Re: GG a Question of Sex?

[Bruce Petherick <bpetherick@shaw.ca>]

At 12:11 PM 07/08/2002 -0400, you wrote:

> But
> you're right, this List is Very Balanced by gender, and by Leadership in
> Vocal Opinion -- in other words, the women here don't at all seem to hang
> back from expressing any opinions and initiating new threads. They don't
> leave everything to the loudmouthish boys. There may be someone named
> Violet on f_minor, but she's not Shrinking.

Unfortunately, this list is still in the minority for those domains that
are traditionally non-female. I subscribe to 4 other lists.
1. A list for Csound, the dominant electro-acoustic platform. This is
almost totally dominated by men.
2. The list for the Canadian Electro-acoustic society - again, with
perhaps a few more women.
3. The shogi list. Not a woman to be seen.
4. Semiotics of Music. Again mostly men, which is sad as the print
publication rate is almost 50%

My wife subscribes to several lists on fantasy and children's authors
(reading has been traditionally female, teaching, especially younger
children the same) which has a better mix, although there are a few more
women than men.
On the other hand, I am helping with a rather large open source project
and we have quiet a good representation of women, 1 in 6 or so. This is
enormous for programmers!

 
> One
> very famous question/controversy is: Where are the Great Classical Women
> Composers? Was it always strictly a matter of social gender repression in
> role opportunity and choice? In the age of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven,
> were women still locked into Kinder, Kuche and Kirche to such a degree
> that none could break out and overcome it? (As some famous women
> novelists managed to -- in the West, since Aphra Benn of the 17th
> Century.)

The historical facts before the 19thC are a little harder to dig through,
but it is recognised now that there were quite a few female composers and
performers in almost all countries. What we don't have is the music from
these people. It has been argued that some of JS Bach's music was written
by his 2nd wife (Anna Madglen? somebody please correct me if I have
confused the two!) and definitely some of Lully's music was written by a
female court musician. [Serious scholars of the list will still have to
excsue my lack of references. All of my materials are still in storage in
Melbourne - It is almost a year since we moved and I still don't have
references or MUSIC OR CDS- ahhhh] The reason we don't have there pieces
are the traditional ones - women were mainly "written" out of
documents unless they were very important eg a Queen., or wrote under
Pseudonyms or under their husband's name (What famous well known trilogy
that has just been made into a film was written -in the main, or at least
a large part - by the wife of the "author"?).



> If
> so, now that so much (by no means all) of that repression has vanished --
> Where are the oft-played works of our Famous neo-Classical Women
> Composers? Is there a female Samuel Barber, a female Leonard Bernstein, a
> female Henryk Gorecki?

The situation is the present is better, but there are still barriers. I
can answer the above question "Yes", but who knows Amy Beach,
GIdette Odet or Susan Hopkins?


> Ditto
> conductors. Now we know, of course, of several world-class women giants
> of symphony and opera conducting. But are they still, numerically,
> freaks? Is conducting still essentially an all-men's
> game?


The situation, in my opinion, is much better for conductors. There are a
good number of extremely good female conductors on the B circuit,
although none are probably on the A circuit -yet. The explosion of
conductor as a career choice is still a very new phenomenon, and I hope
that time will allow the cream to rise, regardless of sex.

>  
> But where did these crazy
> opinions come from? As women in Europe became "liberated," and
> tried to expand their musical horizons from parlour playing to full
> professional careers, did Our Musical Fathead Forefathers express or
> publish similar proto-opinions in the 1920s and 1930s? There must be lots
> of historical male opinions about the inferior musical technique and
> sensibilities of women musicians.

Yes there is - as there are a lot about medical opinions (Hysteria was a
"female" disease and was mainly used, originally, to control
women), scientific skills, political skills etc etc It wasn't just
music.

>  
> Does anyone know about past
> gender quotas and exclusionary rules in the great conservatories of
> Europe and America? Were there parallel restrictions and barriers in
> Japan and China? Do they still linger? 

I can give you some pretty horrible figures for my undergraduate degrees.
I studied at 3 institutions to do undergraduate work. The women
outnumbered the men 75%-25% (except for my improvisation degree where we
had 4 women in a class of 30). In post-graduate, however the ratio had
"slipped" to 50-50 or even 75-25 towards men. The number of
women who got tutoring jobs was tiny. Were/Are there rules? No - but the
upper levels are still very male dominated. I hope that this may just be
an Australian anomaly.

Bruce