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Re: GG a Question of Sex?



I don't wanna put this issue to bed yet. I been thinking about it and wanna post.
 
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.
 
How a List gets this healthy is a kind of mysterious magicke -- a lot of Lists, music and otherwise, aren't at all gender balanced, as Kate points out. Maybe it's the Spirit of Glenn Gould! And if so, that certainly deserves some comment.
 
(Credit certainly goes also to the Spirit of Mary Jo -- but part of her administrative expertise is the consistent way she doesn't Lower the Boom or Lay Down the Law. The List seems to order, structure and define itself without much presence from a gun-totin' Sheriff.)
 
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.)
 
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?
 
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?
 
Is it corporate culture? Do the fat donor cats and trustees still cringe at the thought of placing their $$$ in the baton of a woman? Does part of Great Contemporary Conducting consist of playing a good buddy-buddy men's foursome of golf with insurance and energy company executives?
 
It might be instructive (as well as profoundly nasty and unpleasant) to go back just a few years -- I think not much more than seven -- to the All-Male Vienna Symphony, the world's last holdout that had never hired a single woman instrumentalist. Pickets and protests on their overseas tours dragged this antediluvian dinosaur into the sunshine and forced the conductor and senior instrumentalists to explain their "philosophy." I remember reading their opinions that women were technically inferior and couldn't play with the required force and volume, whether they were talking about brass, reeds or strings.
 
Ridiculous, shameful stereotypes probably far more reflective of deep conservative gender threads in Austrian society rather than anything inherent in playing musical instruments.
 
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.
 
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?
 
It's one thing to say that these historical and contemporary prejudices are baseless. But do they linger today in seriously impeding the careers of women composers, conductors, instrumentalists?
 
Why do audiences seem to warm to women keyboard and string soloists (and, of course, harpists), but chill, or are perceived to chill, to women conductors and composers? Where are the famous women brass soloists, the female Dennis Brain? Do junior-high-school music teachers (of both genders!) divert girls away from entire classes of instruments? Or do the girls themselves recoil at being associated with certain classes of instruments? 
 
In the remarkable film "Playing for Time," there's a tragic portrait of a brilliant woman conductor, Mahler's niece, who ended her career and her life as the conductor of the inmate's orchestra at Auschwitz during World War II. (She's portrayed by the actress Jane Alexander.)
 
Bob
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Harding.Matthew <Matthew.Harding@CIC.GC.CA>
To: F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU <F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 11:23 AM
Subject: Re: GG a Question of Sex?

Well, we're diverging far from the point of this list, but I had always
thought that the f_minor list out of all the lists I belong to (musical,
technical, or otherwise) had the highest percentage of Female Content
(tm) ever!

Our hard working listowner is female, and I see frequent posts from Kate
Clunies-Ross, Valeria Massari, Jacqueline London, Anne Marble, Anne
Smith, Anne Chrystine, etc. In fact, when I first (re)joined the list a
few months back, I thought everyone one the list was called Anne! Very
confusing.

So now let us please put this subject to bed, or at the very least
change the Subject line to: 32 Short Variations on the Name of Anne.

Regards,
Matthew (not Anne)

-----Original Message-----
From: Juozas Rimas [mailto:JuozasRimas@TAKAS.LT]
Sent: August 7, 2002 10:48 AM
To: F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU
Subject: Re: GG a Question of Sex?


>I have not been on F minor for long. Perhaps I don't have an accurate
>take on
things, but it seems to me
>that there are not very many women posters.


I presume there are less active internet users that are women. I wonder
if there is extensive statistics about the female percentage of these
active users (I emphasize "active", to distinguish from the occasional
users - women perhaps constitute a larger part among them).

Anyway, I think it's a consequence of the notorious stereotype that it
is not women's business to have something to do with technics, eg cars,
computers.


Juozas Rimas Jr (not the one playing) http://www.mp3.com/juozasrimas
(oboe, piano, strings)