Women have contributed significantly to the history of music, but you`d never know it from the history books.
A new anthology, ”Women and Music: A History” (Indiana University Press, $27.50), hopes to address the fact that those accomplishments have been sorely ignored over the years. The book, edited by Karin
Pendle, a professor of musicology at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, chronicles the achievements of women since ancient Greece. The contributors are all recognized experts-musicologists, authors and critics-in the field of women`s music. (Also in conjunction with Pendle`s book Indiana University Press is offering three 60-minute companion audio cassettes, ”Historical Anthology of Music By Women,” compiled by James R. Briscoe; $29.95). The music contained in the cassettes was published previously in 1987 in Briscoe`s book, also titled ”Historical Anthology of Music by Women” (Indiana University Press).
Some of the women in the book are:
– Maddelena Casulana (circa 1540-1590). Italian composer of madrigals and the first woman to publish her own music.
– Clara Schumann (1819-1896). Influential German composer, pianist, singer and teacher.
– Clara Louise Kellogg (1842-1916). American opera singer who achieved international success at a time when women professionals were a rarity.
– Ethel Smyth (1858-1944). English composer of operas including ”Der Wald,” the first opera by a woman to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
– Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (1867-1944). American composer who wrote piano, chamber, choral and orchestral works, including her Symphony in E minor, the first symphony by an American woman to be performed in public.
– Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953). Considered one of the most innovative of American composers during the late `20s and early `30s. She is the mother of folk singer Peggy Seeger.
”It was something that I had in the back of my head,” says Pendle about the origin of the book. Through a friend of a friend, she learned of a project to create an undergraduate textbook on women in music.
Pendle agreed to do it. ”We wanted a textbook that could be used as a course for women in music. When I started, there were about three (women`s study courses in music).”
One reason scholars have ignored the musical activities of women, Pendle said, is that, until recently, there has not been enough information available to teach a course in women`s music.
”When I started doing my course there was no such thing as this book,” Pendle says. ”It was do-it-yourself from beginning to end.”
As editor, Pendle chose the contributors but, as she notes, ”The content more or less determined itself. So I thought we should include some chapters on popular and ethnomusicological subjects but, at the same time, I felt that it should be a straightforward history. The feminist aesthetics chapter is unusual. It shows that there might be another point of view. The patronage chapter shows that women accomplished a lot behind the scenes.”
”Women and Music” traces the accomplishments of women through the centuries. Women composer/poets, for example, flourished in what is now southern France during the 12th and 13th Centuries. Renaissance women, especially wealthy ones, were encouraged to learn to read music, to sing and to dance, to enhance their prospects for marriage. But once wed, they were expected to relinquish all thoughts of pursuing careers in music, no matter how talented they were. Still, professional women did exist. During the 17th and 18th Centuries, women were in demand as opera singers.
By the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, such American entertainers as Lillian Russell (1861-1922) and Sophie Tucker (1884-1966) had found ample opportunity to practice their craft in musical theater and later in vaudeville. And during the first half of this century, women vocalists such as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday found widespread acceptance in American popular music.
Throughout history, certain musical occupations were considered feminine. It was entirely appropriate for women to be singers or supporters of the arts, for example, but any thoughts of becoming a composer or conductor-the traditional domain of men-were quickly and firmly discouraged. Attitudes have been slow to change.
It wasn`t until the `60s and `70s, when historians started to explore the social and intellectual implications of history, that the contributions of women began to be fully appreciated. ”Here is where you find the women,”
Pendle says. ”The women for the most part were not government leaders. They were not out on the battlefield, (yet) they did amazing things.”
As recently as a decade ago, ”Women and Music” could not have been written, Pendle says. ”The research has become available only in the last 10 years. There are just a lot more resources now. One of our purposes in this book was to more or less try to pull it all together.”
The women`s movement of the 1960s and `70s inspired scholars to explore the contributions made by women in Western society. At the same time, more and more women began to seek employment in the arts, especially in areas traditionally considered off-guard. It`s only recently that major orchestras have been hiring women conductors, for example, although the numbers are still small.
J. Michele Edwards, in the chapter titled ”North America since 1920,”
notes that in 1988 women held 24 conducting positions with professional orchestras that were members of the American Symphony Orchestra League, and that Catherine Comet was the associate conductor of the Baltimore Symphony from 1984 to 1986.
Today there are still relatively few women composers of symphonic orchestral music. Rather, women have achieved their greatest success in popular music.
Do women support women composers and performers?
”It`s sort of half-and-half,” Pendle says. ”There are still a lot of women who do not support women in the arts, who think their efforts are better off spent supporting men, but there also are a lot (of women) who do.”
As one example, she cites the numerous women`s studies organizations and support groups that have sprouted on college campuses across the country during the last 20 years or so. Another example of women helping women is the women`s music movement that emerged in the `60s. Music created and performed exclusively by women from a female point of view built a grass-roots audience through sponsorship of women`s music festivals and the creation of women-owned record companies.
”Women`s music,” however, attracts a small-albeit loyal-following. Thus, one of the most intriguing points that the book raises is whether a woman, especially a composer of contemporary art music, needs to adopt masculine behavior to be successful in the music profession today and, more importantly, in order to be taken seriously as an artist. Or is the women`s point of view-even so-called feminist music-always filtered, due to the dominance of male culture, through a male sensibility?
Pendle doesn`t have any easy answers. ”Part of what we`re talking about is: What is masculine behavior? When a woman comes into a field that has been (dominated) by men and does the same things that a man does, all of a sudden she`s not womanly anymore. It might be that the behavior itself is neither masculine or feminine. It`s just something you need to do to get the job done. It might just go with the territory.”
One chapter of the anthology, however, deals with certain scholars`
acknowledgement of a female point of view-that women`s music, whether it be popular music or art music, is inherently different from music created by men. Again, Pendle isn`t sure that a female aesthetic exists.
”I`m coming to think that it probably does among certain people,” she says. ”Some of the people that we mention in the book, such as (folk singer) Holly Near, try to bring a feminine perspective to their art. The problem is sorting out what`s actually female, what`s actually woman-derived
characteristics, and what things have come to us from men because men have been the primary performers and teachers.
”It`s entirely possible that we don`t know enough women`s music to say for sure what some of the characteristics might be,” she says. ”(But) I think there might be something in it. I think it`s worth exploring.”
