out’,
are present in the studio. At Radar and Radio X, the live broadcast is exposed locally: the
Radio X studio is located on a bustling square from which you can see into the studio via a
window. Adjacent to Old Street lies the unsuspecting looking black warehouse in which Radar
is located, with its studio integrated into the open-plan office where the broadcast is played via
speakers. At the Roundhouse, the new studios are situated in a long, glass corridor of music
studios that are rented out to young people. The literature has suggested that the studio presents
a space that is defined by technology and strict hierarchies with male-dominated staff. This
places the studio as a potential place of intimidation.
Tamara*, a radio producer, host and DJ who has been at Radar for a few years, commented
on the atmosphere in the studio when she first started, and when less women were involved:
I felt intimidated, because there’s a lot of boys, and even though … I know exactly
what I’m doing, there is still that element of having to stand up in front of all the boys
and just nail it (Tamara*, personal interview, 25 August 2016).
This feeling declined as she noticed a rise in women working at the station, but she still likes to
keep it ‘all girls in the studio’ (ibid.). The pressure of women needing to prove themselves to
men in the studio was reflected in several interviews. However, the intimidating moments were
described as initial periods; all informants reported to being able to overcome them, and felt
generally supported within the studio environment. Despite an under-representation of women
at Radio X, host Anna* stated that, ‘I feel comfortable because there are quite a lot of other
women doing shows’ (Anna*, personal interview, 21 July 2016). Thus, the general presence of
women contributed to a change of gender stereotyping and the perceived roles of women in
music radio. A few interviewees mentioned the positive impact of mentoring and support they
had received at previous stations, which was crucial for them to act confidently in these spaces.
‘At Reprezent it was 50/50 gender split, so there was never any feeling of “I can’t do that
because I’m a girl”’ (Tamara*, op. cit.).
332
The studio was described by several people as being a ‘solitary space’ (Joseph, personal
interview, 27 July 2016). This could be due to the organisational structure of smaller in-
dependent radios, which have smaller staff numbers, and where there is less distinction between
producers, hosts and technicians than in mainstream radio. At Radar and Radio X, the hosts
have one producer who is present in the studio, while at Roundhouse the hosts are alone. As
Anna* (Radio X) noted:
I didn’t actually see that many other people. … It’s a funny thing radio, you’re talking
over the mic and you don’t get any reaction … so sometimes it’s quite a solitary thing
(Anna*, op. cit.).
None of the informants felt they were in a strict hierarchical or gendered space in the studio,
and none of the three stations gave any creative regulations or restrictions to their hosts. This
demonstrates how the studio provided a space of creative freedom and privacy. Simultaneously,
the studio is broadcasting to the world, where women can express their ‘creativity in solitude’;
an environment usually sought out by female producers in the home studio (Wolfe 2012).
Pressure to perform gender in the studio was not raised by any of the informants. On the
contrary, everyone remarked that gender was not an issue for them in the studio as it was not
relevant to the music. The genres the DJs played included electronic music, afrobeat and
ethnographic field recordings, and were sometimes only reluctantly categorised. Many of these
hosts expressed having created a musical niche for themselves, a niche that was unique within
their radio station, too, which demonstrated a different way of making an unchallenged space
for themselves within the station.
The general atmosphere in the studios was seen as experimental and a learning environment,
something that is less intimidating because it does not have to be ‘perfect’. Sara*, who learned
about the technology using the equipment at Radar, reported: ‘it took me ages to understand
certain things and… I never really felt I was… patronised for it, it just felt like people were there
if I needed them’ (Sara*, op. cit.). Two of the men spoke of the studio space having an
intimidating effect, not on themselves, but on the women they co-host with and train. Akinola,
host of a speech show on Radio X, noted that:
I think the studio makes people very self-conscious…. There’s a technical side which
my [female] co-host struggled with. … Everyone thinks … it needs to be perfect,
whereas I … give myself a lot of contingency because it’s independent and we’re
figuring it out (Akinola, personal interview, 25 July 2016).
Aaron, who founded East London Radio and was training a hundred volunteers, described
something similar: ‘A lot of the women that come in are very intimidated by the technical stuff
… [they] are very afraid of getting it wrong’ (Aaron, personal interview, 28 July 2016).
Overall, the participants, especially the women, did not perceive challenges connected to
gender and technology. The experiences in the studios largely presented a positive space for
women, where the hosts in question were able to develop technical skills. Some pressures
existed for women to ‘prove’ themselves under a male gaze, especially compared to the total
lack of such experiences by the men. However, the studio itself can be viewed as a private
space, as a ‘studio of one’s own’, where the few gender-stereotyped pressures that are present
can be easily overcome, and where the hosts are able to create their own content without
creative restrictions (Wolfe 2012).
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Miia Laine
3. The Clubs
The third space relevant to this study are the clubs and parties that socially surround the stations.
Events are either hosted by the stations themselves, or by affiliated music venues where the DJs
play and staff socialise. The clubs highlight the unique position of independent music radio
stations in London, whose closeness to their local music scene is echoed by some of the
managers: ‘even though we’re a radio station, we’re more considered [being] in the music
industry’ (Ben, op. cit.). At Radar, clubs were also described as a place for staff to look for new
talent. Inversely, the stations present a platform for artists to grow:
I think a lot of the people who listen to Radio X work in the industry. So … if we
promote an artist, you will see the artist getting bigger. … It’s like a stamp of approval
for the underground (Mona*, op. cit.).
The parties surrounding the radio stations are also places where people can socialise. As a
creative industry, working hours and free time become less distinct. Some of the interviewees
remarked on the effect this had on boundaries:
There is a lot of socialising that goes on. There is a lot of alcohol. … You’re not in an 9-
to-5 office environment, you’re at festivals… then a gig in the evening. … I can see
how boundaries can get blurry really easily (Marie, personal interview, 24 July 2016).
The independent radio stations seemed to be places with little distinction between work and
play: colleagues are also friends; the offices are places to socially interact during working hours
and, later, to attend the same parties. The dangers these club spaces present to women were
especially connected to their careers, as stated by Laura*, a DJ, musician and radio host:
When I first joined Radio X people were like – how many of the guys have you slept
with? … If you get with some guys that you’re trying to work with, they don’t respect
you anymore (Laura*, op. cit.).
At the same time, a few women commented on how crossing those boundaries did not have
the same destructive effect on men’s careers: none of the male informants cited boundaries as
an issue. Six of the seven women interviewed regularly performed at clubs, while one out of
five men called himself a DJ. Three women organised their own regular club night. As a
DJ, every woman interviewed had experienced sexism and noted a difference in treatment
because of their gender. It mostly manifested in a lack of confidence in their abilities and
not being taken seriously by others. A sentence that came up (independently) in four of
the interviews, was that people are still ‘shocked’ to see women DJing. The discussed under-
representation of women and the gender-stereotyped skill-set can be seen as factors that
contribute to the lack of visibility for women DJs. The questioning of technical and musical
knowledge has also been experienced widely:
I had a guy come up to me in the middle of my set … ‘can I help you?’ Like help me
with what? ‘Like help you with your song selection cause I’ve got some ideas’, and I
was like can you get the fuck out of my space now – so you get stuff…. [T]hat would
never happen to a male DJ! (Niccy, op. cit.).
334
The frequent encounters with sexist incidents were described by some of the women with a
blasé attitude, stating it as fact that female DJs need to prove themselves more than male DJs,
because they are ‘scrutinised more’ (Anna*, op. cit.). The worry of not being able to perform
adequately came from the male judgement perceived by the women whilst performing:
There’s one night … it’s always all guys apart from me … and is thus the only place now
where I’m shaking before I play because I’m so on edge … you’re like ‘oh my god I’m
gonna mess up’ … because the crowd feels very male heavy (Sara*, op. cit.).
The experiences recounted by women from the club environment is reflected in the literature
concerning female DJs, particularly the topic of not being trusted as technically or musically
skilled (see, for example, Bloustien 2016). This treatment is often accompanied by patronising
explanations from men. Most of the women said they were accustomed to such instances and
were able to ignore it because they have been able to practise in spaces with a supportive crowd,
and build confidence. One can identify self-assertion that is developed as a strategy here; a
necessity for women to succeed in the scene. Another observed method for creating spaces for
women was establishing their own club nights, enabled partly through the promotion available
through their radio stations. As curators, the hosts described how they consciously book women
so the line-up is at least 50% female:
There’s always three female DJs on the line-up, minimum. … That was also a con-
scious decision cause I was used to playing in clubs and being treated like a … bimbo
(Niccy, op. cit.).
The DJs thus consciously create environments where they feel most comfortable, and are
supported by the radio station in this respect. This often results in the specialist music they play
aligning with an inequality-aware mindset of the organisers. Tamara* described the usual nights
she attends:
They have safe-space policies and they make a big deal about posting them online …
saying these are the rules, don’t fuck about when you come to this party – which is a
massive step (Tamara*, op. cit.).
The close integration of radio stations with the club scene has had a varying effect on the people
involved. The multifaceted nature of the work and the open-ended work hours consequentially
meant that moving from hosting a radio programme into DJing was, in many cases, encouraged
by management. On the other hand, the club spaces present an environment with arguably
deeper gender inequality than the office or studio. As DJs, they are more visible, less respected,
and perceive themselves to be under stark pressure from male judgement. This has driven some
of the DJs to create their own club spaces.
33.4 Conclusion
Reflecting literature on gender in music, media and technology, three spaces were used in this
research as a tool to gain a more detailed understanding of gender dynamics within the radio stations.
In the offices, management positions were found to be overwhelmingly male, unless under an equal
opportunity employer. The male-centric office space can result in a ‘laddy culture’ within which, in
turn, can cause disenfranchisement of female co-workers, but can be relativised with a strong training
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Miia Laine
element and communication. The network around the radio, especially the closeness to club culture,
means that inequalities which are more extreme in the wider industries can, if not addressed openly,
be reinforced in the radio spaces. The studio, contradictory to the existing literature, did not present
an intimidating male space, but instead offered a space where women were able to create their own
broadcast undisturbed. However, from the female perspective, there endured an underlying pressure
to perform competently, which was not observed amongst male participants. The club scene was the
only space that exposed the female DJs to outright sexism. Here the strategies to build a safe space
was most successfully achieved by female DJs running their own club nights, which reconfirms the
need for more female decision-making and leadership. Since this research in 2016, women DJing
have, arguably, become much more visable and normalised.
Thus, the research reflects the literature only in part: the industries are gendered, and
women continue to have fewer decision-making powers, even in independent settings. This
leads to sexist structures, be it subtle, as in the offices, or outright, as in the clubs. Regardless,
the three spaces reflect the diversity of power dynamics that individuals involved in in-
dependent radio face. The gendered job-roles of the wider music industries were found to be
less potent in independent radio. Indeed, no mention of gender roles, and women being less
capable as DJs in the radio environment, was made. This finding could make the case for more
nuance in the concerned literature generally as notions of femininity and masculinity fade,
exposing wider assumed possibilities of all genders. Challenging the industry-wide gender in-
equality is possible to achieve, especially by female leadership, but was seen to be only limited
when a conscious agenda was missing. Strongly, gendered language of girls, boys, ‘bitchy fe-
males’, and the statement that there still is a ‘gender war’ going on (Laura*, op. cit.), shows
there is still a long way to go. Independent radios have a huge potential to present a more
gender-equal space because of their relative accessibility and open structures. They offer a real,
vital challenge to mainstream media but, at present, this potential is not being fully exploited
due to a lack of economic motivation, the lack of consciousness of inequality, and the re-
luctance to confront gender as an issue in the first instance.
Note
1 Although, due to spatial restrictions, my thesis focused on gender (rather than intersectional gendered
identity), it should be noted that half of my interviewees were people of colour - which is itself
representative of the relatively high level of racial diversity encountered in London’s independent radio
stations (Laine 2016).
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34
‘AND HER VOICE IS A
BACKWARDS RECORD’1: THE
GENDERING OF PHONOGRAPH
TECHNOLOGY
Karlyn King
34.1 Introduction
You would think with women being more suited to the home-life they would ac-
tually be more into record collecting than men (fecklessscrounger 2017).
The above quote comes from an online record retailer forum in a thread entitled ‘Do you know
any women who collect vinyl?’ Out of 113 contributors, 33 stated that they were women. A
lively debate ensued centred around the following ideology: men are serious when it comes to
phonograph technology and women are not (ibid.). I use the term ‘phonograph technology’ to
refer to flat disc playback devices from Berliner’s 1877 gramophone (Read and Welch 1976)
right up to today’s digitally mastered vinyl records available in Sainsbury’s supermarket
(Kennedy 2017). Notions of gendered separation within such technology are an under-
researched area. Yet empirical work since the 1940s has consistently shown a significant
masculine bias in relation to music format consumption patterns (Kruse 1993; Belk and
Wallendorf 1994; Greer and Sommerich 1994; Keightley 1996, 2003; Straw 1997; Robertson
Wojcik and Knight 2001; Barnett 2006; Doane 2009; Perchard 2017). One theoretical fra-
mework that is useful for understanding such perspectives is standpoint theory. Standpoint
theory posits that the experiences of life in an everyday scenario can lead to an analysis of how
socially and culturally embedded patterns contribute to exclusion from the perspective of the
excluded (Hekman 1997). To quote Hartsock:
The concept of a standpoint rests on the fact that there are some perspectives on
society, from which however well intentioned one may be, the real relations of
humans with each other and with the natural world are not visible (1983a, p. 117).
Hartsock is suggesting that dominant ideologies are considered the best or only re-
presentation of reality, while those of oppressed individuals remain obscured. Standpoint
theory ‘exposes real relations between humans’ (Hekman 1997, p. 343). This suggests that
feminist standpoint theory can uncover unconscious, patriarchal structures and analyse
338 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-34

The gendering of phonograph technology
them. Privilege, as in the theoretical framework of power that certain groups have with no
awareness, comes to the fore. We must unpack this in order to explore how this operates
in the gendering for formats.
McIntosh (2003) describes privilege as an ‘invisible knapsack’, or unearned power, that is
unapparent to those who enjoy it. It prescribes identity norms – for instance, men are knowl-
edgeable, tough and superior. The invisibility of such privilege results in unconscious power
imbalances between men and women despite the ‘myth of meritocracy’ (McIntosh 2012). Men
become unconsciously oppressive, acting on the internalised norms of their birth sex, with no
awareness of where these norms come from. Privilege intersects with standpoint theory in an
attempt to ‘express female experience at a particular time and place, located within a particular
set of social relations’ (Hartsock 1983b, p. 303) and, crucially, goes ‘beneath the surface of
appearances to reveal the real but concealed social relations’ (ibid., p. 304).
Fusing standpoint theory and privilege, one key concept emerges that is the focus of
this chapter: internalised patriarchal capital. Capital refers to a type of currency that can be
exchanged and/or exploited (Bourdieu 1984). Economic capital is monetary currency.
However, cultural capital is a means of social stratification with distinct markers of class and
taste. Thornton (1995) extends this to mean, rather than class predominantly, specific markers
of taste as the most significant means of distinction. Examples include mods, punks and
skinhead subcultures from the 1970s. These hierarchical taste groups are related to levels
of rebellion and authenticity via music that contrast with mainstream popular culture. Yet
subcultural theories have been criticised for excluding groups such as women, LGBTQIA
communities, non-white communities and focussing solely on young working class men
(McRobbie and Garber 1976; McFarland and Cole 1988; Bennett 1999).
Gender capital has been explored by a number of theorists (McCall 1992; Skeggs 1997;
Lovell 2000; Connell 2009; Ross-Smith and Huppatz 2010; Darwin 2018). It is defined as
‘a form of limited “embodied” cultural capital’ (McCall 1992, cited in Ross-Smith and
Huppatz 2010). For men, this is internalised and essentialist. In phonograph technology, men
wield this gender capital alongside their cultural capital and set the boundaries for everyone
else. Connell (2009, p. 142) calls this ‘patriarchal dividend’ or gendered advantage. In other
words, privilege. Those with feminine capital must assimilate to masculine capital, gaining
cultural capital but losing gender capital. Feminine capital can also be yielded, as found by
Ross-Smith and Huppatz (2010), by women in senior management roles to ‘destabilize the
masculinised field of management’. These researchers found that women had allowed men to
think that they were secretary staff before surprising them with the revelation that they were,
in fact, senior management. It can also be used to signify diversity in a company, like a form of
affirmative action. In this sense, feminine capital can be a source of value. However, this has
its limits according to McCall (1992) and Skeggs (1997), these authors claiming that it can
never achieve dominance or equality over hegemonic masculinity. I, therefore, refer to this
concept as ‘internalised patriarchal privilege’ for the remainder of the chapter, encompassing
privilege, gender capital and hegemonic masculinity theories.
Using secondary sources from academic literature alongside primary empirical data based on
interviews with format enthusiasts, this chapter argues that for some who present as masculine,
there exists a pattern where they will wield internalised patriarchal capital like cultural capital,
perpetuating the hegemonic masculinity coded into phonograph technology today. The lan-
guage is advisedly binary as a reflection of the cultural norms discussed. However, the use of the
term ‘woman/women’ or ‘feminine’ relates to anyone presenting as feminine. ‘Masculine’ or
‘man/men’ refers to anyone presenting as masculine.
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Karlyn King
34.2 Pre-war neutrality?

Keightley (1996, p. 150) suggested that before World War II, phonograph technology appeared
to be gender neutral. However, the literature suggests that this was not the case, and that such
technology has always had a cultural gender code attached. As Straw (1997, p. 5) states: ‘As part
of the material culture of music, records themselves participate in the gendering of cultural
habits at a number of levels’. Straw is suggesting that these levels are, stereotypically, the carving
out of an escapist masculine space, typically in a bachelor pad, which one could exhibit to peers
with a focus on the size of the phonograph record collection rather than the contents. Rather
than the technology as a functional object itself being embedded with gender, it is the culture
surrounding the technology that perpetuates norms. Psychological theory (Sandberg and
Scovell 2014) would attribute this to social conditioning in Anglo-American societies, which
‘facilitates the misrecognition of culture as nature, and thereby ensures the effectivity and
entrenchment of the interests of the dominant term of the binary’ (Keightley 2003, p. 239).
We can trace the roots of such gendering back to 1914, when the piano was replaced in the
American traditional home with the gramophone, promising hyper real listening without
leaving the house. Kruse (1993) reports that the women of the household would arrange the
domestic space and select which model would be most appropriate for their home. They would
also dictate which music would be listened to by the children, and were, therefore, in the high-
profile role of tastemaker. Sources such as Ladies Home Journal, Vanity Fair and Saturday Evening
Post indicate such choices in the selection and placement of gramophones (ibid.). So women,
protected from academic education pursuits, were ironically trusted to be the ‘custodian of
culture’ for the children and the home (Lynes 1985, cited in ibid., p. 9). Here we see an
important division in accessibility to knowledge, as summed up by Robertson Wojcik and
Knight (Robertson Wojcik 20012001, p. 435): ‘In other words, the gramophone is gendered
female only as a domestic object’.
This was clearly delineated in 1921 by Schauffler with his three categories of phonograph
users: those who want a noisemaker for the children; those who want furniture; and ‘those who
really care for music’ (Schauffler, cited in Kruse 1993, p. 12). We see a clear separation of those
associated with domestic life, and those who are serious music listeners. As per traditional
heteronormative family life, this splits men and women into categories, with more cultural
capital and value assigned to the third category. Women are boxed into the category of do-
mestic drudgery, along with being a comfort to men via records of women vocalists for men in
isolated or military conditions. Therefore, rather than gender neutrality, pre-World War II
women were never included in the realm of phonograph authenticity despite being influencers
and concert attendees en masse (ibid.). We now explore the post-war extension of such patterns
of feminine otherness.
34.3 Post-war audiomania

Those men who returned home to the UK and the USA from the war saw the rebuilding of the
economy and the rise of post-war affluence (Keightley 1996). After removing women from the
jobs that they held to fill in for soldiers, the increase in leisure time and money resulted in
hobbyism. For those men who had received electronics training during the war, high fidelity
audio technology was appealing due to the skills and knowledge that exposure to such tech-
nology during military service had provided, along with its subsequent associations to highbrow
taste. Magazines such as Scientific American, Talking Machine World and Gramophone specifically
targeted men in order to sell such technology as a cultural and material marker of expertise
340
(Kruse 1993; Keightley 1996). Keightley (1996, p. 150) discusses how women were typified in
the audio press as disapproving of their husband’s hi fi hobby, as it distracted him from his
family while he sought escape from heteronormative life. Women reportedly complained about
how the equipment took up space in the home and how they disliked the volume. By 1950,
therefore, phonograph technology equalled masculine and serious versus feminine, domestic
and hostile.
However, this is only one representation. To suggest that women were not listening to
music would be reductive and erroneous. Perchard (2017, p. 367) reminds us that ‘radios,
gramophones and stereograms’ were common in many post-war homes. Robertson Wojcik
and Knight (2001, p. 439) report that between 1944 and 1960, Seventeen and Cosmopolitan
magazines regularly represented women as phonograph enthusiasts. They advised on which
models to buy, reviewed records and informed the readers of record collector mail order
groups: this is all presented alongside more gendered advertising for items such as clothing,
makeup and weight loss techniques. Nonetheless, it does value women as viable phonograph
users outside of domestic adornment or child education, which indicates a more neutral sig-
nifier for the phonograph. However, Robertson Wojcik succinctly points out how this dis-
course and the feminine standpoint has been ‘historically obscured’ in analysis and in media
portrayal (ibid., p. 440). She goes on to discuss a pattern in film theory where women are
associated with phonographs as ‘bad girls, sad girls and fetishists’ (ibid.), making up for an
Oedipal lack of masculine anatomy and power. Any association with high value phonograph
technology is diluted by dramatic plotlines. The lack of a feminine equivalent standpoint in
phonograph-centric novels, and movies such as High Fidelity (2000), is notable, and indicative
of a broader absence in the overarching cultural repertoire.
34.4 Technological otherness

The masculine coding of phonograph technology did not go unnoticed, however, and pro-
voked a response by feminine enthusiasts. One reader of the July 1949 Saturday Review re-
sponded to a misogynistic letter from a masculine audiophile claiming that women don’t even
listen to music, and described how she ‘enjoys playing my phonograph at a rather full volume’
(Heathcote 1949, cited in Keightley 1996, pp. 167–168). Such debate suggests ideas of binary,
biological difference in that women can never appreciate music like men. Bourdage (2010, p. 3)
extends this: ‘Men’s best defence involved attempting to erase women from the history of
technology by emphasizing man’s “natural” aptitude for all things technological’. Yet, as dis-
cussed above, by 1919, it was estimated by Talking Machine World magazine that, ‘over 75% of
phonographs were chosen by married women’ (Kenney 1999, cited in Barnett 2006, p. 312).
However, ‘[t]he key to transforming the phonograph into furniture was aestheticizing it; the
way to most effectively aestheticize the phonograph was to feminize it’ (ibid., p. 309).
If phonograph technology has only ever been coded as feminine via home adornment, there
is a very current example of history repeating itself. This would be the lifestyling or ‘forced aura’
of Crosley turntables (Bartmanski and Woodward 2015). Crosley have manufactured and sold
retro hi fi technology since 1984 with the slogan ‘analog sound for a digital generation’ (Crosley
Radio 2018). Aiming to ‘bring new life to a classic medium’, Crosby products range ‘from our
stylish line of record players, to our newest series of high fidelity turntables’ (ibid.). In the run
up to Record Store Day 2016 (16 April), they introduced their cheapest retro turntable, which
is portable (in a plastic suitcase) and has speakers, amplifier and a turntable in one. They look
retro, kitsch and Instagram-friendly in a variety of colours, yet they are not perceived as high
end, serious equipment by audiophiles. These turntables have gone beyond the initial consumer
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Karlyn King
market target young women who use Instagram, with their biggest market in 2016 being under
25s (Paphides et al. 2016). One stockist, supermarket Sainsburys, reported that in 2016, 67% of
Crosley turntable customers were women (ibid.). A search for the hashtag #crosley on
Instagram demonstrates the vast use of this affordable turntable by women who are listening,
collecting and displaying it as a means of home adornment and portable social media exposure.
This is at odds with the gender disparity described post-war, but is in line with the pre-war
feminine-oriented purchasing of the phonograph. The current remediation of vinyl records and
associated turntables/hardware becomes potentially polysemic. However, rediffusion is com-
plex in that one medium (original turntable) is incorporated into another, with a different, more
modern, feminised look retaining all of the original functions and yet attracting a new consumer
base. Value is reassigned into a new-look, compartmentalised version of the original high-end
turntable. Crosley are suggesting that in order to sell to a feminine consumer base, 1919 must
repeat itself in 2018, as Barnett’s earlier quote made clear (2006, p. 309). Aesthetic appeal equals
a profitable, feminine market. This binary rhetoric suggested by magazines such as High Fidelity
and pink Crosley turntablism cement the masculine gaze marketing to the feminine phono-
graph demographic: attractive, sexy and limited.
34.5 Social sanctions

Obfuscation of women in phonograph technology may be related to McCall’s analysis of
Bourdieu’s gender capital, as mentioned in the introduction. McCall describes how women
who adopt the typical characteristics of men receive a ‘social sanction’ for such behaviour
(McCall 1992, p. 10). This highlights notions of ‘public and unconscious’ issues within the
social structure (ibid., p. 11). On receiving such a sanction, one experiences a ‘break with doxa’,
to use Bourdieu’s phrase, becoming conscious of the broken internalised rules (ibid., p. 15).
This can be experienced in the following ways: conscious or unconscious engagement, or
avoidance.
One expression of standpoint theory correlates with the Bourdieusian ‘break with doxa’. As
Inzlicht and Schmader (2011, p. 8) have argued:
Stereotype threat (Steele and Aronson 1995) is defined as a situational predicament in

which individuals are at risk, by dint of their actions or behaviors, of confirming
negative stereotypes about their group.
Women, when engaged with phonograph technology, become aware or conscious of the as-
sociated masculine bias and become wary of how they will be perceived – unknowledgeable,
untechnical and untasteful. The resulting vigilance in how they will be judged is a similar
concept to ‘double consciousness’ (Du Bois 1903), whereby people of colour view themselves
through their own eyes, and those of a racist, oppressive other: for women of colour, both
standpoints intersect.
Ways of dealing with stereotype threat include psychological or physical avoidance, where
women will distance themselves from environments or situations where this threat may be
experienced. This is what discourages women from audio technology, records stores and DJ
culture, and reinforces minority status, broadly speaking. Evidence of this standpoint comes
from Shuker’s study of record collectors (2004), where the women he interviewed were re-
luctant to affirm the role of collector. This was, ‘related to their perceptions of the masculine
connotations of the term’, creating dissonance with out-dated societal expectations. In Shuker’s
study, only 16% of his record collectors were women, and all expressed a conscious standpoint:
342
I would have to agree. The times I’ve spent attending record swaps, searching record
stores I have found myself in the minority. There have been times I have had to
‘prove’ to other collectors that I am not a girl who simply likes record collecting
because their boyfriend got them into it… which is frustrating and sad (Michelle, cited
in Shuker 2004, p. 314).
Some standpoints, rather than avoiding judgement, attempt to engage with the perceived
rhetoric. An interesting example comes from the contemporary Tumblr blog ‘My Husband’s
Stupid Record Collection’, where Sarah O’Holla reviews each of her husband’s 1,500 records
one by one. She uses terminology such as being ‘intimidated’ to review classic records and does
not try to sound like an expert on musical culture, stating, ‘I have never been ahead of the curve
with music’, and likening herself to a more ‘clueless’ version of her aficionado husband
(O’Holla 2014–2015). There is an ambiguity here in terms of whether this is a parody or
defensive tactic to avoid being critiqued by men. This correlates with a double consciousness
standpoint of self and other (Du Bois 1903). As Inzlicht et al. (2008, p. 164) report: ‘stigma
conscious women are especially vigilant for rejection cues’. However, this ambiguous tactic
could be chastised as feeding into the embedded notion that women do not engage with music
in the same way as men can. Alternatively, she is engaging with music in her own way, and
such prejudice of her knowledge base or approach is only naturalising the dominant ideology.
Therefore, vigilance can be explicitly (consciously and deliberately) or implicitly (automatically,
and not necessarily consciously) expressed in many different standpoints (ibid., p. 165).
34.6 Internalised patriarchal capital in action

Several empirical accounts support Inzlicht et al. (2008). At Rough Trade West, a record store
located in London, I approached three staff (aged 25–30, white, two men, one woman) to ask them
about their customer base. One of the men said: ‘Well, records are a guy thing aren’t they’ (in-
terview, 1 May 2017). The woman then moved away from the area and chose not to participate.
Given what this chapter has discussed so far, I would argue that her stereotype threat manifested in
such a way that she felt a need to avoid, or distance herself, from acknowledging the stereotypical
pattern and how she was an exception to the hegemonic masculinity in her field. As per Inzlicht
et al. (2008), her vigilance was more ‘implicit’ in that her avoidance was almost automatic. In her
role at the record store, she may have reconceptualised herself entirely to separate herself from such
stereotype threat. In addition, as a researcher, I myself present as feminine and this affects how
people respond to me. She may have perceived me as her opposite – an unknowledgeable woman
seeking access to a closed world requiring stereotypical cultural capital. Such stores are open to
anyone. However, when inside their doors, not everyone is made to feel comfortable.
Further empirical research confirms this. When interviewing one feminine vinyl fan, Carly,
she disclosed:
I can vividly remember a time in my life when I was 19 years old, fresh faced, applying
for Amoeba records in LA and two famous shops in Long Beach. There was one nice
guy at the front counter who worked making coffee, and as he handed me an espresso
he said, ‘good luck babe but you’ll never get this job. it’s a boys club around here, try
some of the coffee shops’. There was one quirky, hipster girl sprinkled into the mix,
but I believe that was strictly for show, kink and decoration (Carly, personal inter-
view, 28 November 2018).
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Karlyn King
The woman at Rough Trade was explicitly aware of such patterns, and made a point of not
being the token woman and separating herself from judgement. However, the experience of
explicit discrimination faced by Carly shows how such stereotypes are explicitly known yet
internalised by men in such roles, exemplified by the ‘it’s a guy thing’ men from Rough Trade
West. In other words, internalised patriarchal capital in action.
When individually interviewing five masculine record collectors and three feminine record
collectors (age range 18–50, white, Glaswegian) via Facebook messenger, it was openly dis-
cussed by the women how aware they were of discrimination. Two out of the three women
mentioned, unprompted, how record collecting was coded as masculine. They described
negative shopping experiences, for example:
I once had an experience of buying a record and the man behind the counter spoke to
my boyfriend at the time about what I was buying, which was truly bizarre (Hannah,
personal interview, 6 August 2018).
Hah! Could not count on both hands how many times I’ve bought vinyl in person
and been reprimanded by men I don’t know for my choice in music. I don’t have
enough fingers (Gemma, personal interview, 6 August 2018).
The standpoint of both of these women is conscious of the coding of women as un-
knowledgeable, with the stereotype of the expert man as the dominant authority in the world
of phonograph technology. Both women are excluded from the Schauffler category (1921,
cited in Kruse 1993, p. 12) of serious music fan and denied the associated cultural capital,
despite having the required economic capital.
These findings, combined with the previous cases, raise the question of hyperawareness from
the women’s standpoint, but also suggest that some behavioural responses are non-conscious or
instinctive, such as physical distancing oneself from the situation. All of the women are clearly
conscious of the masculine bias, and I would argue that they are aware of stereotype threat.
However, Gemma sees it as a much more active, laughable and deliberate exclusion compared
to Hannah, who was surprised at being treated in such a non-inclusive way. Gemma has already
been primed to expect such exclusion.
For the men, when asked if vinyl records were affiliated with men, all five participants
denied that phonograph technology is inherently masculine. However, two participants
noted that women were equal to, or more into, vinyl than men. Two participants blamed the
overall music industry and labelled it as inherently sexist as opposed to phonograph tech-
nology. Both seemed surprised by the question and attempted to redress the balance. One
even labelling men as ‘boring’ whereas women were depicted as more enlightened on the
nature of the formats.
Overall, the men do not see phonograph technology as masculine, even though this may
be in the case in the wider music industries. They were not aware of nuanced shopping
experiences in the way that the women were. Hannah, for example, added further weight to
the notion of internalised patriarchal capital when she recalled: ‘my boyfriend didn’t even
notice until I pointed it out after. Very rarely served by a woman’ (Hannah, op. cit.). All of
the women exhibit ‘double consciousness’ (Du Bois 1903) in that they view themselves as
viable customers and the stereotypical other, whereas the men only see through the singular
masculine gaze. As argued by Inzlicht et al. (2008), the more conscious the participant is, the
more vigilant they are at discriminatory practices. The denial or reticence to acknowledge
such prejudice from the men suggests internalised patriarchal capital. When the ‘invisible
344
knapsack’ (McIntosh 2003) is brought to their attention, they respond with disbelief. The
feminine standpoint has been obscured from their consciousness.
34.7 Conclusion
In the ‘Do you know any women who use vinyl?’ Discogs Forum, identified at the opening of
this chapter, 29% of the users identified as women. Yet women are engaged with phonograph
technology as musicians, DJs, collectors and store owners even though they appear to have
minority status. The current marketing of the Crosley turntable to women is both broadening
the landscape and further embedding separatism, selling pink patterns and pastel colours to a
feminine demographic. However, empirical evidence of women engaging with phonograph
technology in the same way as men, rather than being aberrant, strengthens the argument
around the obfuscating of feminine engagement with phonograph technology outside the
traditional stereotypical realms of home adornment or a tool for child education. Internalised
patriarchal capital perpetuates phonograph technology even today. Notions of being viewed in
an equal collectorship way when it comes to phonograph technology appear to still be a long
way off. There is a need to challenge binary codes either by ‘eliminating them, bypassing them
in favour of a diverse field of gendered dispositions, or reversing the valuations associated with
them’ (McCall 1992, p. 22).
Note
1 They Might Be Giants 1988, ‘Ana Ng’, Lincoln, One Little Indian, London.
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35
CRACKS IN THE GLASS CEILING:
WOMEN CONDUCTORS, NEW
TRENDS, OLD CHALLENGES
Carolyn Watson
35.1 Introduction and background

The inspiration for this chapter was manifold. Resulting from my participation in the Dallas
Opera Hart Institute for Women Conductors (2016 and 2017) was a heightened awareness of the
challenges with which women conductors are faced. Up until that time, perhaps fortuitously, I
am doubtful I had perceived barriers hindering my chosen career path, other than those with
which all young conductors are challenged. On reflection, however, I realised that I was very
often the sole female, or one of perhaps two female conductors, in a much larger cohort of men –
in my graduate studies, at masterclasses, competitions and professional auditions.
While underlined by research, this chapter is then also borne out of personal observations
and experiences. Whenever one includes personal experiences in an academic or even quasi-
academic framework, one cannot help but wonder just how much of the ‘personal’ is exactly
that, i.e. personal? I pondered whether I might have merely stumbled across a convenient
explanation for experiences which may not necessarily be gender-related. Conversely, I also
came to question whether much-publicised bias, gender discrimination and double-standards
actually exist in the orchestral conducting field. Opinions, perceptions, personal tastes and
musical preferences are intrinsically difficult to measure or quantify and are, by their very
nature, inherently subjective.
Numerical data regarding percentages of orchestra conductors classified according to gender
does, however, evidence a clear trend. Statistics compiled by the professional organisation
governing orchestras in the USA, The League of American Orchestras, show women con-
ductors outnumbered by men in a ratio of 4:1 in a broad survey of all US orchestras (Levintova
2013). So the total percentage of female conductors working in orchestras throughout the USA
is then roughly 20%. These statistics incorporate data from approximately 800 American or-
chestras, from elite professional ensembles to much smaller-budget community groups and
youth orchestras. This data also includes substitute and assistant conductors.
The League of American Orchestra statistics measuring the gender allocation of conductors
in the 103 top-budget orchestras show a clearer tendency, with 91 male conductors and just 12
female conductors – so, less than 12%. This trend is exacerbated at the upper-most echelons
when the top 22 American orchestras, based on budget size, are analysed (ibid.). In this elite
group, there is one sole female conductor, Marin Alsop, Music Director of the Baltimore
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-35 347

Carolyn Watson
Symphony Orchestra. As the League of American Orchestras acknowledges, ‘women con-

ductors are still rare, especially in the high-status position of music director’ (Doeser 2016, p. 2).
Alsop, who also leads Vienna's Radio Symphony Orchestra, is a powerful and vocal advocate
regarding the need to address the gender disparity in orchestral conducting, and one who is
increasingly involved in the training of aspiring female conductors.
These League of American Orchestra statistics, borne out of the US orchestral environment,
are indicative of a more international and widely prevalent phenomenon. The classical music
website, Bachtrack, publishes annual reports comprising international orchestral and opera
performance data. In a similar reporting period, of the ‘Top 150’ conductors working inter-
nationally, just five are women, or roughly 3% (Bachtrack 2015). ‘Top’ in this instance cor-
relates to conductors’ work schedules, i.e. the number of performances conducted. The
situation appears even more pronounced when one considers the works of the five most
performed women composers, whereby it is necessary to consider the ‘Top 260’ before one
reaches five composers.
Significantly, the past 20 years appear to have seen only minimal progress in terms of a more
balanced gender distribution on the conductor's podium. Statistics collected in 1997 by the US-
based Symphony Orchestra Institute analysed data from The League of American Orchestras.
They reported that of the 49 largest-funded orchestras, just one had a female conductor. Of the
98 smaller orchestras, there were four women in conducting positions (Harmony – Forum of
the Symphony Orchestra Institute 1998, p. 98). From a comprehensive listing, including 425
orchestras, there were 29 female music directors or conductors, approximately 7% (ibid.). So,
while the past 20 years has seen a rise in the number of women entering the profession in
general terms, these increased numbers are apparently not observable in the numbers of women
conducting at the elite level.
Also in 1997, researcher Shirley Jagow recognised and identified possible barriers to women
entering the conducting profession. She outlined a range of recommendations which, when
implemented, one could reasonably assume would result in greater career prospects for women
conductors (Jagow 1998, pp. 141–142). In the 20 or so years since Jagow's work, there has
undoubtedly been progress. However, it appears to have been somewhat sporadic and isolated
to a number of individual cases rather than evidencing a quantum shift in perceptions of, and
attitudes towards, female conductors.
Today, one could reasonably ask: why the apparent sudden interest in female conductors? Female
conductors are not a new phenomenon. Antonia Brico (1902–89) made her professional
conducting debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 1930, before returning home to
the USA where she conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Five years earlier in 1925, British
conductor and composer Ethel Leginska (1886–1970) made her Carnegie Hall debut with the
New York Symphony Orchestra. Famed pedagogue and conductor Nadia Boulanger
(1887–1979), when questioned by a reporter about being a female conductor, responded with a
witty and succinct remark, wryly observing, ‘I’ve been a woman for a little over fifty years, and
have gotten over my initial astonishment’ (Boulanger, cited in Edwards 2015, p. 63). Boulanger
was the first woman to conduct a number of orchestras, among them the BBC Symphony,
Boston Symphony, Hallé Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
In spite of these early conductors’ pioneering efforts, the concept of the female conductor
remains still very much anomalous (Hinely 1984; Jeffries 2005; Groen 2016; Rowland 2016;
Alexander 2017). In 2013, when Marin Alsop conducted London's revered Last Night of the
Proms, the gender debate and discussion appears to have been re-ignited (see Furness 2013;
Prospero 2013; Woolfe 2013; Burton-Hill 2014). Around the same time – coincidentally
perhaps – there were a number of outspoken remarks by prominent male conductors, among
348
Cracks in the glass ceiling
them Vasily Petrenko, Yuri Temirkanov and famous conducting pedagogue, Jorma Panula.
Petrenko reportedly claimed that orchestras simply play better for men and that an attractive
female conductor on the podium causes musicians’ minds to wander (Petrenko, cited in
Higgins 2013). Temirkanov was quoted as saying women are not biologically suited to con-
ducting and that female conductors are contrary to nature because, ‘the essence of the con-
ductor's profession is strength. The essence of a woman is weakness’ (cited in Ross 2013).
Panula is also reported to have cited purported biological reasoning, claiming that women are
not suited to conducting repertoire including Bruckner and Stravinsky (cited in Gillies 2014).
In view of attitudes such as these, the path for young aspiring female conductors is seemingly
paved with greater hurdles and barriers than for young male conductors, a fact noted by Ting
(2015, p. 48), who observes that: ‘when the conductor is still young and inexperienced, more
attention would be drawn to her gender than her talents and musicianship’.
Media portrayal and attitudes towards female conductors also differ from that of their male
counterparts. As Bartleet observes, ‘they are repeatedly judged on their bodily appearance over
and above their musical capabilities’ (2008, p. 40). Concert reviews and media articles refer to,
and emphasize, physical aspects of female conductors’ appearance and/or attire, promoting a
gendered subtext. A review of a performance conducted by the researcher offers one such
example, stating:
Under the enthusiastic, precise and dynamic baton of Carolyn Watson, garbed dra-
matically in red and black [my emphasis], the Willoughby Symphony Orchestra were in
fine form with their latest concert (Lancaster 2017).
It is difficult to imagine an equivalent statement in a review for a male conductor in which they
are referred to as ‘garbed traditionally in a tuxedo’, ‘garbed handsomely in black and white’, or
‘garbed dramatically in a suit and tie’, for instance.
Media announcements and news releases regarding the appointment of a female conductor
to a new post refer to gender such that it is often the focal point of the news piece. Headlines
such as ‘Xian Zhang Makes Conducting History as First Woman to Have Titled Role at BBC
Orchestra’ (Service 2015), ‘Minnesota Orchestra Names its Second-Ever Woman Conductor’
(Ross 2017) and ‘Marin Alsop Appointed First Female Artistic Director of Top Vienna
Orchestra’ (Conolly 2018), serve to reinforce the existing view of the female conductor as an
outlier. When the researcher secured a full-time conducting position at a prestigious American
institution, the media release referred to the appointment of the first woman in this role as ‘a
momentous occasion’ (Interlochen Center for the Arts 2013). Conversely, one does not ty-
pically find parallel news articles regarding the appointment of a male conductor in which his
gender warrants mention or is attributed such a degree of importance.
Clearly, there are inherent biological differences between the bodies of men and women
and, indeed, the traditional physical image of a strong male leader is well-aligned with the
accepted and stereotypical view of ‘the maestro’. The historical notion of women and their
bodies, however, is not generally associated with strength or leadership. Rather, the prevailing
view is a diametrically opposed one – women have been viewed as delicate, petite, fragile and
demure. Bartleet (2002, p. 51) offers an explanation for this apparent antithetical paradigm:
Due to historical and societal precedence, men have had the power to develop the
role of the conductor. The discourses that surround and inform it are saturated with
masculine values, and therefore, the masculine gendered body and its associated be-
haviour are understood as being the norm. A female conductor, then, is defined by
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Carolyn Watson
her difference to the masculine norm. On the gendered podium ‘male’ is the un-
marked category and ‘female’ the marked. Woman is perceived as ‘Other’.
So, as a result of this traditional gender construct, women have not generally been assumed
capable of showing strength, or to be a powerful, charismatic leader in the same way as men.
Furthermore, the very presence of a woman on the podium appears contrary to the generally
accepted job description. For the aspiring female conductor, this presents an obvious challenge,
for despite the passage of time, ‘our society still associates leadership with primarily masculine
traits and characteristics’ (Edwards 2015, p. 1).
Somewhat paradoxically however, criticism is often directed at women who are perceived
to be bold, confident or assertive – traits commonly associated with successful male leaders.
Such apparent double-standards exemplify the additional hurdles of aspiring female conductors
when measured against their male colleagues, as Daniela Maran explains:
[T]he more a woman violates the standards for her gender – by being a very assertive
and commanding leader, for example – the more she may be penalized by prejudiced
reactions: the behavior of a woman conductor is more likely to be criticized than the
same behavior of a male conductor would be (Maran, cited in Ting 2015, p. 41).
Confidence and the ability to be assertive are key for any conductor along with associated
leadership abilities. For female conductors, however, the orchestral podium appears to be a
veritable minefield of perceptions, societal conventions and unconscious bias – aspects of which
one needs to remain mindful but also able to successfully navigate. This vexing issue is described
well by Bartleet (2002, p. 55), who explains:
Success for women trying to fit into certain roles and combat this discrimination
currently depends on how they mitigate against their gender. It is clear that the
conducting profession not only expects women to desexualise themselves, but then
requires them to masculinise their appearance, their gestures and their leadership
methods.
In a similar vein, the conducting gestures of women are often viewed and interpreted differently
than those of men. Marin Alsop explains:
If I am very strong to you as woman, people say “oh she's a bitch”… “oh my god she's
too macho”, but if a man does that people melt “Oh, he's so manly”. If a woman is
very frilly and delicate they say “oh it's too lightweight, it's too feminine”. If a man's
like that he's “sensitive” (Alsop, cited in Bartleet 2008, p. 41).
As Edwards (2015, p. 82) articulates: ‘[c]onducting gestures are not inherently gendered;
however, due to social conventions, some conducting gestures may be perceived differently
when performed by a woman as opposed to a man’. So, simply appropriating the gestures used
by male conductors is not a strategy which will necessarily guarantee success for female
conductors.
Additional challenges faced by female conductors are apparently harsher judgements and
criticisms, and more intense scrutiny i.e. women are held to higher standards than men.
Australian conductor Simone Young was offered the following advice: ‘As a young conductor
… standing in front of an orchestra for the first time … you have got about ten minutes to
350
prove yourself…. If you are a woman, you have got about two’ (Young, cited in Bartleet 2002,
p. 55). Along with Simone Young, Marin Alsop has acknowledged being subjected to much
more intense public scrutiny than her male colleagues (ibid.), and in research conducted by
Edwards, 40% of survey respondents who were professional orchestral musicians agreed that
‘women have to overcome rather than just meet conducting expectations’ (2015, p. 122).
Furthermore, and not unexpectedly, teachers of conducting, professional role models and
mentors, are almost exclusively male, meaning that young female conductors are being taught
how to move and communicate physically with their bodies by someone whose own physi-
cality and corporeal experience is markedly different. The increasing number of training
programmes for women conductors is, in part, responding to this aspect in offering female
conductors as teachers, role models and mentors.
35.2 Training programmes and professional initiatives

In addition to Shirley Jagow, others over the course of the past 20 years have identified a clear
and tangible need to take action in order to redress the gender imbalance in orchestral con-
ducting. The first such women-only opportunity, the Taki Concordia Fellowship, was es-
tablished in 2002 and selects one conductor every two years for a professional industry
apprenticeship. This pioneering programme, established by Marin Alsop, has recently been
expanded, due to the increasingly competitive standard of applications, to now also include two
associate fellows and those recognised with honourable mentions. Originally choosing one
conductor each year, the Taki Concordia Fellowship was modified to a more comprehensive,
two-year experience in 2011, encompassing rehearsal observation, conducting lessons, men-
toring and professional conducting opportunities.
The Linda and Mitch Hart Institute for Women Conductors (IWC), sponsored by The
Dallas Opera, was established in 2015. With funding secured to host the Institute for the next
20 years, the IWC, in championing the work of women conductors, has the potential to put
more than a few cracks in the proverbial glass ceiling. While the Dallas programme is still in its
infancy, the signals are certainly encouraging, with the numbers of applicants increasing with
each successive class:
IWC 2015 – 103 applicants from 27 countries

From these international applications, six conductors are selected along with four American
observers who audit all aspects of the course but do not conduct. Alongside masterclass op-
portunities with leading opera specialists, the IWC offers a comprehensive professional de-
velopment programme covering aspects such as obtaining management, dealing with a board of
directors, the workings of non-profit organisations, along with sessions on marketing, image,
press/publicity and social media – essentially, the business of conducting. Conductors present
public performances with The Dallas Opera orchestra and singers, and are guaranteed high-
quality professional video recording and promotion of their work – a tremendous asset in
securing auditions for professional positions. The IWC is, however, much more than an in-
tensive two-week course. The Dallas Opera guarantees a five-year commitment to each
conductor, with a subsequent annual professional development and networking session along
with ongoing mentorship and career advice. Furthermore, previous Institute conductors have
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Carolyn Watson
been invited back as assistant conductors, conductors and coaches to work with The Dallas
Opera (see Laughlin 2016; Svokos 2019).
Established in 2014 as Women Conductors @ Morley by conductor Alice Farnham and
Andrea Brown, this UK training programme, now rebranded as Women Conductors with the
Royal Philharmonic Society, offers a series of short courses for interested, young female mu-
sicians. Each course is led by an established conductor, with recent teachers including Jessica
Cottis, Sian Edwards, Jane Glover, Julia Jones, Sarah Tenant-Flowers, Rebecca Miller and
Andrea Quinn (see also Mitic 2015; Quinn 2016). Grouped in two stages, the initial Phase One
is an exploratory course for women aged 16–19, or full-time students, with the aim of in-
troducing conducting. Phase Two is a more advanced programme which focuses on a particular
genre such as opera, ballet, choral conducting or orchestral conducting. All courses are held as a
two-day weekend workshop event.
London's Southbank Centre offers an annual masterclass opportunity exclusively for con-
ductors led by Marin Alsop. Established in 2016, this workshop culminates in a public per-
formance with the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Southbank Centre. This masterclass is part of
a broader effort by the Southbank Centre to highlight the work of talented female artists in its
Women in Music series. Also in London, Sian Edwards, Head of Conducting at The Royal
Academy of Music, was instrumental in establishing the Sorrell Women Conductors
Programme in 2018. Designed at bridging the gap between undergraduate and postgraduate
study, this training scheme seeks to encourage young women to consider conducting studies,
and identify those potentially suitable to undertake a degree specialisation at a Master's level. A
US organisation offering conducting training, The New York Conducting Institute, has also
established an annual International Women's Conducting Workshop which in 2017 was led by
Diane Wittry, and in 2018 by Janna Hymes.
Concurrent with the growth in training programmes and opportunities for aspiring women
conductors has been the establishment of a number of significant initiatives by major per-
forming arts organisations aimed at supporting gender parity in conducting. The Royal Opera
House, as part of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme, has begun women-only training
courses for aspiring opera and ballet conductors. In 2018, Welsh National Opera announced the
creation of a new position, Female Conductor-in-Residence. In the same year, Ireland's
National Concert Hall Female Conductor Programme was inaugurated, a ten-month pro-
gramme under the artistic leadership of Alice Farnham culminating in a public performance
with the RTE Symphony Orchestra.
Similar developments can also be observed in the USA and internationally. In 2018, the
Dallas Symphony Orchestra announced a comprehensive Women in Classical Music initiative
which included: the appointment of a female Principal Guest Conductor; a ten-year pro-
gramme to commission at least ten works from female composers; an annual symposium and a
career advancement award (see Richard 2018). The New York Philharmonic also launched a
large-scale initiative, Project 19, to celebrate the centenary of the 19th Amendment – granting
women the right to vote – by commissioning works from 19 female composers. New York
Philharmonic CEO Deborah Borda was also instrumental in establishing the inaugural La
Maestra Conducting Competition, the first exclusively for women conductors, held in Paris
in 2020.
Again one may reasonably ask, are these female-only training programmes, apprenticeships and
career-development initiatives necessary or perhaps even the way forward? (see also Ting 2016).
Opinion appears divided on the merits of imposing an arguably ‘unnatural’ selection by removing
half the population in offering these opportunities to women only. Some validly counter that in
the professional world, women have to compete with men for positions, so it is perhaps
352
somewhat counter-intuitive excluding them at any level. When one considers aspects of gender
inequality from a historical perspective, however, affirmative action-type approaches have re-
sulted in dramatic corrections and reform – the right to vote, right to own property, equal
employment rights.
Certainly, it is likely that continued focus and increasing awareness regarding the lack of
gender equality in orchestral conducting will result in the issue remaining topical. Women-only
conducting training courses featuring female conductors and pedagogues will likely be instru-
mental in inspiring and encouraging generations of young women to consider conducting.
Additionally, by nurturing these young female conductors in a ‘safe’ environment, there exists the
potential for them to gain and develop confidence – a trait typically evidenced in greater
quantities in men than in women, and one far less likely to be developed in a predominantly male
environment. With increasing numbers of women on prominent podiums internationally, en-
joying major guest conducting opportunities as well as leading graduate courses in conducting in
institutions across the globe, the proportion of female role models will continue to grow. In the
words of Marin Alsop on being feted as the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms,
‘here's to the seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths and hundreds to come’ (cited in Furness 2013).
List of training programmes and opportunities for women conductors

La Maestra, Competition and Academy for Women Conductors:
https://lamaestra-paris.com/?lang=en
National Concert Hall Female Conductor Programme:

https://www.nch.ie/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=
Female-Conductors-Programme&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=
New York Conducting Institute:

http://www.newyorkconductinginstitute.org/why_womens_conducting_workshops.html
Royal Academy of Music Sorrell Women Conductors Programme:

https://www.ram.ac.uk/recordings/sorrell-women-conductors-programme
Royal Opera House Jette Parker Young Artists Programme:

https://www.roh.org.uk/about/jette-parker-young-artists-
programme/opportunities/opportunities-for-women-conductors
Southbank Centre Women in Music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy8p5JdEHvU&index=1&list=PL_WY1qgYdw5ml095
jyLfUhzQ10kHZHlsp&t=1s
Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship:

https://takiconcordia.org/
The Linda and Mitch Hart Institute for Women Conductors, The Dallas Opera:
https://dallasopera.org/community/artist-development/hart-institute/
Welsh National Opera Female Conductor in Residence:

https://wno.org.uk/take-part/female-conductor-in-residence
353
Carolyn Watson
Women Conductors with The Royal Philharmonic Society:

https://royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk/performers/women-conductors
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36
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE OF
WOMEN’S LITURGICAL
LEADERSHIP AS MUSICIANS IN
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC
CHURCH
Frances Novillo
My experience leading music in Roman Catholic worship has encompassed parishes, churches,
schools and large-scale events, including Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI at Cofton Park
in 2010. This chapter reflects my own experience, compared and contrasted with the ex-
periences recorded in interviews held in 2017 with other women who work as musicians in
Roman Catholic liturgy (i.e. public and communal Catholic worship following a prescribed
ritual pattern, most commonly the Mass). The interview questions and summary of the in-
terview participants and process are presented at the end of this chapter.
In the Roman Catholic Church, both men and women are permitted to work as musicians
but only men can be ordained priests. The Church is governed by an exclusively male hierarchy
of ordained clergy who preside in liturgy, and antipathy towards the gender debate is illustrated
when the Church refutes the very term ‘gender’ (Case 2016), and expresses mistrust of, and
opposition to, feminism (Louden and Francis 2003, p. 151; Oppenheim 2019, quoting Pope
Francis speaking in February 2019). Nevertheless, reconsiderations of women’s place in the
Church persist,1 and so exploration of women’s access to liturgical leadership is timely. How
musical skill may enable such access appears to be under-researched, so even the small-scale
personal reflections presented here make a useful contribution in this area.
Musical talent permits women to contribute significantly to Catholic worship and permits
women to share liturgical leadership in a manner inaccessible to non-musical women. At Mass,
women (and men) may: prepare the worship venue; welcome congregants as they arrive; serve
the clergy during the Mass; proclaim Scripture (although not the Gospel); offer bread and wine;
distribute Communion (where there are insufficient clergy available to do so); sing, play in-
struments, or direct music. Catholic music leaders commonly choose the hymns everyone sings
together as prayer at Mass (Turner 2015, p. 21). And hymns influence theology (ibid., p. 31), so
in those many churches where the music leader is a woman, women (as musicians) choose
356 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-36

Women’s liturgical leadership as musicians
words for Catholic worship, shaping the theology of the Catholic community. Even in churches
which restrict their texts for singing to the prayers of the Mass, Psalms and Antiphons prescribed
by the Church, the musical setting is usually chosen by the music director, and even where
music for Mass is chosen by the priest, the delivery (tempo, emphasis on certain words, etc.) is
decided by the music director: thus, he or she influences both how Catholics pray in song and
the mood of this prayer.
Phenomenological investigation, however limited in scale, recording women’s work in
Catholic Church music is worthwhile because it builds up a fuller and more accurate picture of
the Church in which the current dominant image of Catholic liturgical leadership is exclusively
male – thereby rendering women’s contribution invisible (Schussler Fiorenza and Collins
1985). As Enya, one of my interviewees, said: ‘a room-full of men dressed in black – that’s the
picture of the Church’ (Enya, personal interview, 5 July 2017). However, drawing attention to
women’s contribution in this area may not be in our best interests. Within Catholicism, music is
famously described as ‘the handmaid of the liturgy’,2 but Margaret Attwood’s Attwood 1985
dystopian novel (1985), expanded and extended in the recent TV series The Handmaid’s Tale
(2017–21), reveals the complex dynamics at play in a male-dominated culture where women
serve. Their subservience, albeit anonymising, assumes significance which may be threatening
to the established social order.
In 2017, I held semi-structured interviews with seven women working professionally as
musicians in Catholic churches and cathedrals across England. All seven women I interviewed
generate the musical sound of Catholic worship, either by playing or singing themselves, or
conducting others who do so. Six of the seven women choose the music used at Mass, guided
by: the content of the Mass fixed for that day in the Lectionary and Missal; any theme allocated
to the Sunday by a charity or the Church (such as Education Sunday or the Day for Life); the
season in the liturgical calendar; the capability of those who sing and accompany the pieces
(including their current repertoire and the time required and available to learn something new);
the qualities of the building; the musical style expected for a particular Mass; and Catholic
theology.
Fewer than half of the interview participants are visible to the congregation during the
liturgy, since most lead music from balconies at the back of their buildings. However, more
than half address the congregation from the front of the church before Mass regularly or oc-
casionally, to introduce new music and invite the congregation to participate in singing.
Additional communication with the congregation may take the form of: inviting new recruits
to join the choirs (Enya, interview, 5 July 2017); announcing choir events (Abigail, personal
interview, 6 June 2017); asking worshippers not to take photos, introducing visiting priests
(Oriana, personal interview, 19 July 2017); or explaining the route around the church to re-
ceive Communion, especially when a number of visitors are present (Sara, personal interview, 1
August 2017). Some of the musicians I interviewed lead music from the front standing to one
side, and so are visible to the congregation throughout Mass. From this position they can also
‘direct traffic’ (Sara, interview, op. cit.), and gesture to the congregation as necessary to indicate
when to stand and sit and kneel (Jade, personal interview, 12 July 2017; Oriana, interview,
op. cit.).
About half of the interview participants considered themselves to be liturgical leaders at
Mass, and among those who didn’t think of themselves in that way, one acknowledged that she
was nonetheless ‘enhancing the liturgy for the congregation’ (Abigail, interview, op. cit.).
Another recognised that her music had a powerful effect on worshippers and could enable
people to pray, be uplifted or release grief (Jade, interview, op. cit.). Sara expanded on this,
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Frances Novillo
saying that musicians have a ‘sensitivity to mood and atmosphere which aids prayer’ (Sara,
interview, op. cit.).
In summary then, the women I interviewed influence Catholic worship and worshippers by:
undertaking the musical tasks of choosing words and music for sung prayer; using music to set
and vary the mood of worship; inviting the congregation to join in singing, and teaching them
new songs. Some of these women undertake further non-musical tasks, communicating with
worshippers before and during the liturgy. It is my experience that working as a liturgical
musician marks me out to worshippers as a leader during liturgy, to whom congregants then
turn not only for leadership in sung prayers, but also in the spoken congregational responses,
postures and gestures of ritual, and practical guidance (e.g. where to find the service sheets, and
where to park cars or push-chairs).
Framing a snapshot of the current contribution of women musicians to Catholic liturgical
leadership, as this chapter does, could aid either side of the debate about women’s place and role
in the Church. The debate polarises between complementarians and egalitarians (Esqueda
2018). Musical skill permitting women to share liturgical leadership with male leaders (other
musicians and clergy) accords with the Biblical model in which Miriam shared leadership with
Moses and Aaron (Micah 6:4; Exodus 15). This is a complementary model in which Miriam’s
musical skill and gender set parameters for her leadership distinct from men’s leadership.
Church history illustrates this model through the example of female religious figures (nuns or
abbesses, for example) leading liturgy for many centuries in their own convents, including the
very musically talented Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179). These women were permitted to
take responsibility within their own religious orders, and to be musically and liturgically
creative within those orders (Malone 2014, p. 66), while remaining accountable to the local
(male) bishops who represented the wider Church. As in other instances of gender com-
plementarity, the relationship was hierarchical (Ward 2008, p. 17), with the ordained male
priest the senior partner holding the power. Interview participants (Enya; Abigail; Sara) ob-
served that their work as musicians in the Church is entirely dependent on good working
relationships with male priests who hold the authority and overall leadership responsibilities in
their churches. Melanie (personal interview, 26 July 2017) discovered this to her cost when
trying to raise complaints about suffering discrimination.
Participants’ descriptions of the ways in which their work overlaps with the work of priests
in leading liturgy could be used as evidence for the effectiveness of women undertaking li-
turgical leadership, and this could, therefore, form part of the argument promoting women’s
equality with men as liturgical leaders in the Catholic Church. The work of female musicians in
the Roman Catholic Church demonstrates both that women are capable of performing some of
the liturgical duties of ordained ministers, and that congregants are willing to accept women’s
leadership during Mass. The areas of overlap between music leaders and priests at Mass iden-
tified in the interviews included: choosing words which help people pray (Enya); interpreting
the readings to bring them to life (Maddie, personal interview, 7 July 2017); leading liturgical
responses (Maddie); expressing appropriately in liturgy pastoral awareness of parishioners’
personal needs (Oriana); leading worship (Jade), and presenting a common vision and common
message in the preaching and the music. Noting similarities between the roles of priest and
liturgical music leader, Maddie and Jade commented that:
as a priest offers their interpretation of the readings and brings it to life … to inspire
the congregation, it’s also the responsibility of the musician to inspire the con-
gregation and bring the Word of God to life, inspire prayer and reflection, and that’s
358
also the priest’s role as well as to lead the practicalities of liturgy, … to lead the sung
responses just as the priest leads the prayer … it might be different words … but it’s
the same role (Maddie, op. cit.).
the music leader has a responsibility to help people to worship the same way as a priest
does and to uplift people or calm people depending on what the service is (Jade,
op. cit.).
But Sara acknowledged that overlapping responsibilities can cause tension in the clergy/mu-
sician relationship (Sara, op. cit.). This may affect both male and female musicians, but inter-
view participants described the Church as an ‘old boys’ club’ and believed that if they were
male they would have been encouraged and permitted to make more progress in their pro-
fession (Oriana, op. cit.; Jade, op. cit.).
Ambivalence expressed by interviewees about their visibility and influence during Mass may
result from priests’ perception that liturgical music leaders encroach on the clergy’s area of
work. It is hard to say whether this relates to gender: there is also a continuing clear distinction
between clergy and lay people in the Catholic Church (Louden and Francis 2003, p. 76, re-
ferring to Mannix 2000). In 1997, lay people’s activity alongside priests was questioned and
effectively curtailed in the document ‘Instruction on Certain Questions Regarding the
Collaboration of the non-Ordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of Priest’ (Catholic Church
1997). Enya (op. cit.) detailed a specific incident in which the place she chose to stand to lead
music at Mass effectively was interpreted negatively by an ordained minister as seeking a po-
sition which was not hers to claim. Maddie (op. cit.) also discussed how carefully she considers
where to stand when leading music at Mass. Such concerns may be unrelated to sharing lea-
dership space and may rather, or additionally, indicate an appropriate pious concern not to
obstruct the rightful focus on the sanctuary and the altar during Mass. Jade’s ambivalence about
the impact of her work as a musician at Mass was expressed when she recognised her work
influenced worshippers’ feelings during Mass, but she immediately mitigated this, saying that
‘was the music, not me’ (Jade, op. cit.).
Individual anecdotal accounts of sexism shared in the interviews indicate that the Church
could do more to be welcoming and inclusive of women’s ministry and music. However,
recognising the significance of the work of women as musicians in the Church may not in-
evitably lead to gender parity or more opportunities for women in liturgical leadership. Indeed,
describing any of the musicians’ work as liturgical leadership might be perceived as an en-
croachment on the territory of male priests. There is ‘sexism in the fact that we work with
clergy who aren’t comfortable with women in authority in the church’ (Sara, op. cit.).
Furthermore, as lay people have increasingly taken on the task of choosing music for worship,
liturgical commentator Father Paul Turner has acknowledged that this has shifted ‘the place of
authority’ (Turner 2015, p. 21). Such shifts can be interpreted by the clerical hierarchy as
threatening, and even in recent liturgical history there are examples of the Church responding
in a defensive and restrictive manner to such perceived threats. In the early 1990s, significant
Christian denominations, including the Church of England, were moving towards the ordi-
nation of women as priests. Women’s advancing position and activity in the Catholic Church
were also attracting attention and recognition (see Byrne 1994; Louden and Francis 2003,
p. 156, referring to Wallace 1993). However, the Vatican did not celebrate such developments.
In response, Pope John Paul II issued Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (Priestly Ordination) in 1994, which
reiterated that priestly ordination is exclusive to men, and prohibited discussion of women’s
ordination (Pope John Paul II 1994).
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Frances Novillo
The overall tone of the document on lay ministry previously cited (Catholic Church
1997) is appreciative of the contribution of lay people undertaking certain roles only
where no priest is available to assume these roles. The now common sight and sound of
women working as musicians in Catholic churches may be attributable to the declining
ability and availability over recent decades of priests who can undertake musical tasks.
Interview participants mostly concurred that their authority to act as liturgical leaders
derives from their musical talent, training and experience, which is perhaps accepted by
the Church solely since the musical ability of priests is insufficient to meet the demands of
the liturgy or expectations of the worshippers. In 1967, an influential Vatican document
entitled Musicam Sacram (Sacred Music) assumed that priests active in ministry at that time
could, and would, sing at Mass (Sacred Congregation of Rites 1967, para.8), and gave
priority among the stratified significance of the many musical prayers sung at Mass to those
led by the priest (ibid., para.7, para.29). By contrast, Pope Francis’s statement issued in
2017 to celebrate 50 years since Musicam Sacram made much more of the music sung by the
congregation and led by lay ministers at Mass (Pope Francis 2017). In the intervening
decades, liturgical documents have increasingly promoted congregational singing and
singing by the choir and cantor (see Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales
2005, para.76), and musical priorities at Mass have evolved to reflect this (ibid., para.77,
para.89).
Across the same half-century time-span, official prohibitions and discouragement directed
against women working as musicians in Catholic churches have diminished. For example,
Musicam Sacram expressed a preference for male choristers, permitting women’s participation in
church choirs as a less preferable option and only if they didn’t enter the sanctuary (Sacred
Congregation of Rites 1967, para.22, para.23). The General Instruction on the Roman Missal
permitted priests to allow women to undertake ministries outside the sanctuary (Catholic
Church 1975, para.70). However, it did not repeat any previous statements on whether choir
members should be male or female. When this General Instruction was revised, prohibitions on
women entering the sanctuary and preferences for men to undertake certain liturgical lay
ministries had disappeared (Catholic Church 2002 & 2005, para.100 ff.).
Musicians in the Church may now be male or female, although clergy attitudes towards
men and women might differ (Louden and Francis 2003, pp. 78–79), and may be informed
by Biblical exegesis and tradition which promotes male headship and mitigates against
women’s leadership (Ward 2008, pp. 37, 44; Esqueda 2018). Formal restrictions on wo-
men’s ministry as musicians have lifted, but the patriarchal culture remains (Hoose 2002,
p. 8). Women contribute most to the leadership of Catholic liturgy when they are working
in the Church as liturgical musicians. It is important to observe and record this as it cur-
rently occurs because Catholic liturgy is perceived to be governed exclusively by ordained
men. It matters for the future because the shortage of priests is an ongoing problem, and lay
liturgical leaders are considered among many potential solutions.3 However, I see little
evidence that musicians’ current contribution to liturgy is recognised by the Church as
liturgical leadership; the 1997 document on lay leadership doesn’t specifically mention
music, for example. As this chapter demonstrates, however, those who bring their musical
skill into service in the Church also possess, or acquire through experience, the skills to
select appropriate words for worship, invite people to pray collectively, set a suitable mood
for communal prayer and lead worshippers confidently, competently, yet unobtrusively – all
vital skills for leading liturgy.
Musical skill gives women a voice in Catholic liturgy. It makes us audible in our singing or
playing, and enables us to choose words for worshippers to pray in song, giving us the
360
opportunity to teach others publicly to sing their prayers. However, the Catholic Church really
isn’t sure if it wants to hear women’s voices. A recent worldwide Synod on the Family held in
Rome involved over 350 participants discussing Catholic doctrine affecting both men and
women, but only 32 of those participants were women, and none were afforded voting rights
(Glatz 2015). Women’s work as musicians leading Catholics in public and communal prayer, if
it is noticed at all, is perceived very much as a mixed blessing.
The interview questions, process (summarised) and

participants (anonymised)
Enya, Abigail, Oriana, Sara, Jade, Melanie, Maddie are pseudonyms given to the women who
participated in the interviews. These women were identified as suitable participants in this study
as professional colleagues already known to the author, or through webpages listing music staff
at Catholic churches and Cathedrals across England. Each woman was invited individually to
participate. Each participant was interviewed once for around an hour at a mutually convenient
time and place. The interviews were audio-recorded for the researcher’s ears only, and written
notes were taken by the researcher during each interview. Participants were informed they
could withdraw from participation at any time or choose to refuse to reply to any question in
which case they would not need to justify any refusal to reply. Participants were not paid for
their interviews. Participants consented to the material from their interviews being used
anonymously in any report (private or published) arising from the research.
Section I: Your role as a musician at Mass

1. What is your role at Sunday Mass? (As a musician? – only ask this if she doesn’t refer to
music initially)
2. Do you work at a church or Cathedral?
3. Is this a paid position?
a. What is your job title? Do you consider yourself to be a professional musician?
b. Who is your employer? Did you go through a formal process of application for
the job?
c. Do you have a job description? May I have a copy? How does your actual work
resemble or differ from this job description?
d. What percentage of your overall income comes from this work?
e. If you have another significant source of income, do you ever provide music for
worship in the course of that other job? (e.g. chaplain, teacher, youth worker, etc.)
4. Is this a voluntary position?
a. Did you volunteer for this role? Did somebody ask you to do it?
b. Do you have a written agreement about what you will do? May I have a copy? How
does your actual work differ from what’s written here?
c. If you also undertake paid work, do you ever provide music for worship in the course
of that job? (e.g. chaplain, teacher, youth worker, etc.)
5. Do you choose the music for Mass?
a. What informs your choice?
b. Do you think the musician or the priest should choose the music?
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Frances Novillo
6. Where do you stand/sit during Mass?

a. Are you visible/audible to the worshippers?
7. Do you speak to the congregation before or during Mass?
a. Where do you stand to do this?
b. What kind of things do you say?
8. Do you give any non-musical guidance to the congregation during Mass, for example,
leading to Communion or indicating when to stand/sit/kneel?
9. How do you relate to other ministers during Mass, including clergy and lay ministers?
(e.g. talking/watching/reminding each other if something’s been forgotten)
10. Do you teach anyone else to do any of these things?
Section II: Leadership in liturgy

1. Who’s involved in leading liturgy where you worship?
2. What’s the priest’s role in liturgy where you worship?
3. Is there anything that only the priest can do in liturgy?
4. Is there anything that only a musician can do in liturgy?
5. Do you think there’s any overlap between the responsibilities of the priest and the music
leader in worship?
6. Do you think you are a liturgical leader? If yes, in what way/where does your authority to
lead come from? If no, why not?
7. Which liturgical leaders inspire you to do your work in liturgy well?
Section III: Gender

1. Is your gender a factor in your ministry? Are you conscious of yourself as a woman when
you undertake your role in liturgy?
2. Have you ever experienced sexism in your work as a church musician?
3. Do you think there’s any difference between the way men and women undertake work as
church musicians?
4. The Roman Catholic priesthood is reserved exclusively to men. What do you think
about that?
5. The Vatican is currently considering the possibility of women deacons. If that possibility
were open to women, would you consider undertaking it?
Section IV: Variables and bias

1. What do you know about the work that I do?
2. Are you a cradle Catholic? If not, when did you convert and from which faith/no faith,
and were you a musician in your previous religion/no religion?
3. Have you always been a practising Catholic?
4. When did you start providing music in Catholic worship?
5. Year of birth: Place of birth:
6. Years lived in England/Wales:
7. Are you trans or cis female?
8. Have you felt able to be honest with me in your answers? If not, why not?
Is there anything more you want to say?
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Notes
1 In Glatz (2015), and more recently during the Amazon Synod in October 2019. See, for example,
Vatican News, 23 October 2019, available from: www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2019-10/
amazon-synod-briefing-role-of-women-inculturation-synodality.html.
2 A much used and misused metaphor but probably derived from the Motu Proprio promulgated
by Pope Pius X on 22 November 1903, in particular, ‘vii. The length of the liturgical chant’
(Pope Pius X 1903).
3 See, for example, the Diocese of Brentwood’s ‘Stewards of the Gospel’ initiative, available from
https://www.dioceseofbrentwood.net/departments/development/stewards-of-the-gospel/.
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37
RE-MAPPING AND CONNECTING
BODIES OF WOMEN MUSICIANS
37.1 Introduction
I am a percussionist and, in 2011, I started a certification in Body Mapping. I was fascinated by
finding things about my body that I had never thought of before and that I could apply into my
playing. After some years, my questioning went beyond the anatomy and physiology of the body,
and I started wondering if the characteristics of my body’s movement were related to my education.
Was I moving like ‘this’ because I am a woman? In order to investigate this, I started doing a
master’s degree in gender studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland. This chapter is based
on my research ‘Re-Mapping the Body: Feminine Experience in Music Performance’ (Sanchez
Diaz 2016), and ‘Connecting Bodies’, a workbook created as part of the same research. The
research in this chapter links three fields: music performance, Body Mapping and feminism. The
purpose is to investigate, through feminist lenses, in what ways gender stereotypes, specifically
femininity, affect body perception and movement and the performances of women classical mu
sicians. I am also interested in the effects of studying Body Mapping for this specific group.
I gathered the stories that appear here in interviews with six participants, and in the entries of a
journal, since I also used autoethnography as a method in my research. My voice is present as a
researcher and also as a percussionist. All participants are female, professional musicians from North
America, their ages ranging from mid-twenties to late fifties and, at the time, they were either Body
Mapping trainees or recently licenced. Claire plays violin; Jessica, oboe; Beth, flute; Theresa, piano;
Alicia sings; and Melanie plays flute and conducts. All of them teach at universities or privately. The
topics of our conversations included their perception of gender, their experiences about their body,
Body Mapping and musical performances. In this chapter, I begin by explaining the Body Mapping
method and how it is taught. I then address gender as a concept and how it permeates musical
performances. The third part explores how femininity, body movement and space are related in
music making. Finally, I consider the effects of the ‘ideal’ feminine body on music performance. I
am grateful to the women who participated and shared their stories for my research.
37.2 Body Mapping

Body Mapping is a somatic method that was first developed by William and Barbara Conable in
1970. William Conable, a cello teacher, noticed that his students moved according to their anatomical
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-37 365

and physiological perception of their own bodies (Conable and Conable 2000; Johnson 2009;
Woodard 2009). Barbara Conable further developed the method by writing about it and teaching it.
She also created the Association for Body Mapping Education (formerly Andover Educators), an
organisation dedicated to helping musicians to find ease in their movements while playing, and to
avoid injuries. According to William Conable, we have all registered information about our bodies in
terms of size, shape and the different functions, and we move according to these ideas, which can be
correct or not (Conable 1995, p. 128). These ideas, however, are not fixed, and research investigating
people with neurological disorders has shown that the body maps can change (Nichols 2009, p. 209).
Thus, with changes in the body maps, different and healthy movements can be learned.
In Body Mapping we examine what we believe to be true about our body and compare this to
accurate physiological information (Conable and Conable 2000, p. 5). Some of the tools that Body
Mapping uses are anatomy images, anatomical models and explorations of the own body and
movements, sometimes by using palpation (Mark 2003; Johnson 2009). For example, look at your
right thumb and then compare it to the one in the image in Figure 37.1. Notice that the thumb has
three bones and three joints and palpate them. Has your idea about your thumb’s size changed?
Figure 37.1 Bones in the Right Hand and Wrist by Holly Fischer.
(Image by Holly Fischer © Association for Body Mapping Education / ABME, used with permission)
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Re-mapping bodies of women musicians
As described by Barbara Conable, Body Mapping focuses on teaching musicians how to gain
access to their body maps and transform them through self-observation and self-enquiry
(Conable and Conable 2000, p. 5). However, Mark emphasized that acquiring anatomical
information is not enough to transform the body maps; the information needs to be integrated
and to be experienced within the body (Mark 2003, pp. 11–12). In the last decade, the concept of
the ‘self map’ has emerged in Body Mapping discussions. Barbara Conable (2015) explained the
self map as a concept to question if musicians identify themselves as artists, and if they are
committed to playing like artists; however, it is not clear in what ways practitioners can in
tegrate this concept. My question is: what, if not social aspects, can be limiting musicians to
consider themselves as artists? Within a social theory frame, Cregan (2006) and Farnell (2012)
argued that embodiment is related to the culture and social interactions in different societies.
Thus, we cannot disconnect the physical body and what happens around it because they are
entangled. Gender is a concept that lives in our minds. Therefore, part of changing the per
ception of the body can also include identifying its social construction.
37.3 Gender
Second-wave feminists described sex as the biological differences between men and women and
gender as the sets of cultural attributes of both (McDowell and Sharp 1997, p. 201), meaning
the different ways to dress, move and behave. Meanwhile, Young identified gender as a self-
concept and behaviour, and sex as ‘anatomy and physiology’ (2005, p. 13). According to several
scholars, femininity is constructed within a society by rules and expectations which are learned
behaviours (Butler 1988, 1999; Bartky 1990; Young 2005; Beauvoir 2011). In The Second Sex,
Beauvoir questioned what a woman is. She suggested that women are defined in relation to
men and not as independent beings, and therefore become the ‘Other’ (2011, p. 6). She also
argued that women are not only Other to men, but they are also Other to themselves. Over the
years, women get used to being defined in relation to men and they accept, participate and
recreate this belief. The statement, ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, woman’ (ibid.,
p. 283), reflects this. According to Beauvoir, biological characteristics are not what define a
woman, but rather the ideas and rules of femininity are defined within a society.
Judith Butler considers gender as a performance, behaviours that people repeat and reinforce
through time, and that these norms establish ideals and rules of proper masculinity and femi
ninity (1999, p. xxiii). She has also stated that gender transformation is possible when there is a
disruption in these rules (Butler 1988, p. 520). In other words, it is possible to subvert the
norms when sex and the performance of a gender do not relate to each other. If we understand
gender as behaviour and a performance, we can acknowledge that people learn and perform
femininity and masculinity.
37.4 In music settings

There are several instances of how the definitions of gender permeate musical settings – for
example, in the way that people choose an instrument or in the repertoire that they choose to
play. Theresa considers herself feminine and expressed her belief that music is gendered. She
explained what she considers to be masculine repertoire:
A big build-up, a big crescendo to a big moment that is excitement…. Whereas the
feminine endings [or repertoire] are ones that have kind of this sustained enjoyment
across the entire, entirety of the phrase and has kind of a gentle ending. And the more
367
I look at my repertoire, the more I see this … and maybe I see it because my pre
ference is towards the more feminine side and I consider myself to be quite feminine
(Theresa, personal communication, 23 September 2014).
Theresa’s concepts of masculine and feminine repertoire resonate with those outlined in
McClary’s Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (2002), where the author analysed
classical musical compositions and their relationship to concepts about gender and sex. Theresa
uses this discourse not only to describe music or its historical aspects, but also to identify and
confirm her identity; this creates an obstacle between her idea of masculine repertoire and her
feminine self. Theresa plays all types of repertoire but thinks that she performs the ‘feminine’
pieces better and enjoys them because they relate to her feminine nature. The ideas related to
gender restrain Theresa and this limitation goes beyond the physical aspects of the body.
In contrast, gender as performance and gender subversion happens in some opera perfor
mances, particularly when men or women sing and perform as if they were the opposite sex.
Singers need to understand and recreate gender stereotypes to be feminine or masculine on
stage. Alicia, who sings, described her way to perform a male character. Although she notes that
it depends on the personality of the character, for her, stance, open gestures and determination
are important (Alicia, personal communication, 17 March 2015). The fact that she has learned
to perform masculinity confirms Butler’s ideas of gender (1999) as performative and gender
subversion.
37.5 Movement
Several feminist scholars have studied femininity in relation to the body and movement, and the
differences between how men and women have been educated about this. For example,
Beauvoir observed that women’s physiology, such as being smaller than men or having less
muscular strength, defines them in society and, therefore, they are considered as lesser and
weaker than men, and more unstable (2011, pp. 43–46). Moreover, according to Grosz, these
physical characteristics label women as vulnerable, frail and ‘incapable of men’s achievements’
(1994, p. 14), which justify misogynist behaviours. Thus, women’s physiological characteristics
define and limit them in what to do and how to behave within a society. Beauvoir also noticed
the different activities in which children engage. Boys climb trees, fight and confront peers in
violent games; meanwhile, girls learn to please and to repress their spontaneous movements, and
are not encouraged to explore (2011, pp. 294–295). Therefore, boys’ activities help them to
learn about the capacity and limits of their bodies. According to Bordo, males are represented as
active subjects and females as passive (2003, pp. 11–13), and passivity is understood as an ‘es
sential’ characteristic of femininity (Beauvoir 2011, p. 294).
Young extended Beauvoir’s observations and said that the most important difference be
tween males and females is in how women use their bodies (Young 2005, p. 32). She observed
that women approach physical activities with timidity, uncertainty and hesitancy (ibid., p. 34).
As a result, women do not engage their whole bodies in the task. For example, women will
tend to throw a ball with the closest part of their bodies (ibid., p. 33) – they will use the forearm
instead of moving the full arm and engaging their legs, torso and the whole body. Young also
observed differences in body movements between women and men in daily activities such as
sitting, standing and walking. There is openness in men’s bodies and behaviour, but women’s
movements are small and closed (ibid., p. 32). Therefore, free, open movements are not part of
being feminine.
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37.6 How does this translate to a musical setting?

I asked participants if they perceived differences or similarities between women and men, re
garding their movements, playing the same instruments. Some of them had difficulty evaluating
if the differences were related to gender or personality, and no one mentioned similarities. Body
movements are connected to the demands of each instrument. There is a difference in tech
nique and the principles of musical expression for each instrument, which is important to
consider when reading the next responses. Although Beth, who plays flute, recognised wo
men’s movement to be more ‘showy’ and ‘dramatic’, and men ‘are more still and … not as
expressive with their bodies’, she resisted categorising them and thought that these behaviours
were the result of gender stereotypes (Beth, personal communication, 26 October 2014).
Melanie stated that women’s bodies appear to collapse when playing flute, while men’s bodies
go forward into the audience, but she also noticed that this was more related to confidence. For
her, when people are insecure they hunch and put the arms close to the torso, which Young
(2005) noticed as common in women. Melanie’s final comments on the movements in men and
women flutists were:
I think in general with the men they’re more aggressive with it… and that, that really
translates into the rest of the body movement. Sort of being in a more active stance to
play … and making your voice heard, whereas a lot of women, um, take a lot of
encouragement and telling that it’s okay to be out there with their sound and be
aggressive and go after things (Melanie, personal communication, 15 March 2015).
Although reluctant to make general statements, Jessica, an oboe player, similarly found that in
high school some of the girls acted ‘shy’, while boys were ‘more bravado’ and ‘overestimate
their ability’ (Jessica, personal communication, 14 March 2015). In relation to conducting,
Melanie observed that women conductors move just the arms from the elbows and do not
engage their whole bodies, which, she suggested, affects their connection with the musicians.
However, she stated that she, ‘observe[s] more men than women in conducting’, and
continued:
It seems that the women who make it to the levels that I get to observe them at are
[pause] it seems that they are moving like men [pause]. I think it’s a more masculine
identity to step onto the podium to conduct [pause]. It’s, it’s being in charge, it’s being
aggressive, it’s being assertive (Melanie, op. cit.).
This description is important because it suggests that some women’s movements while con
ducting imitate those of men. Her observations are an example of defining women in relation to
the men, comparing them instead of treating them independently, as Beauvoir suggested (2011,
p. 6). These last three comments imply that men are more confident and that this confidence is
reflected in their movements when they play or conduct. The comments also confirm that
men, and masculinity, are active, aggressive, without fear and loud. In contrast, participants
perceived female players to be quiet, shy and passive – as Grosz (1994), Bordo (2003), Young
(2005) and Beauvoir (2011) described.
There are two more examples that suggest how some women musicians watch men as an
ideal for playing. For Theresa, male piano players move more but their movement is not ex
cessive. She commented: ‘When I see a man play piano I see extravagant movements, like larger,
sweeping movements to be expressive and functional’ (Theresa, op. cit.). Claire’s ideas seem the
369
opposite. She mentioned the violinists that she admires such as Heifetz, Oistrakh or Menuhin,
and said that:
their movement was not overt in any way…. I think that kind of like strong, still, stoic
kind of image versus somebody who is really pouring their heart out through their
movement is associated with masculine and femininity (Claire, personal commu
nication, 30 September 2014).
Both comments, although they seem contradictory, emphasize that men’s movements while
playing are appropriate and functional. This also suggests the idea of men as a model to follow,
which can affect women’s perception of their bodies and movement.
37.7 Space
Movement and space are related. Bordo (2003), Young (2005) and Beauvoir (2011) suggest that
women inhabit enclosed and constrained spaces. By this, they mean that social practices en
courage women to keep their bodies and movements small and to not occupy large spaces as
part of their feminine nature. Usually, the importance of spatial awareness is not pointed out in
music education. With the concept of ‘inclusive awareness’, Body Mapping encourages mu
sicians to train a deep attention that brings together the self (body and movements), the music
(instrument and interpretation) and the audience by opening awareness to the space (Johnson
2009, pp. 27–29). Almost all participants commented on their perception of spatiality and the
benefits of developing inclusive awareness, and, in Claire’s case, this also made her question her
patterns, gendered behaviours and social interactions (Claire, op. cit.). If Body Mapping en
courages musicians to acknowledge the space that is around them, it contributes not only to
changing the body’s perception and awareness, but also encourages musicians to reclaim spaces.
37.8 The ideal feminine body

According to Foucault (1995, p. 135), in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, bodies
started to be manipulated and trained to become skilful through disciplinary practices. He
explained that this model was characteristic in armies, schools, hospitals, and later, in factories
(ibid., pp. 141–148). The purpose of these practices was to supervise and control the body, its
behaviour and its movements; however, while the body gains control, it also becomes obedient
(ibid., pp. 137–138). Thus, the body is moulded, it follows rules and expectations, and by doing
so, it adapts to social purposes. Bartky applied Foucault’s ideas and observed disciplinary
practices in both women and men. For her, there are three ways in which these practices
encourage femininity in women: in the size of their bodies; the display of their bodies; and in
gestures, postures and movements (Bartky 1990, p. 65). Although the expectations about
women’s bodies are different in each culture, Bartky noticed that ‘massiveness, power, or
abundance’ is not accepted (ibid., p, 66); therefore, social discipline encourages dieting and
exercise. The intention of these practices is to achieve a small body and to ‘resculpture’ it (ibid.,
p. 67). Similarly, Bordo considered several accepted social practices which encourage the idea
of self-discipline: food regimen, exercise and body enhancement (Bordo 2003, pp. 23–29).
There is a paradox: while the body is achieving fitness and slenderness, feelings of freedom and
empowerment may arise while at the same time these practices control and limit the body. We
discipline ourselves to self-surveillance and to judge, correct and improve our bodies
(ibid., p. 25).
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37.9 In musical settings

Women musicians also face, struggle or accept gender stereotypes and participate in some of
these practices. All participants made comments about how they and their students try to match
the ideal feminine body, which they define as being slender and looking beautiful. Claire
remembered how, in a past time, the way she looked was more important than the way she felt
in her body:
I remember in high school, like standing in front of the mirror trying to figure out
how to stand, and how to adjust my posture… to look [pause] better, what I thought
was better, to make my breasts look larger, my thighs look smaller, and all these things
that I thought were wrong with myself (Claire, op. cit.).
Claire was learning about herself from the gazes that evaluate, celebrate or judge her, and she
learned to see herself in the same ways. After studying Body Mapping, she understood that
trying to meet certain body stereotypes influences the relation women have to their bodies and
that this affects their music playing.
Inquiring about the size of anatomical structures and about the body is fundamental in Body
Mapping, and for this, palpation is an important tool. Through the sense of touch, students
explore with awareness their bones, joints and movements, creating an intimate relationship
with their bodies. The changes in perception of the size of the own body is an essential step in a
Body Mapping journey and is often about acceptance. Theresa shared that she had body image
issues when she was a teenager. She said: ‘I was quite overweight at one point and then I had
kind of an eating disorder’ (Theresa, op. cit.). Theresa related this to show how, in that time,
she was uncomfortable with her body, but she has now embraced the process of accepting her
full size.
In the autoethnography, I also commented about the struggles I had related to my size
(Sanchez Diaz 2016, p. 62). In contrast to Theresa’s experience, and as another example of
gender subversion, people perceive my body as small and slender for playing percussion. A
feminine body, graceful and delicate, is not the type needed to play big, loud and masculine
instruments (Green 1997, p. 58). I had one female percussion teacher who told me that I was
extremely thin and that I needed to eat more (Sanchez Diaz 2016, p. 64). These comments
were not performance related; therefore, there was no ‘educational’ justification. According to
Howson (2005), the experience of the body is a dialogue between the internal and the external
experiences: on one side, the experience of feeling my body; and on the other, experiencing the
teacher’s disapproval of my body. It took me years to become aware of these mixed ideas within
myself, and to be able to separate my experience from external comments.
37.10 Media messages and self-perception

In Body Mapping, we want to discover tense regions in the body that interfere with the ability
to play an instrument, but the cause of the tension is usually not questioned. The next excerpts
show some of the effects media messages have on the self-perception of the body. For example,
Theresa discovered a relation between social ideas about the body and her abdominal muscles.
She described that she had ‘a tight abdominal region and a tight lower back’, but that it was
difficult for her to release the tension in the abdomen area. She explained: ‘You know, you
tighten it like they tell you like in fitness magazines. They tell you to clench your abs, because
it’s a workout’ (Theresa, op. cit.). Alicia also mentioned that releasing the abdominal muscles
371
was a big challenge for her when she started Body Mapping, and that she also sees this in her
voice studio. She thinks that singers tense their abdominal muscles to look slim, and that re
leasing the tension and trying to find balance disrupts their own perception of themselves
(Alicia, op. cit.).
It is interesting that these excerpts suggest that tension in the abdomen is a common issue in
women musicians, regardless of the instrument they play, and that it is related to ideas about
being fit and slender. We can also notice that the transformation of the body maps and our
movements can have an impact in how we present ourselves to the external world. Claire also
noticed this challenge, saying: ‘In order to change the way that you move you have to be ok
with that possibility that you’re going to be perceived as a different person’ (Claire, op. cit.).
Similarly, Beth mentioned that before doing Body Mapping, she felt that there was ‘something
missing’ in her playing, but later explained:
It wasn’t that there was something missing, it was that [with Body Mapping] I finally
was able to let myself, to let it come out … and that has to do with breathing…. I
mean it has to do with letting things go and learning how to do that, and just ac
cepting that … things change (Beth, op. cit.).
Beth and Claire explained moments when they each noticed that there was more than releasing
muscles, finding balance and the transformation of the body maps; they were also experiencing
changes in their own and others’ perceptions of themselves. Beth also perceived changes in her
self-confidence.
37.11 Conclusions
In recent years, women performers and conductors have gained more visibility in the musical
world, and yet there are still several topics in relation to women and music that can be dis
cussed. In this chapter, I have focused on how some ideas of femininity permeate our lives and
our interactions in musical settings as students or professionals. Through excerpts of interviews
and a text from the autoethnography, women classical musicians and Body Mapping practi
tioners expressed their ideas about perceptions of gender, experiences about their bodies,
musical performances and Body Mapping. Masculinity and femininity, as binary concepts, are
social constructions that establish the ways that male and female should behave. In the inter
views, although some participants had difficulty defining body movements within the concept
of gender, all of them saw differences in the ways that women and men move while playing an
instrument or conducting. It was clear how the movements of the body were classified as
masculine or feminine, and these observations reflect how social information about gender
stereotypes form part of our ideas that can interfere with, and limit, the performance of music.
Femininity, and all that entails, can be seen as another type of inaccurate body map that also
lives in our minds. I believe that if musicians thought about gender as a fluid performance, as
Butler (1988, 1999) suggests, it would be beneficial for liberating their bodies and minds.
Femininity is related to understandings of movement, posture, gestures and spatiality, which
are the same topics that Body Mapping covers. Femininity directly affects and shapes the bodies
of women musicians, and following its rules can result in the absence of spontaneous move
ments, lack of body confidence, and fragmentation between the body and one’s experience or
perception of it. For example, the size of the body is a subject that arises several times in
different sections in this chapter. Following feminine rules, women have to have small bodies,
small movements and inhabit small spaces; but these ideas can change with self-observation and
372
self-reflection, which are elements that Body Mapping encourages. As we saw in some of the
participant’s comments, the palpation of one’s own body helped them to understand their size.
Their perception and definition of ideas about a right size and shape of body changed, which
led to body acceptance. In Body Mapping, with the understanding of one’s size, the exploration
of new and healthy movements arises and the space to move also increases.
The recognition and acceptance of their bodies and movements is already changing parti
cipants’ own perceptions of themselves. Moreover, some participants realised that, at some
point, the practice of Body Mapping means that they are often perceived differently by others;
thus, it is like the development of a new person and brings the possibility of self-transformation.
Body Mapping is a discipline that focuses on the body through a physical and neurological
approach, leaving social questions to personal and private work. Although Barbara Conable
encourages the enquiry of the self map, there are no Body Mapping resources to do this.
Questions and concerns that students face while exploring their bodies are not investigated and
can be the cause of some of their musical, emotional or personal limitations. The workbook
created as part of the original research includes some of the topics covered here, and tries to fill
that gap and to guide women in a self-reflective process. The risk of considering only the
physical body is the possibility of fragmentation within the self. Understandings of gender and
the normative performances of it also live in our minds. Discussions about the relationship
between the body, musical performance and social interactions can engage people in a com
plete, inclusive awareness and a whole self. The acknowledgement of the social-physical con
nection can help Body Mapping practitioners, students and performers understand their
experiences as part of their Body Mapping journeys.
References
Bartky, S.L., 1990. Femininity and domination: studies in the phenomenology of oppression. New York: Routledge.
Beauvoir, S. de., 2011. The second sex, trans. C. Borde and S. Malovany-Chevallier. New York: Vintage
Books. First published as Le deuxième sexe in 1949.
Bordo, S., 2003. Unbearable weight: feminism, Western culture, and the body, 10th ed. Berkeley: University of
California Press. First published in 1993.
Butler, J., 1988. Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist
theory. Theatre Journal, 40/4, 519–531.
Butler, J., 1999. Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
Conable, B. [Barbara] and Conable, B. [Benjamin], 2000. What every musician needs to know about the body:
the practical application of body mapping to making music. Portland: Andover Press.
Conable, B., 2015. Body Map self map, paper presented at the Seventh Biennial Conference of Andover
Educators, Portland.
Conable, W., 1995. Origins and theory of mapping. In: B. Conable and W. Conable, eds. How to learn the
Alexander Technique: a manual for students. Portland, OR: Andover Press, 127–131.
Cregan, K., 2006. The sociology of the body: mapping the abstraction of embodiment. London: Sage.
Farnell, B., 2012. Dynamic embodiment for social theory: “I move therefore I am”. New York: Routledge.
Foucault, M., 1995. Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, trans. A. Sheridan. New York: Vintage
Books. First published as Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison in 1975.
Grosz, E.A., 1994. Volatile bodies. Toward a corporeal feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Howson, A., 2005. Embodying gender. London: Sage.
Johnson, J., 2009. What every violinist needs to know about the body. Chicago: GIA Publications.
Mark, T., 2003. What every pianist needs to know about the body: a manual for players of keyboard instruments.
Chicago: GIA Publications.
McClary, S., 2002. Feminine endings: music, gender, and sexuality, 2nd ed. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press. First published in 1991.
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McDowell, L. and Sharp, J.P., eds., 1997. Space, gender, knowledge. New York: Arnold Publications.
Nichols, T.R., 2009. Scientific basis of Body Mapping. In: M. Malde, M.J. Allen and K.-A. Zeller, eds.
What every singer needs to know about the body. San Diego: Plural Publishing, 209–210.
Sanchez Diaz, G., 2016. Re-mapping the body: feminine experience in music performance. Master’s
project report, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
Woodard, K., 2009. Recovering disembodied spirits: teaching movement to musicians. British Journal of
Music Education, 26/2, 153–172.
Young, I.M., 2005. On female body experience: “throwing like a girl” and other essays. New York: Oxford
University Press.
374
PART VI
New perspectives on women’s work

in music
38
MATERIALITY, EDITORSHIP AND
CANONISATION IN WANG
DUANSHU’S COLLECTION OF
ELEGANCE (1667)
Yuemin He
38.1 Introduction
In his attributed preface (dated 1636) to his niece’s Dreams of Mandarin Ducks, a song-drama set
to the northern style of music, the late Ming, literary critic Shen Zizheng (1591–1641), possibly
sensing the absence of women in the field of qu,1 claimed that: ‘lyrics and arias have been
prosperous since the Yuan dynasty [1271–1368]; however, I have never heard of a gentle
woman who is an expert at composing it’ (Shen 1636/1989, p. 929).2 After praising Ye
Xiaowan (c.1613–c.1657), Shen continued: ‘thanks to my unusually talented niece, her drama
fills the gap …’ (ibid.). Shen’s claim could be interpreted as a deliberate proposition to situate
his niece’s work as a unique ‘phenomenon’ in qu circles. Indeed, Ye Xiaowan’s song-drama is
often said to be the first, complete northern song-drama composed by a female author.
However, extant late Ming sources suggest that female qu writers were not absent in the field:
female writers did produce qu even before Ye’s ‘first-ever’ female-authored piece had been
published. Courtesan Ma Xianglan (1548–1604), for example, composed the northern song-
drama Story of Three Lives (before 1602), although only two suites and one aria have been
preserved. In addition, gentlewoman writer Liang Mengzhao (c.1572–1640), born four decades
before Ye Xiaowan, composed the song-drama Inkstone of Lovesickness (late Ming-early Qing).
In her edited, 42-chapter anthology, Classical Poetry of Notable Women (1667), gentlewoman
editor Wang Duanshu included a sub-collection, entitled the Collection of Elegance (chapters 37
and 38), where songs by women are gathered. The diverse, social backgrounds of the female
authors in the Collection of Elegance contrast sharply with their exclusive, noble or elite male
counterparts – authors and qu works that have been extensively discussed in previous studies
(Birch 1995; Sieber 2003; Lowry 2005). The Collection of Elegance is a compilation of songs,
suites and operatic arias that were composed by female writers of the mid- and late Ming
periods. It is also a product of the printing process, with its contents re-curated, reordered and
reorganised from a pool of materials, including pre-existing, late Ming prints such as literati
editions of songbooks, drama miscellanies and single-author poetry collections. Although the
recycling of pre-existing materials was an established practice among literati anthologists during
the process of songbooks editing, historically, such practice was not done uncritically.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-38 377

Yuemin He
Female writers have been mainly discussed in the scholarship when they appear in male-
curated collections (Lam 2010; Zeitlin 2013; Cass 2016). In order to reveal a fuller picture of
female writers’ participation and position in the music realm, however, the discussion must be
envisaged through women’s own voices. Previous scholarship regards the Collection of Elegance as
a significant, historical source in giving information on individual authors that literary historians
intended to examine (see Zeitlin 2006, 2008). This chapter, however, identifies the Collection of
Elegance as a carefully constructed, collective material space, and seeks to explore the ways in
which Wang Duanshu, as complier-editor-commentator, shaped the meanings both of texts
and paratexts to create a ‘distinctive’ collection. A materialist approach offers a productive lens
through which the Collection of Elegance can be interpreted as a material music-performance
space. The music space or site emerges, as Lam defines, ‘when human agents manipulate
specific music objects in times and places defined by historical and contemporary features and
functions’ (Lam et al. 2017, p. 28). Through examining how the editor, Wang, acted as a music
agent to create an ‘interactive dialogue’ with her intended audiences by ‘manipulating’ her
music objects – that is, the printed music texts – this chapter seeks to investigate the text’s
‘packaging’. As Wendy Wall Wall 1993has argued:
[T]he text’s ‘packaging’, so frequently erased when a work’s history is drained from it,
speaks to the specific conditions by which meaning was and is transmitted … [and
enables us] to consider how a literary work becomes readable to its culture – to make
visible the lens through which the ‘book’ and the acting of public writing are viewed
(1993, p. 5).
I consider the Collection of Elegance as a ‘book’ and an artefact, contextualising the modes of
public distribution of women’s qu in late Ming social, cultural and political contexts.
38.2 Materialisation of late Ming (1573–1644), female-authored songs:

texts and contexts
At the very beginning of the Collection of Elegance, Wang remarks that of the ‘many newly
composed sounds from literati’s households, arias circulated either in print or manuscripts, the
quantity of them is as much as the mists above the sea’ (Wang 1667/2005, 37.1a). Here, she
underlines the fact that the elite class was keen to be involved in the qu genre on a daily basis,
either in its practice of composing and domestic performance making, or in its circulation in
both print and manuscript forms. The timespan of the compilation of the Collection of Elegance
(between the 1640s and 1660s) maps onto the final year of the late Ming period to the Ming-
Qing dynastic transition period (1644–61), and is also the period when qu was still a genre that
was favoured among favoured among the privileged intellectual elite.
The Ming dynasty (1368–1644) witnessed a publishing boom in the second half of the
sixteenth century, and printing became a key sphere for negotiating power from that time. As
powerful agents who directed much of the cultural capital of that society, male literati played a
significant role in shaping late Ming print culture. Individual scholars and literary communities
– established in different regions from the mid Ming onwards, and especially during the late
Ming – gained reputations in sociocultural spheres through artistic and literary productions.
The elite privately enjoyed numerous artistic pursuits and as one of the most adored artistic
endeavours, qu became a field where authority and power were negotiated and exercised, with
many literati-edited, multi-author song collections appearing during the late Ming period.
These literati-edited song collections worked not only as public showcases for music expertise,
378
Wang Duanshu’s Collection of Elegance
but also ‘as a mirror of reminding its readers of the literati editor’s social cachet of education’
(Carlitz 2005, p. 297).
The blooming of the printing industry also prompted a wider circulation of women’s songs
and other literary works such as poetry and prose. The late Ming period marked a turning point
for women appearing in public, both physically and textually, and women’s music received
unprecedented attention from the literati. Such cultural phenomenon was also socially
grounded in that increasing interest in the publication of women’s work was rooted in the
acceptance of women’s education and the burgeoning literacy of women at this time. The
literati’s attention to women’s music, especially by the inclusion of women’s qu in literati
collections, reflects the increasing interactions between men and women in the process of
cultural production among late Ming intellectual communities, and also ideological changes in
pursuing qing (passion, sentiments, subjectivity) in humanistic arts rather than the (earlier) self-
discipline and desire-oppression advocated in orthodox Confucianism.
Late Ming male literati were keen to write about female entertainers – particularly cour
tesans’ musical performances – actively commentating on their talents and beauty in memoirs,
diaries, poetic writings or literary collections: an example of the latter can be found in Pan
Zhiheng’s (1556–1622) posthumously published literary collection, History of the Immemorial
(1612 preface). However, the construction of feminine ideals and images in these sources are
male-mediated and gendered. Before 1644, writings on women, especially on occasions of
exclusive cultural events held in celebrated courtesans’ quarters, fashioned the literati’s social
identity as music aficionados and members of the intellectual society. When the Ming Empire
collapsed in 1644, writings on women, especially on courtesans, gradually became a nostalgic
ideal with memories of encounters with courtesans and salon pleasure events used as an allegory
for the glorious past of the Ming dynasty. Writings on courtesans in the early Qing (1644–1700)
period were also a distinctive feature of memoir literature, as has been seen in Miscellaneous
Records of the Plank Bridge (1693) by Yu Huai (1616–96). Yu’s memoir consists of depictions of
pleasure quarters, salons and numerous cultural events in Nanjing (southern capital city) as well
as short biographic accounts of courtesans – all of which are pervaded with a sense of personal
loss, melancholia and nostalgia.
Many arias presented in Wang’s Collection of Elegance reflected the sociocultural and political
contexts of the late Ming and early Qing periods. Wang’s role as compiler-editor-critic was
unusual for its time: traditionally, this had been a male-exclusive position in the field of qu, and
one in which editorial authority over the curated texts functioned as an allegory of exercising
power more generally. Although qu was a liberal genre that gentry-born women had rarely
dabbled in – mainly due to the Confucian ethics of womanly virtue – Wang considered herself
to be a gentlewoman editor with moral stands, thereby distinguishing herself and other gen
tlewomen’s work from that of the courtesans. Hence, poems by female writers were usually
divided into sub-collections based on the authors’ social background within Wang’s (1667)
anthology. This ordering demonstrates her concern to present womanly virtue through her
editorial choices, especially as these texts would be made public through print.
Wang’s approach to the Collection of Elegance is discussed clearly in the editorial principles she
outlines in her anthology: ‘by including them’, she writes, ‘I have provided readers with a
complete view’ (1667/2005, Editorial principle, 3a). In addition to the bulk of poems that
constituted the main body of her Classical Poetry of Notable Women, the ‘complete view’ refers to
Wang’s inclusion of other genres that are practised by women writers, including female-
authored songs. From the viewpoint of ‘preserving women’s talents and work’ as the aim of
editing and compiling the 1667 anthology, Wang’s editorial decisions also made the compre
hensiveness of women’s literary and artistic endeavours known.
379
Yuemin He
Wang justified her editorial decision to include lyric poetry, songs and miscellaneous
writings by stating that they were: ‘random writings with a poetic flavour … [and] certainly an
extension of classic poetry, despite their names’ (Wang, cited in Widmer 2001, p. 190). This
editorial critique also shared a similar view with literati editors in anthologising such liberal
genres. In his attributed preface (dated 1629) to Unification of Ancient and Contemporary Lyrics
(published in 1633), the late Ming dramatist Meng Chengshun (who also prefaced Wang’s
Classical Poetry of Notable Women) claimed that: ‘poetry became ci (song-lyric), song-lyric be
came sanqu (art song), the song-lyric is an extension of poetry, and the ancestor of art songs’
(Meng 1633/2000, p. 4). Wang analogically refers to the switch of genres within her anthology
as ‘to come to an end after endless mountains and rivers’ (1667, Editorial principle, 3a). As she
further explained:
[T]he people in ancient days always delight when new things appear. This also applies
to poetry and prose, when ‘correctness’ ends, then ‘elegance’ succeeds. Therefore,
there is poetry first, and then lyric poetry, after that there is arias and songs, then the
ditty tunes from streets and alleyways (ibid.).
In other words, rather than being distinctively different from each other, poetry and liberal
genres of lyric poetry, songs and popular ballads are interrelated, while the evolutionary course
of the poetry shows a tendency towards more informal, narrative and even performance-related
genres. As mentioned previously, liberal genres for gentlewomen like Wang were forbidden,
but by claiming that their relationship with poetry was in the manner of ‘literary extensions and
with poetic flavours’, this narrative may have created a basis in which Wang’s practice in
informal genres could be deemed acceptable.
38.3 Wang Duanshu’s critical values: reading womanly virtue, music aesthetics
and canonicity in the Collection of Elegance
Wang’s editorial focus was primarily on writers of the Ming dynasty. As she explained in her
preface, her decision to ‘to restrict myself to more recent writers’ was so that she could ‘speak
with certainty’ (1667/2005, Preface, 2a). This ‘certainty’, presented through Wang’s editorial
commentaries and biographical accounts, makes up a significant amount of the paratextual
materials. Wang’s comments are not only all tailored to each entry of an author, but also her
comments always appear before a given text. Since the physical position of commentaries in the
collection are placed ahead of the curated texts that interrupt the reading experience of moving
from texts to texts, the make-up of the collection shows the degrees in which the editor wanted
the collection to be read, and ‘whereby interpretation could be guided’ (Carlitz 2005, p. 290).
Wang’s approach of sequencing her own comments could also be explained as an act of as
serting her position as editor-critic, whose editorial power controls the re-curated materials.
Certain entries in this collection which had previously been included in various literati edition
songbooks, as the source materials in Figure 38.1 indicate, suggest that female-authored songs
received popularity among the contemporary cultural elite.
One of the facets that Wang attempts to clarify in her editorial comments is that the writers
should compose songs based on implemented Confucian social hierarchy. This viewpoint is
particularly highlighted when Wang speaks from her Confucian moral stance as gentlewoman
editor on the presentation of womanly virtue in female-authored songs. Consequently, Wang
directs her satire at courtesan-composers. Courtesans’ professional careers in early modern
China relied upon their excellence and mastery of music and other literary-artistic talents.
380
Figure 38.1 Possible source texts of the Collection of Elegance. 3
Wang was astonished how Chu ji (prostitute from Chu, no specific name) rose to fame, with
one song, ‘Sending a Letter to my Friend’, attracting frequent literati patronage.4 ‘In short’, as
Wang comments: ‘there are surplus petty tricks in her song in terms of morale and conduct:
381
Yuemin He
however, her song is an offence against decency’ (1667/2005, 38.4a-b). Wang seems to have
adopted a moralist’s tone in her criticism of the courtesan’s erotic song. However, she also
shows a hint of understanding of the author’s ‘plight’ when she comments: ‘but she is among
those who registered with the Music Bureau. If she does not play petty tricks in song, she could
not arouse sensual and erotic feelings of her clients’ (ibid.).5 Wang’s explicit address to the
courtesan’s social status highlights Chu ji’s identity as a music servant, a ‘hereditary servile status
group’ that was categorised as ‘social pariahs’ in the Confucian social hierarchy (Volpp 2011,
p. 5). The erotica within Chu ji’s aria almost became forgivable under the consideration of the
means by which she made her livelihood. Wang’s comment on Chu ji perhaps also delivers an
educational meaning to the readers in which women’s song, unless composed by professionals
who had to ‘arouse sensual feelings’ in others to make a living, should be written according to
the womanly conducts and morals that would not ‘offend against decency’.
Despite Wang showing her disagreement when it came to the eroticism of courtesans’
music, her critique also included her positive appraisal of their excellence in songwriting in
terms of musicality and lyrical expression. In the penultimate entry of chapters 37 (see
Figure 38.1), Wang describes Ma Shou’s ‘Present to Scholar Zhang’ to the tune ‘Drunken
Return’, as ‘music that lingers in the air’ (1667/2005, 37.17b). Similarly, Wang’s editorial
comments on Jiang Qiongqiong’s arias (Figure 38.1, chapters 38) suggests that the music and
lyrics were created simultaneously during the process of qu composition: as she states, ‘hum
ming with a low voice, so naturally, melody and rhythms come into being’ (ibid., 38.2b).
Wang’s evaluation of qu also affirms that ‘sanqu art song was principally considered a per
formance genre’ (Zeitlin 2006, p. 86), in that she frequently indicates the instrumental ac
companiment of the songs in her comments. On Hao Xiang E’s suites, for instance
(Figure 38.1, chapters 37), Wang suggests that ‘the newly composed fine lyrics should be
accompanied by clappers’ (1667/2005, 37.15b), and she describes the first of two arias by
courtesan Jing Pianpian (fl. 1570s) – ‘Winter Thoughts’ to the tune ‘A Coil of Golden Rope’
(Figure 38.1, chapters 38) – as being ‘like a stringed instrument played without a single broken
note’ (Wang, cited in Zeitlin 2008, p. 16). Such indications, whether based on Wang’s reading
of a given tune title from contemporary sources, or derived from her real listening experience,
also reinforce the ‘truism’ of qu as a performance genre (ibid.).
Wang’s critiques not only provide readers with information about the musical instrumentation
and style, but also reveal how female-authored songs, in certain cases, could be the musical ma
terialisation of a careful and skilfully created artistic style and persona. Courtesan-cum-concubine
Hu Wenru’s aria, ‘Lyrics of Four Seasons’ to the tune ‘Purple Silk Robes’ (chapters 38), is an
example of how a courtesan skilfully created a scene of seduction, publicly showcasing her talents
through music. As Wang comments: ‘I had never heard such deep-seated bitterly sarcastic words
among old tunes’ (1667/2005, 38.1a).6 Hu’s song suite contains four individual arias that are set to
the same tune, with the repeated lyrics depicting scenes of different seasons. The lyrics are, in
keeping with other courtesans’ entries within the collection, romantic songs that might have been
performed as part of the courtesans’ repertoires. With metaphors such as pairs of swallows, the
lyrics portray a female figure longing for her lover to reunite, and how this longing might have
caused her lovesickness and her isolation behind a tightly closed door. Unlike other courtesans’
songs curated within the Collection of Elegance, that do not refer to a specific dedicator, and were
sung for the broader audience, Hu’s ‘Lyrics of Four Seasons’ was specifically written for a lover-
client to propose marriage to him – according to Bronze Strings and Golden Threads, an erotic
anthology on courtesan culture (Ren 1931/2013, p. 1295).
Although Wang does not remark on the dedication of Hu’s song, her comment on the
‘deep-seated bitterly sarcastic’ words could indicate the sarcasm of the courtesan’s ‘scolding’ and
382
‘mocking’ of the unseen, fickle lover who had caused her lovesickness and who might have
treated her unfairly, disguised here as the emotionally distressed mind and heart expressed in the
repeated words. This aria is perhaps not only an outlet for revealing Hu’s inner self, but is also a
skilful portrayal of a distinctive lyrical persona that displays the courtesan’s sharp-wittiness. As
Ropp argues, the function of these courtesans’ writings that seem to address the male reader,
‘was to make a certain kind of impression – whether of the elegance, the romantic lure, or the
wit of the courtesan’ (Ropp 1993, p. 115).
Wang’s commentaries on the performing style of courtesans’ songs do not render the other
half collection – comments on the gentlewomen’s lyrics – less desirable in terms of the mu
sicality and performability. As Ko argues, gentlewomen ‘as playwrights, readers, critics, and
audience – took drama seriously both as a literary genre and as a performing art, and women’s
eagerness to dramatize emotion, were in fact, second to none’ (Ko 1994, p. 78). Hao Xiang E
and Hu Wenru are good examples of women who are both from relatively respectable
backgrounds and masters of qu composing – regardless of the fact they both rose from obscure
origins as maids and courtesan-cum-concubines. There may have been some truth to literary
historian claims that qu was not a desirable genre of self-expression for gentlewomen. The
reason was partially explained by Wang when she stated that the mastery of composing was very
difficult to gain. As her comments on gentlewoman composer Liang Mengzhao reveal:
[I]t is easy to possess talents in poetry. To learn how to compose qu, however, is very
difficult. One can make painstaking efforts to learning the music of Suzhou, even until
‘hair turns white’, but one can still not be proficient in qu composing (Wang 1667/
2005, 37.8a).7
Wang’s commentary could be derived from her own experience of and reflection on qu
composing practice, as she herself composed six independent arias: these were placed as the
contents of the last chapter of her individual collection Red Chanting (published in 1651).
Gentlewomen writers during the late Ming, as contemporary literati-critics’ accounts reflect,
did not take qu as their major genres of practice. It is interesting to note, however, that the first
two entries in the Collection of Elegance are, in fact, gentlewomen qu writers who had already
attained public recognition among literati-critics. The ‘Golden Orioles’ song-suites by gen
tlewoman Huang E (1498–1569), the first and only mid Ming writer included here
(Figure 38.1, chapters 37), had been well known among the literati. In his 1637 essay Worldly
Remarks on Song, Zhang Qi praises Huang’s ‘Bitter Rain’ suites, set to the tune of ‘Golden
Orioles’, as: ‘reaching excellence in each character, even her husband’s three parting and re
union lyrics cannot be defeated’ (Zhang 1637/2009, p. 350). In addition, the aria by Xu Yuan
(1560–1617) – ‘Writing Feeling on a Spring Day’ to the tune ‘Cotton Wadding’ (chapters 37) –
had already been included in Celestial Air Played Anew (c.1627). In this multi-author, art song
collection, Feng Menglong’s editorial commentary clearly indicates that Xu Yuan’s ‘speciality is
in quatrain poetry’, and that she ‘occasionally wields her pen on music bureau’ (Feng 1627/
2007, p. 146). Feng makes the point that although qu is not a genre that Xu frequently
practiced, ‘her aria does not have inharmonious melodies’ (ibid.). Such a comment was, in fact,
related to Feng’s general criticism of contemporary (male) composers. As he noted, ‘those who
claim to be experts in writing lyrics should feel ashamed’ when being compared to Xu Yuan,
who only occasionally composed qu (ibid.).
In fact, from the quantities of author entries featured within the collection, the first three
gentlewomen entries of Huang E, Xu Yuan, and Liang Mengzhao (Figure 38.1, chapters 37)
made up a high percentage of the entire sub-collection, with 12 independent arias and song-suite
383
Yuemin He
entries in total. The choice of favouring gentlewomen’s lyrics over courtesans’ arias probably
reflected Wang’s personal frame of reference: the gentlewomen authors were closer to her own
social status, and she may have had a greater aesthetic engagement with their lyrics. In particular,
the third entry, Liang Mengzhao – who had the greatest number of songs included in the
Collection of Elegance – could be interpreted as Wang’s personal tribute to a leading gentlewomen
qu writer: she praises Liang as ‘the writing hand of the generation, the paradigm amongst women’
(1667/2005, 12.1a). Meanwhile, in the given biographical account, Wang points out that Liang
also composed several song-dramas, and that she was one of the few female writers who was
proficient in both independent songs and song-drama subgenres in the field of qu.
Wang’s comments on the first three gentlewomen’s entries demonstrate her recognition of
their composing talents, and she adopted a similar tone when commenting on their songs. She
stated, for example:
• These 12 songs from Huang E, even Shen Jing could not reach their perfection
(ibid., 37.1a)
• Tang Xianzu did not follow forms and formulas when composing song-drama, but still, he
is inferior to Xu Yuan’s creativity (ibid., 37.4a)
• The song-dramas Liang composed [are] embodied with innermost feelings and thoughts,
which makes her works formal but appealing and charming. Even when generations of qu
masters like Liang Chenyu and Shen Shi make a comeback, they have to step down in the
field when compare to Liang Mengzhao (ibid., 12.1a)
The works of Shen Shi (1488–1586), Liang Chenyu (c.1521–94), Tang Xianzu (1550–1616)
and Shen Jing (1553–1610) – alongside other male literati composers who were active in the
field – constituted the canon of qu. By claiming the superiority of these three gentlewomen’s
works, Wang’s comparison reflects: on the one hand, the male constructed canon as measuring
criteria of composing in the field of qu; on the other hand, Wang’s comments show her own
(daring) intention of elevating women’s position in the field. Her comments are particularly
appropriate when viewed in the context of pre-existing praise by the literati of gentlewomen qu
writers such as Huang E and Xu Yuan.
Wang’s attempt to establish the canonical status of female songwriters is also prevalent in the
way in which she envisaged the entire 1667 anthology. Wang cleverly tweaked the idea
through wordplay, entitling this anthology as shi wei (literally meaning ‘weft’ of poetry) in
parallel to shi jing (literally meaning ‘woof’ of poetry), just as in the Book of Odes (Shijing). By
claiming that ‘without the weft threads, there would be no woof threads’, Wang was, in fact,
arguing for the necessity of women’s poetry as a ‘complementary canon that answers to six
Classics’ (Wang, cited in Chang 1997, p. 158). As Wang’s argument goes in her attributed
preface to Classical Poetry of Notable Women: ‘so truly can these poems be said to be “of a
feather” with the ancient Odes … [that] they form a classic in their own right’ (ibid.). As a classic
and canon of poetry itself, the Book of Odes was utilised as a counter-canon measure by Wang in
publishing women’s poetry. Wang included her own poetry in Classical Poetry of Notable Women
to show her ambition to promote herself not only as an editor, but also as a writer in the
‘complementary canon that answers to six Classics’. Wang’s critical voice, which ‘speaks with
authority on behalf of the texts that are written by socially subordinated women’ (ibid.), mirrors
the ways in which the female editors of early modern China sought to establish a female
tradition of textual and creative production.
384
38.4 Conclusion
When female qu writers began to construct authorship by taking the roles of author, compiler
and editor, they gained cultural authority in public writing, achieving success and recognition
on their own merits. They were culturally independent as female songwriters and, through
Wang’s editorial negotiation, were presented as such without male-mediated approaches.
Female songwriters could even be regarded as culturally equal to their male counterparts to a
certain extent, for their names and outstanding works are mentioned and compared with that of
their husbands as well as contemporary canonical male qu writers. Yet, living under the
Confucian hierarchical society, these female writers and editors were not feminist in the
modern sense of the word. They approached their public writing reflecting the considerations
of womanly virtue of their time, and defined their own social position by subordinating
themselves to their fathers, husbands or literati clients – as shown in the biographical remarks in
the Collection of Elegance.
The textural space of the Collection of Elegance – materially, the assembly of individually
conceived songs in the physically bounded pages of a book – acted as a material realisation of
the editor’s intention to preserve female-authored songs. As compiler-editor of this multi-
authored collection, Wang managed the presentation of women’s authorship, virtue and cul
tural authority in songwriting, thereby elevating women’s songs as part and parcel of the
‘complementary canon’. The Collection of Elegance can also be seen as a cultural artefact of
women’s authorship, music and agency in the norms of both cultural production and gender
negotiation of the wider society, and as a case-study in contextualising women’s participation
and the accessibility of female-authored qu in public writing. Wang’s careful repacked, re
constructed and reordered textural performance space provides multi-faceted dimensions in
which the musical culture, gender and moral concerns of late sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century China speaks to the specific conditions in which meaning was transmitted, and also
shows us how the book and act of public writing were viewed. Through a female editor’s
perspective, the Collection of Elegance reawakens women’s musical voices of the past, and answers
that very question of the ‘absence’ of women in Chinese music, cultural and historical dis
course, while offering another angle of knowing early modern Chinese women’s lives,
memories and histories.
Notes
1 Qu is a Chinese performance-related literary genre prospered from the thirteenth century to the early
eighteenth century. It not only refers to independent arias and songs, but also operatic arias within
song-dramas.
2 All translations are my own, except where otherwise indicated.
3 These source collection lists are hypothesis that are based on the editor Wang Duanshu’s annotations,
cross-referencing of different versions of lyrics among other collections, and occasionally Wang’s direct
indication of source texts. For Chu Ji (chapters 38), for instance, Wang Duanshu remarks that ‘her song
could be seen in Most Pleasing Disposition’ (1667/2005, 38.4a), indicating that this collection could be
her source of material. The Collection of Elegance has been digitalised by McGill University and is
available online at: https://digital.library.mcgill.ca/mingqing/search/results-work.php?workID=120&
language=eng
4 The song lyrics involve a series of lewd erotic and sexual double entendres about lifting heavy loads
with the shoulder pole and lovemaking (Zeitlin 2008, p. 15). This song was also collected in Feng’s
Celestial Air Played Anew and has the different title of ‘Romantic Shoulder Pole’ (Feng 1627/2007,
p. 794). The Chinese title of ‘Romantic Shoulder Pole’ – feng yue dan, in which the phrase of feng yue –
literally meaning ‘breeze and moon’ – is a euphemism for romanticism and sensuality. Among the late
385
Yuemin He
Ming printed titles of ‘brothel treatises’, this word appears in books that are particularly associated with
the guidance of prostituting.
5 The Music Bureau was an official agency operated by the Ming’s court’s Ministry of Rites to take
charge of registrations and regulation of professional entertainers including courtesans, musicians and
actresses, etc. The Bureau also supervised the taxation of pleasure quarters and entertainers.
6 Wang describes Hu’s song as ‘old tune’, probably referring to the fact that this aria was set to Yiyang
operatic style. Wang recognised that the aria was one of the old tunes possibly because Hu mainly
worked as an official courtesan within the army in Jiangxia, where the Yiyang style of music was still
circulated and performed.
7 Wuyin, the music of Suzhou that Wang refers to in her critique, is the Kunshan (a county of Suzhou)
style of music that was in vogue among the elites, and was utilised to perform both independent arias
and southern song-dramas during the late Ming.
References
Birch, C., 1995. Scenes for Mandarins: the elite theatre of the Ming. New York: Columbia University Press.
Carlitz, K., 2005. Printing as performance: literati playwright-publishers of the late Ming. In: C.J. Brokaw
and K. Chow, eds. Printing and book culture in late imperial China. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 267–284.
Cass, V., 2016. The theatre and the crowd: Jiangnan performance culture and regional identity in the
Ming. Asia Major, 29/1, 101–145.
Chang, K., 1997. Ming and Qing anthologies of women’s poetry and their selection strategies. In: E.
Widmer and K. Chang, eds. Writing women in late imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
147–170.
Feng, M., 1627. Tai xia xinzou (Celestial air played anew). Reprinted in: Q. Wang, ed. Shanbenxiqu
congkan (Collections of rare editions of opera and songs), series 5/4, 1984, facsimile edition, Taipei,
Xuesheng shuju.
Ko, D., 1994. Teachers of the inner chambers: women and culture in seventeenth-century China. Palo Alto, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Lam, J., 2010. Reading music and eroticism in late Ming texts. NAN NÜ, 12/2, 215–254.
Lam, J., Lin, S.-f., De Pee, C., and Powers, M., eds., 2017. Sense of the city: perceptions of Hangzhou and
Southern Song China, 1127–1279. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.
Lowry, K.A., 2005. The tapestry of popular songs in 16th- and 17th-century China: reading, imitation, and desire.
Leiden: Brill.
Meng, C., 1633. Preface. Reprinted in Unification of ancient and current lyrics, 2000. Shenyang: Liaoning
Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 3–4.
Ren, Z., 1931. Quxie, Matters on Qu, in Sanqu congkan. Reprinted in 2013. Nanjing: Fenghuang Press.
Ropp, P., 1993. Love, literacy, and lament: themes of women writers in late imperial China. Women’s
History Review, 2/1, 107–141.
Shen, Z., 1636. Preface to Dreams of Mandarin Ducks. Reprinted in: C. Yi, ed. Compiled collections of
colophons and prefaces to Chinese classic drama, 5, 1989. Jinan: Qilu shushe, 929–930.
Sieber, P., 2003. Theatres of desire: authors, readers and the reproduction of early Chinese song-drama
(1300–2000). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Volpp, S., 2011. Worldly stage: theatricality in seventeenth-century China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Wall, W., 1993. The imprints of gender: authorship and publication in the English Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Wang, D., 1667. Classical poetry of notable women / Ming yuan shi wei chu bian. Reprint available in Ming-
Qing Women’s Writing Database, Montreal, McGill University, 2005: https://digital.library.mcgill.ca/
mingqing/search/results-work.php?workID=120&language =eng
Widmer, E., 2001. Selected short works by Wang Duanshu. In: S. Mann and Y.-Y. Chen, eds. Under
Confucian eyes: writings on gender in Chinese history. Berkeley: University of California Press, 178–194.
Zeitlin, J., 2006. “Notes of flesh” and the courtesan’s song in seventeenth-century China. In: M. Feldman
and B. Gordon, eds. The courtesan’s arts cross-cultural perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 75–99.
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Zeitlin, J., 2008. The gift of song: courtesans and patrons in late Ming and early Qing cultural production.
In: G.S. Fong, ed. Hsiang lectures on Chinese poetry, 4. Montreal: McGill University Publication, 1–46.
Zeitlin, J., 2013. The pleasure of print: illustrated songbooks from the late Ming courtesan world. In: R.
Harris, R. Pease and S.E. Tan, eds. Gender in Chinese music. Rochester: University of Rochester
Press, 41–65.
Zhang, Q., 1637. Worldly remarks on song. In: W. Yu and R. Sun, eds. Comments on Qu from imperial
dynasties, Ming Dynasty section, 3. Reprinted in 2009. Anhui: Huangshan.
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39
MARY CARLISLE HOWE
(1882–1964) AND ADELLA
PRENTISS HUGHES (1869–1950):
CREATING AN ARTS CULTURE
IN AMERICA, ONE WOMAN
AT A TIME
Jennifer Cable
39.1 Introduction
In 1910, Musical America published a piece by an anonymous writer, who stated:
[…] one hundred thousand women in American homes are spreading the gospel of
music far and wide in this country. Through their unselfish and indefatigable efforts …
a musical foundation is being built that nothing can topple over (C.A. 1910, pp. 3–4).
Many of these stalwart music supporters were members of amateur music clubs, possessing
varying levels of performing skill. These women sacrificed time with family, resources, and, in
some cases, relationships, in pursuit of the collective dream of bringing musical opportunities to
themselves and to others in their communities. This chapter considers the work of two women
who were at the forefront of creating an enduring musical culture in the American cities of
Washington, DC, and Cleveland, Ohio. Mary Carlisle Howe, raised in Washington, DC, was a
pianist, composer and a force behind the establishment of the National Symphony Orchestra.
Cleveland native Adella Prentiss Hughes, herself a fine pianist, earned her living as an im-
presario, regularly bringing symphony orchestras and international performing artists to
Cleveland. She was also the founder of the Cleveland Orchestra and served as that ensemble’s
first general manager. Howe and Hughes were defined by their outstanding leadership, creative
thinking and deep passion for music and performance, leaving a rich cultural legacy for the cities
they called ‘home’.
Mary Howe and Adella Prentiss Hughes were members of amateur music clubs, which were
vehicles for music discussion and performance for women (and some men) in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries. The members of these clubs were what Linda Whitesitt
called the ‘keepers of culture’ in her essay of the same name (1997, p. 73). Amateur music clubs
388 DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-39

Mary Carlisle Howe, Adella Prentiss Hughes
of this era typically began when a small group of women came together regularly in their homes
to talk about and perform music. Groups eventually invited friends to join them and before
long, ‘at home’ meetings were no longer possible, given the large size of the group. The
amateur music club has, at its roots, connections to the nineteenth-century salon. Thus, I
consider relevant Evelyn Gordon Bodek’s recognition of the role of the salon for women, in
particular, as:
[…] an informal university for women – a place where they could exchange ideas,
avail themselves of some of the best minds of their time, receive and give criticism,
read their own works and hear the works of others and, in general pursue in their own
way some form of higher education (Bodek 1976, p. 185).
These exchanges were, in many ways, identical to the kinds of interactions which took place in
the amateur music clubs: performances were given; music research was discussed; new works
were premiered; guest artists offered recitals (often for a paying audience, profiting the club);
opportunities were available for coaching and counsel; and finally, women had a place to freely
share and celebrate their achievements in music.
39.2 Mary Howe and the Friday Morning Music Club

Mary Carlisle Howe was a member of the Friday Morning Music Club (FMMC) of
Washington, DC. Begun in 1886 as an opportunity for friends to share music study and per-
formance, the club was formalised in 1890. A tiered membership system was established,
mirroring what was common practice for other amateur music clubs across the USA: a per-
former membership, which required regular performing on club programmes (as well as
continued development on one’s instrument); and an associate membership, which did not
require performing and, instead, expected members to serve as hostesses for club events.
FMMC membership included women with significant musical training, with some having
studied in conservatories in America or Europe. Leadership roles were, at the beginning, all
held by women, though men participated in programmes after 1920 and, by 1966, were ad-
mitted as full members (Shear 1987, p. 69).
Club meetings began in the fall and continued through spring. Programmes were varied, as
they were for many American amateur music clubs of the time. Formal performance pro-
grammes made up the largest number of meetings, followed by presentations on musical topics
(sometimes by a visiting scholar), themed programmes (a patriotic holiday or Valentine’s Day)
and, on occasion, special events including a costume recital – sometimes representing a specific
character, such as a musician or stateswoman (ibid., pp. 27–28). Newly composed works also
found their way onto FMMC programmes, including works by American women composers.
Today, the FMMC continues to thrive in the US capital, 133 years after it was formed, offering
free public concerts throughout the week (no longer limited to Friday mornings), and pro-
viding members ‘with a host of outlets for their talents as well as delighting audiences in
Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia’.1
Friday Morning Music Club member Mary Carlisle Howe was born in Richmond, Virginia,
in 1882. Growing up in Washington, DC, her early education included music, with piano
lessons beginning in 1891. In Howe’s words:
I can very well remember that I was not taught any music until I was nearly nine years
old. But I can’t remember at all a time when I didn’t play the piano after a fashion, or
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Jennifer Cable
sing …. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t use music wherever it touched daily life –
popular songs, hymns, classics, accompaniments, being “band” for the Old Guard group
of steady companions (Howe 1959, p. 78).
Performances across Howe’s early years, usually given at home, were mainly for family and
friends. In 1900, she entered the Peabody Conservatory, studying piano with Ernest
Hutcheson. In 1904, at age 22, Howe travelled to Europe with her mother; while in Dresden,
she met Richard Burmeister, the then director of the Conservatory of Dresden. Howe studied
piano with Burmeister in May and June: two lessons a week and three hours of practice a day
(Indenbaum 1993, pp. 105–106). While Howe was primarily focused on classical music, she did
not distinguish between music in classical or popular idioms. In fact, following a classical
concert in 1907, Howe, her brother, and some friends hosted a party where they played
ragtime. In Howe’s view, all music was to be played, or experienced through performance, and
enjoyed (ibid., p. 45).
In 1910, Howe again enroled in Hutcheson’s piano class at Peabody, seeking a more formal
and intense musical experience (ibid., p. 47). She was 28 years old at the time. Dorothy
Indenbaum, in her outstanding dissertation on the life and work of Mary Howe, writes that
1910 was a difficult year for Howe, who was concerned that she had not yet experienced a
meaningful romantic relationship. Howe travelled to Europe that spring, and wrote (in German
and French) of her emotional state, expressing her feelings of despair and self-doubt in her
diaries:
Lord, let fall from my face, buried in my hands, the mask of anguish that constrains
me / Lord, let not my two hands leave on my mouth, the froth of fierce despair. / I am
sad and sick, perhaps because of You / perhaps because of another, perhaps because of
You (Howe, cited in ibid., p. 51).2
Despite this bleak time in Howe’s life, she forged ahead, immersing herself in music study and
performance. Within two years, on 12 January 1912, Howe married her childhood friend and
one-time neighbour, Walter Bruce Howe. Their marriage was, by all accounts, one of love,
great happiness and a deep respect for one another (ibid., p. 56).3 Howe managed her per-
forming and composing work while raising three children – Bruce born in 1912, Calderon in
1916 and Mary (Molly) in 1918 (ibid., p. 63). Though Howe was a devoted mother, she also
had help in the home, a privilege which she recognised, and one that afforded her the op-
portunity to advance her career in music. While she was well organised, rearing her children
with strictness and warmth, Howe was also an energetic and vibrant parent, possessing a sense of
humour and providing her children with a rich, cultured family life (ibid., p. 77). Rehearsals
and club meetings often took place in her home (she had two grand pianos in her living room),
allowing Howe to keep a close eye on the comings and goings of her family. Once married,
Howe sought to separate her personal life from her professional one in terms of how she was
identified. Mrs. Walter Bruce Howe was used in formal situations when she was involved in
social activities as the wife of Walter Bruce Howe, though Mary Howe was the name she
insisted be used in connection with her professional work (ibid., p. 82).
The principal performing outlet for Howe was with her duo-pianist partner Anne Hull
(1888–1984): Howe and Hull met when both were studying at Peabody. While the two were
very active as a duo across the years 1913–31, their performances were limited to venues east of
the Mississippi, and tours were never of a long duration due to Howe’s responsibilities to her
family. The two women remained dear friends across a lifetime, as letters filled with warmth,
390
support and honesty from Howe to Hull attest.4 Howe also performed regularly on the FMMC
programmes as a soloist and as a collaborator. The club provided her with an opportunity to
reach beyond her familiar surroundings and, as societal norms expanded, to gradually transition
to public concert performances. With young children at home, it was convenient for her to
appear in Washington in less formal circumstances and, at the same time, maintain her pro-
fessional musical standards. In her appearances for the club, she performed as soloist, accom-
panist and as duo-pianist with Hull. She was also able to share her compositions on club
programmes, with a recital in 1925 comprised entirely of her works for piano, cello and voice.
Howe began composing as a child; her first work, The Mariposa Waltz for piano solo, was
written at the age of nine (Indenbaum 1993, p. 127). While she continued composing
throughout her early life, and received her diploma in composition from Peabody in 1922
(having studied with Gustave Strube), Howe marked 1924 as the onset of her identity as a
composer. Much later, looking back on her life, Howe wrote in her book, Jottings: ‘I can only
say it was because the gates had been opened and I wanted to go into those fields and pastures
and towards those hills and mountains that had always seemed the property of other people’
(Howe 1959, p. 87). She goes on to explain:
I must say that in spite of all my enjoyment of the piano playing experience, com-
position was like coming home, to a place where you had the right to be. Hence, only
as late as 1924, did I really even begin to compose, and for close to twenty years before
that I had been listening to every available piece of music, probably with traditionally
conservative ears, but pricked forward, alert for new sensations, like a Puritan on a
holiday. I have always felt that one foot was in the past and the other stepping forward
into the new elements of the future. I have never known any phase of modern music
that was not natural to me, and have found all phases stimulating and many en-
lightening (ibid., pp. 89–90).
In 1933, during a trip to Paris with her daughter, Howe had four sessions with renowned
composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. Howe showed her several works, including Sand for
chamber orchestra (1928), a work which, according to Howe, Boulanger found ‘charmant’
(Howe, cited in Indenbaum 1993, p. 133).5 Howe candidly continues:
She gave me good points on orchestration and said she thought I read too few modern
scores. She more or less advised me to get an up-to-date métier. It’s true about the
scores and some of the orchestration. As to the modern métier, if it grows on me, I’ll
accept it, but not unless it happens (ibid.).
Howe was actively composing for well over 44 years, ceasing only in 1966, two years before
her death. Her works encompassed chamber, orchestral, solo piano and vocal genres. She wrote
of composing:
I liked being considered seriously as a musician and composer; I liked having works
published and performed. Inside I feel grave and humble about any work of mine that
speaks truly aloud. In some ways I feel there may be a place for my music. Possibly the
same inhibitions and hedging about that trammelled me are expressed in it, with the
wide openings to air and light that it gave me. Life would not have been the same to
me without it … (ibid., p. 97).6
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Jennifer Cable
Howe maintained friendships with many composers across the course of her career, in-
cluding Amy Beach, Aaron Copland and Douglas Moore. Howe considered Beach, 20 years
her senior, to be a mentor. Howe maintained warm relationships with other notables of her
time, including Ethel Glenn Hier, Willa Cather, Gena Branscombe, Marion Bauer, Harold
Bauer, Leopold Stokowski, Celius Dougherty, Thornton Wilder, Hans Kindler, Carl Engel,
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and Marion MacDowell, along with many others. Periods spent at
the MacDowell Colony (Howe’s first visit was in 1925) and the Huntington Hartford
Foundation brought Howe into close company with leading figures in the arts. She also held
memberships (and some leadership roles) in several organisations, such as the National League
of Pen Women, Society of American Women Composers, Washington Composers’ Club,
ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and the ACA (American
Composers Alliance), as well as ongoing associations with the Library of Congress and the
Chamber Music Society of Washington. Howe’s life was rich, bringing her into contact with
composers, publishers, music colleagues and other performers. Friends across these groups
joined artists and individuals from the worlds of business and government, Howe inviting them
into her home and life (ibid., p. 82).
It was Howe who brought the idea of supporting a symphony based in the nation’s capital to
the FMMC. The FMMC Board of Governors unanimously decided on 28 March 1930 to act as
guarantors for the new National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) to the extent of $100 a year for
five years (Shear 1987, p. 25). The following year, with strong support from FMMC president
Alice Byrnes, the club contributed $5,000 toward the establishment of the NSO, becoming one
of the founders of that organisation in 1931 (ibid., p. 27). Howe’s husband was the chairman of
the symphony board, thus Howe herself was able to remain tangentially, yet importantly,
connected to the organisational work of the orchestra. The archives of the NSO contain the
names of those who served on the many women’s committees established to support the
symphony; supervising the work of each of these committees, Howe held numerous leadership
roles, both formal and informal.7 Under her leadership, membership in the women’s com-
mittees grew from 19 in 1941 to 800 by 1949. The unwavering support that the Howes gave to
the NSO makes their departure from that organisation all the more startling. Their break with
the NSO came in 1948–49, caused in large part by a board coup that sought to remove Hans
Kindler from the Music Director position. The split was shattering for Howe given her deep,
passionate and long-lived commitment to the orchestra. In 1952, several years after the se-
paration with the Howe family, the NSO showed their admiration of Howe by performing a
programme devoted solely to her compositions.
In speaking of the challenges of being a woman composer, Howe told her son Calderon: ‘I
wish that my name was Martin Howe and that would eliminate the whole woman question’
(cited in Indenbaum 1993, pp. 195–196).8 Writing to Hull about the International Women’s
Council, Howe said: ‘… every piece of news & literature about it of course emphasizes the
women very well – but did you ever think it keeps us more apart from the “men composers”
than ever?’9 And in 1952, in an interview with the Washington Post:
Women composers should be played more than they are…. I don’t think conductors
have a prejudice against women composers now. But no one puts women writers or
women painters in a class any more, and they still do so with women composers …. I
know I considered it a handicap to be a woman when I started composing. I’m not a
feminist. But I think I would have gotten along faster if I’d been a man (Howe, cited
in Sharpe 1952, p. 25).
392
39.3 Adella Prentiss Hughes and the Fortnightly Musical Club of Cleveland
It is difficult to imagine the current classical music scene in Cleveland were it not for the work
of Adella Prentiss Hughes. Hughes was born in Cleveland in 1869 and, as a part of her proper
education, studied the piano, beginning at age six. She attended Miss Frances Fisher’s School for
Girls in preparation for making an application to Vassar. Following graduation from Vassar (in
1890), and a grand tour of Europe with her mother, she returned to Cleveland and, when
asked, accepted work as an accompanist. More performing led to more success, and she turned
professional in 1897.
Just as Mary Howe was a member of an amateur music club (with many members possessing
the skills to be professional players), so too was Adella Prentiss Hughes; in her case, a music club
that, often through her leadership, served Cleveland in vital and memorable ways. The
Fortnightly Musical Club of Cleveland (FMCC) began with a meeting on 24 January 1894 at
the home of Helen Curtis Webster, who, with six ‘prominent’ women, decided to form a
musical club to ‘further the interests of music in Cleveland’.10 Adella Prentiss Hughes was one
of the charter members. In February of that year, invitations were issued for prospective
members to attend the first regular meeting; more than 400 responded, indicating a strong level
of interest for a group such as this.11 According to Hughes, in the early days, members of the
club played symphonies in four- or eight-hand arrangements (Hughes 1947, p. 44). For the
several singers in the club, German lieder was favoured, perhaps, in part, because German was
the only non-English language taught in the Cleveland schools at the time (ibid.). By 1919, the
FMCC was the largest music club in the USA, numbering a staggering 1,529 members, and
drawing an audience of 1,200 for its opening concert that same year (ibid.).
Multiple musical organisations in Cleveland owe their existence, in large part, to those six
charter members of the FMCC. While the FMCC is no longer in existence, having disbanded
in 2008, the Cleveland Music School Settlement, the Cleveland Institute of Music and the
Cleveland Composers Guild remain active and valued participants in the arts culture of
Cleveland, having been born through direct support from the members of the FMCC.12 In
1918, the Cleveland Orchestra, founded by Adella Prentiss Hughes, received a gift of $1,000
from the FMCC, the first organisation to contribute.
Hughes’s early steps in the music profession were sure ones, beginning as a performer, then
moving to the role of concert promoter and impresario in 1898, despite having no experience
in that area. That year, following a FMCC performance of Liza Lehmann’s In a Persian Garden,
Hughes determined that she wanted to hear the work again, performed by ‘celebrated’ artists
(ibid., p. 45). A friend suggested that Hughes import a few musicians to perform and, in
agreement, she quickly wrote to another friend in New York in order to explore options for
three musicians for a concert in Cleveland which would include the Lehmann work. In
Hughes’s words:
My personal bank account at that time was fifteen dollars. I had signed contracts for
$750. My mother was alarmed. My father, a clear-sighted lawyer, looked at me
gravely and then said, I think you can do it, daughter. The motives back of this
undertaking were three-fold: I wanted to hear beautiful music beautifully performed; I
wanted to advertise the fact that I was an accompanist available for engagements; and I
needed to earn money, for the family had had serious reverses …. The net proceeds of
this first concert amounted to $1,000. It was invested in a Steinway piano which is still
my dear delight after forty years of use (ibid., pp. 45–46).
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Jennifer Cable
As for her professional work as a promoter: ‘I had not been aware of the fact that the man-
agement of a concert was anything to be labeled or taken into consideration, for it had been
handled in a way that was natural to me’ (ibid.). Following the great success of that first recital,
the soloists thought Hughes to be outstanding and she quickly became their booking agent as
well as their accompanist. Much of Hughes’s early concert promotion work came through the
FMCC, initially to benefit the work of that organisation, and later, as a means of making a living.
During the first 25 years of the FMCC, that organisation, with Hughes’s partnership, served as a
concert agency for Cleveland, regularly bringing artists and ensembles to the city for public
performances. In 1901, Hughes proposed to the FMCC that they divide the profits from these
guest artist performances equally between them; the proposal was readily accepted.
Across the course of her adult life, Hughes engaged with an astonishing number of pro-
fessional musicians, in addition to mixing with families of wealth and influence in the city of
Cleveland.13 One such family was the Rockefellers, known to Hughes from an early age. John
D. Rockefeller Sr. kept not only a town home in Cleveland, but also a summer home nearby at
Forest Hill. After the death of Hughes’s mother in 1908, Hughes was asked by Rockefeller Sr.
to spend more time with Mrs. Rockefeller. Hughes promptly agreed and accompanied the
family on a cross-country trip and enjoyed regular visits with them when they were in
Cleveland. Despite this great friendship, Hughes refrained from seeking funding from the
Rockefellers but for three occasions, each outlined in her book Music is My Life (1947). First,
John Rockefeller Jr. was one of the guarantors for her symphony orchestra fund, supporting
Hughes’s efforts to bring symphony orchestras to Cleveland each season; second, the
Rockefellers helped to support the French-American Association for Musical Art (along with
William K. Vanderbilt, Augustus Juilliard and others), helping to bring French musicians to
America following World War I; and finally, Rockefeller Jr. pledged funds for the building of
Severance Hall, the home of the Cleveland Orchestra.
As a booking agent, Hughes contracted world-renowned artists (such as Fritz Kreisler,
Yehudi Menuhin, Maud Powell, Emma Eames, Maggie Teyte and Madam Schuman-Heink, to
name only a few), and through the Symphony Orchestra Concert Series, begun in 1901, she
regularly brought orchestras to Cleveland, beginning with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the
Cincinnati Symphony (starting in 1902), the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (from 1904) and
the Boston Symphony (from 1906). Hughes believed that the resounding success of her or-
chestra concert series enabled her to sign other notable artists for Cleveland performances, some
as soloists with the visiting orchestras, others through her Artist Series. Her exceptional work
with both series sowed the seeds for what would become the Cleveland Orchestra.
The discussions surrounding the possibility of an orchestra for Cleveland began in January
1918, when Hughes met Nikolai Sokoloff at an event in New York City. Through the Musical
Arts Association (MAA), of which she was secretary (and the only woman member), she de-
vised a way for the MAA to hire Sokoloff, then allow him to donate his time to local city
schools, working with teachers and young students across the city. At the same time, the
FMCC began to hold lectures before performances. These two elements, incorporating pre-
concert lectures and young people’s concerts, became an important part of the work of the
Cleveland Orchestra. According to Hughes, this work was:
[…] the forerunner of the Cleveland Orchestra’s unique project, educational concerts
with advance study of music appreciation in schools and clubs. Started in the or-
chestra’s first season by Mr. Sokoloff and myself, by visits to school auditoriums and
churches on occasional Friday nights, the orchestra played for parents and children and
our conductor talked on the music they were hearing (Hughes 1947, p. 142).
394
The MAA undertook the task of forming the orchestra. Hughes wrote to the MAA board,
urging support of a new orchestra for Cleveland:
No factor is more far reaching or vital to the success of that great national endeavor
than music. Cleveland with its seventy-three or seventy-five percent foreign born
population is a great field. The Musical Arts Association has an opportunity and an
obligation. Your secretary [Hughes herself] has given her life to the study and the
furtherance of these matters (ibid., p. 251).
The first season of the orchestra (1918–19) was a strong one, building upon the foundation that
Hughes had already constructed through her Symphony Concert Series. The second season, in
many ways, secured the future for the orchestra, as the MAA determined that year that it would
support its local orchestra first, and any guest orchestras second (ibid., p. 263). Hughes became
the orchestra’s first general manager and remained in that position for 15 years. She was the
primary figure who cultivated John L. Severance as an influential patron of the orchestra,
eventually leading to the significant gift which helped to finance the construction of Severance
Hall. She also worked closely with Dudley S. Blossom, who became the executive vice-
president of the MAA in 1920 and later served as its president from 1936 to 1938: his son,
Dudley Blossom Jr., served as trustee from 1946 to 1961. By naming their summer home the
Blossom Music Center, opened in 1968, the Cleveland Orchestra recognised the sustained
support of the Blossom family.
In 1933, following her retirement from the orchestra, Hughes was honoured on 3 June,
celebrating the 35th anniversary of her first concert. Carl Engel, then chief of the music division
of the Library of Congress,14 wrote a tribute to Hughes, which included the following:
[Her road] has been [one] of high accomplishment, always with the greatest good of
the greatest number as the goal. It has been an enthusiastic, loyal and unselfish service
to the cause of music, in the interest of art, and for the benefit of the city of Cleveland.
It has been an example and an inspiration. No material reward or words of gratitude
can do full justice to such an accomplishment. The only worthy form of appreciation
must be the upholding, at any cost, and through sacrifices, if necessary, of the ideals to
which Adella Prentiss Hughes has devoted, throughout her life, a keen intelligence, a
fine discrimination, a disinterested and impartial spirit, and unwavering strength of
character (Engel, cited in Hughes 1947, p. 288).
Both Howe, from the sidelines, and Hughes, in a principal role, were behind the creation of
two major US orchestras. In fact, women were crucial to this important cultural work. As
Whitesitt has argued:
[…] of the ten major cities that were the first to support permanent symphony or-
chestras in the years 1842 to 1919, women were actively involved in setting up nearly
all of them (excepting the Boston Symphony Orchestra) and played a leading role in at
least four: Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York and Cleveland (1997, p. 72).
Mary Howe, Adella Prentiss Hughes, and so many women like them, from classes of significant
wealth to those who participated as they could, contributed greatly to the musical growth and
development in their respective communities. Often challenged in balancing private and public
personas, Howe, Hughes and other women musicians faced untold obstacles in navigating the
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Jennifer Cable
demands of spouse and family, along with those related to maintaining and advancing a career in
music. Their passion for music performance and teaching, for arts patronage and growth,
fuelled the work of the music clubs that populated cities across the USA. American women in
the first half of the twentieth century supported and sustained music outreach through their
commitment and leadership, leaving a legacy that continues to benefit the generations that
followed.
Notes
1 Friday Morning Music Club (FMMC) website. Available from: https://fmmc.org/about-us/
2 Translated by Dorothy Indenbaum from the French.
3 In a twist of fate, Howe and her new husband had a reservation on the Titanic, returning to the USA
following their honeymoon, yet cancelled in order to extend their trip.
4 Anne Hull Collection 1905-1980, Library of Congress: https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?
searchCode=LCCN&searchArg=2016570572&searchType=1&permalink=y.
5 Indenbaum cites a letter from Howe to Hull, dated 15 March 1933.
6 Indenbaum cites a letter from Howe to Calderon Howe, written in October 1937, to be delivered
posthumously.
7 To the author’s surprise, her great aunt was listed as one of the women who worked with Howe
during the early years of the NSO.
8 Indenbaum quoted from a telephone interview between herself and Calderon Howe, 15 May 1990.
9 Letter from Howe to Hull, dated 9 April 1955, in Anne Hull Collection, Library of Congress.
10 Fortnightly Musical Club of Cleveland Centennial Book, 1894-1994, p. 5. Booklet produced by the
FMCC’s Centennial Committee.
11 The first regular meeting was on 6 February 1894.
12 FMCC Centennial Book, op. cit., pp. 6–9.
13 Details regarding Hughes’s personal life are scarce. She married the singer Felix Hughes in either 1903
or 1904. Hughes frequently accompanied her husband’s performances, including his annual recitals in
Cleveland. He practically disappears from her autobiography after 1919, however, and the couple
divorced in 1923.
14 Engel was also friend to Mary Howe and to the renowned music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge.
References
Bodek, E.G., 1976. Salonières and bluestockings: educated obsolescence and germinating feminism.
Feminist Studies, 3/3–4, Spring–Summer, 185–199.
C.A., 1910. Woman – the potent influence in our musical life. Musical America, XII/22, 8 October, 3–4.
Howe, M.C., 1959. Jottings. Washington, DC: Independent Publisher.
Hughes, A.P., 1947. Music is my life. Cleveland & New York: World Publishing Company.
Indenbaum, D., 1993. Mary Howe: composer, pianist and music archivist. PhD thesis, New York
University.
Sharpe, E., 1952. A musician’s viewpoint: Mary Howe, independent composer. Washington Post, 26
December, 25.
Shear, C., 1987. The first hundred years of the Friday Morning Music Club of Washington, D.C.. Washington,
D.C.: Independent Publisher. Available (in 2 parts) from Friday Morning Music Club Inc.: https://
fmmc.org/about-us/history/
Whitesitt, L., 1997. Women as “keepers of culture”. In: R.P. Locke and C. Barr, eds. Cultivating music in
America: women patrons and activists since 1860. Berkeley: University of California Press, 65–86.
396
40
LOUISE HANSON-DYER
(1884–1962): PATRONESS OF
MUSIC PUBLISHING
Elina G. Hamilton
40.1 Introduction
The bicentennial of François Couperin (1668–1733) was approaching fast in 1932, and it was
Louise Hanson-Dyer (1884–1962) who had the idea of reviving the (at the time) little-known
works of this French composer. A new, limited edition was completed in 12 volumes under her
supervision with the highest standards of publishing possible: musicologists were employed to
edit the music; the type-setting was completed in a stylised format that resembled eighteenth-
century engraving and then printed on high-quality paper from Japan; and the volumes were
bound in a decorative binding by the finest publishing houses that Paris could offer (see
Figure 40.1).1 At the age of 52, the formidable publisher had created what would become one
of the most exciting publishing houses in the twentieth century. It is an understatement to say
that her publications shaped the way scholars and performers preserve and study early music.
This was the beginning of L’Oiseau-Lyre Press, named after an Australian native bird, whose
long tail feathers form the shape of a harp.
Louise Hanson-Dyer was a woman of good fortune in almost all ways possible: she was well-
connected, wealthy, extremely talented and her business instincts were unmatched. Born in
Melbourne, Australia to an established family of significant wealth, her love for music was
nurtured from a young age. As a young adult, she would receive her formal music education
from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music as a pianist. Her first marriage (in 1911) to James
Dyer, a successful businessman from Scotland who had deep political connections in
Melbourne, enabled her to maintain the social status and wealth to which she had become
accustomed in childhood (Davidson 1994, pp. 22–23, 34, 42–45). In her new position of
influence as a married woman, the young Mrs. Dyer organised reputable music soirées, fos
tering new connections with influential musicians who made their way through Australia’s
cultural establishments. It was the couple’s move to Europe in 1927, however, which brought a
change of opportunities for Louise and led her to produce one of her greatest legacies in early
music scholarship.
Re-establishing herself in Paris as a music aficionado, the socially conscientious Hanson-
Dyer lost no time finding new engagements in la ville lumière. But it was her work alongside
publishers at Oxford University Press between 1928 and 1931, specifically for the catalogue of
compositions by Gustav Holst and Edward Elgar, that exposed her to the exciting world of
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-40 397

Elina G. Hamilton
Figure 40.1 Flier for l’Oiseau-Lyre Press advertising the complete works of François Couperin.
(Music Division, Library of Congress)
398
Louise Hanson-Dyer (1884–1962)
music publishing – a world which she would passionately pursue for the remainder of her life.
In turn, it was an interest in editing and publishing music of the distant past – a long-standing
activity prevalent since the early nineteenth century among small but enthusiastic societies in
Paris – that seemed to capture her interest most.2 The complete works of François Couperin
was an obvious first project in her mind.
This chapter takes Louise Hanson-Dyer’s first catalogue (1936) as a starting point to
highlight the impact of her work among musicians and scholars of music in her lifetime. Easily
overlooked in this first catalogue are the number of women represented and how their work is
showcased among the various publications she presented for sale. In the following, I unpack
what these connections reveal to us and suggest that Hanson-Dyer advocated for female mu
sicians and scholars in subtle and not so subtle ways. Though the finished products that streamed
out of l’Oiseau-Lyre Press were unprecedented, the journey that Hanson-Dyer undertook as
one of the few women in the music publishing business was not always smooth sailing. I also
highlight in this chapter a set of correspondence preserved in two library archives, at the Library
of Congress in Washington, DC, and at the University Library of Cambridge University, to
unfold the story of a woman who navigated a mostly male-dominant industry with confidence
and conviction in her own work and in her own products. What becomes evident is that
Hanson-Dyer developed and cultivated deep, meaningful and life-long relationships with a
wide array of individuals who worked alongside her.
40.2 A woman with her own press

On 30 October 1936, Hanson-Dyer, accompanied by her assistant Simone Edouard-Belin, had
been invited to attend a concert organised by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation at the
Chamber Music Auditorium of the Library of Congress. The programme featured Joseph
Haydn’s String Quartet in C, Op. 74, No. 1, Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet in B-flat,
Op. 130 and a new composition by Nicolai Berzowsky (1900–53), one of the members of the
Coolidge Quartet.3 But it was the exhibition of her own publications, displayed neatly in the
Music Division at the Library of Congress, which was likely on the mind of Hanson-Dyer that
day. Hanson-Dyer had travelled to the USA that autumn to introduce publications from her
recently established press to the American market. With her, she had brought a carefully se
lected collection of publications and her first product catalogue (Figure 40.2).
But the visit was not merely a promotional tour of l’Oiseau-Lyre Press. It was a business trip
in which she sought to obtain appropriate copyright protection for her publications from the
USA (Hamilton 2017, pp. 635–636). In the early twentieth century, a copyright permission
from the Library of Congress was still one of the only internationally recognised institutions to
offer protection for printed music. This led many music publishing houses in Europe to seek
US copyright protection (Anderson 1989, pp. 115, 128, 131). Hanson-Dyer’s trip at the outset
of founding l’Oiseau-Lyre Press reveals how important it was that the world saw her new work
as a legitimate publishing house. I have written of this visit and the subsequent relationship
between Hanson-Dyer and members of the Music Division at the Library of Congress else
where (see Hamilton 2017). It is of interest, however, to this present chapter that among the 17
items listed for sale in her publication catalogue, we find included the names of women
composers and editors: in particular, Yvonne Rokseth, Margaret Sutherland, M(ady) Humbert-
Lavergne and J(eanne) Marix.
Organist and early music scholar Yvonne Rokseth (1890–1948) was one of the many who
formed a mutually beneficial relationship with l’Oiseau-Lyre Press (Schrade 1949, pp. 171–174;
Parsoneault 2005, pp. 339–351). A student of Vincent d’Indy at the Paris Conservatoire,
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Elina G. Hamilton
Figure 40.2 Limited editions in l’Oiseau-Lyre Press 1936 catalogue.
Rokseth completed her doctoral dissertation on organ music from the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries in 1930. Yet, Rokseth was lured by the multifaceted study of medieval and re
naissance music in addition to her organ studies, and it was during the years immediately
following that she began working on an edition of the thirteenth-century musical collection
known as the Montpellier Codex.4 It is unknown how Hanson-Dyer and Rokseth came to
400
know each other’s work, but l’Oiseau-Lyre Press took on the complicated task of bringing
Rokseth’s edited music to press, and the Polyphonies du XIIIe siècle: Le Manuscript H 196 de la
Faculté médecine de Montpellier was published in four volumes between 1935 to 1939 (Davidson
1994, pp. 239–240). Rokseth’s publications hold an especially prominent position in the first
catalogue of products: of the 300 copies available for purchase, 200 copies were bound specially
with Australian Blackwood. Almost simultaneous to this publication, Rokseth secured the
permanent position of maître de conférences at the University of Strasbourg – the first female
musicologist to hold such a position.
Perhaps because of this early collaborative and successful work with Rokseth, Hanson-Dyer
herself became interested in producing more scholarly editions of thirteenth- and fourteenth-
century music. Yet her efforts were temporarily sidelined when events that unfolded in the
Second World War took a turn for the worse. Turmoil in France had caused Hanson-Dyer and
her new husband, Jeff Hanson, to leave her beloved Paris and seek refuge in Oxford, where Jeff
Hanson had established academic connections. From a relatively comfortable and safe position
at Pin Farm Cottage, she continued to run her publishing house (Davidson 1994, pp. 338–340).
While living through the horrific events that took place around her, it is evident that Hanson-
Dyer found comfort in her work towards producing publications of early music:
I am working away at the fourteenth-century publication, but it is slow work in

wartime, being away from Paris necessitates so much work and writing but it is my
wartime work and I never cease working at it. Sometimes I feel in despair but while all
values are crashing, and barbarianism is in full swing, some of us must hold up our
hearts and fight on for the spiritual side of life today – we who are not young are
unable to go and fight but we can do our own fighting at home all the same (Hanson-
Dyer, cited in Hamilton 2017, p. 641).5
The series of editions known as the Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, which eventually
included the editorial output of Leo Schrade and Frank Ll. Harrison, among others, continues
to be used by scholars today as foundational resources within the discipline.
While in England, Hanson-Dyer lost no time promoting her own publications in many ways
she found possible, and she did this by always including women where she found appropriate.
Among a set of letters she wrote during her time in Oxford is a programme for a Concert de
musique francaise, held at the Oxford University French Club on 11 June 1943. The short
programme comprised of recently published music by l’Oiseau-Lyre Press which was per
formed by Australian singer Ruth Naylor. The programme featured music from the Polyphonies
du XIIIe siècle edited by Rokseth, two compositions by Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre
(1655–1729) – Rigaudon for clavichord, and Cephale et Procris for voice, flute and clavichord –
and concluded with La Voyante for voice and chamber orchestra by Henri Sauguet, composed
in 1938. Interestingly, Hanson-Dyer’s chronological presentation of music in this concert re
flects a traditional, if not by then old-fashioned, French custom of including ancient and new
music as a set concert. The custom, as described by Katherine Ellis, was a symbol to the
audience that modern music was as important as the revival of ‘musique ancienne’ (Ellis 2008,
pp. 243–244). Though clearly captivated by the role she played in publishing editions of early
music, the pieces selected for this special concert featuring her own publications reflect Hanson-
Dyer’s extensive and eclectic interest in music from a distant past but also a keen interest in
music of her own time.
Hanson-Dyer’s engagement with modern composers was especially significant for two
fellow Australian women. In Figure 40.2 above, a Sonata for violin and piano by Margaret
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Elina G. Hamilton
Sutherland (1897–1984) is featured under the Modern Works section. From a musical family
herself, Sutherland had obtained at a young age a solid reputation as a pianist in New South
Wales. At the age of 26, she made her way to London where she studied with Arnold Bax
(1883–1953) who is said to have found her Violin Sonata, composed in 1925, especially fa
vourable. Yet her most prolific years as a composer were after her return to Australia a decade
later, and it is during this later period that her compositions were published by Hanson-Dyer’s
press (Symons 2001).
Some of the earliest compositions by Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912–90) were also published
by l’Oiseau-Lyre Press. Before Glanville-Hicks became the student of Ralph Vaughan
Williams, Egon Wellesz and, eventually, Nadia Boulanger, she had already been noticed by the
young Hanson-Dyer when she was acting Lady Mayor of Melbourne in 1932 (see Robinson
2003, p. 3). Impressed by the talent she witnessed, Hanson-Dyer eagerly sent off some of
Glanville-Hicks’ early compositions to the Royal College of Music (London) to promote this
young composer’s works, and a couple of years after her first catalogue, published her Four
Songs for Solo Voice and Piano and her Choral Suite for Female Chorus in 1938. Still later, in 1950,
l’Oiseau-Lyre Press published Concertino da Camera for Flute, Clarinet, Bassoon and Piano, re
vealing a long-standing musical partnership between the two Australian women. The number
of copies that l’Oiseau-Lyre Press produced for both Sutherland and Glanville-Hicks reveal that
both composers’ works were of equal importance to other works Hanson-Dyer included in her
catalogue.
The Second World War had disrupted many business prospects that Hanson-Dyer had
carefully fostered in the years prior to its outbreak. Yet, as soon as it was possible to return to
some form of normalcy, Hanson-Dyer lost no time promoting her own publications once
more. In a re-introduction of l’Oiseau-Lyre Press, ten years after her initial visit in 1936, the
publications by Hanson-Dyer were presented afresh to an American market. Richard Hill, then
head of the Music Division at the Library of Congress, gave the following description of the day
Hanson-Dyer prominently presented her first catalogue in the Music Division’s journal, Notes:
Somewhat over ten years ago a handsome lady with handsome packages visited the
United States and inspected a number of our country’s leading collections. The lady
was Mrs. Louise B.M. Dyer (now Hanson-Dyer), and she carried with her several
products of her newly founded press, The Lyrebird Press. These were as beautiful as
luxurious specimens of music publishing as one could wish to behold. Indeed, they set
new standards of typographical excellence, and the Library of Congress displayed
them in a specially arranged exhibit (Hill 1946, p. 151).
The appearance of this short but heartfelt announcement was an attempt to reassure American
scholars that quality publications from Europe were available to them once more, an especially
important notice after the significant disruption of correspondence caused by the war. But the
warm and long-standing business relationship Hanson-Dyer held between members of the
Music Division at the Library of Congress was, at times, overshadowed by others who seemed
to take advantage of her well-known generosity.
A set of begruntled letters to the Music Division at the Library of Congress suggest that in
the summer of 1948, Hanson-Dyer had received the unfortunate news that several copies of
microfilms containing Rokseth’s Polyphonies du XIIIe siècle, which she had loaned to trusted
colleagues, had gone missing. The rumours were that they had been taken to New Mexico. A
search and enquiry were issued by Edward Waters who wrote to assure her that the microfilms
were not likely to be in New Mexico, but were perhaps the ones loaned to Yale, and that he
402
would look into the matter further (Hamilton 2017, p. 647). By the end of that summer, it had
been identified that the microfilms had been in the possession of Dean Robb (1892–1989), a
New York attorney who had studied music composition with Horatio Parker, Darius Milhaud,
Roy Harris, Paul Hindemith and Nadia Boulanger – musicians all familiar to Hanson-Dyer
through her own exclusive music soirées she was known to hold in Paris. Robb had taken a
position of Head of Music in New Mexico, which is where the rumours for the missing
microfilm’s destination originated.6 The letters alone cannot confirm if this microfilm was ever
recovered, but they reveal a deeply troubled Hanson-Dyer who found offence in having had
her work mistreated.
40.3 Unafraid of new adventures

By the time that Mr. Hill’s announcement in Notes had reached the desks of academics and
music libraries in the USA, Hanson-Dyer was already embarking on another line of products
for l’Oiseau-Lyre Press: the recording industry. Recording early music was especially novel but
with a reputation of bringing music of the past to publication well secured among her en
thusiastic followers, Hanson-Dyer had an upper hand in the industry. It was in 1947 that
Thurston Dart (1921–71), a young and talented musicologist and harpsichordist who had re
cently been appointed as assistant lecturer in music at Cambridge University, encountered the
formidable Louise Hanson-Dyer for the first time. In 1948, a letter by Dart to Hanson-Dyer
reveals how he was evidently approached by her with an advertisement of her publications.
Though acknowledging that her publications would be useful in his new role, Dart bemoaned
the extraordinary cost of the volumes:
Reynolds Close, Girton, Cambridge, 3 January 1948

Dear Mrs. Dyer
Thank you for your letter. It reached me very tardily since I was out of the country
over Christmas and have only just returned, and I fear you will be in Australia by now.
Unfortunately much as I should like to have and use a copy of the Polyphonies [du XIIIe
siècle: Le Manuscript H 196 de la Faculté médecine de Montpellier], my finances simply
won’t rise to £32 at the moment, and in any case the Treasury & Board of Trade are
being exasperatingly difficult over much smaller sums than that at the moment as I
have become very aware only recently. So even if I could afford them, I doubt if I
could arrange the transaction. One begins at times to despair of ever getting anything
worthwhile again…7
By 1952, Dart wrote of the favourable news that his economic condition had improved and
asked if a copy for himself would be still available:
7 Adams Road, Cambridge, 23 April 1952

[…] The long and short of this is that I’ve now got the money to pay for a set; so I’m
emboldened to write to you to ask if a set is still available, and whether I might buy it.
I’ve just finished a course of lectures on the history of music from 1000 to 1500 A.D.,
and next year I shall have to do the period 1200 to 1600. Without a set of your
Polyphonies by me (or even one in our faculty Library; though we do now have your
magnificent Couperin, which receives much use) and without one nearer than the
University Library (where it is kept locked up among the very precious books; this it
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Elina G. Hamilton
deserves, maybe, but it means that it can’t be taken out for reference), all I can do is to
quote other people’s secondhand opinions about the music it contains.8
This early and formal correspondence between Dart and Hanson-Dyer resembles nothing of
the blossoming friendship and musical partnership that unfolded in the following years. Much
of the correspondence that follow are letters that discuss the possibilities and opportunities to
produce recordings in London. The first suggested is a recording on a 12” disc with Tomkins
transcriptions by Steve Tuttle on one side and works by William Byrd on the other (letter dated
14 May 1954). Dart asked for £10.10 per side with no royalty, given his newness to solo
recording.
Much like her initial success in publication, Hanson-Dyer attained a great reputation in her
production of early music recordings. In 1952, the recording of John Blow’s Venus and Adonis
(c.1683), based on an edition that Hanson-Dyer had also overseen, was awarded the Grand Prix
du Disque. Of this achievement she wrote: ‘years of work are in it both for the edition and the
recording. I am ever so happy about it’ (Hanson-Dyer, cited in Davidson 1994, p. 650). In fact,
Hanson-Dyer seemed to find immense pleasure in hearing recordings of music made of the
music which she had earlier brought back to life through her publications. In describing her
recording of Couperin’s Le rossignol en amour, produced under her own label, she noted:
[T]here is something in this record that is not of Earth – you can hear the nightingale
breathe in a becoming way – it is almost uncanny that Flute – you forget it is me
chanical it seems really the nightingale (Hanson-Dyer, cited in Hamilton
2017, p. 643).
As with her publications, Hanson-Dyer sought to make the most educated sound reproductions
of early music and the results were awe-inspiring. The letters, preserved today in the Thurston
Dart Archive held at Cambridge University Library, remain mostly unstudied, but reveal a true
and deep comradery between the two early music enthusiasts as they collaborated to produce
recordings of the highest quality.9 They disclose a long and productive, friendly partnership
between Hanson-Dyer and Dart and record a unique history of the recording industry in
the UK.
40.3.1 ‘Remember me!!!’

This chapter took l’Oiseau-Lyre Press’ first catalogue as a point of departure to explore the
different ways in which Louise Hanson-Dyer engaged with musicians in Europe and the USA. I
have revealed, among other things, that Hanson-Dyer provided a place for women in the music
world in a way that has, as yet, been little acknowledged. Though never explicitly declaring
herself as an advocate for women working in music, evidence shown above suggests that
Hanson-Dyer at least had some desire to enhance the position of and advocate for women in
music.
The stories above also tell of the influence Hanson-Dyer had on the expansion and estab
lishment of early music scholarship in the first half of the twentieth century. The extensive
collection of letters in archives tell of her business acumen and pride in the work she ac
complished, and how desperately she needed to protect her work through copyright and tactful
advertisements. Indeed, the many letters of correspondence reveal that any who worked
alongside her had a deep respect for her, her work and for the extent to which she advocated
music. In her last decade, Hanson-Dyer remained true to her high expectations, often
404
disappointed with the new, popular and mass-produced cheap productions she found others
presenting to the world (Davidson 1994, pp. 428–432). It is indisputable that the woman who
founded, managed and worked to preserve her l’Oiseau-Lyre Press left behind a contribution of
great consequence.
It is unfortunate that many patrons of the arts are often forgotten in music history. The
obituary for Louise Hanson-Dyer in Fontes Artis Musicae reveals her unique and numerous
contributions to music:
When one thinks of musical patronage, it is usually in the form of commissions for
new compositions or for the actual performance of music. Louise Hanson-Dyer,
however, had a new idea when she began her work about thirty years ago. This was to
subsidize a publishing house which would prove beneficial not only to the creators of
music and the performance of music but also to the musical scholars (Fontes Artis
Musicae 1962, cited in Hamilton 2017, p. 653).
Others also contributed to the empty place she left behind in the musical spheres she interloped.
Upon hearing of her death on 9 November 1962, Thurston Dart wrote to Jeff Hanson, who
had become a close and trusted friend:
Cambridge, 12 November 1962

Oh, my dear Jeff…
No bird can be kept in its cage forever: she built her bower, she sang, and she has
gone. I am so sorry. I cannot write. Emily Dickinson must write for me (26
April 1862):
I had a friend who taught me immortality;
but venturing too near, herself,
she never returned.
[…]
Affectionately,
Bob10
Louise Hanson-Dyer helped bring unfamiliar, new compositions as well as forgotten music of
the past into the hands of scholars and performers like few others were able to. She did this
through persistent drive and a personal conviction, through talent and vision that the world
deserved highest quality products to reflect the beauty she found in the music itself. Her final
note, scribbled on 9 November 1962, a few days before her death, reveals a woman still full of
ideas, but whose body gave way before she had truly completed her work:
But Oiseau-Lyre will go on…. We need a catalogue, a complete catalogue,

Astri must get all the editions, and all the recordings. All the work I’ve ever done…
Those young artists.
Neville – we must do Mozart – and the Baker girl…
Tony did get a good result with Dido,
and that ‘Remember me!!!’….
(Hanson-Dyer, cited in Davidson 1994, p. 466).
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Elina G. Hamilton
Notes
1 Her first publication of Couperin’s compositions, completed in 1932, foretells Louise’s desire to
preserve music in as beautiful and long-standing manner possible.
2 Scholarship on the French early music revival has been well documented by Katherine Ellis (2008).
3 With thanks to Caitlin Miller from the Library of Congress who helped to trace down the programme
for this concert, and to Evan Angus MacCarthy for his generosity in helping me with finding this
information.
4 Yvonne Rokseth also published an essay on female musicians at around the time she was interested in
the Montpellier Codex. Yvonne Rokseth, ‘Les Femmes musiciennes du XIIe au XVe siècle’, Romania
61 (1935), pp. 464–480.
5 Hanson-Dyer’s letter is dated 27 March 1940.
6 Many thanks to Nancy Brown-Martinez at the University of New Mexico archives who kindly looked
into the contents of Dean Robb’s collection. Besides his wide-ranging interest and curiosity in nearly
everything musical, there is little reason to believe that Robb would have requested the microfilm in
question.
7 Thurston Dart Archive, Cambridge University Library: MS Dart/2 Correspondence/23 Letters to
Louise Dyer and Jeff Hanson 1948. The collection of letters, mostly of discussions concerning re
cording sessions and musical opinions between the two, reveal the affectionate relationship that Dart
and Hanson-Dyer maintained until her death in 1962, and the latter correspondence between Jeff
Hanson and Thurston Dart who continued the work started by Louise. To my knowledge, these
letters remain unstudied but deserve a closer look, especially as they reveal interesting detail about the
recording industry in mid-century England.
Louise Dyer and Jeff Hanson 1948.
9 With thanks to Margaret Bent who first pointed out the existence of these letters.
Louise Dyer and Jeff Hanson 1948.
References
Anderson, G., 1989. Putting the experience of the world at the nation’s command: music at the Library of
Congress, 1800–1917. Notes, 42/1, Spring, 108–149.
Davidson, J., 1994. Lyrebird rising: Louise Hanson-Dyer of Oiseau-Lyre, 1884–1962. New York: Amadeus
Press. First published in 1994 by Miegunyah Press, Melbourne.
Ellis, K., 2008. Interpreting the musical past: early music in nineteenth-century France. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Hamilton, E.G., 2017. The unique patroness: Louise Hanson-Dyer’s letters to the Library of Congress,
1936–1952. Notes, 73/4, June, 631–657.
Hill, R., 1946. The Lyrebird Press-Paris. Notes, Second Series, 3/2, March, 151–153.
Parsoneault, C., 2005. Aimer la musique ancienne: Yvonne Rihouët Rokseth (1890–1948). In: J. Chance,
ed. Women medievalists and the Academy. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 339–351.
Robinson, S., 2003. Four cheers for Peggy Clanville-Hicks: a survey of her Australian reception to 1975.
Australasian Music Research, 8, 1–17.
Schrade, L., 1949. Yvonne Rokseth: in memoriam. Journal of American Musicological Society, 2, 171–174.
Symons, D., 2001. Sutherland, Margaret (Ada). Grove Music Online. Available from: 10.1093/gmo/97815
61592630.article.27160
406
41
LADY LLANOVER AND THE
SWEDISH CONNECTION: A
WELSH MUSICAL LEGACY
Lia Lonnert and Helen Davies Mikkelborg
41.1 Augusta Hall – Lady Llanover1

Lady Llanover (1802–96) was one of the key figures to the revival of Welsh culture in the
nineteenth century. She had a genuine interest in different aspects of Welsh culture, such as
costume and language, but also in Welsh music, the Welsh triple harp and the promotion of
musicians and music. This chapter will focus on her interest in the Welsh harp and how it led to
the performance of the Harp Concerto by Handel. It also focuses on the Swedish harpist who
performed it, and how he continued Lady Llanover’s legacy (Figure 41.1).
Lady Llanover was born Augusta Waddington in 1802 in Llanover, Monmouthshire, near
Abergavenny in south Wales, to English parents who had decided to make their home in Wales
(Fraser 1962, p. 306). In 1823, she married the politician Sir Benjamin Hall (1802–67) who was
from a neighbouring estate in south Wales. Their wedding was filled with music and dance and
a harpist from Caerphilly played at the occasion (Fraser 1963, p. 30). The harp, especially the
Welsh triple harp, accompanied her all her life and she promoted it as the national instrument of
Wales for over 50 years.
Music was ever present in the couple’s social life. Sir Benjamin sang and Lady Llanover
accompanied him on the piano or the harp, as her godmother Lady Elizabeth Brown Greenly
(1771–1839) recalled in a letter, and they also had musical evenings with friends (ibid., p. 32).
In 1826, Sir Benjamin and Augusta went to the second Gwent Eisteddfod, the first such
gathering they attended. The first eisteddfod had been organised in 1822 and some of their
friends had attended or been part of the organisation.2 At this second eisteddfod, they heard the
harpist John Jones for the first time and they later employed him as a harpist in their household.
The also met Rev. Thomas Price, whose bardic name was Carnhuanawc (ibid., p. 34).
Carnhuanawc had an impact on Augusta’s interest in Welsh culture, even though she had been
interested before their meeting, and they shared an interest in promoting the Welsh language
(ibid., p. 35). Lady Elizabeth Brown Greenly was also active in societies promoting Welsh
culture and was undoubtedly an inspiration to Lady Llanover (Aaron 2010, p. 66). In 1833, a
new Welsh Literary Society, Cymdeithas Cymreiyddion y Fenni, was formed in Abergavenny
with the aim of promoting Welsh culture. Children were to be taught Welsh in school and the
use of Welsh names was encouraged. Competitions were held in poetry, prose, singing and harp
playing. Lady Llanover and Sir Benjamin joined the society shortly after it was founded.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-41 407

Lonnert and Mikkelborg
Figure 41.1 Augusta Hall, Lady Llanover.

(Elizabeth Murray, private collection)
In 1834, Lady Llanover competed with an essay at the Cardiff Eisteddfod – and won first prize
under her bardic name Gwenynen Gwent, the Bee of Gwent (Fraser 1964a, p. 212).
The importance of women for the revival or re-creation of Welsh culture cannot be
overestimated, as Gurden-Williams has noted (2008, p. 7).3 The circle around Sir Benjamin and
Lady Llanover attracted several women. One of these was Lady Charlotte Guest (1812–95),
who took a special interest in the Welsh language (Fraser 1964a, p. 212), and who translated the
medieval Mabinogion, the earliest prose stories in the literature of Britain, into English (Fraser
1964b, p. 322; Aaron 2010, pp. 66, 72). Other members of the Llanover circle included the
antiquarian and historian Angharad Llwyd (1780–1866) and historian and biographer Jane
Williams (1806–85), whose bardic name was Ysgafell (Aaron 2010, pp. 61, 66). Maria Jane
Williams (1795–1873) was also a part of the circle. She was a collector of folk songs and edited
Ancient Welsh Airs of Gwent and Morgannwg, first published in 1844 (Fraser 1964a, pp. 219, 223).
For this, she had gathered all the airs from folk singers in south Wales (Fraser 1965, p. 42).
Lady Llanover was involved in organising and patronising ten eisteddfodau between 1834
and 1853 (Löffler 2016). In 1837, an eisteddfod was held at Llanover and Sir Benjamin Hall was
president. According to contemporary sources, the event was a success with its display of Welsh
costume, language, music and other forms of culture (Fraser 1964b, p. 315). In this period, John
Jones, a triple harp player became employed at Llanover Court (ibid., p. 316; Ley 1996, p. 138).
408
Lady Llanover and the Swedish connection
John Wood Jones and Thomas Gruffydd, the harpist at Tredegar, played at a concert in
Buckingham Palace for the Royal family in 1843. On the same occasion, Thomas Price gave a
harp by the Cardiff harp maker Bassett Jones to the Prince of Wales (Fraser 1965, p. 42; Gurden-
Williams 2008, p. 164f). In 1844, John Wood Jones died and was buried in Llanover churchyard.
His gravestone describes his musical heritage through four generation of harpists – from
Robert Parry, John Parry, William Williams to Richard Roberts, who was his teacher – thus
showing the Welsh harp tradition. Jones was succeeded at Llanover by his pupil, Thomas
Gruffydd (Fraser 1965, p. 44), who was not only a renowned musician but was also a composer
and teacher (Ley 1996, p. 138). After his death in 1887, he was succeeded by his daughter
Susannah Berrington Gruffydd Richards (ibid., p. 139). She was, thus, the seventh generation of
named Welsh harpers, three of which had been employed at Llanover Court.
Music always had a place in all festivities at Llanover Court as well as in the London home of
Sir Benjamin Hall and his wife. In 1854, they entertained European Royalty and others in their
London home with Welsh music and instruments in order to spread the Welsh musical heri
tage. Two Llanover harpists, Gruffydd and Watcyn Walter Watkins (1830–1904), played folk
tunes (Fraser 1966, p. 293f). Watcyn was a Llanover harpist from 1853, and a student of John
Jones and Gruffydd (ibid., p. 300; Ley 1996, p. 138). Lady Llanover had different ways of
promoting Welsh harps and music. One was the employment of harpists, and another was that
music was ever present in their home. She enabled children to learn the triple harp in her home
and supported harp makers (ibid., p. 139). In addition, she supported several different eis
teddfodau and always promoted the Welsh harp as much as possible at those (ibid.).
Another member of her circle was the Welsh pianist, composer and music educator Henry
Brinley Richards (1817–85). Richards studied music in London and Paris, and later became
teacher and director at the Royal Academy of Music, London (Edwards and Leighton Thomas
2001). He arranged and edited Welsh tunes, and is most famous for his 1873 publication Songs
of Wales (Heward Rees 1997, p. 184). He was an advocate for Welsh music and the triple harp
and also participated in eisteddfodau (ibid.). His interest in the triple harp led him to rediscover
the Harp Concerto for triple harp by Handel, which resulted in a performance (ibid., p. 182).
Richards later published it in a new edition with the title Concerto for the Welsh Harp (see
Figure 41.2). The Harp Concerto in Bb (Op. 4, No. 6) by Handel was published in 1738. It
was probably written for the Welsh harpist William Powell to be performed in Alexander’s Feast
in 1736 (Fulton 2001), but it was the young Swedish harpist, Adolf Sjödén, who was chosen to
play the concerto in Richards’ edition at Lady Llanover’s London home in 1870.
41.2 The Welsh triple harp

The Welsh harp, with three rows of strings, stems from the Italian triple harp. There are sources
that refer to Welsh triple harpists and harp making from the seventeenth century, and Welsh
harpists were employed by the English court from 1660 (Fulton 2001). In an appendix to the
minutes of the Royal Swedish Academy, there is an essay on the history of the harp written by
Sjödén, and one section describes the triple harp and Welsh music:
The two outer rows of strings are tuned in unison in usual diatonic keys – usually G major –
and the middle row, which is reached by putting the fingers through one of the outer
rows – is made up of semitones, which answer to the black notes of the piano. The Welsh
bards composed a great number of powerful, peculiarly beautiful melodies for this in
strument, which are quite different in character from those of Scotland and Ireland. These
melodies are extended with developed and difficult variations, in which the peculiar effect
409
of the unison outer strings is used. And even Handel himself so admired this instrument
that he not only used it in his oratorios, he also wrote numerous shorter compositions for
it, as well as a Concerto in Bb with and accompaniment by a string quartet (Kungliga
musikaliska akademien 1872, translated by the authors).
Figure 41.2 First page of Handel’s Concerto for the Welsh harp.
(Västernorrlands Museum, Sweden)
The number of Welsh triple harp players was decreasing during the nineteenth century,
probably partly due to the innovation of the pedal harp. In Wales, this situation gave rise to two
movements. On the one hand, there were those who abandoned the triple harp for the pedal
harp such as John Thomas (1826–1913), harpist to Queen Victoria (Ley 1996, p. 137).
Although Thomas played the pedal harp, he continued to play Welsh music and edited and
arranged folk melodies (Edwards 2001). However, others, such as Lady Llanover, worked
tirelessly to promote the triple harp by: sponsoring and supporting eisteddfodau; encouraging
competitions and festivals to feature it; including it in concerts; and promoting the making and
teaching of the instrument (Gurden-Williams 2008, p. 161ff). There was a certain amount of
tension between pedal harpists and triple harpists, but Lady Llanover was determined that only
410
the triple harp should be played in Wales (ibid., p. 171ff). Morgan suggests that Lady Llanover
might not have been aware of the Italian origin of the triple harp, and that it had replaced other
harp models used in Wales (Morgan 2015, p. 77). Brinley Richards’ interest in the Welsh triple
harp, possibly inspired by Lady Llanover, led to conflicts with pedal harpists such as John
Thomas, but also to the rediscovery of the Handel Concerto (Richards 1869, pp. 310–311;
Heward Rees 1997, p. 182).
41.3 The Swedish harpist Adolf Sjödén

The Swedish harpist and composer Adolf Sjödén (1843–93) was born in in Sollefteå in the
north of Sweden on 15 January 1843 (Lindgren and Personne 1897). He began his studies with
Ottilia Runsten, a friend of the family (Svensk Musiktidning 1893a), who had studied harp in
Stockholm with the renowned composer and harpist, Eduard Pratté (1799–1875): a description
of Runsten in a magazine says that she gave harp lessons to the famous nineteenth-century
singer Jenny Lind, ‘the Swedish Nightingale’, in exchange for singing lessons (Roos 1891).
Even though Runsten and her husband’s home was in a remote part of Sweden, it was
nevertheless visited by royalty and by artists and intellectuals of the time. When Sjödén was 18,
he moved to Stockholm to study medicine (Lindgren and Personne 1897). He also took lessons
from Pratté, who was a member of Musikaliska Akademien, the Royal Swedish Academy of
Music, at the time (Ny Illustreret Tidende 1875; Svensk Musiktidning 1893a; A.L. 1915). In 1865,
Sjödén went to Vienna to continue his medicine studies but also studied harp with Antonio
Zamara (1829–1901) (Svensk Musiktidning 1893a). He subsequently decided to end his studies in
medicine and to become a musician and made his debut in 1867, at the age of 24, in Meran and
Innsbruck in Tyrol (ibid.). Sjödén then started his career as one of the travelling virtuoso
harpists of the time. Sources such as concert programmes, newspaper reviews and magazines
describe his concerts in Austria, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, Portugal, Great Britain,
Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Sjödén had a genuine interest in medieval
music and folk music from all over the world, as well as an interest in contemporary music and
idiomatic harp music. During his travels, he encountered musicians and composers: one of the
composers he met was Franz Liszt, for example (Lonnert and Davies 2016; Storino 2016). He
gave public concerts, played for the royalty and nobility of Europe and also gave charity
concerts at hospitals and orphanages (Ekerot 1893; Svensk Musiktidning 1893b). He became a
royal chamber musician for King Luiz of Portugal and received several royal awards in Europe
(Svensk musiktidning 1893a). From 1877, he lived in Baden-Baden (Lindgren and Personne
1897). He died on 15 June 1893 at the age of 50, in Biel, Switzerland (ibid.).
41.4 Music making in Wales and London – Lady Llanover and Adolf Sjödén
On 14 October 1869, there was a meeting of Welsh harpers at Llanover, where they were
invited by Lady Llanover to ‘compete for the prize of a new Welsh triple-stringed harp, to be
given by her ladyship’.4 Only Welsh harpers were asked to compete and animosity towards the
pedal harp was shown, as expressed in the Aberystwyth Observer: ‘No one to be allowed to
compete who had ever played on the pedal harp’.5 Of the eight harpers that arrived, two
withdrew from the competition; one because his harp did not meet the standards, and another
because he had adopted the pedal harp. In the speech by Lady Llanover, she compared the
Welsh (triple) harp and the pedal harp and showed her intention of bringing the Welsh harp
forth as a national instrument.6 The speech was an expression of Welsh nationalism through
411
culture, and there were other important speakers at the meeting who supported her sentiments,
including Brinley Richards. In addition:
Herr SJODEN, the Swedish performer on the pedal harp, then ascended the platform,
and said, with a foreign accent, but correct expression, that he need not apologise for
addressing Welshmen to tell them that their Welsh triple harp was unrivalled in
softness of tone, and that he would advise them by all means to adhere to their own
national instrument, which was so peculiarly well adapted for their fine Welsh music,
which was composed for it, and this he said although the pedal harp was his own
instrument. Herr Sjoden again expressed the delight he had had in hearing their harps
and their Welsh singing; and, showing the silver leek he wore, he said he was proud of
being that day an adopted son of Wales, and he hoped when he again visited the
country that he should be able to address them in their own beautiful language.7
This is the first encounter recorded between Sjödén and Lady Llanover. Considering that he
was a pedal harpist, he seems to have made an impact on the circle – shown by him being given
a silver leek, a sign of Welsh culture (see Morgan 2015, p. 90). He also seemed to be sincere in
his praise for the sound and music of the Welsh harp. According to a letter Lady Llanover wrote
to Maria Jane Williams, Sjödén was not fond of the sound of the pedal harp but praised the
sound of the Welsh harp.8
In July 1870, Lady Llanover arranged a concert with harp music in her London house in
Mayfair. Members of the aristocracy and the royal family were present and the Handel
Concerto was performed (Gurden-Williams 2008, p. 170f). The soloist was Sjödén, who had
learned to play the triple harp in about eight months. He played the concerto from memory,
and the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian noted that it was played from the original score, with
Brinley Richards conducting:
The object of the entertainment was to show the value and powers of the national
instrument of Wales, the triple-stringed harp, as well as to give specimens of the
unaltered ancient Welsh compositions, vocal and instrumental, and the crowning
incident of the night may be considered as an event in the history of music – viz., the
performance of a concerto composed by Handel for the celebrated Welsh harper
Powell, who used to play before George II. This valuable manuscript has been re
cently discovered in the British Museum by Mr. Brinley Richards, and was executed
with the most marvellous precision from memory on the triple harp of Wales, by Herr
Sjödén, himself an eminent performer on the pedal harp.9
At the same concert, Lady Llanover’s harpist, the royal harpist, Gruffydd, and Sjödén played Per
Oslef in harpist Richard Roberts’ version for two harps as well as other solo pieces for the Welsh
harp. Gruffydd played the Welsh air Pen Rhaw on the Welsh triple harp belonging to HRH the
Prince of Wales, which had been brought from Marlborough House for the occasion. Sjödén
played Swedish folk tunes on a pedal harp and Welsh songs were sung by soloists and choirs.
According to the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, the performance was a success.10 However,
according to Heward Rees (1997, p. 182), most of the press were not enthusiastic and did not
regard the Handel Concerto as worthy of more performances – although history has proved
them wrong. Brinley Richards’ edition of the Concerto is preserved in a proof copy annotated
in Sjödén´s hand, indicating ornaments and extra notes (see Figure 41.2). The copy shows the
work and discussions Sjödén and Richards had about performance practices.
412
41.5 Lady Llanover’s legacy

Whilst no sources have yet been found indicating that Sjödén ever returned to Wales, his en
counter with the music and harps of Wales, and with Lady Llanover, seem to have influenced his
future musical life. Some sources show that he played the triple harp in a few of his European
concerts – concert programmes from Dublin 1879, concert programmes from Portugal 1871 and
undated clippings from Brighton (Sjödén n.d.Sjödén).11 A rare photograph shows Sjödén playing
a hybrid instrument – a harp with triple stringing in a pedal harp body, with a Prince of Wales
feather at the top of the column (see Figure 41.3): the maker is unknown.
The harp in the illustration is, in all probability, the one Sjödén played on his tours, and it
can be assumed that it was built especially for him. The music he chose to play on the triple
harp on his tours and in concerts was the Handel Concerto and harp solos of Welsh folk tunes,
arranged by Sjödén himself and others. Although a few sources show that he travelled with two
harps, in most concerts he played Welsh music on his pedal harp. The reason for this is not
clear, but perhaps it was difficult to travel with two harps. There were two pieces from the
Figure 41.3 Adolf Sjödén with his Erard and hybrid Welsh harp.
413
Figure 41.4 ‘The Welsh March’.

Welsh context that followed him throughout his career – the Handel Concerto and a Welsh
March, which he had arranged. Unfortunately, only a manuscript with the tune and a text
claiming Sjödén used to play the tune is preserved (see Figure 41.4). The text reads ‘Ancient
March recorded in Wales by Adolf Sjödén and with great approval played on his harp concerts’.
Numerous sources describe how he played this March in almost every concert throughout his
life, always to great audience response. He usually performed it ‘from pianissimo, crescendo to
fortissimo to decrescendo to end pianissimo – like an army marching past’.12
Sjödén was not only a famous virtuoso, but was also an educated collector of important harp
music, as evidenced in the archive of his music in Västernorrlands Museum in Sweden. A
considerable amount of Welsh music and most of the major works of the eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Welsh harp repertoire can be found in this archive, either in printed form
or in handwritten copies that Sjödén made. There are, for example, the three known collec
tions of harp music by John Parry (Blind Parry of Ruabon – Parri Ddal Rhiwabon (1710–82),
The Welsh Harper by John Parry (Bardd Alaw 1776–1851), The Poetical Relics of the Welsh Bards
by Edward Jones (1752–1824) and The History of the Harp by Ap Thomas (c.1829–1913)).
There is also a copy of Lady Greenly’s prize-winning composition for harp which was dedicated
to Lady Llanover. Volume 2 of Bardd Alaw’s Welsh Harper was evidently given to Sjödén as a
gift from Maria Jane Williams, as it bears an inscription to her from Sir Benjamin Hall. The
archive also contains manuscripts and notated Welsh folk tunes: Sjödén seems to have been an
avid collector of folk music and took a great interest in comparisons of traditional music from
different countries.
414
The Irish harp was discussed at the 1869 meeting of harpers at Llanover that Sjödén at
tended, and it was noted that the Irish had tried in vain to revive their traditional, wire-strung
harp.13 So, it is of special interest that when Sjödén visited Ireland in 1879, he instigated a
three-day Irish harp revival festival, where the wire-strung harp was played, and where com
parisons of Irish music were made with the music of other countries, including Wales. Sjödén
performed on both pedal and triple harps at the three concerts (Sjödén n.d.), and gave full credit
to Lady Llanover as an inspiration for his folk music revival:
8.- Welsh airs on the Ancient Welsh Harp with Three Rows of Strings
The airs introduced are: “SIR HARRY DDU” with old variations peculiar to the
Welsh harp; “FWYALCHEN” (The Blackbird), a striking Welsh illustration of the
Irish “Last Rose of Summer” “LLWYN ON” (The Ash Grove), a well known
beautiful Welsh Melody; and finally, a fine old “WELSH MARCH”. The Triple
Harp, an instrument used by the Welsh for many centuries, is capable of producing
special and surprising effects, on account of the three rows of strings, of which the two
outer rows are tuned in unison, and the middle row contains the semiquavers. In later
times WALES owes the preservation of the national music and the ancient triple harp
to LADY LLANOVER, whose wonderful energy and patriotism has been crowned
with complete success (Programme, 10 May 1879, Sjödén n.d.).
Given Sjödén’s interest in Lady Llanover’s revival in Wales, it is probable that he was aiming to
do something similar in Ireland. The concert included the revival of tunes and the participation
of musicians playing the wire-strung harp and pipes associated with Irish musical heritage. Press
clippings from the Dublin press (in Sjödén n.d.) show that critics were mostly enthusiastic about
the festival, as were the audiences. For example, the Irishman wrote in 1879: ‘In return for the
opportunity which HERR SJODEN has offered us of listening to the sweet music of our own
Irish Harp, Ireland owes him a depth of gratitude’ (in Sjödén n.d.Sjödén). O’Donnell concludes
that the revival of harp music was at the initiative of pedal harpists, and was, thus, ‘culturally and
musically flawed’ (2014, p. 140), and does not consider Sjödén’s attempt of a revival as suc
cessful. However, it can be mentioned that one of the performers in Sjödén’s revival concerts
was Mr. Lloyd. This probably refers to Owen Lloyd, who took harp lessons from Sjödén
(O’Donnell 2013, p. 161). As O’Donnell describes, Lloyd was central to the revival of Irish
music for the harp and Irish harps from the 1890s, thus possibly continuing Sjödén’s vision of
reviving the Irish harp music (ibid., p. 159). A curiosity is that Lloyd’s performance of Brian
Boru’s March, as described in a source from 1903 (ibid., pp. 164–165), bears a striking resem
blance to the way Sjödén always performed his arrangement of the Welsh March: starting with
a pianissimo which crescendos to a fortissimo and back again, giving the impression of a passing
marching army. Although Lady Llanover and Sjödén may never have met again, letters in the
National Library of Wales show that they had some kind of contact later. After Sjöden’s death
in Biel, Lady Llanover donated money to buy his harp, but this mission failed and the money
was transferred to the payment of his tombstone.14
41.6 Conclusion
Lady Llanover’s impact on the revival and preservation of Welsh culture cannot be over
estimated. She and her circle promoted local culture and re-created a national identity. She can
also be seen as a role model for the ways in which a musical and cultural heritage can be revived,
415
as evidenced by Adolf Sjödén. Sjödén met Lady Llanover at the start of his career, when he was
26 years old, and this meeting seems to have influenced and strengthened his interest in the
national music of different countries. He spread knowledge about Welsh music and the Welsh
triple harp to several regions of Europe as well as attempting to revive the Irish wire-strung
harp. Thus, Lady Llanover’s role as a patron of culture had a far-reaching impact – not only on a
regional and national level, which was her main aim, but also as a catalyst in spreading Welsh
music to European audiences. This is shown by her willingness to include a young Swedish
musician in her inner circle, and the way in which he was inspired to learn to play a new
instrument and to participate in a musical heritage.
Notes
1 This article is dedicated to the memory of harpist and scholar Ann Griffiths (1934–2020), who first
introduced us to Adolf Sjödén and who was a constant source of information and help in our research.
2 An ‘eisteddfod’ is a Welsh cultural festival with roots in the twelfth century. For further information,
see Morgan (2015, p. 56f).
3 Lady Llanover’s view on the roles of women in Wales, as shown in the Welsh periodical Y Gymraes
(The Welshwomen), is discussed by Kreider (2004). In the periodical, their roles as wifes and mothers,
with the responsibility of fostering Welsh citizens, are emphasized. For example, mothers should speak
Welsh to their children, and use Welsh flannel instead of imported cotton. There is a moral aspect on
the role of the Welsh woman, which is not related to public roles.
4 ‘Meeting of Welsh Harpers at Llanover’, Aberystwyth Observer, 23 October 1869, p. 4.
5 Ibid.
6 ‘Meeting of Welsh Harpers at Llanover’, Cambrian News and Merionethshire Standard, 23 October 1869,
p. 4. Available from: https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3305997/3305998
7 Ibid.
8 Letter from Lady Llanover, written between 1869–71, to Maria Jane Williams. Aberpergwm Estate
Records, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: NLW GB 0210 Abepergwm, ref. code 210-20.
9 ‘Lady Llanover’s Musical Entertainment’, Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, 23 July 1870, p. 5. Available
from: https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3096963/3096964
10 Ibid.
11 A letter from Sjödén to Maria Jane Williams, written in Brighton, probably dated 1 December 1870.
Aberpergwm Estate Records, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: NLW GB 0210 Abepergwm, ref.
code 1216.
12 The march is also known as Forth to the Battle or Capden Morgan.
13 ‘Meeting of Welsh harpers at Llanover’, Cambrian News and Merionethshire Standard, 23 October
1869, p. 4.
14 Confirmed in Marie Eschmann’s letter to Elizabeth (‘Betha’) Johnes of 23 October 1893. Dolaucothi
Estate Records, The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: NLW GB 0210 DOLTHI, ref. code
L6250.
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77425/1281889/2#?xywh=-1548%2C-31%2C5119%2C3912
Fraser, M., 1963. Young Mr. and Mrs. Hall 1823-1830. National Library of Wales Journal, 13/1, 29–44.
Available from: https://journals.library.wales/view/1277425/1282016/38#?xywh=-1282%2C-18%2
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Fraser, M., 1964a. Benjamin and Augusta Hall 1831-36. National Library of Wales Journal, 13/3, 209–223.
Available from: https://journals.library.wales/view/1277425/1282242/1#?xywh=-38%2C16%2C35
83%2C2329
Fraser, M., 1964b. Benjamin Hall M.P. for Marylebone 1837-1839. National Library of Wales Journal, 13/4,
313–328. Available from: https://journals.library.wales/view/1277425/1282351/2#?xywh=4%2C92
0%2C3175%2C2329
Fraser, M., 1965. Sir Benjamin and Lady Hall in the 1840’s - Part 1: 1840-1845. National Library of Wales
Journal, 14/1, 35–52. Available from: https://journals.library.wales/view/1277425/1282484/44#?
xywh=-773%2C99%2C4477%2C3284
Fraser, M., 1966. Sir Benjamin and Lady Hall at home in the 1850’s - Part I. National Library of Wales
Journal, 14/3, 285–300. Available from: https://journals.library.wales/view/1277425/1282754/34#?
xywh=93%2C134%2C3115%2C2329
Fulton, C.A., 2001. Multi-rank harps in Europe outside Spain: (iii) Wales and England in ‘Harp: V.
Europe and the Americas’. Grove Music Online. doi: 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.45738
Gurden-Williams, C., 2008. Lady Llanover and the creation of a Welsh cultural utopia. PhD thesis, Cardiff
University.
Heward Rees, A.J., 1997. Henry Brinley Richards (1817–1885): a nineteenth-century propagandist for
Welsh music. Hanes Cerddoriaeth Cymru / Welsh Music History, 2, 173–192. Available from: https://
journals.library.wales/view/1175725/1175979/178#?xywh=-1597%2C158%2C5658%2C4229&
cv=178
Kreider, J.A., 2004. “The height of its womanhood”: women and gender in Welsh nationalism,
1947–1945. PhD thesis, University of Arizona. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280621
Kungliga musikaliska akademien, 1872. Appendix to minutes 1872-02-25 §4. In: Kungliga Musikaliska
Akademiens Protokoll 1771-1971. Stockholm: Musikverket.
Ley, R., 1996. Lady Llanover and the triple harp. Hanes Cerddoriaeth Cymru / Welsh Music History, 1,
136–143. Available from: https://journals.library.wales/view/1175725/1175726/143#?xywh=-15
97%2C-213%2C5658%2C4229
Lindgren, A. and Personne, N., 1897. Nils Adolf Sjödén. In: Svenskt porträttgalleri XXI. Tonkonstnärer och
sceniska artister med biografiska uppgifter af Adolf Lindgren & Nils Personne. Stockholm: Hasse W. Tullbergs
Förlag. Available from: http://runeberg.org/spg/21/0109.html
Lonnert, L. and Davies, H., 2016. A newly discovered autographed Franz Liszt transcription for the harp.
Svensk tidskrift för musikforskning / Swedish Journal of Music Research (STM–SJM), 98, 1–21.
Löffler, M., 2016. Hall, Augusta, Lady Llanover (‘Gwenynen Gwent’) (1802–1896), patron of Welsh
culture and inventor of the Welsh national costume. In: Dictionary of Welsh biography (online). National
Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. Available from: https://biography.wales/article/s10-HALL-
AUG-1802
Morgan, P., 2015. From a death to a view: the hunt for the Welsh past in the Romantic period. In: E.J.
Hobsbawn and T. Ranger, eds. The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
43–100. Originally published in 1983.
Ny Illustreret Tidende, 1875. †Antoine Edouard Pratté, 2/30, 25 July.
O’Donnell, M.L., 2013. Owen Lloyd and the de-Anglicization of the Irish harp. Éire-Ireland, 48/3–4,
155–175. doi: 10.1353/eir.2013.0019
O’Donnell, M.L., 2014. Ireland’s harp: the shaping of Irish identity c.1770–1880. Dublin: University College
of Dublin Press.
Richards, B., 1869. The Welsh triple harp. The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, 14/322, 310–331.
Roos, M., 1891. Ottilia Runsten. Idum: praktisk veckotidning för kvinnan och hemmet, 7/165, 13 February,
49–50. Available from: http://www2.ub.gu.se/fasta/laban/erez/kvinnohistoriska/tidskrifter/idun/1
891/pdf/1891_7.pdf
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Sjödén, A., n.d. Der hochschule in Heidelberg von Adolf Sjödén. In: Sammlung von konzertprogrammen und
zeitungsanzeigen zu konzerten von Adolf Sjödén aus den Jahren 1879–1882. Universitätsbibliothek, Heidelberg.
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dell’Ottocento. Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana.
Svensk Musiktidning, 1893a. Adolf Sjödén, 13/13, 97–98. Available from: http://boije.statensmusikverk.
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Svensk Musiktidning, 1893b. Till Adolf Sjödéns minne, 13/14, 16 September, 109. Available from: http://
boije.statensmusikverk.se/www/epublikationer/Svensk_Musiktidning_1893_no_14.pdf
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42
THE WOMEN MUSICIANS OF
THE BRITISH ETHICAL
MOVEMENT, 1887–1927
Jessica Beck
42.1 Introduction
Conway Hall Ethical Society, previously named South Place Ethical Society, has been a pro
minent home for radical thinking in London since it was established in 1793 as a dissenting
congregation (see Ratcliffe 2014; Herrick 2016).1 Today, it can be found in the corner of Red
Lion Square, Holborn, boasting the largest humanist library in the UK and the longest-running
series of chamber music concerts in Europe. Both music and feminism have played a significant
role in the Society’s history. The intersection between the two has previously been overlooked,
however. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, rapid developments in
women’s equality occurred across the country as the fight for women’s suffrage became one of
the most important political issues of the time. This was also a period that witnessed a vibrant
music scene in London as more people had the opportunity to engage with performance,
concerts and music education; this included young, British women who were beginning to
challenge the limited expectations of musical women’s careers, which had been ingrained over
many centuries of a patriarchal music scene.
This chapter explores how these developments in British culture and politics were mani
fested in a Society that had already established itself as an important organisation in London for
progressive thinking and action. It also demonstrates how much of the Society’s efforts towards
women’s equality manifested in the musical events held at the chapel: to what extent did the
women contribute to South Place’s musical success, and how in return did the Society benefit
women’s careers? It is achieved through a focus on the women musicians who were part of the
Society’s activities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although music per
meated the Society’s activities throughout many years, this chapter focuses on the first 40 years
of the South Place Sunday Popular Concerts (1887–1927), and the musicians who contributed
to the significant success of the chamber music concerts (see Meadmore 1927). Particular at
tention is paid to a selection of women from the Concert of Women Composers, who re
present some of the diverse experiences that musical women found within the South Place
Chapel during this period. Drawing on previously unstudied and newly discovered archival and
musical material from Conway Hall, this chapter highlights the influence of South Place on
women’s musical careers in early twentieth-century London.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-42 419

Jessica Beck
42.2 How music shaped the ethical movement

The year 1927 saw two noteworthy landmarks for South Place: the first was the celebration of
the 1000th South Place Sunday Popular Concert; the second being the final year that the
Society spent at the South Place Chapel in Finsbury, before moving to their new purpose-built
premises. In the 40 years leading up to these milestones, other tumultuous changes at the
Society included several changes in leadership and, perhaps most drastically, the Society’s of
ficial departure from its status as a religious organisation to join the ethical movement. The
movement had originated in America during the 1870s and Stanton Coit (1857–1944) was
central to its introduction to South Place and the UK, where the movement quickly evolved
(Spiller 1934; MacKillop 1986). During the movement’s most prolific years in the early
twentieth century, there were at least 74 ethical societies across the UK. The ethical movement
started to decline after World War One but acted as an important precursor to twentieth-
century humanism.
Despite many similarities between the attitudes at the chapel and the outlook of the ethical
movement, the conversion was met with mixed responses (Royle 1980). Subsequently, South
Place lost and gained members, and the new community became rife with debates concerning the
identity of the Society. Music became an important vehicle through which such debates were
navigated. Many of the discussions centred on the singing of hymns at the Sunday services – a
common feature of ethical society practice.2 In line with South Place’s objective to cultivate
‘rational religious sentiment’, the services avoided a theological focus; however, many of the
hymns still contained references to Christianity.3 As the hymns were supposed to provide a means
of expression for the congregation, the mixed messages became a contentious issue. Through
the conversations generated by this topic, members were obligated to consider where the line
should be drawn between remaining inclusive of all religious beliefs and not depending on it as a
source of moral guidance. South Place needed these debates to consolidate the general under
standing of where the chapel was situated between its religious roots and other secular societies.
Furthermore, it encouraged discussion around the purpose of singing and music in their services,
which to most were considered an essential means of participation and a positive step towards their
community-driven goals.
Outside of the services, musical activities permeated life at the Society. South Place had an
orchestra, a choir, musical lectures and soirées where South Place members performed in
smaller ensembles. The People’s Concert Society initially set up the concerts at South Place
Chapel in 1880, but in 1886, they announced that the current season would be their last.
Disappointed by this news, the leaders of South Place chose to set up a new committee that
would continue the concerts (Spiller 1934, p. 28). A key initiative behind this endeavour was to
offer the experience of listening to well-performed chamber music to a person from any
background or class. This was partly achieved through free admission to the concerts, with a
collection to support the running costs.4 In fact, the committee’s choice to hold the concerts on
a Sunday meant that it would have been illegal to charge an entrance fee, but it was a time that
was convenient for the working classes, and the Society’s radical and secular nature would not
have been against challenging the Sabbatarian laws.5
As well as their quality and accessibility, the concerts were distinctive by the diversity of each
programme. The main concert organiser for the first 1,000 concerts, Alfred J. Clements,
compiled programmes that featured a mix of historical, contemporary, British, international,
renowned and virtually unheard-of composers. Crucially, Clements’ awareness of championing
under-represented composers led to a noticeably high number of British women composers in
the programmes compared to most other significant chamber and orchestral concert series. The
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Women musicians and British ethical movement
zenith of this was a Concert of Women Composers that took place on 24 January 1915,
following recognition of the essential contribution of women musicians since the start of World
War One.6 For some time, the war did heighten the number of women involved across musical
activities at South Place. Intriguingly, subsequent years saw a dramatic fall in the number of
women composers in the programmes, correlating with a rise in the celebration of historical
male figures. The concert of women composers, however, provides an accurate representation
of the women who had made an impact at the concerts thus far. In light of this, the next part of
this chapter uses the concert as a lens through which to discuss some of the most influential
musicians at South Place.
42.3 Composers
The Concert of Women Composers consisted of three substantial instrumental works and ten
songs, their usual format following the example of the People’s Concert Society (Bartley 2010).
South Place included more songs by women composers than was the norm, particularly pre-
war. In many cases, songs received the most encores and were particularly enjoyed by audi
ences. Two of the most popular song composers during this period of the concerts were
programmed during this special concert in 1915 (see Figure 42.1): Maude Valérie White
(1855–1937) and Liza Lehmann (1862–1918). Over the first 1,000 concerts, White’s name
makes the most regular appearance as a woman composer, living up to her reputation as ‘among
the very best of England’s song writers’ (Elson 1903, p. 150; see also Hyde 1991, pp. 67–69;
Fuller 1994, p. 330). 20 of White’s songs were programmed between 1887 and the start of the
war, the most regular including ‘Ye Cupids’, ‘King Charles’, ‘To Mary’ and ‘The Throstle’.
White’s friend, Liza Lehmann, also permeated the South Place concert programmes. Her
mother, Amelia Lehmann (1838–1903), composed and arranged songs too. In the 1915 women
composers’ concert, Amelia Lehmann’s ‘When Myra Sings’ was featured alongside Liza
Lehmann’s ‘I Sometimes Think’, extracted from her internationally successful song-cycle In a
Persian Garden (see Banfield 1995). The full song-cycle was first performed at South Place in
1899 at a ‘special vocal concert’, with Josephine Troup as the pianist.7 Todd and Clements
wrote in the annual reports about the work:
[I]t is encouraging to find that a work so far removed above the commonplace (which
is supposed, often with only too much truth, to appeal to the public) should have
become so popular as this beautiful song-cycle has done.8
It was programmed another 17 times at South Place, often with the full 36-minute work as the
major part of a special vocal concert. The vocal concerts usually took place at the end of a
season as a means to attract a large audience, which would help clear any debts. More of
Lehmann’s song-cycles were performed, including In Memoriam, Songs of Love and Spring, The
Daisy-Chain and Cameos (Five Greek Love Songs).9 Like many other venues, South Place pre
ferred Lehmann’s lighter music, which seems slightly at odds with their commitment to ‘ser
ious’ chamber works.
Not all of the composers were so well known. In this particular concert, for example, songs
by Evelyn Burrows and Agnes Lambert represented the many songs by women composers that
only appeared at the concerts once or twice. Somewhere in between these contrasts was Emily
Josephine Troup (1853–1913). She was well regarded as a song composer, but much better
known as an individual within the ethical movement; few women had such a multifaceted role
at South Place as Troup, or made such a large contribution to its musical growth between 1887
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Jessica Beck
Figure 42.1 Front page of the programme for the Concert of Compositions by Women Composers, 24
January 1915.
(Printed with the permission of Conway Hall Ethical Society)
422
and 1927. In particular, she funded and compiled three hymn books ‘with infinite pains and
work’.10 In Hymns of Modern Thought alone, she contributed an impressive 63 original hymns,
which are mostly secular, altruistic and progressive.11 They drew an important connection
between elevation and entertainment that were both central aspects of secular chapel life (Royle
1980, pp. 127–129). In addition, Troup wrote fables and poetry for the South Place Magazine,
ran the Children’s Sunday Services, supported fundraising events, regularly donated money and
gave lectures on topics ranging from ‘Russian Folk Song and the New Russian School’ to
‘Environment and Heredity’.12 In the early years of the concerts, she was also asked to join their
concert committee, which she declined, but she sat on the panel of the West London Ethical
Society between 1893 and 1898.13 Furthermore, Troup regularly performed piano solos and
provided piano accompaniment at the concerts on 49 occasions between 1889 and 1902, always
for no fee.14 The majority of her repertoire was made up of German, Nordic and Polish
composers.
Over 70 of Troup’s songs were published while she was alive and several were performed at
the concerts. ‘Unless’ was printed by two publishers and Troup first accompanied a perfor
mance of the song at South Place in 1894 alongside Marian McKenzie (1858–1927), with
whom she had a good professional relationship.15 Troup’s song-cycle, An Apparition, was also
programmed at South Place several times, as were her songs ‘Love and Death’, ‘The Great Sun’,
‘Benighted’ and ‘Hark, hark! The Lark’.16 The reception of her songs by magazine critics was
often glowing, commenting on her unconventional style towards fitting words to music.17
Out of her instrumental works, ‘Kleines Wiegenlied’ from her Six Sketches for Violin, and
her Romanza in C, were both performed numerous times, often by one of South Place’s fa
vourite violinists, John Saunders, who Troup had initially introduced to the Society.18 On a
larger scale, Troup also wrote March of the Workers for soprano, bass solo, chorus and orchestra, a
setting of William Morris’ poem and socialist anthem of the same title.19 The choice of poem
indicates that Troup was more involved in socialism than is immediately apparent from her
work with the ethical societies. Her legacy also shows an engagement with feminist issues, at
least in respect to music, as she founded a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music speci
fically aimed at women composers. This may have been influenced by her upbringing as a
Unitarian: it is likely that she would have been taught that unlimited and rational education was
important for girls and boys of all classes. Ruth Watts has highlighted that the distinction
between public and private life was often blurred by women’s involvement in religious, social
and political concerns (Watts 1998, pp. 46–47, 198). Although many Unitarian women still
found themselves restricted to domestic life, Troup may have felt empowered by a combination
of her education, the arts and the ethical movement community to engage in more public
activities. Her transition from Unitarianism to a prominent figure in the ethical movement
almost perfectly reflects South Place’s transition between the two doctrines.20
The three instrumental works in the programme were compositions by Edith Swepstone
(1862–1942), Agnes Zimmerman (1867–1925) and Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944).21 The
majority of women composers whose music was performed at the Chapel were British, but
Chaminade was among the exceptions who regularly had compositions featured in the South
Place programmes between 1893 and 1918. Mostly these were songs: ‘The Silver Ring’ and
‘L’Été’ were particularly popular. Her Piano Trio in A Minor was the last work in the women
composers’ concert, the only time one of her instrumental ensemble pieces was programmed.
The second instrumental piece was Zimmermann’s Sonata in D Minor, Op. 16, for piano and
violin.22 Zimmermann was born in Germany but moved to England as a young child. She was
considered an exceptional pianist in London, where her compositions were also regularly
performed, but had a limited influence elsewhere (Wenzel 2007). By the time South Place
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started programming her music in 1913, she was rarely performing. The Sonata was the longest
piece in the programme, which would usually have been placed at the beginning or end of the
concert. Instead, Swepstone’s Phantasy was the first work in the programme, perhaps with the
intention of opening the concert with music by a close associate of the Society.
At different stages of her life, Swepstone was given significant recognition by four main
platforms: the Guildhall School of Music (1885–90), South Place Ethical Society (1897–1921),
Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra (1900–27) and John Parr’s Chamber Music Concerts in
Sheffield (1930–38). Her reputation was largely formed by the opportunities that these in
stitutions gave her, and South Place was crucial in presenting her work on a regular basis for the
first time after she left education. Swepstone had more instrumental music performed at South
Place between 1887 and 1927 than any other woman composer; 12 instrumental works were
performed as well as a few of her songs.23 This helped Swepstone to form an identity as a
composer of instrumental music when she was primarily only given the opportunity to publish
songs. When Edwin Evans (1903, pp. 130–131) described her as an ‘already distinguished’
composer in 1903, this was mostly following a selection of published songs, a few performances
of her work at Bournemouth and several more at the South Place Sunday Concerts.
Swepstone’s compositions split opinion, but some of these opinions would have been co
loured by late nineteenth and early twentieth-century attitudes to women writing large-scale
chamber music and orchestral works. Evans criticised Swepstone for allowing herself to be ‘held
back’ by her training (ibid.), but other reviewers praised her imagination and originality.
Furthermore, from the works that still exist, it is clear that Swepstone played with varying levels
of experimentation depending on the nature and purpose of the music. There is a stark dif
ference in style between her songs and early string orchestra compositions compared to her later
instrumental works such as Spectral Hunt, Lament and Requiem.24 Evans’ observation that her
gender may have played a role in her hesitation to push boundaries may have been accurate in
her early career, and perhaps it influenced how long it took her to gain confidence in her own
compositional style. However, this did not hold Swepstone back from producing a large and
varied output of compositions and forming professional relationships that meant her work was
performed in many venues across five decades, earning her national success. Rediscovering her
work through the South Place archive reveals music that reacted to the context of its time in
ways that both challenged and conformed to the contemporary stereotypes of women com
posers, and is a valuable addition to the repertoire of British music from the early twentieth
century.
42.4 Performers
Swepstone and Troup were among many women musicians at South Place who performed at
South Place as well as having their compositions programmed. Others include Rebecca Clarke
(1886–1979), Amy Grimson (1872–1935), Freda Swain (1902–85) and Kate Ralph
(1849–1937). Ralph first appeared as a pianist at South Place in 1889. Later in the programme,
her colleague, Gerald Walenn, performed an unnamed piece composed by Ralph as an encore,
making her the first woman to have an instrumental composition performed at the South Place
concerts, even though it was not officially set for the programme. Clearly this in no way upset
the committee, as she was asked back to perform many times and she and others performed
more of her compositions.25 Ralph evidently saw South Place as an opportunity for work as
well as self-promotion. She was bold in taking extra opportunities through encores and, for a
while at least, South Place seemed happy to support her efforts.
424
Amy Grimson similarly performed at the South Place concerts prior to playing the cello for
her own composition Canzona with her sister, Annie Grimson (1870–1949), as the pianist.26
The sisters were part of a larger family ensemble who started performing together at South Place
in 1896, described by Simon McVeigh as one of the most talented musical families of the era
(2010, pp. 238, 252). The family requested reasonable rates of pay and offered musical pro
grammes with educational value, a perfect fit for South Place.27 The breakout star of the family
was Jessie Grimson (1873–54) who played on 105 occasions during the first 1,000 concerts.28
South Place gave Jessie Grimson decades of experience and the opportunity to perform with
and lead world-class musicians. She was experimental with repertoire, which in turn gave them
a vessel through which to deliver new and unusual music to their expectant audiences.
The women composers’ concert was executed by the Chaplin sisters who, like Grimson, had
a long association with South Place. Nellie (pianist), Mabel (cellist) and Kate (violinist) made
their first appearance at South Place in the first season.29 Ironically, their involvement in the
1915 concert appears to have been their final performance there. However, for many years the
trio performed a wide range of music. In 1907, they also introduced Concerts of Ancient Music
to South Place, a concept that they brought to other UK venues, often accompanied by
dance.30 The first of this kind at South Place included music by Daquin, Corelli, Handel and
Purcell, and was performed by an entirely female ensemble, including Leila Bull on the oboe.
The concerts took on special educational value as the women gave descriptions of their unusual
instruments, such as a harpsichord, a viol d’amore and a viol da gamba. On such occasions, the
sisters took on the roles of educators, performers and organisers, and were paid sufficiently for
their work. Judging by the recalls and encores they received, the women were also respected by
their audience.
Other South Place performers who made very early appearances include Dorothea Walenn
(violinist) and Kate Ould (cellist), who were both relatives of men who were also musicians at
South Place, but who subsequently played independently from them. Such connections were a
typical route for musicians at the Chapel where family connections played an important role.
Equally, there was a strong institutional connection, particularly with musicians who studied at
Guildhall. As well as those already mentioned, Kate Augusta Davies (pianist) and Minnie
Sumner (concert committee member) both attended the college and made early and regular
appearances in the concerts.
42.5 Conclusion
The musicians mentioned in this chapter are just a few of a huge number who were involved
over the first 1,000 concerts. For some, the South Place offered a place for musicians to shape
their identities as musicians and the future course of their careers. The South Place concerts
offered a unique platform for musicians to progress from amateur to professional level within
the same venue and to perform for a diverse audience. The fact that many of the successful
performers came from the Guildhall, which, in its early years, mainly admitted amateur level
musicians, emphasizes this observation. Although these networks and communities played an
important role, women were driven by different goals in their participation at the concerts. For
Jessie Grimson and Edith Swepstone, it was an opportunity to raise their status as professional
musicians, whereas for Josephine Troup, the concerts and other musical activities at South Place
were a way for her to support a movement that she was immensely passionate towards.
Although these women may, at first glance, have fitted easily into a category of ‘performer’
or ‘composer’, it is clear that many women took on multiple roles at South Place. Swepstone’s
involvement in the committee, lecturing and performance encouraged performances of her
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works that were not as quickly embraced elsewhere perhaps, as they may have been considered
too obscure or daring for a late nineteenth-century audience. Troup had an even broader
multifaceted role, and along with Swepstone, Grimson, the Chaplin sisters and Kate Ralph,
contributed to widening the repertoire of the concerts through their choices of music and own
compositions. This, along with other outputs from the women, will have added to the edu
cational value of South Place’s engagement with music that was seen to be so important at the
Society. The visibility of women at the concerts, such as Swepstone being programmed first and
last in concerts, and Grimson leading an all-male quartet, will have been influential in con
tributing to rapidly changing perceptions of women as musicians, and their general status in
society in the years preceding and immediately following the achievement of the right to vote.
There are still many instances where men had advantages over women within the Society, but,
in many ways, the Society’s engagement with feminist issues was reflected in their musical
practice. It is, however, a complex and nuanced relationship that reflects the wider attitudes of
society to issues of women’s equality at this time.
Notes
1 The Society was renamed Conway Hall Ethical Society in 2012. As this chapter is focused on the years
1887–1927, the Society shall be referred to as ‘South Place’ rather than ‘Conway Hall’ throughout.
2 These discussions can be traced through contemporaneous editions of South Place Magazine and The
Ethical World between 1907 and 1914.
3 ‘The object of the Society is the cultivation of a rational religious sentiment, the study of ethical
principles, and the promotion of human welfare, in harmony with advancing knowledge’ was printed
in the South Place Magazine and the Society’s annual reports. Ethical society services usually included a
main address, hymns and instrumental music (Spiller 1934, pp. 79–82).
4 This lasted until 1945 when a one-shilling admission charge was introduced.
5 It was written in 1884 that the Sunday concerts had been ‘the best attended, and the most appreciated’.
Anon., ‘The People’s Concert Society’, Musical Standard, vol. 26/1026, 29 March 1884, pp. 195–196.
6 Concert programme, 24 January 1915 (29th season) in ‘Concert Programmes 1887–1927’, Conway
Hall Archive, London.
7 Concert programme, 26 November 1899 (14th season), ‘Concert Programmes 1887–1927’, Conway
Hall Archive.
8 South Place Sunday Popular Concert Committee Annual Reports, 1899–1900, Conway Hall Archive:
ref. SPES/7/1/14.
9 Concert programme, 2 December 1923 (38th season), Conway Hall Archive.
10 This quotation was taken from William Rawlings’ address at Troup’s South Place memorial service, 20
April 1913, the text of which can be found at the Conway Hall Library: ‘In Memoriam: Emily
Josephine Troup’, South Place Ethical Society, Conway Hall Library, ref. R.TRO.
11 A rare copy of this can be found at the Conway Hall Library. See Josephine Troup, Hymns of Modern
Thought: Words and Music. Special Edition with Supplement for the use of the South Place Ethical Society
(Finsbury: South Place Ethical Society, 1912), Conway Hall Library, ref. 264.2SOU.
12 W. J. Reynolds, ‘South Place Discussion Society’, South Place Magazine, vol. 5/6, March 1900,
pp. 90–92, and Anon., ‘Musical Notes’, South Place Magazine, vol. 3/8, May 1898, pp. 122–125.
13 Minutes of the Concert Committee of South Place Ethical Society, 1887–1892, Conway Hall
Archive, ref. SPES/7/1/3-4.
14 For example, Troup was not paid for performing on either 9 December 1888 or 7 September 1890
when other women were paid £1 1s. each. This information can be found in the Minutes of the
Concert Committee of South Place Ethical Society 1887–1892, Conway Hall Archive, ref. SPES/7/
1/3.
15 Three editions were published: one by Stanley Lucas and Weber & Co. (1890) and two by Leonard &
Co. (1887 and 1903). See also Concert programme, 14 October 1894 (9th season), Conway Hall
Archive.
16 Concert programmes: 23 October 1898 (13th season); 24 October 1897 (12th season); 4 December
1910 (25th season), Conway Hall Archive.
426
17 See ‘New Music’, The Orchestra Musical Review, vol. 4/43, February 1878, p. 271.
18 Romanza in C was likely premiered elsewhere but was performed at South Place on 18 November
1906 (21st season) and 15 December 1912 (27th season). ‘Kleines Wiegenlied’ was performed three
times by John Saunders: 20 December 1891 (6th season); 30 October 1910 (25th season); and 3 March
1912 (26th season).
19 A hymn version can be found in Troup’s Hymns of Modern Thought (1912).
20 South Place was a Unitarian chapel between 1802 and 1835 before moving through free religion and
theism towards humanism.
21 Chaminade’s Piano Trio is indicated on the reverse side of the programme, not shown in the image
provided.
22 The Royal Academy of Music has preserved some of Zimmermann’s work, but unfortunately her Op.
16 Sonata is not among the collection.
23 Swepstone’s instrumental works performed at South Place: Lament (violin solo); Spectral Hunt (piano
solo); Piano Quintet in E Minor (piano, two violins, viola and cello); Quintet in D (horn, two violins,
viola and cello); Quintet in E♭ (piano, flute, clarinet, bassoon and horn); Lyric Cycle for string quartet;
Phantasy Trio in D Minor ‘Como Bells’ (piano, violin and cello); Trio in C Minor (piano, oboe and
horn); Trio in A Minor (piano, violin and cello); Quintet in F Minor (piano, two violins, viola and
cello); Six Miniatures for Viola – Pansies and Quartet in A Minor (piano, violin, viola and cello).
24 The string orchestra works (Tarentelle and Minuet) are unpublished but manuscripts can be obtained
from the Fleischer Collection at Parkway Central Library (Philadelphia, US). The later music can be
viewed at the British Library.
25 Concert programmes from: 4 January 1891 (5th season); 22 March 1891 (5th season); 1 October 1893
(8th season); 18 February 1894 (8th season) and 21 October 1894 (9th season), Conway Hall Archive.
26 Concert programme, 22 March 1896 (10th season), Conway Hall Archive.
27 As explained in their advert from ‘Front Matter’, The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, vol. 36/
629, 1895, p. 433.
28 South Place Sunday Popular Concert Committee Annual Reports, 1887–1927, Conway Hall Archive,
ref. SPES/7/1/14-17.
29 Ibid.
30 Concert programmes, 20 January 1907 (21st season) and 14 February 1909 (23rd season), Conway Hall
Archive.
References
Banfield, S., 1995. Liza Lehmann. In: J.S. Sadie and R. Samuel, eds. The new grove dictionary of women
composers, 2nd ed. London: Macmillan Press Limited.
Bartley, A., 2010. Far from the fashionable crowd: the People’s Concert Society and music in London’s suburbs.
Newbury: Whimbrel Publishing.
Elson, A., 1903. Woman’s work in music. Boston: Colonial Press.
Evans, E., 1903. Modern British composers. Musical Standard, 20/504, 29 August, 130–131.
Fuller, S., 1994. The Pandora guide to women composers: Britain and the United States 1629–present. London:
Pandora Press.
Herrick, J., 2016. Aspiring to the truth: two hundred years of the South Place Ethical Society. London: Conway
Hall Ethical Society.
Hyde, D., 1991. New found voices: women in nineteenth century English music, 2nd ed. Kent: Tritone Music
Publications.
MacKillop, I., 1986. The British Ethical Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McVeigh, S., 2010, “As the sand on the sea shore”: women violinists in London’s concert life around
1900. In: E. Hornby and D. Maw, eds. Essays on the history of English music in honour of John Caldwell.
Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 232–258.
Meadmore, W.S., 1927. The story of a thousand concerts: 1887–1927. London: South Place Ethical Society.
Ratcliffe, S.K., 2014. The story of South Place 1793–1952. Conway Hall, 16 September. Available from:
https://conwayhall.org.uk/ethicalrecord/the-story-of-south-place-1793-1952/
Royle, E., 1980. Radicals, secularists and republicans: popular freethought in Britain, 1866–1915. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
427
Jessica Beck
South Place Magazine, 1907–1914. London, The South Place Society. Available at Conway Hall Archive.
Spiller, G., 1934. The ethical movement in Great Britain: a documentary history. London: Farleigh Press.
The ethical world: an organ of democracy in religion, education, art, industry and politics, 1907–1914. London: The
Ethical World Publishing Company. Available at the British Library.
Watts, R., 1998. Gender, power and the Unitarians in England 1760–1860. Essex: Addison Wesley
Longman Ltd.
Wenzel, S., 2007. Agnes Zimmermann. Musik und Gender im Internet (MUGI), Hamburg. Available from:
https://mugi.hfmt-hamburg.de/old/A_lexartikel/lexartikel.php%3Fid=zimm1847.html
428
43
THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN IRISH
MUSIC INSTITUTIONS IN THE
EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
43.1 Introduction
Women played an important role in the development of a modern society in twentieth-century
Dublin. This chapter aims to promote the contribution of women within Irish music institu-
tions such as the Feis Ceoil (1897) and the Leinster School of Music (1904) during the
twentieth century. The chapter intends to rectify the neglect of the female pedagogue and
musician within twentieth-century Dublin by moving towards a more nuanced understanding
of their lives, the struggles they overcame and the contributions they made to Irish music
institutions. Women played influential roles not only in music, but in society too in Ireland
during the twentieth century, their lives touched by political conflicts in the quest for an Ireland
independent of foreign influence. By combining historical and sociological methods, this
chapter will focus on case studies of three women in Irish music history – Dr. Annie Wilson
Patterson (1865–1939),1 May (Mary) Cosgrave (c.1885–1974) and Joan Burke (c.1893–1978) –
all of whom played important roles within Irish music institutions in the development of a
curriculum, the promotion of music in Ireland and the nurturing of young musical minds
throughout the capital. Cosgrave and Burke’s work has been unacknowledged to date. Their
lives were intertwined with the political state of affairs that unfolded in Ireland during the years
1878–1924. Not only were their personal lives shaped by the nation’s ideologies, so too were
their roles in the development of music education in Ireland.
The twentieth century was a period of Irish history affected by the outbreak of war.
Irishmen and Irishwomen searched for an alternative to the history of the island and were
striving towards not only an independent Free State, but musical independence too. For
women, due to the ground-breaking educational reforms of the Intermediate Education Act of
Ireland 1878 and the University Education of Ireland Act 1879, their role in Irish society gained
momentum in the early twentieth century.2 During the late nineteenth century, music edu-
cation was centred around Dublin and had been provided by two schools: the Royal Irish
Academy of Music (founded 1848) and the Dublin Municipal School of Music (1890). The
Leinster School of Music was founded in 1904 to counteract the growing demand for music
tuition and to tackle the issue of a national examining body for music in Ireland. The position of
women in Ireland started to transform, and they were striving towards an Irish music centre that
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-43 429

the people of Ireland could be proud of. Women were no longer confined to the domestic
sphere entrusted to them from previous centuries and began to make their mark in Irish history.
43.2 Musical foundations

In the final decade of the nineteenth century, Patterson aimed to promote a musical culture of
Ireland’s own, and the founding of the Feis Ceoil (Festival of Music) in 1894 led to the de-
velopment of pride among the society of Ireland. The Feis Ceoil became a national platform for
Irish composers and musicians to perform compositions by both male and female composers.
The significance that this Irish musical institution had on the promotion of Irish culture and
independence is unquestionable. Patterson was born in 1865 and promoted Irish art music and
education at a time when the rest of the country was under political hardship. She was a
member of the Gaelic League and National Literary Society, where she met Joan Burke at a
concert held on 4 January 1916. The significant role Patterson played in the development of
Irish culture is reflective of her involvement in the Feis Ceoil and how her career was inter-
twined with the lives of Ireland’s heroes. In 1894, she proposed a new project to the Gaelic
League to promote the study of Irish art music and composition, and in 1897, pioneered the
first Feis Ceoil in the hope to make music an important part of Irish society. Founding panel
members and adjudicators of the Feis included Count Plunkett, father to Joseph Mary Plunkett,
Éamonn Ceannt and Tomás McDonagh – all of whom were signatories of Poblacht na hÉireann
in 1916 and were active members of the Gaelic League and Sinn Féin.3 Patterson immersed
herself in national affairs and was an influential character not only in teaching and composition,
but also in literature, particularly on the position of music education.
The 1878 Intermediate Education Act of Ireland was based on the British school system and
outlined a new secondary education for female students to undertake for examination, in-
cluding music. In 1901, however, practical examinations in Ireland were only examined by
examiners provided from the Incorporated Society of Musicians, London, rather than from a
local Irish centre. Many teachers were discontented with the programme offered by the
Commissioners and lodged complaints against the examination process and the curriculum.4 In
a report for the Education Board for Ireland, dated 1901–02, Patterson commented on the
unsatisfactory standard of both ‘teachers and students’, and ‘sheer ignorance of the orthography
of music’ (Report of the Intermediate Education Board for Ireland for the year 1901-1902, p. 77). Her
conclusion was as follows:
Either a large percentage of the candidates who enter for Music are content with self-
preparation through more reading of the prescribed textbooks; or else there are very
few really competent teachers of musical theory in Ireland (ibid.).
Understandably, given British domination of society and politics, the system was wholly based
on British affiliations, a state of affairs which would change when the quest for a nationalist
cultural identity gained momentum in the 1920s. In the 1908 Irish Yearbook that was published
by the National Council (Sinn Féin), sentiments of cultural identity by the public were stated:
‘There is nothing distinctly Irish in the whole system. No stimulation of patriotism’ (cited in
McCarthy 1996, p. 154). The standard of teachers of music was considerably low, and this made
it more desirable for music institutions to want to uphold standards for music teachers in
Ireland: The Leinster School of Music was founded in 1904 by Samuel Myerscough in an
attempt to counteract precisely this. However, it was not until 1922, when the school came
under the official directorship of the sisters Cosgrave and Burke, that the void began to lift in
430
Women in Irish music institutions
their quest for musical independence. Building on the pioneering influence of Patterson, the
sisters constructed a new, politically informed approach to art music in Ireland. In the years
leading up to the Easter Rising of 1916, and subsequently until the 1920s, music education
began to focus on the development of an Irish centre for examinations. The Leinster School of
Music began to assert its place within Dublin as one of the leading institutes of music education.
43.3 Hidden figures in Irish music institutions

Like Patterson, Cosgrave and Burke were influential female musicians and pedagogues who
devoted their lives to the development of music education in Ireland, notably within the
Leinster School of Music for over 50 years. Cosgrave and Burke were Dubliners who lived in
the heart of the capital their whole lives. Neither married, and they were proud members of a
society culturally charged and engrossed in the affairs of the nation.5 The sisters grew up in a
house filled with national sentiment and held great connections with leading political figures in
the twentieth century.6 This was not indeed unique for the era. Within the Leinster School of
Music, they played a pivotal role in curriculum development, the education of pupils and
administration duties. Through the promotion of a new syllabi for the intermediate school
system in 1922, advertisements in nationalist newspapers, and concerts that celebrated Irish
heroes, music education began to promote the Irish culture.
The Cosgrave–Burke family’s involvement in the nationalist movement was nothing short
of extraordinary. In 1913, the sisters’ three brothers, William T. Cosgrave, Philip B. Cosgrave
and William Francis Burke, became members of the Irish Volunteers, fought in the 1916
Rising, and were active members of the Sinn Féin party. Undoubtedly, the national sentiments
of the sister’s political stance during 1916 were reflected in their musical careers. Their career
aspirations set out to restore national pride and Irish identity in Irish society, and the personal
lives of these women were by no means unconnected – indeed, the two were intertwined.
It is clear from records that the family were well educated. May (Mary) Cosgrave was
awarded a Diploma from the Incorporated Society of Musicians, London in 1905. She was 18
years old when she joined the teaching staff of the Leinster School of Music in 1904, where she
remained for the rest of her professional life. She had remarkable success with her students in
Feis Ceoil competitions throughout her career. Unlike her sister, Cosgrave did not exhaust
herself when it came to performance. Although it was remarked that ‘the juvenile performer
promises great musical talent’,7 she remained behind the scenes. One can speculate that this was
due to the Cosgrave name and affiliations to her brother, William T. Cosgrave. She performed
in concerts held by the Leinster School of Music and as an accompanist for a number of
concerts in Dublin: she never gave a solo debut, however.
Joan Burke was born in c.1893 and, unlike her sister, remained in the spotlight as a singing
teacher and a favourite among concert-goers. She began to study at the Leinster School of
Music in c.1904, when Cosgrave was teaching the piano there. A promising violin and viola
player, she played in a number of student prize-winner concerts and school concerts.8 Although
Burke continued with her violin studies, she pursued a performance career in singing, at which
she excelled. Succeeding her ‘highly commended’ performance of Irish songs in the May 1915
Feis Ceoil,9 she was awarded the Denis O’Sullivan medal in the competition and her career
blossomed. Throughout the early years of her career (1914–15), she performed in over 14
concerts in Dublin, many of which were benefit concerts for the Irish cause.
From 1916, Burke was among the most sought-after singers in the country. The significance
of newspaper articles and reviews of Burke’s performances, which appear in local and national
press in Ireland, is the focus given to her success and demand for the ‘charming contralto’ in 1916,
431
a time of political unrest.10 Her performances earned reviews that mentioned her as ‘a favourite
with metropolitan concert-goers’.11 Though none of the reviews mentioned her political af-
filiation, it is clear from this evidence that it was widely known, particularly considering that she
featured in nationalist newspapers and concerts organised by members of the movement.
At a time when the Local Government went underground, the Leinster School of Music
officially went under the directorship of Cosgrave in January 1921, when Burke, aged 29, became
professor of singing at the School.12 According to newspaper articles, however, it seems that
Cosgrave and Burke took over the school from as early as 1919. Cosgrave became the first
woman in Ireland to become director of an established music institution. At this point, the
Leinster School of Music had received no recognition or funding from the government, and the
sisters worked in vain to secure examination centres throughout Ireland through a number of
Catholic schools. In 1921, Reverend Father Corcoran was asked to promote the Leinster School
of Music ‘in any schools where [he had] influence’.13 Successively, the Leinster School of Music
grew to become an examining body in which ‘at least seventy-five per cent of the secondary
schools in Ireland are under our [the Leinster School of Music] control’.14 This meant that outside
tuition, scholarships and exhibitions were provided by the Leinster School of Music to schools
nationwide, making music tuition accessible for those who could not afford tuition.
In 1922, the sisters designed a new syllabus to bring out the abilities of each candidate not
merely in technique but in musical culture, temperament and understanding. From as early as
1919, the Leinster School of Music boasted that ‘the management of The Leinster School of
Music examinations was distinctly Irish’,15 and the school staff placed high educational value on
the syllabus. In the selection of test pieces, Cosgrave and Burke prescribed works by Irish
composers and poets where possible. Of the prescribed works was Annie Curwen’s pianoforte
books: The Child Pianist, Grade 1, Step 1 and Second Solo Album were on the pianoforte syllabus
as technical exercises from Preparatory Grade to Grade II. Annie Curwen was Dublin-born and
later moved to Scotland to pursue her teaching career. Later, poems by Irish poets such as
Pádraic Pearse and William Butler Yeats were prescribed on drama syllabus. From 1919 to
1926, Patterson was on the board of examiners for the Leinster School of Music. The devel-
opment of a music curriculum and introduction of Irish examiners was a way in which
Cosgrave and Burke constructed a new, politically informed approach to art music in Ireland.
During the early years of the Irish Free State, the Leinster School of Music took steps to
promote an Irish examination board. Under the official directorship of Cosgrave and Burke, the
school coined the emblem ‘Gan Ceol, Gan Tír’ (Without Music, Without Country) in 1922,
echoing the words of the fallen hero Pádraic Pearse – ‘Tír Gan Teanga, Tír Gan Anam’ (A
Country Without a Language, is a Country Without a Soul). During this era, the Leinster
School of Music’s aim was to promote a system that encouraged progress through the in-
troduction of music grade exams that were examined by individuals in Ireland, and the study of
Irish compositions, and lessons for the public in the Irish language itself, were made available.
Through the promotion of Irish art music and an Irish music examination board, the sisters
made numerous appeals to the newly founded government, urging them to address the issue of
music in Ireland.
43.4 The quest for an independent Irish music institution

Discontent with issues concerning a national academy for music, the sisters promoted the
Leinster School of Music as a musical institution ‘deserving of Government recognition and
support’.16 In 1921, the National Education System, and music in the Intermediate
Examinations, had undergone a revision under a programme submitted by a sub-committee
432
comprised of John F. Larchet (1884–1967), Vincent O’Brien (1871–1948) and Professor

Robert O’Dwyer (1862–1949). National songs had been prescribed for the new syllabus, ur-
ging the children of the new Irish Free State to learn songs in the Irish language. In 1922, a
memorandum on the subject of music in Ireland was sent to music institutions around Dublin
by the Department of Education. The memorandum proposed a new national academy of
music in Dublin. However, following political instability, Cosgrave wrote a critical letter to the
Department of Education, stating that:
Although the Memorandum advocating the establishment of a National Academy of

Music in Dublin is an ingenious and interesting document which maintains some
useful suggestions, but its main ideas are impracticable.17
The six-page letter reflected the changing attitudes of society towards British rule, and control
of the education system. Concerned with the needs of the community and children of Ireland,
and similar to Patterson, the sisters were critical of the developments of the Intermediate system
and music education in general. In the eyes of Cosgrave and Burke, the system that was
modelled on British schools of music had now become ‘utterly valueless’,18 given Ireland’s
new-found freedom. Evidently, music institutions were supportive of the promotion of Irish
music and identity, and the values of the proposed national academy of music in Dublin would
bring with it nothing new. Despite the government’s proposed idea, and the expense of the
national academy of music, the Leinster School of Music still received no funding from the Irish
Free State. Rather than promote established Irish music institutions, the government instead
fought a lengthy campaign to establish a newly defined centre for music that would oversee the
examinations and training of music teachers in Ireland.
In a letter dated the 5 April 1922, Micháel Ó hAogha (Michael Hayes), who was then the
Minister for Education, wrote to the sisters of the difficulty that arose in finding examiners
within Ireland who did not teach the Intermediate music curriculum themselves, and stated that
for a number of years the Incorporated Society of Musicians (London) was to be, and remain,
the examining body of music education in Ireland until this could be rectified.19 Of this point,
it is evident that the Department of Education were searching for alternatives to the British
system that Irish music education was modelled on. However, this would involve training new
examiners who did not teach in schools at the time and did not have teacher training. The
numerous letters to the Department of Education between 1921 and 1932, criticising the
proposed new academy of music, articulate the views of not only Cosgrave and Burke but that
of Irish society during the setting up of the Irish Free State.
Through the development of curriculum and examination syllabi, the Leinster School of
Music reached a national level, and employed numerous female pedagogues and examiners to
promote the Irishness of the school. The uncertain voice of the island in the 1920s echoed the
lack of support from the Irish government in sustaining established Irish music institutions. In
an examiners’ report for the Leinster School of Music (dated c.1923), Patterson remarked of the
syllabus and examination system:
[T]he performance of all demonstrated thoroughness of the methods upon which they
have been instructed. I bore witness to the minute grading and unquestioned ex-
cellence of the syllabus which is followed by the Leinster School of Music…. I am
only too happy to speak in the highest terms of respect and admiration of the syllabus
of the Leinster School of Music.20
433
Their efforts were acknowledged in 1941: a School’s Teacher’s Music Diploma was introduced
by the sisters and was accredited by the Department of Education as a qualification for teaching
music in secondary schools. In 1954, Burke became a member of the board of the Music
Teachers’ Association of Ireland, an Association which aimed to set standards for teachers in
Ireland. The influential role that these women played in music institutions during the twentieth
century encouraged others to follow in their footsteps, such as Maud Davin (née Aiken), who
was appointed director of the Dublin Municipal School of Music in 1931.
43.5 Conclusion
The pioneering work of Patterson, Cosgrave and Burke echoed the changing times of a nation,
and their lives were bound up with the quest for an independent Ireland. Disappointingly,
though Cosgrave remained instrumental in the development of curriculum, her role as a music
performer was overshadowed by her family’s name. Though numerous books have been
written about her brother, William T. Cosgrove, she has been overlooked by historians and
musicologists, her name incorrectly referenced. All three women’s experiences in Irish cultural
politics shaped their musical careers. They were afforded more opportunities due to the
ground-breaking educational reforms. However, they all paved their own way in Irish art music
by dedicating their lives to the standardisation and promotion of music education in Ireland.
Their access to education enriched their lives and promoted self-reliant women who depended
solely on themselves in their careers. Despite the changing role of women in Ireland from 1878
to 1924, however, restraints on their careers were placed. By never marrying, these women
could sustain the positions they held in musical life and society in Dublin.
The obstacles women faced – by war, class and questions of Irish identity – did not fetter
these women. Instead, Burke and Cosgrave were inspired to promote other women in society
and lay the foundations for music education in Ireland. Musical life in Ireland during the
twentieth century was pioneered by influential female musicians and educators such as
Patterson, Edith Best (née Oldham) (1865–1950), Patricia Read (c.1868–1961), Cosgrave,
Burke and Maud Aiken (née Davin) (1898–1978). Their contribution to the development of
music education of the Irish nation was unrivalled, promoting a high standard of music edu-
cation and of cultural identity. They supported women who felt the hardship of war such as
Grace Plunkett (1888–1955), who became widowed following the execution of her husband.21
Women’s lives were intertwined with the political state of affairs that unfolded in Ireland
during the years 1878–1924. Not only were their personal lives shaped by the nation’s
ideologies so, too, were their roles in the development of musical culture and education in
Ireland. By uncovering the cultural politics at play in the personal lives of Patterson, Cosgrave
and Burke, their roles are of significant importance in the realm of musicology and historical
literature in Ireland. Through their continued hard work in Irish music institutions, all three
women promoted music in Ireland at a time when the spirit of the nation was under con-
siderable hardship. Over the course of a decade, more recognition has come for women and
music. This research will facilitate academics, researchers and music professionals to explore the
changing role of women and music in Ireland and abroad.
Notes
1 For more information about Annie Wilson Patterson, see Jennifer O'Connor, ‘The role of women in
music in nineteenth‐century Dublin’. PhD thesis, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2010.
434
2 The Intermediate Education Act 1878 and the University of Ireland Act 1879 granted access and
equality in education. Examinations in music were centred on the Incorporated Society of Musicians
system, based in London, and modelled on the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin.
3 Poblacht na hÉireann, The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic to the People of Ireland. The
Proclamation declared Ireland as a Republic and was read out at the beginning of the 1916 Easter
Rising by Páidraic Pearse. The Proclamation was signed by Thomas Clarke, Séan Mac Diarmada,
Thomas MacDonagh, Pádraic Pearse, Éamonn Ceannt, James Connolly and Joseph Mary Plunkett.
4 ‘Intermediate Education Board (Ireland): Minutes Proceedings of the Commissioners of Intermediate
Education Meeting (1901–1902)’, Report of the Intermediate Education Board for Ireland for the year
1901–1902, p. 285.
5 May Cosgrave and Joan Burke were half-sisters. Their mother, Bridget Nixon (1855–1934), married twice.
Bridget married Thomas Cosgrave in 1877 and moved to Dublin where they operated a family grocers and
public house. Together, they had six children: Patrick, William Thomas, Mary (May), Philip and Joseph. In
July 1888, Thomas Cosgrave passed away suddenly and Bridget took control of the family businesses. In
September 1891, Bridget married Thomas Burke and together they had two children, Joan and William
Francis. For further information about William T. Cosgrave, see S. Cullen, ‘Bridget Nixon (1855–1934)’,
Dublin Historical Record, 66, Spring/Autumn, 2013, 61–71: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24616052.
6 Evidence I have found suggests that the sisters moved in the same circles as leading Sinn Féin members
such as Arthur Griffith, Bulmer Hobson, Eoin MacNeill and Pádraic Pearse. Their brother, William T.
Cosgrave, was an Irish politician who came to be Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish
Free State in 1922. He played a prominent role in the Irish nationalist movement. He was a member of
the Sinn Féin party and played an important role in the Easter Rebellion of 1916. He, along with their
three brothers, fought under Éamonn Ceannt in the South Dublin Union close to their family home
during the 1916 Easter Rising. Joan Burke played in a number of memorial concerts organised by
leading political figures of the nationalist movement, and alongside Éamonn Ceannt, who was an avid
Uilleann Pipe player. Their family home (174 James Street, Dublin) was raided on numerous occasions
by British forces, and a number of Sinn Féin meetings were held on the premises.
7 ‘Concert in Borris’, Nationalist and Leinster Times, 13 May 1905, p. 2.
8 A student concert for the Leinster School of Music was held in Molesworth Hall on 17 November
1910 where Burke performed a violin solo Kujawiak. See ‘The Leinster School of Music Student
Concert Programme’, 17 November 1910, Pearse Museum, Dublin.
9 ‘Feis Ceoil Awards Prize Winners’ Concert’, Irish Times, 17 May 1915, p. 8.
10 ‘Anniversary Oration by Rev. Walter McDonald’, Irish Independent, 4 October 1916, p. 2.
11 ‘Good Fund Concert in Cavan’, Anglo-Celt Newspaper, 21 October 1916, p. 8.
12 ‘The Leinster School of Music Joan Burke Appointed Professor of Singing’, Irish Independent, 24
January 1921.
13 Correspondence Letter from the Secretary of the Leinster School of Music to Reverend Father
Corcoran of 35 Lower Leeson Street Dublin, 12 December 1921. The Leinster School of Music
Private Archives, Leinster School of Music & Drama, Dublin, Ireland.
14 Ibid.
15 Correspondence Letter from the Secretary of the Leinster School of Music to the Editor of
Freemason’s Journal, 23 June 1919. The Leinster School of Music Private Archives, Leinster School of
Music & Drama, Dublin, Ireland.
16 Correspondence Letter from the Secretary of the Leinster School of Music to the Minister of
Education of the Irish Free State, 28 September 1923, p. 1. The Leinster School of Music Private
Archives, Leinster School of Music & Drama, Dublin, Ireland.
17 ‘The Proposed National Academy of Music - A Criticism’, c.1923, in Correspondence Letter from the
Secretary of the Leinster School of Music to The Secretary to the Minister of Education Irish Free
State, 16 April 1923, p. 1. The Leinster School of Music Private Archives, Leinster School of Music &
Drama, Dublin, Ireland.
18 Ibid.
19 Correspondence Letter from Micháel Ó hAogha (Department of Education) to William T. Cosgrave
T.D., 5 April 1922, p. 1. The Leinster School of Music Private Archives, Leinster School of Music &
Drama, Dublin, Ireland.
20 Dr. Annie Wilson Patterson’s Reports on the Dublin Centre: The Leinster School of Music
Examinations, c.1923, The Leinster School of Music Private Archives, Leinster School of Music &
Drama, Dublin.
435
21 Grace Gifford Plunkett married Joseph Plunkett at Kilmainham Gaol (Kilmainham Jail) following his
arrest for his involvement in the 1916 Easter Rising. He was executed the next day by Crown Forces.
Grace was an active member of Sinn Féin and earned a living as an artist.
References
McCarthy, M., 1996. The transmission of music and the formation of national identity in early twentieth-
century Ireland. In: P.F. Devine and H. White eds, Irish Musical Studies 5: The Maynooth International
Musicology Conference 1995 – Selected Proceedings: Part Two. Dublin: Four Court Press, 146–159.
Report of the Intermediate Education Board for Ireland for the year 1901–1902, printed for his Majesty’s
Stationery Office by Alexander Thom & Co., Dublin.
436
44
THE BEEDLE-CARTER
CORRESPONDENCE: AN
ANALYSIS OF THE CULTURAL
WORK UNDERTAKEN BY
MAUREEN BEEDLE TO PROMOTE
ELLIOTT CARTER’S MUSIC IN
THE UK AND EUROPE
Helen C. Thomas
44.1 Composers and their publishers

Letters between composers and their publishers have a peculiar fascination. They can be of
historical interest when they document industrial and sociological developments. They can give
us insight into associated changes in skill sets, and there is something reassuring about observing
the mundane lives of the famous. There is also human interest in the stories of friendships made
and broken, and personally signed letters fulfil the antiquarian’s desire to collect symbolic goods
associated with creative people.
In 2011, the charismatic UK publisher and new music promoter Maureen Beedle passed away
in France. Amongst Beedle’s estate was a collection of 129 previously unpublished letters doc
umenting how she promoted the music of Elliott Carter in the UK and Europe during the period
1975–82, when she was a London-based employee of the American publishing house, G.
Schirmer Inc. This chapter tells the story of the publication of Elliott Carter’s In Sleep, in Thunder
(1981) through the exchange of letters between Maureen Beedle, Elliott and Helen Carter. The
correspondence is unusual in that it contains not just the letters Beedle received from Elliott and
Helen Carter, but also carbon copies of the letters she sent to the Carters: so, we have all sides of
the exchanges. This letter-writing exchange illuminates a previously invisible story of a
composer-publisher relationship, and sheds light on the unrecognised cultural work undertaken
by Maureen Beedle. Within the Carter literature, the only reference I have found to Beedle’s
work is an acknowledgement by David Schiff (1998, xi) for ‘help, advice and encouragement’
received in preparing his book. The Beedle-Carter correspondence offers a unique opportunity
to study the specialist knowledge Maureen possessed – the skills she practiced and the cultural
capital she owned – and a publishing world in which loyalty and commercial interests collide.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429201080-44 437

Helen C. Thomas
44.2 The Correspondents
Maureen Beedle
Maureen Beedle (1936–2011), seen on the right here in next to her husband, Michael Boxall
(Figure 44.1a), was one of a predominantly female group of music publisher-promoters in the
UK in the late twentieth century that also included Sally Groves at Schott Music (daughter of
the conductor Sir Charles Groves), Janis Susskind at Boosey & Hawkes (daughter of the
conductor Walter Susskind), Sally Cavendish at Faber Music and Sheila McCrindle at Chester
Music. Beedle did not have a distinguished, musical family background. She was born near
Beverley in north Yorkshire, studied violin in London at the Royal Academy of Music (where
she shared digs for a year with the actor Albert Finney), and had a successful career in music
publishing, working first for the Leeds Music Corporation, then G. Schirmer, and lastly,
Oxford University Press. Following her retirement to the Languedoc in the South of France,
she went on to form and direct a choir of local villagers in concerts of Byrd and Palestrina
masses in churches throughout the region, including Beziers Cathedral. In a commemorative
page set up on Just Giving, Andrew Potter, former Chair of the Performing Right Society and
Head of Music at Oxford University Press, wrote: ‘What a wonderful individual you were,
Maureen. Such good memories of forthrightness, unshakeable dedication - and laughter’.
Elliott Carter
The American composer Elliott Carter (1908–2012) began writing music before the comple
tion of the Empire State Building in 1931, and continued to write for another decade after the
destruction of the World Trade Centre in 2001. Whilst at school, he was encouraged to follow
a career in composition by Charles Ives. He studied first with Walter Piston at Harvard and then
with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. In 1936, he entered a publishing contract with G. Schirmer,
assigning to them his Tarantella for male voices and piano 4-hands, written for the Harvard Glee
Club. He went on to develop a modernist, compositional aesthetic that encompassed all musical
parameters, and radically overhauled the Western Art tradition of tempo relationships and
Figure 44.1a Michael Boxall, Maureen Beedle.
438
The Beedle-Carter correspondence
Figure 44.1b Helen Carter, Elliott Carter.

(Maureen Beedle, private collection)
musical texture. Yet, he was a composer who was performer-focused. He liked to collaborate
with, and challenge, the very best exponents of new music in North America and Western
Europe. A glance through the list of musicians who have commissioned, performed and
continue to perform his work reads like a roll call of the new music elite. Carter was the
recipient of numerous international awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes (1960 and 1973), the
Ernst Von Siemens Music Prize (1981), the United States National Medal of Arts (1985), and
received the insignia of Commander of the Legion of Honor from the French Government
(2012). He was described by his friend, Aaron Copland, as ‘one of America’s most distinguished
creative artists in any field’ (Music Sales Classical, n.d.), and music critic Stephen Danker
concluded that he was: ‘perhaps the last living embodiment of the great, progressive composer
working within the venerated classical tradition’ (Danker 2013). He was married to Helen
Frost-Jones from 1939 until her death in 2003 (Figure 44.1b).
Helen Carter
Helen Carter, née Frost-Jones, was a cubist sculptor and art critic, a personal friend of Marcel
Duchamp, and was introduced to Elliott Carter by the composer Nicolas Nabokov. According
to Meyer and Schreffler (2008, p. 42), Helen Frost-Jones abandoned sculpture after marrying
Carter. Her bust of her husband can be seen on display at the New York Public Library, and her
bust of Marcel Duchamp is in the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art collection in
Hartford, Connecticut. She and Elliott married in 1939 and the marriage lasted until her death
in 2003. Elliott dedicated his Symphony No. 1 (1942), Duo for Violin and Piano (1973–74),
Anniversary (1989) and Boston Concerto (2001–02) to her. The harpsichordist Paul Jacobs
439
Helen C. Thomas
described Helen as having ‘a backbone of steel, but [she] can be extraordinarily sensitive and
considerate’ (ibid., 251). The composer Ned Rorem, writing on the occasion of Carter’s 70th
birthday, provided this short pen-portrait of her:
May it not seem chauvinist to suggest that the artist Helen Frost-Jones and the pianist
Yvonne Loriod [married to Olivier Messiaen], while in no sense accountable to the
nature, are indispensable to the breadth of their husbands’ oeuvres. For 35 years Helen’s
canny comments at intermissions, not to mention her apparent service as a buffer
betwixt Elliott and crass practicalities, have been as solid a presence in the musical
world as her own sculptures in the world of the eye (Rorem 1978, 23–24).
Rorem’s caveat ‘may it not seem chauvinist’ raises uncomfortable questions around the gender
imbalance in professional support between creative couples, even into the late twentieth
century. For example, Meyer and Schreffler’s glossy, centennial portrait of Elliott Carter gives a
single page to Helen Carter’s own professional achievements, accompanied by a photograph of
her in her sculpture studio (Meyer and Schreffler 2008, p. 40). Furthermore, most of the other
50-plus references to Helen in this publication are merely acknowledgements in the opening or
closing salutations in correspondence between Elliott and musical luminaries such as Nadia
Boulanger, Pierre Boulez, Aaron Copland, Paul Fromm, William Glock, Paul Griffiths, Heinz
Holliger, John Kirkpatrick, Witold Lutosłaski, Nicolas Nabokov, Conlon Nancarrow,
Goffredo Petrassi and Igor Stravinsky. Perhaps the most telling evidence for the significance of
Helen Carter’s work as a promoter of her husband’s work is to be found in Robert Craft’s
address from her memorial ceremony on 15 September 2003, in which he writes: ‘“Call Helen”
was Elliott’s response when a difficulty of any kind arose, and call Helen we did’ (Craft
2006, p. 414).
There is no mention of Helen Carter’s creative work in the Beedle-Carter correspondence,
nor is there any evidence in the letters that either of these two correspondents critiqued the
nature of Elliott’s compositions – despite their obvious qualifications as, respectively, art critic
and conservatoire-trained musician. Rather, the letters highlight the work of Helen and
Maureen as cultural intermediaries working in tandem to promote Elliott’s music effectively
into Europe and, at the same time, to protect him from the demands of an escalating reputation
so that he could continue to compose relatively undisturbed. The letters offer insight into the
successes and frustrations of forging, maintaining and supporting a successful compositional
career (Thomas 2016). Detailed information about scores, corrections, recordings, reviews and
travel schedules is posted back and forth across the Atlantic, sometimes as often as once or twice
a week. What might have been a rather formal correspondence is enlivened by the burgeoning
friendship between Maureen, her husband Michael and the Carters. The modes of address
become increasingly affectionate and there is notable concern for each others’ wellbeing. The
friendships can be seen to develop not only through the business of music but also through
exchanges about the weather, holiday plans and occasional inconveniences brought about by
wide-scale industrial unrest. Presents are exchanged, and the Carters subsidise Maureen and
Michael’s trips to Carter concerts in Europe as well as a trans-Atlantic visit. These tokens of
friendship indicate a rare level of mutual trust and interdependence that is reminiscent of the
Jaeger-Elgar correspondence (see Northrop Moore 1987).
By the late 1970s, Elliott Carter’s reputation in the UK and Europe was firmly established.
He was completing Syringa (1978), and the Nash Ensemble in London and Pierre Boulez at
IRCAM were vying for the right to give the first European performance. At the invitation of
Sir William Glock, Elliott had become a composition tutor at the prestigious Dartington
440
Summer School. A Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976) received its first UK performance at the
Proms in 1979. In the same year, Beedle was working hard on plans to feature Elliott’s music at
festivals in Bath and Dublin, and the Carters took up residency at the American Academy in
Rome for a few months where Elliott completed his Night Fantasies (1980) for solo piano,
which was premiered in Bath by Ursula Oppens. The Piano Concerto (1965) was being ne
gotiated for performance at the Proms in 1980, and Helen and Maureen worked through
various scenarios before finally securing Charles Mackerras as the conductor. In the meantime,
the London Sinfonietta was pushing hard to finalise the arrangements for a new work, the first
to be commissioned outside the US.
44.3 In Sleep, in Thunder (1981)

Between July 1978 and September 1982, a dozen letters were exchanged between the three cor
respondents concerning the new work, which outlines a route – from commission to first perfor
mance and first commercial recording – that was full of deviations and delays. Figure 44.2 shows the
three correspondents – Maureen Beedle, Helen Carter and Elliott Carter – situated amongst other
agents who appear in the correspondence: on the left are the names of performers who are mentioned
in these particular letters, and on the right are other cultural intermediaries. Lurking on the far right,
rather like a stealth bomber, is a rival publishing firm to G. Schirmer Inc., Boosey & Hawkes Ltd.
Maureen Beedle first mentions the London Sinfonietta commission in a letter of 4 July 1978
to Helen Carter, when she reports on a conversation she had that morning with James
Mallinson, a producer at Decca Records. Beedle writes:
[Mallinson] had a tape of the Piano Concerto and thinks it’s a splendid work but is worried
about the fact it’s been recorded before. [Decca’s] strict policy is to record work not
previously recorded. I mentioned that Elliott was doing a commission for the London
Sinfonietta and this interested him enormously. Is it possible to let me know a bit more
about the sort of work Elliott’s writing for the Sinfonietta so that I can pass it on to him?
Michael Vyner has it scheduled for a world premiere on April 1st, 1979, but that’s all I
know about it. Mr Mallinson was also interested in MIRROR [A Mirror on Which to
Dwell (1975)] but I presume that’s already scheduled for recording, is it?1
Figure 44.2 Agents in the production of In Sleep, in Thunder.

441
Helen C. Thomas
The letter gives us insight into how Beedle frames and qualifies Carter’s music with a network
of contacts, a knowledge of Carter’s output, and a commercial understanding of the premium
placed on a premiere recording. In the next few letters, we see Beedle negotiate the process of
getting the work to a first performance.
On 3 August 1978, Beedle alerts Helen Carter to the fact that Michael Vyner, Artistic Director
of the London Sinfonietta, has started to make arrangements for the premiere of the new work for
spring 1979. At this point, Elliott Carter is still writing out the score of another piece, Syringa (1978),
which has taken much longer than planned. Beedle is concerned that Vyner is ‘jumping the gun a
bit’ and might have to be ‘gently put off as quickly as possible’. The linguistic qualifiers ‘a bit’ and
‘gently’ demonstrate her ability to deal with a powerful gate-keeper in the contemporary musical
world with tact, and to absorb some of the impact that this news about the proposed timescale
would have on the Carters – a classic ‘buffering’ tactic. Helen Carter’s response is rapid. On 14
August, she writes: ‘This is really an SOS. Michael Vyner is indeed quite ahead of everything’.2
Beedle reports back on 24 August that she has had a telephone conversation with Vyner, ‘who was
naturally very disappointed’ that the new work would not be ready in time, and that she has
suggested that the Sinfonietta programme another Carter work, A Mirror on Which to Dwell, in place
of the premiere. The use of abbreviations in this exchange – ‘MV’ for Michael Vyner, ‘MIRROR’
for A Mirror on Which to Dwell – highlights a sense of shared cultural capital between the two women
and quite possibly a degree of cultural exclusivity.
Elliott Carter is left to work, and the timetable for the Sinfonietta commission is not raised
again until a letter from Beedle to the Carters dated 5 June 1979. Beedle has had lunch with
Ruth Ubell – ‘what a nice lady’ – from the Dublin Contemporary Music Festival, and been told
by Ubell that Carter might have started the piece. Beedle asks for confirmation from Elliott
Carter, and adds: ‘Michael Vyner is worrying me again and says that you said you would let him
know by June. Sorry to bother you’. Whilst Beedle is busy wining and dining as part of the
business of promoting Carter’s music, the implication in the sign off is that the composer should
be busy composing at his desk.
By October 1979, the Sinfonietta commission was being advertised, and Beedle sent the Carters a
leaflet with the advert marked up, and with the plea, ‘Is there any news?’ It is not until 20 May 1980,
however, that Beedle sends, at Elliott Carter’s request, Michael Vyner’s ideal orchestration for the
new piece. The instrumentation given is: ‘flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, 2
violins, viola, cello, bass, keyboard, percussion (not too much)’, but with the caveat that this is only a
suggestion, and that Vyner has indicated that ‘whatever Elliott wanted to do was alright by them’. In
fact, Carter decided on a setting of six poems by Robert Lovell for tenor and 14 instrumentalists in a
work entitled In Sleep, in Thunder. The openness of Vyner’s invitation to Carter regarding the scoring
encouraged the composer to write a work that uses all the suggested instruments, with some ad
ditional woodwind doublings plus tenor voice. The final scoring is:
flute doubling piccolo and alto flute

oboe doubling cor anglais
clarinet doubling bass clarinet
a substantial percussion line-up for one player (vibraphone, marimba, wood block,
cowbell, guiro, tuned bottle, maracas, small sizzle cymbal, suspended cymbal, side-
drum, tenor drum, bass drum, tam-tam)
piano
tenor soloist
2 violins
viola
442
cello
double bass
The additional cost to the Sinfonietta of this expanded instrumentation would be quite sub
stantial, with doubling fees for the woodwind players as well as porterage costs for the bass
clarinet and all the percussion. In addition, a piano will have to be made available (and tuned, of
course), and there is now a tenor soloist to cost into the mix. For the publisher, the costs of
preparing the performance materials will also rise with the engraving of additional or complex
parts and, as publishers rely on repeat performances to recoup their investment, there may have
been concerns that the new work would not become a regular, repertoire work. Beedle would
later voice the opinion that she would feel justified in pointing out to a composer, that:
a piece written for ten horns and contrabassoon stands less chance of performance than
one for, say, violin and piano, but if they can’t be dissuaded we bow to their artistic
integrity, while reserving the right not to print for sale! (Beedle 1986, p. 25).
The instrumentation of In Sleep, in Thunder is a classic London Sinfonietta line-up, pushed to its
registral and timbral limits.
A year later, in the summer of 1981, Helen Carter reports that her husband ‘works away on
the piece for the London Sinfonietta and hopes to have it by Autumn’, but Beedle responds on 14
July that, now, the Sinfonietta want to postpone the premiere until autumn 1982. She writes:
I spoke to Michael Vyner again about the new work. He said he didn’t think he could put
the new work on this winter unless he fitted it in in a hole-in-the-corner fashion which
would be a less than perfect event. He’s planned his whole series of concerts around it for the
autumn of ’82 and already booked Philip Langridge to sing it. Of course, as you know, they
do make their plans an awful long time in advance and I didn’t manage to persuade him.
Again, the letter is couched in language that defers to the perceived magnitude of a Carter pre
miere, which cushions the effect of the postponement. Beedle also closes down any hope the
Carters might have that the earlier performance date could be reinstated by telling Helen that she
has already had that conversation with Michael Vyner and the London Sinfonietta plans are fixed.
It is at this point that the story takes on a very personal twist. The next letter from Beedle that
references In Sleep, in Thunder is dated 15 April 1982. It is addressed to Helen Carter but is written
from Beedle’s home address, not Schirmer’s offices. It is deeply personal and is quoted here in full:
I’ve been wondering for the last fortnight whether or not to write this letter to you
but I keep brooding about it and it gets worse and worse so I thought I’d better get it
off my chest.
I was terribly hurt that, until I asked outright, you hadn’t thought it necessary to let
me know that the Sinfonietta piece was going to Boosey’s, although I’d been so
involved in it from the start. After I’d spoken to you on the telephone, I rang Michael
Vyner to tell him and it appeared that he’d heard from you about it at the end of
February and now it appears that practically everybody in London knew except me.
The last thing Elliott said to me about publishing was that the idea of a contract with
Boosey was too complicated because of the BMI/ASCAP thing and that he intended in
future to offer each work as it came along to Schirmer and not sign a contract. I can
443
Helen C. Thomas
understand entirely why he doesn’t want to continue being published by Schirmer Inc.
(although I’m particularly sad not to have In Sleep, in Thunder) but, because of what Elliott
said, I’d already started doing things about the piece like letting the BBC know and
mentioning it at the end of an advert we did in a Sinfonietta concert programme earlier this
year, so I don’t only feel very upset but also rather silly.
Please, dear Helen, don’t take this letter amiss. I had to write and tell you how I felt
because otherwise it would have got worse and now, hopefully, I can relax and go
back to normal. Your’s and Elliott’s friendship means a very great deal to me and I
don’t want any shadows to darken it.
Unfortunately, there is no written reply from either of the Carters – I assume one or other of
them phoned Maureen – and the remainder of the correspondence resumes its normal tone. In
1982, however, the copyright of In Sleep, in Thunder was assigned to Boosey & Hawkes, and not
to G. Schirmer. It was the first work to be published under the new contract and marked the
beginning of new, exclusive publishing relationship that lasted until Carter’s death. Further
commissions from prominent European performers and ensembles followed.
In Sleep, in Thunder received its first performance at St John’s Smith Square in London on 26
October 1982. The tenor soloist was Martyn Hill (not Philip Langridge as originally planned)
and the conductor was Oliver Knussen. Subsequently, the work has found a place in the
repertoire despite the size of the forces for which it is written. It received its French premiere at
the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1983, and in the following year the London Sinfonietta took
the work on an Arts Council of Great Britain funded Contemporary Music Network tour of
eight UK cities (see Figure 44.3). The work has been picked up by other ensembles and singers
Figure 44.3 1984 advert featuring Carter’s In Sleep, in Thunder.

(Maureen Beedle, private collection)
444
in Europe and the USA. Martin Hill and the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Oliver
Knussen, made the premiere recording, which was released on the WERGO record label, not
Decca, in 1986. The work was later recorded in America by Speculum Musicae, Jon Garrison
(tenor) and David Starobin (conductor), and released on the Bridge label in 1993.
44.4 Significance of cultural work

To conclude, the significance of the cultural work undertaken by Maureen Beedle can be
reviewed under the four headings proposed in the introduction to this chapter.
1. Historical interest
Around 1800, the role of the music publisher evolved from that of a printer working with a
network of agent-distributors, to that of a patron who supported composers financially in
exchange for exclusive publishing rights. This change in practice led to a proliferation of
musically literate and well-connected cultural intermediaries whose job it was to promote and, to
some extent, protect their ‘house’ composers as they engaged in the supply of music for a new
bourgeois market for classical music. Perhaps the best-known, published example of this type of
mutually beneficial relationship is of that between Edward Elgar and A. J. Jaeger at the publishers
Novello & Co., which resulted in the compositional portrait ‘Nimrod’ in the Enigma Variations
(Northrop Moore 1987). This promotional role eventually became separated from the more
traditional roles of printing and editing. Towards the end of her career, Beedle claimed that:
[O]ver the past 20 years or so, [the publishers’ commitment to living composers]
spawned a new breed of worker – the promotion person. He, or more often she, is
devoted to promoting performances of contemporary music from the firm’s catalogue
and generally doing a PR job for the composers themselves (Beedle 1986, p. 25).
The Beedle-Carter correspondence is a part of a historical trajectory towards publishers as

Public Relations executives.
The correspondence is a late example of letter writing in an age just before the techno
logical advancements that facilitated cheap transatlantic phone calls and, of course, emails.
Making it visible now highlights how, in the twenty-first century, similar cultural work is
likely to remain largely invisible again because of the ephemeral nature of new commu
nication technologies. More specifically, these letters provide historical context for Carter’s
change of publisher from G. Schirmer to Boosey & Hawkes. In letters that pre-date the In
Sleep, in Thunder story, the Carters complain to Beedle quite vociferously about publishing
problems that they encounter with G. Schirmer in the USA, but they are also fulsome in their
appreciation for the work that she was doing to increase the presence of Carter’s music on the
European stage. There are exchanges of gifts, social invitations and the Carters even pay for
Maureen to attend a premiere in Venice. Meyer and Schreffler have suggested that the move to
Boosey & Hawkes marked an increase in enthusiasm for Carter’s music which, whilst it was ‘not
sudden or unprecedented […], was qualitatively different from the occasionally condescending
treatment he and his music had received earlier’ (Meyer and Schreffler 2008, p. 245). Ironically,
the very success of Beedle’s efforts may have influenced Elliott’s decision to move to a European
publishing house.
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Helen C. Thomas
2. Skills, attitudes and behaviours
Beedle’s role as cultural intermediary has gone unnoticed in the Carter literature. The analysis
of this small selection of letters brings into focus a woman with a deep, specialist knowledge
of modernist repertoire, and of Elliott Carter’s music in particular. Strangely, what doesn’t
come through in the letters, but was obvious to those of us that knew Maureen, was that this
knowledge was driven by a personal passion for that repertoire. Instead, this passion is muffled
by the ‘buffering’ role of her professional activity. It is in that intermediate ‘buffer’ zone that
Beedle practiced the communications skills that enable her to both promote Elliott Carter’s
work to highly regarded performers and artistic directors, whilst simultaneously protecting
the composer from the mundane business of supply and demand that is at the root of
commercial publishing. She demonstrates excellent negotiating skills, strong problem-solving
abilities and a commanding level of assertiveness when dealing with the gate-keepers of the
new music scene.
Beedle’s attitude towards the Carters is one of respect that deepens into friendship. When
news of the assignment of copyright for In Sleep, in Thunder to Boosey & Hawkes reaches
Maureen, both professional and personal pride are wounded. Her status as the doyenne of
Elliott’s music in the London new music scene, which in her life experience means ‘practically
everybody in London’, is thrown into question. She understands that the move to Boosey &
Hawkes may well be advantageous to Carter’s career but is deeply hurt that this decision has
been made without reference to her. This episode highlights the difficulty of maintaining what
is both a professional and personal relationship. Beedle’s behaviour is interesting: she writes to
the Carters from her home address to signal that her feelings of betrayal and her desire for an
explanation from the Carters is to be treated as personal.
3. Human interest
McFall (2014, pp. 50–51) has observed that there is:
[…] a tendency to get carried away with all that symbolism, signification and taste-
making at the expense of the more mundane work involved in market-making. It is
the significance and variety of this mundane work that the product qualification lit
erature exposes.
In its entirety, the Beedle-Carter correspondence goes well beyond the business of publishing
Carter’s music. It details everyday thoughts and actions from all parties: frustrations with
postal strikes, descriptions of the weather, travel arrangements, items lost in transit and health
concerns. For example, on 25 January 1979, Elliott wrote to Maureen about an operation that
Helen has had on her toe. In contrast, on 24 April, there is a letter from him which attaches a
xeroxed copy of the City of Los Angeles’s proclamation of an Elliott Carter Day on 27 April
1979. There is something reassuring about the human scale of the concerns expressed in these
letters in contrast to the aura of celebrity. The full correspondence continues until 1983,
when Beedle was appointed as Repertoire Promotion Manager at Oxford University Press:
Elliott Carter wrote her a reference. But the friendship survived for several more decades.
The Carters visited Maureen and Michael in their retirement in France, and I remember
Maureen telling me she had rung Elliott after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center,
which he had witnessed from his apartment in New York.
446
4. Symbolic value
The Beedle-Carter correspondence was given to me shortly after Maureen’s death by Ernst and
Eileen Beedle, Maureen’s brother and sister-in-law, at Maureen’s request. Inside a manilla folder
were the letters: typed carbon copies from Maureen and hand-written items from Helen and
Elliott Carter on flimsy, blue airmail paper, scraps of manuscript paper and the occasional postcard.
These physical copies have value as ‘symbolic goods’ – they have been touched by the famous.
After I transcribed the letters, I donated the originals to the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basle where
they are now housed in the Elliott Carter Archive. Maureen would have been thrilled.
Notes
1 Letter from Maureen Beedle to Helen Carter, 4 July 1978. All extracts from Maureen Beedle’s letters
reprinted by kind permission of G. Schirmer Inc.
2 Letter from Helen Carter to Maureen Beedle, 14 August 1978. All extracts from Helen Carter’s letters
reprinted by kind permission of The Amphion Foundation.
References
Boland, M. and Link, J., eds., 2012. Elliott Carter Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Beedle, M., 1986. Either we are out of our minds or we are the only visionaries left in the music industry.
Classical Music, 29 November, 25.
Craft, R., 2006. Remembering Helen Carter. In: Down a path of wonder: memoirs of Stravinsky, Schoenberg
and other cultural figures. Hong Kong: Naxos Books, 414–417.
Danker, S., 2013. Appreciation: Elliott Carter, ultra-modernist and rare original. Classical Voice North America,
23 July. Available at: https://classicalvoiceamerica.org/2013/07/23/elliott-carter-an-appreciation/
McFall, L., 2014. The problem of cultural intermediaries in the economy of qualities. In: J. Smith Maguire
and J. Matthews, eds. The cultural intermediaries reader. London: Sage Publications Ltd., 42–51.
Meyer, F. and Schreffler, A.C., 2008. Elliott Carter – a centennial portrait in letters and documents.
Woodbridge: The Boydell Press.
Music Sales Classical, n.d. Elliott Carter. Available from: http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/
long-bio/Elliott-Carte
Northrop Moore, J., ed., 1987. Elgar and his publishers: letters of a creative life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rorem, N., 1978. Messiaen and Carter on their birthdays. Tempo, 127, December, 22–24.
Schiff, D., 1998. The music of Elliott Carter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
The Amphion Foundation, Elliott Carter website. Available from: https://www.elliottcarter.com/
Thomas, H., 2016. From one dissonance to another: the Maureen Beedle/Helen Carter correspondence.
Elliott Carter Studies Online, 1. Available from: https://studies.elliottcarter.org/volume01/02Thomas/
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Wierzbicki, J., 2011. Elliott Carter. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
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INDEX
Note: Italicized page numbers refer to figures, bold page numbers refer to tables
Abd Al-Mageed, A. 73 Allitsen, F. 95, 97

Abdel Karim, A. 79 al-Mahdiyya, M. 79
Abdel-Karim, A. 77 Al-Quds Al-Arabi 73, 79
Abe, K. 100 Alsop, M. 310, 347–348, 348, 350–351, 351, 352
Aboriginal music 84 alter ego 32–33
Aboriginal Themes (Hill) 84 Alternacja II / Alternation II (Synowiec) 119
Abtan, F. 169 ‘Always Alone’ (Henriette) 264, 266, 267
Acácia, S. 169–174 Ambache Chamber Orchestra 15
Acosta, L. 273 Ambache Charitable Trust (ACT) 16
Adedeji, S.O. 281 Ambache, D. 15, 325
Adichie, C. 174 American Association for the Advancement of
Adorno, T.W. 161–162 Science 63
Aeon time 82, 83, 84 American Composers Alliance (ACA) 392
affirmative action 339 American Musicological Society 62
African Independent Churches (AICs) 281 American Society of Composers, Authors and
Agawu, K. 9 Publishers (ASCAP) 392
Aguirre del Pino, M. 107 Ancient Welsh Airs of Gwent and Morgannwg
Ahvenniemi, R.S. 3, 159–166 (Williams) 408
Aiken, M. 434 Andalusi music 44–45
Akiwumi, D. 284 Andrew Marr Show 320
Al Andalus Caravan 46, 47–48 Andrew, K. 322
Al- Mahdiyya, M. 79 Andriessen, L. 88
Al Sharnoubi, F. 73 Angklung (Boyd) 87
Alaw, B. 414 Anniversary (Elliott) 440
Albiston, N. 84 Anquandah, M. 284
Alchera-Jugulba (Boyd) 87 Anthology of Music (Edexcel) 178
Algerian Family Code 50 Antwi Hamilton, D. 285–286, 287
Algerian women musicians 43–51; Chaabi music Anwyl, E. 150
46–47; Rachida 44–47; Tia 48–50; Aotearoa/New Zealand popular music scene
Yasmine 47–48 289–294; contemporary popular Maori music
Alice in Wonderland (Chin) 4, 219–226; comparison 289; Maniapoto 291–292; Mohi 292–294; Paki
with novel 220; mad-party scene 220–226, 292–294; ‘Poi E’ 290; protest songs 290–291;
222 Sheehan 292–294; Tocker 291–292
Allisten, F. 264 Aperehama, R. 292
448
Index
An Apparition (Troup) 423 Bartleet, B.-L. 349–350

Appleby. R. 83, 88 Barz, G. 55, 56, 58
Appleton, E. 242, 245 Bates, D. 85
applied ethnomusicology 53–60 Bauer, H. 392
Arab music 76–78 Bauer, M. 392
Arab women composers 73–79; historical Bauld, A. 100, 102
discussion of 78–79; influence of Western art Bauls of Bengal 2, 53–60, 56
music 77; and National Congress of Arabic Baume, I. 126
Music 77–78; scholarship concerning 75–77 Bax, A. 84, 402
Argent, M. 99 Bayton, M. 27, 29–30
Arnhem Land Symphony (Hill) 84 BBC Concert Orchestra 352
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) BBC Four Television 153
322–323 BBC National Orchestra of Wales 148, 153,
Arts Council England 330 311, 322
Aryee, Rev. J. 286 BBC Proms see Proms
As I Crossed Bridge of Dreams (Boyd) 87 BBC Radio 3, 318–323
As it Leaves the Bell (Boyd) 87 BBC Radio Cymru 153
Assaf, S. 77, 78 BBC Symphony Orchestra 311, 348
Associated Board of the Royal School of Music Beach, A. 98, 136, 392
(ABRSM) 179–180 Beamish, S. 182, 320
Atierno, A. 281, 282 The Beatles 106
Atterbury, B. 178 Beauvoir, S. de. 368, 369, 370
Attwood, M. 357 Bebbington, W. 88
Australian Music Centre 86 Bechstein Hall 149
Australian Music Examinations Board (AMEB) 84 Beck, J. 5
Australian Performing Rights Association (APRA) Beck, U. 419–426
289, 292 Bedford, H. 93
Australian women composers 82–89 Beecham, T. 93
authenticity 163–164 Beedle, M. 5, 437–447, 439
Autoethnography as Method (Chang) 195 Beedle-Carter Correspondence 5
Ave Maria (Owen) 152 Beer, A. 16
Azcárraga, E. 107 Beethoven, L. 182, 313, 315, 399
Belina-Johnson, A. 323
Baban 201 Bella 169–173
Babbe, A. 252 belle époque era 4
Babiracki, C. 55 Benedict XVI, Pope 356
‘Babooshka’ (Bush) 231 Berkeley Ensemble 153
Bacewicz, G. 316 Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra 348
Bach, A.M. 313 Berzowsky, N. 399
Bachtrack 348 Best, E. 434
Bagge, M. 4, 252, 260–269 Bindra the Minstrel (Allitsen) 95
Baily, J. 66 Bingham, J. 321
Bakr, H. 74 Birmingham Symphony Orchestra 311
Banerjee, S. 56 Black Katz 291
Banfield, S. 11 Blacking, J. 66
Barbillion, J. 3, 124–134; awards 127; compositions Blossom Music Center 395
129–133; concerts 127; dedicatees 129–133; Blossom, D.S. 395
musical education at the Schola cantorum Blossom, D.S., Jr. 395
125–127; publishers 129–133; success in inter- Blow, J. 404
war years 127–129 Blue Scar (film) 154
Barbirolli, J. 149 Boateng, S. 287
Barenboim, D. 312 The Boatswain’s Mate (Smyth) 13, 93–94
Barns, E. 95, 96 Bodek, E.G. 388
Barns-Phillips Chamber Concerts 95 bodies of women musicians 365–373; body
Barraza, C. 108 mapping 365–367; and gender 367; ideal
Bartira 169–173 feminine body 370; media messages 371–372;
Bartky, S.I. 370 movement 368; in musical settings 367–368,
449
Index
369–370, 371; self-perception 371–372; and The Brownings Go to Italy (Freer) 144
space 370 Brunswick, J. 313
body mapping 5, 365–367 Buabeng, A. 283
Boenke, H.M. 124 Burgoyne 230
Bonds, M.E. 160 Burke, J. 5, 429–434
Bonnie, B. 286, 287 Burke, W.F. 431
Book of Bells (Boyd) 87 Burmeister, R. 390
Book of Odes (Shijing) 384 Burrell, D. 100, 102
Boosey & Co. 10 Burrows, E. 421
Boosey & Co. 262, 265 Bush, K. 4, 31, 228–236
Boosey & Hawkes 446 Butler, J. 58, 88, 161, 175, 299, 367
Boosey, J. 4 Butt, C. 95
Boosey. J. 260–262 Butterworth, G. 62
Borda, D. 352
Bordes, C. 126 Cable, J. 5, 388–398
Bordo, S. 368, 369, 370 Caccini, F. 12–13
Borgo, D. 209 café maures (Arab cafés) 44
Boston Concerto (Elliott) 440 Cai, C. 23
Boston Symphony 348, 394 Cairo National Conservatory 77
Boulanger, L. 97, 324 Cairo Opera House 77
Boulanger, N. 194, 348, 391, 402, 403, 439, 440 Cairo Symphony Orchestra 77
Boulez, P. 440 Callaway, F. 88
Boult, A. 99 Callil, C. 323
Bourdage, M. 341 Callirhoe (Chaminade) 91
Bourdieu, P. 181, 342–343 Calvary Temple of the International Central
Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra 424 Gospel Church 286
Bowman, D. 178 Cameos (Five Greek Love Songs) (Lehmann) 421
Boxall, M. 439 Cameron, B. 99
Boyd, A. 83, 85, 86–87 canon 177–186
Boyle, I. 97 Canzona (Grimson) 425
Braidotti, R. 86 capital 339
Branscombe, G. 392 Caradog Scholarship 148
Brawning, B. 144 Cardiff Eisteddfod 408
Bray, C. 182, 320 Carl, F. 281
Brian Boru’s March 415 Carmona, J.J. 107
Bribitzer-Stull, M. 235 Carneiro, S. 168, 175n3
Brico, A. 348 Carroll, L. 205, 219
Bright, D 97 Carter, E. 5, 437–447, 439–441
Brindisi quartet 24 Carter, H. 437, 439
Brinley Richards, H. 409, 412 Carthy, E 322
British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Casa de las Américas 273, 276
Authors (BASCA) 311 Castellanos, T. 276
British Ethical Movement 5, 419–426; composers Castelo-Branco, S. 76
421–424; performers 424–425 Casulana, M. 321
British Forum for Ethnomusicology 67 Cather, W. 392
Broadwood 262 Catholic Church musicians 356–363; gender 362;
Broadwood, L. 62, 94–95 interviews 361–363; liturgical leadership
Brodu, E. 126 356–363; roles of 361–362; variables and
Brontë, E. 234 bias 362
Bronze Strings and Golden Threads (Ren) 382 Caussade, G. 97
Brouwer, L. 273 Cavendish, S. 438
Brown, A. 310, 352 Ceannt, É. 430
Brown, B.A. 22 Celebration 40,000 (Henderson) 87
Browning, B. 136, 144 Celestial Air Played Anew 383
Browning, E.B. 12 Central Conservatory of Music (Beijing) 188
450
Index
Centro de la Canción Protesta 273 Colebrook, C. 87

Céphale et Procris ( Jacquet de La Guerre) 320 Coleman, J. 292
Céspedes Gómez, I.J. 271–279 Coleridge-Taylor, A. 194–195
Chaabane, B. 44 Collection of Elegance (Wang) 5, 377–386
Chaabi music 46–47 Collins, J. 280, 281, 282
Chamber Music Concerts 424 colonialism 162–163
Chaminade, C. 22, 91, 92, 423 The Complete Companion to Twentieth (Lebrecht) 91
Chang, H. 195 Composer Diversity Database 184
Chanticleer 199–201 ‘Composer of the Week’ (COTW) 320, 322–323
Chaplin, K. 425 Conable, B. 365–367
Chaplin, M. 425 Conable. W. 365–367
Chaplin, N. 425 Concert de musique francaise 401
Chapottín 275 Concert of Women Composers 420
Chappell 260 Concertino da Camera for Flute, Clarinet, Bassoon and
Charles Lucas Silver Medal 149 Piano (Glanville-Hicks) 402
Chassagneux, G. 126 Concerto 4-3 (Higdon), 4, 210–214
Chen, Yi 4, 198–207; Chinese Myths Cantata Concerts of Ancient Music 425
199–206; countryside experience 198–199; and Concertstück (Barns) 95
Cultural Revolution 198–199; first encounter conductors 5, 214, 347–353; biological differences
with peasants’ music 198–199 349; gender allocation of 347–348; stereotypical
Chester Music 438 view of 348
Chibici-Revneanu, C. 3, 106–112 Conference on Women’s Work in Music 310
Chicago Symphony Orchestra 394 Connell, R.W. 339
Chiener, C. 58, 60 The Consolations of Scholarship (Weir) 100
Chin, U. 4, 219–226 contemporary music 160–161
Chinese music prints 5 contemporary popular Maori music 289
Chinese Myths Cantata 4, 199–206; movement 2, Contini, A 88
201–206, 202–206 Contrasts (Sutherland) 85
Chisholm, K. 321, 324 convivencia 44, 51n6
Chodak-Gregory, A. 150 Conway Hall Ethical Society 419
Choral Suite for Female Choru (Glanville-Hicks) 402 Cooley, T.J. 55, 56
Christ Reformed Church (Kristo Asafo) 284 Coolidge, E.S. 392
Christian music 281 Coote, A. 93
Chronos time 82, 83, 86 Copland, A. 392, 439, 440
Chu, J. 381 Côr y Cwm Children’s Choir 322
church music 281 Corder, F. 149, 154
Cincinnati Symphony 394 Cosgrave, M. 5, 429–434
Citron, M. 1, 19–24, 178, 180, 183, 185, 194 Cosgrave, P.B. 431
‘Claribel’ 260 Cosgrave, W.T. 431, 434
Clarke, R. 424 Cottis, J. 324, 352
Classical Poetry of Notable Women (Wang) 377, 379 Couperin, F. 397, 398, 398, 404
Clauson-Elliott, S. 3, 91–104 Covell, R. 88
Cleaver, E. 151 Craft, R. 440
Clements, A.J. 420 Craigie, J. 154
Cleopatra (Allitsen) 95 Crawford Seeger, R. 38
de Clerq, T. 230 Crawford, R. 63, 194
Cleveland Composers Guild 393 Crawshay, R.T. 149
Cleveland Institute of Music 393 Crawshay-Williams, E. 149, 150, 151
Cleveland Music School Settlement 393 Crépet (-Bertrand), L. 126, 128
Cleveland Orchestra 388, 393–394 Crisp, D. 83, 85
clubs 334–335 Crosley turntables 341–342
Clyne, A. 320 Cross-Hatching (Henderson) 87
Clytemnestra (Samuel) 321 Crossley-Holland, P. 66
Cohen, A. 124 Cuba 4
Cohen, H. 149 Cuban cinema 274
Cohn, R. 230, 235 cultural capital 339
Coit, S. 420 Cultural Revolution 198–199
451
Index
Culturama 45 Diamond, B. 329

Curwen, A. 432 Diariusz / Diary (Synowiec) 121
A Cycle of Sea-Songs, Morfa Rhuddlan (The Marsh of Diaz, G.S. 365–373
Rhuddlan) (Owen) 149 Díaz, Y. 277
Cykl piesni do wlasnych wierszy Haiku/Song Cycle to Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG) 22
One’s Own Haiku Poems (Synowiec) 122 Dilthey, W. 114
Cymdeithas Cymreiyddion y Fenni 407 Dina Reindorf and the Dwenesie Choir 283
Cynwal, H. 153 Discogs Forum 338, 345
Dixon, A. 23–24
d’ Indy, V. 126 DJs 334–335
D’Hardelot, G. 94, 95 Do szuflady / Just for Myself (Synowiec) 121
Dadson, N.B. 282 Doctor, J. 14
Daffodil Perspective 15, 184 Doe Tetteh, Rev. C. 286
Daisy Bates at Ooldea (Boyd) 85, 87 ‘Dolores’ 260
The Daisy-Chain (Lehmann) 421 Domingo, P. 106
Dallas Opera 311 Dommel-Dieny, A. 126
Dallas Opera Hart Institute for Women Donatoni, F. 38
Conductors 347, 351 Dong, R. 381
Dallas Symphony Orchestra 152, 352 Donkor, G.T. 4, 280–288
Dallman, L. 4 Donne – Women in Music project 260
Dane, B. 276 ‘The Donovans’ (song) 265, 267
Danielson, V. 75, 76–77, 79 Doolittle, E. 2, 36–42
Darija 51, n10 Doors, The (band) 233
Dart, T. 403–404, 405 dotara 54
Dartington Summer School 441 Doubleday, V. 62
Darwin, C. 323 Dougherty, C. 392
Darwin, E. 244 The Dreaming (Henderson) 87
Dashwood, H. 195 Dreams of Mandarin Ducks 377
Daughters of Glorious Jesus 285 Dreams of the Earth (Boyd) 87
Davies, A.M. 264 Dring, M. 324
Davies, E.T. 151 Drinker, S. 12
Davies, K.A. 425 drummers 28
Davies, R. 3, 146–154, 181 Dublin Contemporary Music Festival 442
Davies, T. 182, 322 Dublin Municipal School of Music 429
Davis, H.E. 26–33 DuBois, W.E.B. 342
Davis, R. 75 Duchamp, M. 439–440
Dawson, L. 24 Duchen, J. 4, 309–316
De Beauvoir, S. 1 Duchesneau, M. 125, 129
de Beauvoir, S. 205 Dugan, S. 284
De Brito, E. 15 duggi 54
De Carfort, H. 126 Dughan, S. 284
De la Martinez, O. 13 dumpster diving 164
De Pue, Z. 210 Dumpygate 312
De Serres, L. 125–127 Dunashu, W. 5
de Zubeldía, E. 106 Duo for Violin and Piano (Elliott) 440
Debussy, C. 182 Dyer, L.B.M. 402
Decca Records 441
Del Riego, T. 95, 96 Eames, E. 394
del Valle, J. 273 East London Radio 333
Deleuze, G. 82, 87 Eastburn, S. 322
denaturalisation of musical material 161–162 Easter Sonata (Mendelssohn) 322
Denis O’Sullivan medal 431 Edexcel 178
Densmore, F. 62, 63 Edgeworth, M. 243–244
Der Artist 252 Edgeworth, R. 243
Der Rosenkavalier (Strauss) 312 Éditions Fortin-Armaine 130
Der Wald (Smyth) 93 Éditions Musicales Fortin-Armaine 129
DeVale, S.C. 62 Edouard-Belin, Simone 399
452
Index
Education Board for Ireland 430 Firsova, E. 100, 102

Edwards, J.M. 4, 198–207, 350 First International Conference on Women’s Work
Edwards, S. 352 in Music 1–2
Eggebrecht, R. 13 First String Quartet 85
Egyptian Feminist Union 76 Fischer, H. 366
Egyptian women composers 73–79; historical Fisher, F. 393
discussion of 78–79; influence of Western art Fisher, O. 322
music 77; and National Congress of Arabic Flint, C. 125
Music 77–78; scholarship concerning 75–77 Flintoff, B. 292
eisteddfod 407–408 Folk-Songs Collected in Flintshire and the Vale of
ektara 54 Clwyd (Herbert Lewis, R.) 149
El Rincón de los Recuerdos 108 Fontes Artis Musicae 405
El Shawan, S. 75, 77 For the Queen (Allitsen) 95
Elegia dla Matki / Elegy for Mother (Synowiec) 122 Forrest, D. 4, 228–236, 230, 235
Elgar, E. 397, 445 Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra (FWSO) 211
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation 399 Fortnightly Musical Club of Cleveland (FMCC)
Elle Decoration magazine 12 393–395
Elliott Carter Archive 447 Foster, I. 151
Ellis, C. 195 Four Songs for Solo Voice and Piano (Glanville-
Ellis, K. 401 Hicks) 402
Elósegui, J. 273 Four Welsh Impressions 153
Emielu, A. 281, 282 Fowke, M. 62, 63
Encuentro Internacional de la Canción Protesta Fox, E. 315
(International Protest Song Meeting) 273 Fraguier, M.-M. 126
Engel, C. 392, 395 Frances-Hoad, C. 320
English Musical Renaissance 12 Francis, Pope 359
Enigma Variations (Elgar) 445 Freer, E.E. 3, 136–144
epistemicides 168 French-American Association for Musical Art 394
Equal Pay Act of 1970 323 Freud, S. 150, 205, 230
Ericson, M. 21 Friday Morning Music Club (FMMC) 389–392
Erraught, T. 312 Frimpong, N. 284
Espressivo (Synowiec) 119 Frith, S. 66
ethical movement 419–426; composers 421–424; Fromm, P. 440
performers 424–425 Frost-Jones. H. see Carter, H.
ethnomusicology 66; Bauls of Bengal 53–60; Fuller, S. 2, 9–16
fieldwork equipment 59; fieldwork roles 58–60; Furore Verlag 13, 16
gender and performance in 58–60; gender issues
in 57–58; heroic quest 59; learning music G. Schirmer 438, 439, 444, 446
55–57; women’s work in 62–68 Gabeaud, A. 126
Euterpe 243, 244 Gabriel, V. 260, 264
Evans, D. 147–149, 151 Gachet, F. 126
Evans, E. 424 Gaelic League and National Literary Society 430
Everett, W. 230 Game of Attrition (Sierra) 183
experimental music 167 Garaudet, A. 126
Garrison, J. 444
Faber Music 438 Gates, E. 184
Farnham, A. 310, 352 Gauthier-Villars, M. 126
Fauré, G. 97 Gauthiez, C. 126
Feis Ceoil (Festival of Music) 429, 430 Geary, E. 242
female drummes 28 gender 367; and Algerian musics 43–47; and genre
Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality 21–22; in music industry 27; in popular music
(McClary) 368 education 27; and sexuality research
feminist epistemologies 168 project 27–28
Fernández, T. 277 Gender and Equality in Music Higher Education
Ferrer, P.L. 273 (Bogdanovic) 68
Fete Galante (Smyth) 13 Gender and the Musical Canon (Citron) 12, 22, 194
Firsova, A. 321 gender capital 339, 342
453
Index
General Instruction on the Roman Missal 360 Gubaidulina, S. 100, 102, 162
genre 21–22 Guerra, G. 273
Germán Guerrero, N. 107 Guest, C. 408
Ghanian gospel music 4, 280–288; brief history of Guevara, A. 274
281–282; Tehillah experience 286–287; Guildhall School of Music 93, 424
Women Called to Worship 287; women in Guillemot, S. 126
282–285; Women in Worship 286 Guilmant, A. 126
Ghansah, M. 284 guilty pleasures 164–165
ghunur 54 Gunn, G.D. 138
Gillett, P. 241 Günther, E. 250
Gillies, S. 349 Guzmán, J. 109
Ginsburg, R.B. 1–2 Gwent Eisteddfod 407
Gipps, R. 98 Gwent, G. 408
Glanville-Hicks, P. 83, 84, 85, 402 Gwŷr y Gân (Cleaver) 152
Glasser, J. 44
Glickman, S. 13 Hafez, B. 78
Glock, W. 99–100, 440, 441 Hahn, H. 210
Glover, J. 352 Haigh, R. 153
Goehr, L. 159 haka 292
Golley, N. A.-H. 79 Hall, A. (Lady Llanover) 407–416
Gomez, J.C. 4 Hall, B. 407–409
Gonzalez, S. 4 Hall, E. 320
González, S. 271–279; education 272–273; and Hall, M. 13
Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC Hallé Orchestra 348
273–276; songs 276–278 Hamilton, E.G. 5, 397–406
González-Rubiera, V. 272 Handel Concerto 410, 411, 412, 413–415
gospel highlife music 281, 282, 283–284 Handel, G.F. 410
gospel music 280–288 Hanslick, E. 159, 165
Gow, D. 10 Hanson, J. 401, 405
Grainger, P. 62 Hanson-Dyer, L. 5, 397–406
Grand Prix du Disque 404 Hao, X. 381, 382, 383
Graper, J.L. 275 Harding, V. 2, 53–60
Gražinyte-Tyla, M. 311 harmonic coloring 138
Green, L. 31, 167, 174, 181, 184 Harp Concerto 409
Greene, H.P. 265 Harris, R. 403
Greenly, E.B. 407 Harrison, F.L. 401
Greer, G. 194 Hartsock 338
Grever, M. 106 Haunted Hills (Sutherland) 85
Gribben, D. 15 Haweis, H.R. 246
Griffiths, G. 323 Haydn Jones, H. 149
Griffiths, P. 440 Haydn, J. 399
Grime, H. 182 Hayes, M. 433
Grimshaw, P. 84 Hayman, S. 322
Grimson, A. 424–425 He, Y. 5, 377–386
Grimson, J. 425 Heartz, D. 22
Grosz, E.A. 368, 369 Hebert, D.G. 27
Grout, D.J. 1 Heine, E. 230, 235
Grove Music Online 21–22 Heinrich, A. 124
Groves, C. 438 ‘Hello Earth’ (song) 233
Groves, S. 438 Help Musicians UK 27
Gruffydd Richards, S.B. 409 Hely-Hutchinson, V. 99
Gruffydd, T. 409 Henderson, M. 83, 86
Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC Henriette 4
(GESI) 271–272, 273–276 Henriette (composer) 265, 266, 267–268
Gu, C. 381 Hensel, F. 19, 20–21
Guangzhou Beijing Opera Troupe 199 Herbert Lewis, J. 149
Guattari, F. 82 Herbert Lewis, R. 149
454
Index
Herbert-Jones, D. 149 In Sleep, in Thunder (Carter) 437, 441, 441–444,

Hevia, L.M. 277 445, 446
Hier, E.G. 392 Incorporated Society of Musicians (London) 430,
Higdon, J. 4, 182, 209–216, 320; collaboration 431, 433
with conductor 214; collaboration with listeners independent radio stations 328–336, 332–333;
215–216; collaboration with soloists 210–214; clubs 334–335; gender roles in 329; media and
Concerto 4-3 210–214; Percussion Concerto alternative media studies 329; offices 329–332;
210–214; Violin Concerto 210–214 studios 329–332; women DJs 334–335
high culture music 77, 165 Indian Harmonium 54
Hildegard Publishing Company 13, 16 informal ban 241
Hill, A. 83–84 Inkstone of Lovesickness (Liang) 377
Hill, M. 83–84, 84, 86 Institute for Women Conductors 351
Hill, R. 402 Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria
Hindermith, P. 403 Cinematográficos (ICAIC) Sound
The History of the Harp (Thomas) 414 Experimentation Group 271
History of the Immemorial (Pan) 379 Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria
A History of Western Music (Grout) 1 Cinematográficos/Cuban Institute of
Hoegberg. E.H 136–144 Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) 274
Holland, D. 84 Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity 54
Holliger, H. 440 Intermediate Education Act of Ireland (1878)
Hollingworth, L. 3, 187–196 429, 430
Holmès, A. 323 International Alliance for Women in Music
Holst, G. 397 (IAWM) 79, 184
Holst, I. 10 International Alliance of Women Composers 16
Holywell Workhouse 149 International Alliance of Women in Music
Homer, C. 62–68 (IAWM) 13
Hood, M. 62, 66 International Central Gospel Church 285–286
Horniman Museum 63 International Encyclopedia of Women Composers
Hounds of Love (album) 232–233 (Cohen) 124
Howe, M.C. 5, 388–392, 389–390 International Women’s Council 392
Howe, W.B. 390 International Women’s Day 318–323
Howes, F. 10 Introitus (Gubaidulina) 162
Howson, A. 371 invisible canons 182–185
Hu, W. 381, 382, 383 Inzlicht, M. 342, 343
Huang, E. 381, 383, 384 Ion (Plato) 163
Huata, N. 290–291 Irigaray, I. 205
Hughes, A.P. 5, 388, 393–395 Irishwomen in music 429–435; influence 431–432;
Hull, A. 390–391 musical foundations 430–431; quest for an
Humphreys, A. 153 independent Irish music institution 432–434
Humphrys, J. 153 Ives, C. 119
Huntington Hartford Foundation 392
Huppatz, K. 339 Jackson, G. 13
Hutcheson, E. 390 Jacobs, P. 440
Hwang, D.H 219 Jacquet de La Guerre, É. 320, 401
Hyde, M. 84 Jaeger, A.J. 445
Hymes, J. 352 Jagger, B. 195
Hymns of Modern Thought 423 Jagow, S. 348
‘James and the Cold Gun’ (Bush) 234
Iazzetta, F. 168 James, R. 153
Ids (progressions) 230 Janacek, L. 38
Idylle Arabe (Chaminade) 91 Jenkins, J. 63–66
Igualada, H. 277 Jette Parker Young Artists Programme 352
Illuminate Women’s Music 184 Jeunesses Musicales National Composers
image 32–33 Competition 118
In a Persian Garden (Lehmann) 393, 421 Jiang Qing 188
In Memoriam (Lehmann) 421 Jiang, Q. 381, 382
Jindyworabaks 86
455
Index
Jing, P. 381 l’Oiseau-Lyre Press 5

John Paul II, Pope 359 L’Oranaise, R. 44
John Sims Reeves’ (1818–1900) Annual Benefit La Maestra Conducting Competition 352
Concert 262 La Rue, H. 62
Jones, E. 150–151, 413 La Sierra de Lara (documentary) 107
Jones, J. 352 Labrada, J. 273
Jones, J.W. 408–409 Lacan, J. 205
Jones, W.H. 149 Lachenmann, H. 162
Jottings (Howe) 391 ladies’ orchestras 250–258; in Finland 255–256;
Juilliard, A. 394 history 250; journalistic representations
255–256; marketing strategies 252–253; music
Ka’ai-Mahuta, R. 289 criticism 255–256; overview 250–252; variety
Kagel, M. 87 250–251; visual and fictional representations of
Kaiserstadt 252 253–255
The Kaleidoscope 244 Lady Llanover 5
karakia 292 Lagrange, F. 75, 76
Karpelès, M. 62 Laine, M. 5, 328–336
kartal 54 Lalon 54
Kartomi, M. 62 Lambert, A. 421
Kashperova, L. 323 Langer, S.K. 165
Kats-Chernin, E. 83, 88 Lara, A. 3, 106–112
Kaufmann, D. 251, 253 Lara, J.M. 107
Keightley, K. 340–341 Lara, M.T. 3, 106–112
Kel-Ahaggar society 43 Larchet, J.F. 433
Keller, H. 318 Larrikin’s Lot (Henderson) 87
Kelly, J. 309 Last Night of the Proms 348, 352
Kendall, H. 320 Last Songs of the Kamikazi (Boyd) 87
Kendall, N. 210 Latifa 73
Kennedy-Fraser, M. 94 Laura, D. 209–216
Kerry, G. 83, 86, 88 Laurel of Cracow Music Lovers 116
Keychange project 311 Lawrence, D.H. 150
khamak 54 Lazreg. M. 49–50
khanjoni 54 Le rossignol en amour (Couperin) 404
Khanna, R. 46 League of American Orchestras 347–348
khol 54 League of Women Composers 13
The Kick Inside (album) 231–232, 233 Leal, T.R. 169–173
Kindler, H. 392 Lebrecht, N. 91
King, K. 5, 338–345 Leclerc-Olive, M. 271
Kirkpatrick, J. 440 Lee, J.Y. 4, 219–226
Knight in Armour (Gipp) 98 Lee, K. 62
Knight, A. 341 Leeds Music Corporation 438
Knight, L.I. 57 LeFanu, N. 9, 13, 100, 102, 325
Knussen, O. 38, 444 Lefèvre, J. 126
Ko, 383 A Legacy of Affection, Advice and Instruction 244
Kohanga Reo (Maori language pre-school) 290 Legg, R. 181
Köhler, Karl-Heinz 20 Leginska, E. 348
Koivisto, N. 4, 250–258, 254 Legrand (-Philip), M. 127
Koskoff, E. 21, 67, 178 Lehmann, A. 421
Kosman, J. 206 Lehmann, L. 93, 264, 393, 421
Kouvaras, L. 83 Leinster School of Music 429–434
Krader. B. 63 Lekeu, G. 128
Kreisler, F. 394 Leonard, M. 27
Kruse, B. 166 Leonarda Productions 13
Kruse, H. 340 Les Amazons 283
Kudikynah Cave (Henderson) 87 Letters for Literary Ladies (Edgeworth) 243–244
Kulthum, U. 75, 78 Letters from Morocco (Glanville-Hicks) 85
Kura Kaupapa 290 LGBTQIA communities 339
456
Index
Li, C. 381 Mackerras, C. 441

Liang, C. 384 Maconchy, E. 9–16, 22, 91, 97–98, 99, 100, 324
Liang, M. 377, 381, 383–384 Madrasat Al-‘Azf 77
Library of Congress 399, 402, 404 Madrasat Al-Muhtarifin 77
Lieb, K.J. 27 Madrasat Al-Musiqa 77
Liebeslied (Bright) 97 Madrasat Al-Tubul 77
Lied 21 Madrasat al-Tubul wa Al-Aswat 77
‘Light My FIre’ (song) 233 The Magic Harp (Boyle) 97
Lili Boulanger Initiative 185 Magic progressions 230
Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company 199–201 Mahendra, M. 286
Lind, J. 411 Mahler, A. 36
Linda and Mitch Hart Institute for Women Makeba, M. 283
Conductors 351, 352 male gaze 159–166; and contemporary music
Lindy (Henderson) 87–88 160–161; and critical approach to musical
line of flight 87 colonialism 162–163; and denaturalisation of
Liszt, F. 411 musical material 161–162; and dumpster diving
liturgical musicians 5 164; and embracing guilty pleasures 164–165;
Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and fighting authenticity 163–164; and
(LIPA) 27–30 independent radio stations 329; overcoming
Llewellyn, J. 323 165–166
Lllanover, L. 407–416 Mallinson, J. 441
Lloyd George, D. 149 Malnory-Marseillac, F. 127, 128
Lloyd, E. 150 Maniapoto, M. 290, 291–292
Lloyd, O. 415 Manning, S.J. 322
Llwyd, A. 408 Manual of Harmony (Ziehn) 137
L’Oiseau-Lyre Press 397–406, 398, 400 Mao Zedong 198
Lomax, A. 63, 64 Maori Language Act of 1987 290
Lomax, J. 63 Maori women 289–294
London Ballad Concerts 4, 260–269; audiences Maran, D. 350
262; Monday ‘morning’ concerts 262; number The March of the Women (Smyth) 93–94
of concerts per season 262; promoter 262; March of the Workers (Troup) 423
singers 262; venues for 261; women composers The Mariposa Waltz (Howe) 391
in 263, 264–267; women’s work performances Martagón, D.G. 109
263–264 Martines, M. 319, 323
London Sinfonietta 441, 442–444 Marxisms (Henderson) 87
Lonnert. L. 5, 407–416 Maschke, E.M. 3, 124–134
Lontano 13, 16 masculinity 339
López Sánchez, A. 273 Mathias, R. 99
Lorelt 13 Mathlouthi, E. 79
Loriod, Y. 440 Matthei, R. 13
Los Angeles Philharmonic 348 Maxwell Davies, P. 99–100
Los Dimos 273 May, A. 169–173
Lovell, R. 442 May, T. 309
Lumsdaine, D. 9 Mazurka (Barns) 95
Lutoslaki, W. 440 McCabe, J. 15, 20, 21, 178, 321
Lutyens, E. 91, 99, 100 McCall, L. 339, 342
Lyrebird Press 402 McCarthy, M. 430
Lyric Studies (Freer) 137 McCauley, C. 286
McClary, S. 1, 86, 161, 163, 184, 368
Ma, S. 381, 382 McCrindle, S. 438
Ma, X. 377, 381 McDonagh, T. 430
Mabinogion 408 McDougall, J. 44
Macarthur, S. 2–3, 82–89 McFall, L. 446
Macauley, C. 287 McGill Billboard Corpus 230
MacDowell Colony 392 McIntosh 339
MacDowell, M. 392 McKenzie, M. 423
Macfarren, G. 11 McNaughton, A. 292
457
Index
McVeigh, S. 241, 425 Müller-Hermann, J. 319, 323

Mead, M. 63 Mulvey, L. 159
Meadows White, A. 98 Munk Debate 74
Meditations and Distractions on the Theme of the Murdoch, J. 88
Singing Nun (Henderson) 87 Murphy, S. 230, 235
Meditations on A Chinese Character (Boyd) 87 Musgrave, T. 91, 99, 101, 182
Meierovich, C. 106 Music Academic Partnership (MAP) 33
Melbourne Conservatorium of Music 397 Music and Morals (Haweis) 246
Melbourne, H. 292 music industry, gender in 27
Mélodies (Barbillion) 128 Music is My Life (Hughes) 394
Mendelssohn, F 19, 21, 23, 313, 315, 320, 322 Music Theory Examples by Women (MTEW) 184
Menéndez, P. 273 Musical America 388
Meng, C. 380 Musical Arts Association (MAA) 394–395
Menuhin, Y. 394 musical colonialism 162–163
Mercy, O. 286, 286–287 Musical Education (Geary) 242
Merikanto, O. 252, 255 musical instruments 28–29
meritocracy 339 Musicam Sacram (Sacred Music) 359
Merriam, A.P. 62 The Musiclovers Calendar 137
Messiaen, O. 182, 440 music-making 29–30
#MeToo movement 27 Musik als Existentielle Erfahrung (Lachenmann) 162
Meyer, R. 210, 211 Mustafa, N. 74
Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum Muzyka i mozg / Music and Brain (Synoviec)
(MECAMF) 75 119, 120
Mikkelborg, H.D. 5, 407–416 Myers, M. 252
Milanés, P. 271, 273 Myerscough, S. 430
Milhaud, D. 403
Miller, R. 352 Nabokov, N. 439, 440
Ming dynasty 378–379 Nancarrow, C. 440
Minors, H.J. 33 Nash Ensemble 441
A Mirror on Which to Dwell (Carter) 442 Nathan, I. 84
Miscellaneous Records of the Plank Bridge (Yu) 379 Nation 147
Mitchell, C. 329 National Association for Music in Higher
Mitchell, J. 31, 291 Education (NAMHE) 68
Moana and Moahunters 291 National Concert Hall Female Conductor
Moana Maniapoto and the Tribe 292 Programme 352
Modern Reveal 184 National Congress of Arabic Music 77–78
Mohi, H. 291, 292–294 National League of Pen Women 392
Mohr-Pietsch, S. 322 National Museum of Scotland 63
Moisala, P. 329 National School of Art Instructors/Escuela
Molloy, J.L. 262 Nacional de Instructores de Arte (ENIA),
‘Moments of Pleasure’ (Bush) 228, 231 272–273
Monday ‘morning’ concerts 10, 262 National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) 392
Monk, M. 36 Naylor, R. 401
Monteverdi, C. 230 Needham, A.A. 4, 264, 265, 267, 267–268
Moore, D. 392 Negus, K. 329
Moore, G. 309 Neiva, T.M. 169–173
Moore, R.D. 271 Nettey, G. 286
Morfa Rhuddlan (Owen) 150, 152 New Grove Dictionary of Music 20
Morfydd (Haigh) 153 New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers
Morgan, E. 153, 243 (Sadie and Samuel) 12, 20, 22
Morrison, R. 153 New York Conducting Institute 352
mothers 36–42 New York Musicological Society 62
‘Moving’ (Bush) 231–232, 235 New York Philharmonic 348, 352
Mpare, J. 286 New York Symphony Orchestra 348
Muldoon, K.A. 5, 429–434 New Zealand Music Hall of Fame 292
458
Index
New Zealand popular music scene 289–294; Oxford Handbook of Singing (Harding) 54
contemporary popular Maori music 289; Oxford University 397
Maniapoto 291–292; Mohi 292–294; Paki Oxford University Press 438, 447
292–294; ‘Poi E’ 290; protest songs 290–291;
Sheehan 292–294; Tocker 291–292 Paganini, N. 242
Newman, A. 284, 286 Paglia, C. 74
Newman, R. 91, 98 Paki, E. 292–294
Nga Tamatoa 290 Palpatines (progressions) 230
Nicola, N. 271 Pan, L. 4, 298–306
Nicolas, L. 273 Pan, Z. 379
Night Fantasies (Elliott) 441 Pandora Guide to Women Composers (Fuller) 2,
Nkrumah, K. 283 12, 15–16
Nobre, G. 169–173 The Pankhurst Anthem 322
Nocturne (Owen) 97, 149, 152–153 Pankhurst, E. 322
Nogueira, I. 3, 167 Pankhurst, H. 322
Novello & Co. 445 Pankhurst, L. 322
Novillo, F. 5, 356–363 Panufnik, R. 311
NTS Radio 328 Panula, J. 349
Nu Wa 201–206 Parent, A. 125–126
nueva canción 276 Paris Conservatoire 97
nueva trova 4 Parke, W.T 242
Nulla Dies Sine Linea / No Day Without a Line Parker, H. 403
(Synowiec) 121 Parr, J. 424
Núñez, L. 272 Parra, I. 276
Nunns, R. 292 Parra, V. 276
Nyamekye, E. 284 Parrott, I. 152
Parry, H. 11
O’Brien, V. 433 Parry, J. 409, 414
O’Dwyer, R. 433 Parry, R. 409
O’Holla, S. 343 Parsitau, D.S 281, 281–282
O’Regan, H. 289 Partridge. I. 24
O’Sullivan, D. 265 The Passing of Branwen (Owen) 154
The Obstacle Race (Greer) 194 Patea Maori Club 290
Oduro, G 284 Patey & Willis 265
Olive Pink’s Garden (Boyd) 87 Patey, J.M 265, 267
Oliveros, P. 36, 167, 174 Patterson, A.W 429–434
Olmedo, G. 106 Peabody Conservatory 389–390
The Open Field (Tann) 321 Peacock, A. 322
Openshaw, J. 55 Pearl Jam (band) 230
Opolska Wiosna Festival (Poland) 118 Pearse, P. 432
Oppens. U. 441 pedagogical canon 177–182
The Orchid and its Hunters (Bingham) 321 Pedigo, A. 124
Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (Priestly Ordination) 357 Pekka Hirvonen (Sundman) 253–254
O’Regan, H. 290 Peleggi, V. 324
Orfeo (Moteverdi) 230 Pendle, K. 1, 183–184
Oriental music (al-musiqa ash-sharqiyya) 77 Penillion (Williams) 9, 99
Oropesa, R. 107 People’s Concert Society 420, 421
Orozco, D. 271 Peralta, A. 106
Ostatnie zrodlo / The Last Source (Synowiec) 122 Perchard, T. 341
Ould, K. 425 Percussion Concerto 4, 210–214
Owen, M. 3, 97, 146–154; apogee of career as Pérez Vidal, A. 274
composer and performer 150; as child prodigy performances 30–31
147; death 151; early life 147; in London Welsh performativity 58, 299
circles 149–150; songs 154; as teacher and Performing Rights Society (PRS) Foundation 16
composer 147 Performing Rights Society for Music 27
459
Index
Perlemuter, V. 116 Powell-Davies, I. 147

persona 32–33 Power, S. 153
Petrassi, G. 440 Practical Education (Edgeworth and Edgeworth) 243
Petrenko, V 349 Pratté, E. 411
Pewhairangi, N. 290 Price, F. 323, 324
Phantasy (Swepstone) 424 Price, T. 407, 409
Philadelphia Orchestra 348 Prieto, M.T. 106
Philip, E. 264 Private Education (Appleton) 242, 245
Philips, C. 95 privilege 339
Phoenix Rising (Musgrave) 99 Prix de la Société des Compositeurs 128
phonograph technology: Crosley turntables Pro Patria (Owen) 149, 152
341–342; and femininity 343–344; gendering of Project 19, 352
338–345; and internalised patriarchal capital Proms 13–14, 312; in 1895-1904 91–94; in 1905-
343–345; and masculinity 344; post-war 1914 94–97; in 1915-1944 97–98; BBC 98–99;
audiomania 340–341; pre-war neutrality 340; gender statistics 100–103, 103; list of women
social sanctions 342–343; technologial otherness composers 103–104
341–342; users categories 340 Proms 3
Piano Trio 3, 124–125, 128, 129, 152, 153 protest songs 290–291
Piédelièvre, P. 126 PRS for Music Foundation 311
Piesni o 12-u miesiqcach / Songs about 12 Months PRS Foundation 27
(Synowiec) 122 Psychohistory 153
Piñero Gil, C. 168, 175n2 public ethnomusicology 64
Piston, W. 439 Pulido, E. 106
Pittsburgh Symphony 394 The Pursuit of History (Tosh) 79
Plan for the Conduct of Female Education
(Darwin) 244 Qing dynasty 379
Plato 163 qu 379, 382, 383, 384
Plowden, S. 62, 63 Quatuor Jeanne Barbillion 127, 128
Plunckett, Count 430 Queen’s Hall 260
Plunckett, J.M. 430 Queen’s Hall Promenade Concerts; see Proms
Plunket Greene, H. 267 Quinn, A. 352
Plunkett, G. 434 Quintin, A. 126
Plush, V. 84
Poblacht na hÉireann 430 Rabbles, H. 284
The Poetess (Hollingworth) 3, 187–196; ‘I Stare At Radar Radio 328–333
The Wall’ 189; ‘Still Life’ 192; ‘You Were Radford, R. 151, 265
Right’ 188–189; instrumental parts in ‘Still Life’ Radic, T. 82, 83
193; piano part from 190; static piano chord 191 Radio Monalisa 153
The Poetical Relics of the Welsh Bards (Jones) 414 Radio Symphony Orchestra 348
‘Poi E’ (Pēwhairangi and Prime) 290 Radio X 328–334
Polish Piano Festival 118 Ragab, G. 73
Polynesian Panther Movement 290 Rago, M. 168
Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century 401 Rahal, B. 44
Polyphonies du XIIIe siècle: Le Manuscript H 196 de la Raï 43
Faculté médecine de Montpellier (Rokseth) Rain Waves (Tower) 183
401, 402 Rajam, S. 320
Ponsonby, R. 99 Ralph, K. 424, 426
popular music education 27 Rameau, J-P. 38
Pori Regiment (Porilaisten marssi) 252 Ramos, E. 271, 273
pornography 313–314 Ranalow, F. 265
Portéhaut, G. 126 Randall, M. 278
Potter, A. 438 Randel, D.M. 184
Pound, E. 150 rationality 164–165
Powell, B. 4, 241–248 Rawlings, A.W. 11
Powell, M. 394 Ray, R. 56
460
Index
Rayner, G. 312 Royal Opera House Jette Parker Young Artists

Re:Dress 16 Programme 352
Read, P. 434 Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) 316, 353
Reconquista 43, 51n5 Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) Women
Red Chanting (Wang) 383 Conductors’ Programme 310–311
Red FM 153 Royal Scottish Museum 63
Reed, V. 311 Royal Swedish Academy of Music 409, 411
Reeves, J.S. 262 Ruki-Sheeha, M. 293
Refuge (Synowiec) 119 Rulison, C. 126
Reich, N.B. 20, 247
Reindorf, D. 283 Sa’eed, S. 73
Remarks on the Use and Abuse of Music As Part of Saariaho, K. 178–179, 182
Modern Education 244 Sackey, M. 284
Ren, Z. 382 Sacred Site (Henderson) 87
Renart, C. 126 Sadie, J-A. 20
Research Centre for Music and Gender 268 Sainton-Dolby, C.H. 260, 262, 264
Retrospect Opera 13 Salhi, Z.S. 50
Rhodes, H. 94 Salon Without Boundaries 184
Rice, T. 55 Salvador, E. 273
Richardson, L. 195 Salzburg Festival 316
Ricordanza (Martwa Natura III / Still Life III) Samuel, R. 20, 321
(Synowiec) 119 Sanchez Diaz, G. 5, 365–373, 371
Ring Cycle (Wagner) 230 sanqu 382
Rinse Cycle (Henderson) 87 Santamaría, H. 276
Riot grrrl movement 329 Santley, C. 262
Robb, D. 403 Sarjala, J. 255
Roberts, H.H. 63 ‘Saxophone Song’ (Bush) 232, 235
Roberts, R. 409, 412 Scales, R. 44
Robertson Wojcik, P. 341 Scarlatti, D. 38
Robinson, L. 184 Scelsi, G. 38
Roche, S. 116 Schabel, A. 99
Rockefeller, J.D., Sr. 394 Schaeffer, B. 114, 116–117
Rodgers, T. 167 Schauffler, R.H. 340
Rodríguez, S. 271, 273 Scherzo (Mendelssohn) 322
Rogers, V. 85 Schiff, D. 437
Roil in Stillness (Slater) 183 Schiller-Rydzewska, J. 3, 114–123
Rokseth, Y. 399–401, 402 Schirmer Inc 444
Roman Catholic Church 5, 356–363 Schleifer, M.F. 13
Romanza in C (Troup) 423 Schmader, T. 342
Rorem, N. 440 Schnapper, L. 128
Rosa, L. 168, 175n4 Schott Music 438
Rosen, J. 260 Schrade, L. 401
Ross, J. 349 Schuman-Heink, M. 394
Ross-Smith, A. 339 Schumann, C. 19, 21, 36, 179, 182, 313, 315
Rough Trade West 343–344 Schumann, R. 19, 128, 313
Roundhouse Radio 328 Scordatura 185
Rousseau, J.-J. 74 Scott, D.B. 260
Rowlands, D. 149, 150 Scott-Ellis, T.E. 154
Royal Academy of Music 149, 352, 438 Sculthorpe, P. 83
Royal Academy of Music Sorrell Women Sea Sketches (Williams) 99
Conductors Programme 352 Sears, D. 230, 235
Royal Albert Hall 260 second artist persona 32
Royal College of Music (RCM) 260 The Second Sex (Beauvoir) 1, 367
Royal Irish Academy of Music 429 Seeger, C. 62, 64, 194
Royal Opera House 352 Seeger, P. 63
461
Index
Seeger, R.C. 12, 36, 62 Sonata per pianoforte (Synowiec) 118

Sekaobela, L. 286 Sonate synthétique (Barbillion) 124
Sekyeredumase Gospel Bands 284 Sondergard, T. 153
Selva, B. 126 Songs of Love and Spring (Lehmann) 421
Sensbach, S. 124 Songs of Wales (Richards) 409
Separatist churches 281 songwriting 30–31
Severance Hall 394 Sonnets from the Portuguese (Everest) 136–144
Severance, J.L. 395 Sorrell Women Conductors Programme 352
sexism 313 Sound and Music 322
Sha’arawi, H. 76 Sounding the Feminists 185
Sharp, C. 62 Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of
Sheehan, M. 4, 289–294, 292–294 Classical Music (Beer) 16
Shen, H. 381 South Place Ethical Society 419, 424
Shen, J. 381, 384 South Place Sunday Popular Concerts 419, 420
Shen, S. 384 Southbank Centre 352
shi jing 384 Southbank Centre Women in Music 352
shi wei 384 Spain-Dunk, S. 324
Shihabi, Z. 2, 73–79 Speculum Musicae 444
Shreffler, A.C. 178 Speculum of the Other Woman (Irigaray) 205
Shuker, R. 342–343 St Quentin, E. 11
Sierra, A. 182 St. James’s Hall 260
Sikora, E. 320 Standpoint 287
Silesian Quartet 316 standpoint theory 338–339
Silver Birch (Panufnik) 311 Starobin, D. 444
Sinach 286 Stasevska, D. 311
Sinatra, F. 106 Steblin, R. 242
Sinfonia da Pacifica (Glanville-Hicks) 85 Sterling, A. 262
Sinn Féin 430 Stock, J.P.J. 58, 60
Sitsky, L. 88 Stokes, M. 75
Six Sketches (Troup) 423 Stokowski, L. 392
Six Urban Songs (Henderson) 87 Stone, K. 85
Sjödén, A 411–414, 413 Story of Three Lives (Ma) 377
Sjoden, A. 5 Strauss, R. 182
Skeggs, B. 339 Stravinsky, I. 440
Slater, A.E. 3, 177–185 Straw, W. 340
SLIDE progression 231 Strozzi, B. 319
Smith, F. 273 Strube, G. 391
Smith, G.D. 28, 31 Stubble (Henderson) 87
Smyth, D.E. 93–94, 94 A Student’s Guide to A2 Music (Terry and
Smyth, E. 10, 13 Bowman) 178
soccer moms 37 studios 329–332
social sanctions 342–343 Suaret, E. 95
Société des Compositeurs de Musique 128–129 Subotnik, R.R. 160
Société Nationale de Musique 128 Suffrage Centenary 322
Société Schola cantorum 125–127 Suffragette Movement 93
Society for Education, Music and Psychology Suite Bretonne (Bright) 97
Research (SEMPRE) 54 Sultan, M. 74
Society of Women Musicians 13 Summer, M. 425
soggetto cavato 139 Sundman, G. 253–254
Soho Radio 328 Susskind, J. 438
Sohy, C. 126 Sutherland, M. 83, 84, 84–85, 86, 401–402
Sokoloff, N. 394 Swain, F. 424
Some Like It Hot (film) 256 Swepstone, E. 423–424, 425–426
Sonata for Harp (Glanville-Hicks) 85 Symphony No. 1 (Elliott) 440
Sonata for Piano and Percussion (Glanville-Hicks) 85 A Symphony of Three Orchestras (Carter) 441
462
Index
Symphony Orchestra Institute 348 Titon 58

Synowiec, E. 3, 114–123; composing in childhood Titon, J.T. 55
115–116; disease 119–121; getting away from Tocker, M., Tocker 291–292
performing 117–119; last works 121–122; Tomaszewski, M. 114
meeting with Schaeffer 116–117; pianism Tosh, J. 79
115–116; threshold of peak creativity 119–121; Totten, N.K. 260
works of 117, 119 Tower, J. 183, 324
Syringa (Carter) 441, 442 Trachtenkapellen 252
Szuster, J. 83 Treforest United Choir 149
Trelawny, P. 153
Tabakova, D. 320, 322 Trevor, K. 152
Tagoe Sisters 284, 286 Trinity Laban Conservatoire 14, 15–16
Taiwanese female musicians 298–306; image of Troubadisc 13, 15
298–299, 300–301; stereotype 299–300, Troup, E.J. 421–423, 425–426
301–305; visuality 299–300 trovadoras 277
Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship 352 trovadores 271, 273
Taki Concordia Fellowship 351 Truro Cathedral 322
Takyi Donkor, G. 281, 282 Tui Teka, P. 290
Tang, X. 384 Tunley, D. 88
Tann, H. 321 Turner, E. 149
taqtuqa 76 Tuttle, S. 404
Tarantella (Carter) 439 Twum Ampofo, M. 286–287
Tarazi, R. 79 Twum, C. 286
Tarnhelms (progressions) 230 Tydfil, M. 149
Tartini, G. 241
Taruskin, R. 228, 230 Ubell, R. 442
Taruskins (progressions) 230 UNESCO 54
Tate, P. 10 Unification of Ancient and Contemporary Lyrics
tauparapara 292 (Meng) 379
Tchaikovsky, P. 182 University Education of Ireland Act 1879` 429
Te Waka Huia 294 University of Strasbourg 401
Tehillah experience 286–287 Ustvolskaya, G. 38
Temirkanov, Y. 349
Temperley, D. 230 Vaders (progressions) 230
Temple, H. 264 Valdés, M. 276
Tenant-Flowers, S. 352 Van Rijswijk, A. 153
Terra, I. 169–173 Vanderbilt, W.K. 394
Terry, P. 178 Van-Garshong, J. 286
Teyte, M. 394 Varese, E. 38
Theocritus 136–144 variety 250–251
Thomas, A. 414 Velázquez., C. 106
Thomas, H.C. 437–447 Venus Blazing 15, 15–16
Thomas, J. 411 Vera, M.T. 276
Thomas, M.H. 153 The Vicar of Wakefield (Lehmann) 264
Thomasm, H.C. 5 Victorian women 10–11
Thompson, S.J. 323 Vidor, P. 97
Thorne, T. 152 Viennese Ladies’ Orchestra 4, 250–258
Thornton, S. 339 Vilcins, S. 322
Three Aboriginal Dances (Hill) 84 violin, as forbidden instrument 241–248
Three Browning Songs (Beach) 98 Violin Concerto 4, 210–214
Threnody (Owen) 152 Violin Sonata in D major (Barbillion) 130
Through the Looking Glass (Carroll) 205 Virago Press 323
Thurston Dart Archive 404 Vitier, S. 273, 275
Tick, J. 21 Voice of Egypt (Danielson) 74, 76–77, 79
Tilbrook, J. 15 von Karajan, H. 324
463
Index
Voss (White) 87 Wollenberg, S. 2, 19–24

Vyner, M. 442–444 Wolstencroft, E. 4, 318–323
Wolterstorff, N. 163–164
Waddington, A. 407–416 Women & Music: a history (Pendle) 12
Wagner, R. 230 Women Called to Worship 287
Wahby, A. 73 women composers 9–16; contexts for study of
waiata 291–292 20–21; ethical movement 421–424; genre
Walenn, D. 425 21–22; as mothers 36–42; personal canon of
Walenn, G. 424 177–185; post-Citron 19–24; stylistic
Wallen, E. 322 categories 22
Wang, D. 377–386 Women Composers: Music Through the Ages
Wang, X. 198 (Glickman and Schleifer) 13, 138
Warburg, A. 167, 175n1 women conductors 347–353; and biological
Washington Composers’ Club 392 differences 349; history 348–349; media
Waters, E. 402 portrayal of 349; professional initiativies
Watkins, W.W. 409 351–353; statistics 347; and stereotypical view of
Watson, C. 5, 347–353, 349 maestro 348; training programs 351–354
Webern, A. 38, 182 Women Conductors @ Morley 352
Weir, J. 91, 99–100, 101, 182, 313 Women Conductors with the Royal Philharmonic
Wellesz, E. 402 Society 352
Welsh Harper (Alaw) 414 women DJs 334–335
The Welsh Harper (Parry) 414 Women in Classical Music initiative 352
Welsh Literary Society 407 Women in Music 13, 15
Welsh March 414 women in music: British Ethical Movement
Welsh Music Information Centre 152 419–426; Conference on Women’s Work in
Welsh National Opera 352 Music 310; as creative geniuses 313; images
Welsh National Opera Female Conductor in 313–314; issues to be addressed 312–316;
Residence 352 landmarks for 310–312; and pornography
Welsh National Orchestra 148 313–314; Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS)
Welsh triple harp 409–411 Women Conductors’ Programme 310–311;
West London Ethical Society 423 scarcity in musical canon 312–313; and sexism
Western art canon 177–182 313; visuality 313–314; Women Make
White, M.V. 9, 92, 92–93, 262, 264, 421 Music 311
White, P. 87 Women in Worship 286
Whiteley, S. 329 Women Make Music 311
Whitesitt, L. 392 Women of Note (Appleby) 88
Whitley, K. 322 Women of Note (website) 15
Whittaker, A. 178–179 Women of the World Festival 309
Whittall, A. 9, 91 ‘Women on Three’ day 318
Wieck, C. 313 women violinists 4; education 242–243; intellect
Wiggins, T. 67 245–246; music as accomplishment 243–245;
Wigmore Hall 149 and musical culture 246–247; public
Wild Card (Henderson) 87 performances in the 19th century 247–248;
Wilder, B. 256 realm of 242; violin as forbidden instrument
Wilder, T. 392 241–248; virtuosity 246–247
Wilford, S. 2, 43–51 Women, Society of American Women
Williams, G. 9–16, 99, 154 Composers 392
Williams, J. 149, 408 women’s music, analysis of 22–23
Williams, M.J. 408, 412, 414 Women’s Philharmonic 199–201
Williams, R.V. 402 Wood, C. 148
Williams, V. 62 Wood, E. 247
Williams, W. 409 Wood, H. 91, 98–99
Wilson, H.L. 265 Woodforde-Finden, A. 264
Wilson, L. 267 Woolf, V. 10
Wittry, D. 352 Workers Brigade Concert Party (Ghana) 283
Wola, S. 118 Worldly Remarks on Song (Zhang) 383
Wolfe, P. 333 The Wreckers (Smyth) 93–94
464
Index
Wright, R. 181 Yousafzai, M. 322

Writing: A Method of Inquiry (Richardson) 195 Yu, H. 379
‘Wuthering Heights’ (song) 234 Yusupov, F. 150
Xu, Y. 381, 383 Zamara, A. 411

Zepke, S. 88
Ye, X. 377 Zerbinatti, C. 168
Yeats, W.B. 432 Zhang, Q. 383
Yoshihara, M. 298 Zhang, S. 381
The Young Kabbarli (Sutherland) 85 Zhang, X. 311
The Young Lady’s Book 245, 246 Ziehn, B. 137–139, 143
young musicians 27–28 Zimerman, K. 316
Young, I.M. 369, 370 Zimmerman, A. 423–424
Young, P. 12 Zwilich, E.T. 100, 102
Young, S. 350–351
465

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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF

WOMEN’S WORK IN MUSIC

Routledge Handbook to Luigi Nono and Musical Thought

The Routledge Handbook to Music under German Occupation, 1938–1945

The Routledge Handbook of Music Signification

The Routledge Handbook to Sociology of Music Education

The Routledge Handbook of Women’s Work in Music

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Music-

Edited by Rhiannon Mathias

ISBN: 978-0-367-19209-9 (hbk)

1 Grace, Betty, Maude and Me: 30 years of fighting for women

2 ‘Where are we now?’: teaching and studying women composers post-

3 ‘Because I’m a girl’: exploring experiences, practices and challenges

5 ‘The Algerian woman is very strong’: music, identity and gender in

6 In search of the field: reflections on an ethnomusicological project in India 53

7 Women’s work in ethnomusicology: alternative spaces 62

8 A brief historical and sociological examination of twentieth-century

9 The rise and rise of women in Australian composition 82

11 Chasing María Teresa Lara: an autoethnographic account of trying to

13 Composer, performer, teacher: Jeanne Barbillion (1895–1992) and the

14 How Theocritus sang: Eleanor Everest Freer’s Sonnets from the

15 A life in fragments: Morfydd Owen (1891–1918) 146

16 Overcoming the ‘male gaze’ of music: towards renewed compositional

17 Voices, sounds and herstories: constructing feminist research in

18 Invisible canons: a reflective commentary on the formation of my

19 Storytelling in autoethnography – The Poetess 187

20 Chen Yi: trauma, myths, and representation 198

21 Considering autonomy and collaboration in three concerti by Jennifer

22 Decoding the riddle: the tea-party scene in Unsuk Chin’s Alice in

23 Kate Bush’s uncanny harmonic language 228

24 Notions of virtuosity, female accomplishment, and the violin as

25 Visitors from ‘the merry town by the Danube’: Viennese ladies’

26 Women song composers and the London Ballad Concerts 260

27 Sara González: a different song about women 271

28 Changing roles of women in the gospel music performance space in

29 Māori women at the forefront of Aotearoa/New Zealand music in the

30 The stereotypical image and body representation of Taiwanese female

31 Climb every mountain 309

32 Celebrating women composers on BBC Radio 3 318

33 Contested spaces: gender dynamics in independent radio stations in

34 ‘And her voice is a backwards record’: the gendering of phonograph

35 Cracks in the glass ceiling: women conductors, new trends, old

36 Personal reflections on professional experience of women’s

37 Re-mapping and connecting bodies of women musicians 365

38 Materiality, editorship and canonisation in Wang Duanshu’s Collection

39 Mary Carlisle Howe (1882-1964) and Adella Prentiss Hughes

40 Louise Hanson-Dyer (1884-1962): patroness of music publishing 397

42 The women musicians of the British ethical movement, 1887–1927 419

43 The role of women in Irish music institutions in the early twentieth

44 The Beedle-Carter correspondence: an analysis of the cultural work

1.1 Women Composers at the Proms 1996–2019 14

19.3 Original Manuscript of the Poem ‘Still Life’ 192

Jessica Beck completed an AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award at the Royal

Claudia Chibici-Revneanu (Austria) is lecturer of Intercultural Development and

Susan Clauson-Elliott gained an Open University MA in Music degree in 2017. Her

Grace Takyi Donkor is an assistant lecturer at the Department of Music, School of

J. Michele Edwards, musicologist and conductor, is professor emerita of music at Macalester

Elina G. Hamilton is assistant professor at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa. Hamilton’s

Valentine Harding is an independent researcher in ethnomusicology. She comes from

Christina Homer is an ethnomusicologist specialising in material culture and museum

Sally Macarthur is associate professor of Musicology whose research draws on Deleuzian

Gabriela Sanchez Diaz (Body Mapping Educator, MMus, MGS) is an accomplished

Joanna Schiller-Rydzewska is a professor at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk (October

Helen C. Thomas worked in the Repertoire Promotion Department at Oxford University

The Routledge Handbook of Women's Work in Music

The Routledge Handbook of Women's Work in Music