Past Attitudes
Explores the historical barriers that made it challenging for women composers of classical music to receive recognition similar to that of their men counterparts.
Fanny Mendelssohn
Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Expectations of the Musical Woman
The most significant barrier that women of all walks of life faced in trying to have personal career was the expectation of domesticity.
The 19th century saw an immense number in women composers but many of those women never got the opportunity to publish or continue their work after becoming wives and mothers (Harris).
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Fanny Mendelssohn, sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn, was a brilliant musician who remained steadfast in her work for the entirety of her life. When she became engaged to Wilhelm Hensel, her future husband, who was an artist himself, was jealous of the poet Edward Droysen, whose poetry Fanny was setting with music. Wilhelm told Fanny that she would "would no longer compose for voice, at least by poets that [he] personally knew" (Beer, 169). Fanny's response to this was that she would "give up music entirely, since it is fit only for girls not for married women".
Wilhelm managed to convince her to continue her art.
Dr. Tabatha Easley, D.M.A. and Mr. Matt Wilshire speak on the opportunities and lack of opportunities thereof for historical women in the world of music.
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Clara Schumann
Franz Hanfstaengl, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Clara Schumann (nee Weick) met her husband, the famous composer Robert Schumann when she was 8 years old and he 18 (Beer, 212). After living with her family for several years, he took notice of her romantically when she was around 13 years old. They married in 1840 when she was 21 and he 31.
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A few years before they were married, Robert tried to convince Clara to publish one of her works in his journal, a composition that had already been promised to a legitimate publisher (213). Clara refused him.
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For the entirety of their marriage, Robert manipulated Clara to think that he was entirely dependent on her in order to sway her from her dreams of musical independence.
"Robert's compositional activity took precedence not only over his wife's composition but even over her piano practicing" (224). Robert's stance was that 'Men stand higher than women.' He insisted that he had higher status than her creatively as she was simply a performer.
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In a journal Robert Schumann wrote about his wife:
"...But to have children and a husband who is always living in the realm of imagination, does not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost because she cannot work them out. But Clara herself knows her main occupation is as a mother and I believe she is happy in the circumstances and would not want them changed" (228).
"Women are expected to be wives, mothers, and do all the nasty things in the community (oh, I do them). And if a woman is cursed with having talent too, then she keeps apologizing for it… It really is a curse, in a way, because instead of working 12 hours a day like other women, you work 24."
- Margaret Bonds (1913-1972)
Women Finding Ways
Throughout history women found ways to get their music heard and published.
A 17th century musical virtuoso, Francesca Caccini was a singer, musician, and composer. For years, she was the highest paid musician in the Medici court and is the author of what is considered to be the oldest surviving opera written by a woman (Hall). Her works were popular during her time; however, many of Caccini's works have not survived to today. Caccini knew her audience and part of her large success was that she catered many of her works to her mostly male audience of 1600s Italy. The main reason why Caccini isn't well known in today's music circles is that "La liberazione di Ruggiero was not Caccini’s only opera. She wrote at least 16 major staged works, but only La liberazione di Ruggiero survives in full".
Several women composer's music was publish under a male name. Some like, Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn had no choice in the matter.
Mendelssohn published a few works under the name "F. Hansel" - her first initial and married name - but other works by her were attributed to her brother due to the social norms she lived in.
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Schumann had to navigate her compositional career as a mother to eight children, with a manipulative husband who wished to keep her out the public eye.
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Claude Arrieu (1903 – 1990) was a prolific French composer. Claude Arrieu was the pen name used by Ann Marie Simon (Clarinet Music). She is remembered for composing reed trios, quintets, quartets, a work for 10 winds, and several works for clarinet and piano. Uneducated musicians and audiences might not know that they were experiencing music composed by a woman if they were not made aware.
"I feel I must fight for [my music], 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."
- Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)
Beyond Femininity and Intersectionality
Composer Florence Price remarked how she was aware that she had "two handicaps-those of sex and race" (Knight). "Black classical musicians have often thrived briefly when performing or composing within the boundaries of the white canon, before struggling for recognition after introducing more apparently “African” elements" (Harrison). Oftentimes composers of color fall into obscurity after their deaths, because "their legacies aren't tended." The traditional canon is not built with them in mind.
The issue with the representation of women in classical music is not just due to their femineity and the expectation placed on them as women. The recognition of all historically excluded composers is an intersectional issue.
In an 1939 edition of the Musical Times, critics discuss the music of Nadia Boulanger. These writers possess a strong sense of British nationalism and critique Boulanger not just on the fact that she is a woman, but a French composer taking up space in British music halls. "Mr. R. Green’s letter on the Nadia Boulanger concerts in the December Musical Times was, I think, timely. This very accomplished ladies name is becoming an easy passport to fame for many young composers. The B.B.C. seem to be in danger of forgetting what good work is being done outside the fashionable coteries; work which is just as modern, more significant and more advanced. (The tameness of some of the Boulanger pupils is one of their most disappointing features.)" (Linstead).
“It's only common sense, and not small mindedness or prejudice, to say that the British Broadcasting Corporation should encourage young British composers first. If the BBC doesn't do it, who will and who can?”.
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Nadia Boulanger
Edmond Joaillier (1886-1939), Paris http://data.bnf.fr/14764348/edmond_joaillier/, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons