Abstract
Positioning the book within the worldwide resurgence in feminist focus, Kouvaras reflects on the collection’s accounts of creative processes and contextual issues pertaining to current-day and early-twentieth-century woman composers: their rich compositional voices and the testing—to say the least—scenarios in the professional settings in which these creators disseminate their work. This chapter presents the ways in which the book balances narratives of struggle, of artistic prowess, and of “breaking through” the obstacles in their profession. The book has a tripartite structure: Part I, “Creative Work—Then and Now,” illuminates historical and present-day women’s composition and various iterations and conceptions of the “feminine voice”; Part II, “The State of the Industry in the Present Day,” viewed through the creation of new music by women, provides solutions to the inequities women face in the sector; and Part III, “Creating; Collaborating: Composer and Performer Reflections,” offers personal accounts of current music creation. Kouvaras draws together the issues arising from these areas that have pertained to scholarship on women’s music since the advent of 1970s feminist criticism, through to the current so-called Fourth Wave, ending with a discussion that teases out the myriad contemporary complexities of the very concept of the “woman composer.”
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Notes
- 1.
The majority of the chapters build extensively on papers presented at two research conferences on gender and music presented in 2017 and 2018, respectively: “Women in the Creative Arts” Conference, August 10–12, 2017, School of Music, Australian National University, Canberra, http://music.cass.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/women-creative-arts and “Gender Diversity in Music-Making” Conference, July 6–8, 2018, Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Monash University, Melbourne, https://www.monash.edu/muma/public-programs/previous/2018/the-gender-diversity-in-music-making-conference.
- 2.
Some recent titles here include Siobhan McAndrew and Martin Everett, “Symbolic Versus Commercial Success Among British Female Composers,” in Social Networks and Music Worlds, ed. Nick Crossley, Siobhan McAndrew and Paul Widdop (New York: Routledge, 2014), 61–88; Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft, eds, Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Secular & Sacred Music to 1900 (London: Oxford University Press, 2018); Michael K. Slayton, ed., Women of Influence in Contemporary Music: Nine American Composers (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2010); and Roxane Prevost and Kimberly Francis, “Teaching Silence in the Twenty-First Century: Where Are the Missing Women Composers?” in The Oxford Handbook of Music Censorship, ed. Patricia Hall (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018): 637–60. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733163.013.26. Also see Susanna Eastburn, “We Need More Women Composers—and It’s Not About Tokenism, It’s About Talent,” The Guardian, March 6, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/06/sound-and-music-susanna-eastburn-we-need-more-women-composers-talent-not-tokenism, and Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, “Beyond the ‘Dead White Dudes’: How to Solve the Gender Problem in Australian Classical Music,” The Guardian, August 20, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/aug/20/beyond-the-dead-white-dudes-how-to-solve-the-gender-problem-in-australian-classical-music.
- 3.
An 1862 critic writing in The Musical Times, cited in Paula Gillet, “Introduction: Music and the Female Sphere,” in Musical Women in England, 1870–1914: Encroaching on All Man’s Privileges (New York, Saint Martin’s Press, 2000), 25.
- 4.
Karin Pendle and Melinda Boyd, Women in Music: A Research and Information Guide (London: Routledge, 2005); and Linda A. Krikos, Catherine R. Loeb, and Cindy Ingold, Women’s Studies: A Recommended Bibliography, 3rd ed. (Westport: Libraries Unlimited, 2004).
- 5.
World Economic Forum “Global Gender Gap Report 2020,” accessed January 20, 2021, https://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2020/the-global-gender-gap-index-2020/. It has taken until now for the first woman to become Vice President of the United States of America, and until 2019 for a woman to be elected President of the International Society for Contemporary Music (see Glenda Keam, Foreword, present volume); also see Michael Cooper, “The Met Is Creating New Operas (Including Its First by Women),” New York Times, September 23, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/23/arts/music/metropolitan-opera-bam-public-theater-women.html—just to cite three startlingly belated global “firsts.”.
- 6.
Parsons and Ravenscroft, “Introduction,” 2. Also see Amy Beth Kirsten, “The ‘Woman Composer’ Is Dead,” New Music Box, March 19, 2012, http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/the-woman-composer-is-dead/.
- 7.
Christine Battersby, Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics (London: Women’s Press, 1989). This seminal text in feminist musicology was published online by Cambridge University Press in 2009.
- 8.
See, for example, Marcia Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 3rd ed. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000) (the first edition of which was published in 1993 and is a seminal text in feminist musicology); Jill Halstead, The Woman Composer: Creativity and the Gendered Politics of Musical Composition (London: Routledge, 2016) (the first edition of which was published in 1997 and is a seminal text in feminist musicology); James R. Briscoe, ed., Contemporary Anthology of Music by Women (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).
- 9.
Lucy Green, Music, Gender, Education (London: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
- 10.
That Australian composer Miriam Hyde felt the necessity to entitle her autobiography Complete Accord (Sydney: Currency Press, 1991), to underline the fact that she maintained her most important role of running a harmonious and appropriately managed—by herself alone—household of husband and four children despite being a committed composer speaks volumes here. Also see Teresa Carvalho, Özlem Özkanli, Heidi Prozesky and Helen Peterson, “Careers of Early- and Mid-career Academics,” in Generation and Gender in Academia, edited by Barbara Bagilhole, and Kate White (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 127–68.
- 11.
McAndrew and Everett, “Symbolic Versus Commercial Success.”
- 12.
Parsons and Ravenscroft give a sound overview of attendant issues here in their “Introduction.” For a confronting, historical perspective on the then-new form, the Minuet movement in a symphony, see Matthew Head, “‘Like Beauty Spots on the Face of a Man’: Gender in 18th-Century North-German Discourse on Genre,” The Journal of Musicology 13, no. 2 (1995): 143–67.
- 13.
Ruth M. Solie, Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993); Phillip Brett, Elizabeth Wood and Gary C. Thomas, Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology (New York: Routledge, 1994).
- 14.
Rhian Samuel, “Women’s Music: A Twentieth-Century Perspective,” in The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, ed. Julie Ann Sadie and Rhian Samuel (New York: Norton, 1995), xiii–xviii; Laura Snapes, “Still a Boys’ Club: Don’t Fall for the Hype that the Music Industry Has Changed,” The Guardian, (24 January 2020), https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/23/boys-club-2020s-music-awards-superficial-change-grammys; Sarah Baer, “Works by Women in the 2016–2017 Season,” Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy, August 30, 2016, http://www.wophil.org/2016/works-by-women-in-the-2016-2017-season/; and McAndrew and Everett, “Symbolic versus Commercial Success.”
- 15.
To cite just one recent instance: Norman Lebrecht, “More Women’s Works Than Ever in US Symphonic Season,” Slipped Disc, September 14, 2018, https://slippedisc.com/2018/09/more-womens-works-than-ever-in-us-symphonic-season/.
- 16.
Renee Cox Lorraine, “Recovering Jouissance: An Introduction to Feminist Musical Aesthetics,” in Women and Music: A History, ed. Karin Pendle (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 3–18; Solie, Musicology and Difference; Brett, Wood, and Thomas, Queering the Pitch.
- 17.
Stéphanie Genz and Benjamin A. Brabon, Postfeminism: Cultural Texts and Theories (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018); Elaine J., Hall and Marnie Salupo Rodriguez, “The Myth of Postfeminism,” Gender and Society 17, no. 6 (2003): 878–902; Laura Brunor and Elinor Burkett, “The Fourth Wave of Feminism,” Britannica, (n.d.), https://www.britannica.com/topic/feminism/The-fourth-wave-of-feminism; Constance Grady, “The Waves of Feminism, and Why People Keep Fighting Over Them, Explained,” updated July 20, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth; Prue Clarke, “Stuck on the Third? A Guide to Fourth Wave Feminism,” Future Women, accessed January 27, 2021, https://futurewomen.com/leadership/gender-diversity/fourth-wave-feminism-guide/; and Nicola Rivers, Postfeminism(s) and the Arrival of the Fourth Wave: Turning Tides (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
- 18.
Chapter 2, present volume.
- 19.
Chapter 3, present volume.
- 20.
Chapter 4, present volume.
- 21.
Chapter 5, present volume.
- 22.
Chapter 7, present volume.
- 23.
Chapter 8, present volume.
- 24.
Chapter 6, present volume.
- 25.
McAndrew and Everett, “Symbolic Versus Commercial Success.”
- 26.
- 27.
Chapter 9, present volume.
- 28.
Chapter 9, present volume.
- 29.
Chapter 10, present volume.
- 30.
Laura Bates, “Female Academics Face Huge Sexist Bias,” The Guardian, February 14, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2015/feb/13/female-academics-huge-sexist-bias-students; Kieran Sneider, “The Abrasiveness Trap: High-Achieving Men and Women Are Described Differently in Reviews,” Fortune, 26 August 2014, http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-bias/; Lisa A. Williams, “The Problem with Merit-Based Appointments? They’re Not Free from Gender Bias Either,” The Conversation, 30 July 2015, http://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-merit-based-appointments-theyre-not-free-from-gender-bias-either-45364.
- 31.
Kate MacNeill and Anne Tonks, “Leadership in Australian Arts Companies: One Size Does Not Fit All,” in Arts Leadership: International Case Studies, ed. Josephine Caust (Melbourne: Tilde University Press, 2013), 69–82; Anne Sweigart, “Women on Board for Change: The Norway Model of Boardroom Quotas as a Tool for Progress in the United States and Canada,” Northwest Journal of International Law and Business 32, no. 4 (2012): 81A–105A, https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/njilb/vol32/iss4/6/; Editorial Board, “Academic Gender Quotas Are an Extreme Solution to an Extreme Problem: Divergent Promotion Trends Between Men and Women Require Systemic, Qualitative Changes,” University Times, 22 May 2016, http://www.universitytimes.ie/2016/05/academic-gender-quotas-are-an-extreme-solution-to-an-extreme-problem/; Nicola Clark, “Getting Women into Boardrooms, by Law,” New York Times, 27 January 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/world/europe/28iht-quota.html; J. F. Corkery and M. Taylor, “The Gender Gap: A Quota for Women on the Board,” Corporate Governance eJournal, 11 January 2012, http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ElderLRev/2012/4.pdf; Cordelia Fine, “Do Mandatory Gender Quotas Work?” The Monthly, March 2012, https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2012/march/1330562640/cordelia-fine/status-quota.
- 32.
Several of the concerted efforts that were undertaken in the United States in 2017 are detailed by Elizabeth Nonemaker, “Who’s Fighting for Gender Equity in Classical Music?”, 21st Century Musician Initiative, Archive, August 1, 2019, https://www.depauw.edu/music/21cm/; Fiona Maddocks, “Women Composers: Notes from the Musical Margins,” The Guardian, 13 March 2011, http://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/mar/13/london-oriana-choir-women-composers.
- 33.
Catherine Fox, Stop Fixing Women: Why Building Fairer Workplaces Is Everybody’s Business (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2017).
- 34.
Fox, “Introduction,” Stop Fixing Women. Also see M. O’Connor, “Women Executives in Gladiator Corporate Cultures: The Behavioural Dynamics of Gender, Ego and Power,” Maryland Law Review 65, no. 2 (2006): 465–500.
- 35.
Chapter 11, present volume.
- 36.
Andrea C. Vial, Jaime L. Napier, and Victoria L. Brescoll, “A Bed of Thorns: Female Leaders and the Self-Reinforcing Cycle of Illegitimacy,” The Leadership Quarterly 27, no. 3 (2016): 400–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2015.12.004.
- 37.
Chapter 12, present volume.
- 38.
European Women’s Audiovisual Network, “EWA Network Study on Gender Inequality in the Film Industry: Where Are the Women Directors in European Films? Gender Equality Report on Female Directors (2006–2013),” accessed 22 December 2020, https://www.ewawomen.com/gender-inequality-in-the-film-industry-2/.
- 39.
Chapter 13, present volume.
- 40.
- 41.
Ashley Fure, “GRID—Gender Research in Darmstadt, 2016,” accessed June 20, 2017, https://www.griddarmstadt.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/grid_gender_research_in_darmstadt.pdf.
- 42.
Sally Macarthur, Cat Hope and Dawn Bennett, “The Sound of Silence: Why Aren’t Australia’s Female Composers Being Heard?” The Conversation, May 31, 2016, http://theconversation.com/the-sound-of-silence-why-arent-australias-female-composers-being-heard-59743; Tom Service, “Vienna Philharmonic’s Conservatism Has Exposed it to Unsettling Truths,” The Guardian, March 12, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/mar/11/vienna-philharmonic-history.
- 43.
Chapter 14, present volume.
- 44.
Chapter 16, present volume.
- 45.
Chapter 17, present volume.
- 46.
Chapter 15, present volume.
- 47.
Chapter 18, present volume.
- 48.
Chapter 19, present volume.
- 49.
Kaija Saariaho, “Kaija Saariaho: Ears Open,” interview by Nadia Sirota, Meet the Composer, WQXR, July 30, 2015, audio, https://www.newsounds.org/story/kaija-saariaho-mtc-ears-open/.
- 50.
Roland Barthes Image, Music, Text, essays selected and translated [from the French] by Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977).
- 51.
Chapter 20, present volume.
- 52.
- 53.
Chapter 21, present volume.
- 54.
Chapter 22, present volume.
- 55.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, “The Impact of Hierarchical Structures on the Work Behavior of Women and Men,” Social Problems 23, no. 4 (1976): 415–30, https://doi.org/10.2307/799852.
- 56.
Chapter 10, present volume.
- 57.
Emily Wilbourne, “Letter from the Editor,” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 21 (2017): vii–ix; Philip V. Bohlman and Federico Celestini, “Editorial: Reckoning with Musicology’s Past and Present,” Acta Musicologica 92, no. 2 (2020): 117–19; Julie C. Dunbar, Women, Music, Culture: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2021); Daniel HoSang, George Lipsitz, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, eds, Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness Across the Disciplines (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2019); and Lisa Disch, Mary Hawkesworth, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
- 58.
Parsons and Ravenscroft, “Introduction,” 3.
- 59.
Parsons and Ravenscroft, “Introduction,” 4. These authors give similar statistics for the European scene.
- 60.
Parsons and Ravenscroft, “Introduction,” 4.
- 61.
Parsons and Ravenscroft also make the point that contemporary composition by men has to compete in the analysis space with that of canonic historical composers. Parsons and Ravenscroft, “Introduction,” 4. Regarding Australian composers performed by Australian Major Performing Arts Groups in 2019, analysis of the repertoire of nine major concert-music performance organisations in Australia reveals that only 9% of 2006 total works performed in 2019 were written by Australian composers. Richard Watts, “Women, First Nations Composers Under-represented in Orchestral Repertoire: New Report,” ArtsHub, 26 June 2020, https://performing.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/performing-arts/richard-watts/women-first-nations-composers-under-represented-in-orchestral-repertoire-new-report-260629.
- 62.
Chapter 10, present volume.
- 63.
- 64.
See, for example, Parsons and Ravenscroft, “Introduction,” 8–9.
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Kouvaras, L. (2022). Composing Women’s (Very) Long 100-Year Fight: Evolutions, Illuminations, Solutions. In: Kouvaras, L., Grenfell, M., Williams, N. (eds) A Century of Composition by Women. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95557-1_1
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