The Woman Composer Question: Four Case Studies from the Romantic Era (2025)

The Women in Music Anthology

2021

This anthology begins with two major essays that explain why we rarely see women composers included in music history textbooks, or hear their music performed in major concert venues. The book then continues with chapters on the lives and legacies of nine women musicians who made a major impact in their respective fields and communities: Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Clara Schumann, Ethel Smyth, Amy Beach, Agathe Backer Grondahl, Maude Valerie White, Ethel Smyth, Amy Beach, Florence Price, Vera Lynn and Vitezslava Kapralova. The history of early lady orchestras and their maestras is also explored.

Gender, Professionalism and the Musical Canon

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Compositrices, women composers, Komponistinnen, mujeres compositoras. Bibliography in progress (about 53 countries) by dr Arthur CHIMKOVITCH (06.06.2021)

Bibliography : texts written about women composers of the past and the present time. Women composers of 53 countries. Tabel of contents.

Musical Biography and the Myth of the Muse

Critical Music Historiography: Probing Canons, Ideologies and Institutions, 2015

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel: A Life of Music within Domestic Limits

Kapralova Society Journal, 2007

Gender and Music Composition: A Study of Music, and the Gendering of Meanings

Frontiers in Psychology, 2016

In this study claims that music communicates gendered meanings are considered, and relevant literature is reviewed. We first discuss the nature of meaning in music, and how it is constructed and construed. Examples of statements of gendering in the literature are cited, and the problems identified by writers who have questioned their validity are considered. We examine the concepts underlying terminology that has been used in inconsistent and contradictory ways. Three hypotheses are posed, and tested by means of two listening tasks. Results are presented that indicate that gendering is not inherent in musical structures, but is contributed to the perceptual event by the listener.

Women in Music

Oxford Bibliographies, 2011

Annotated bibliographies of: Reference Works Scores Historical Background of Research on Women in Music Feminist Musicology Women in Opera Women and Gender in Non-Western and Traditional Musics Women in Popular Music Lesbian Musicians and Musicality Women as Composers of Western Art Music (by period/century) Women as Professional Performers Women as Amateur Musicians Our current understanding of women in music began to take shape within the context of second-wave feminist activism of the 1970s, with its mission of promoting women’s voices and perspectives in contemporary arts and in the history of the arts. Female musicians promoted each others’ work through women-centered orchestras, choruses, bands, and ensembles; concerts and festivals of women’s music; female networks for teaching, collaboration, and mentorship; and independent labels for recording and distributing music by women. Composers such as Pauline Oliveros explored and cultivated feminist musical aesthetics. Historical researchers sought to recover female composers previously neglected by historians, and to integrate their lives and works into the music-historical narrative and art music canon. At the same time, the framing of issues in terms of “women and music” created new tensions. Gender-based advocacy, in the form of courses, journals, concerts, festivals, and record labels, raised awareness and created opportunities for women in music, but also threatened to perpetuate women's status as marginal to dominant discourses and institutions. Third-wave feminists of the late 1980s and 1990s pointed out that norms of feminine and masculine roles and behavior vary widely across social contexts, and that there is no universal experience of “women.” Research on women in music increasingly focuses on how gender intersects with other categories such as race, ethnicity, social class, geographic region, political affiliation, and sexual orientation. In any particular time and place, the intersection of all these factors creates the conditions for women’s access to musical training, resources, audiences, publication, and professional careers. Women’s musical activities and contributions have become more visible in musicology as the discipline has deepened its engagement with performers, with popular music, with nonwritten musical activities, and with music as social event and embodied practice. The study of women in music thus takes place within broader theoretical investigations of how music reproduces, affirms, subverts, and transforms cultural norms of gender and sexuality.

“Fanny Hensel Meets the Boys in the Band: the Brass Transcriptions of the Gartenlieder, op. 3,” Historic Brass Society Journal 18 (2006): 17-36.

Müzik Disiplini Bağlamında Feminist Müzik Teorisi Ve Cinsiyet Semantiği

Journal of Turkish Studies, 2013

Contributing to the literature by analysing the composition techniques in the works of composers who are women; analysing the composition and music education and women's access to composition education in the context of European Academic music, right along with socio-cultural background as well asstructural and formal analysis of composers who are women; due to the liberal feminist consciousness which iscombined with the discipline of sociology, analysing the musical life of composers who are women and further investigating the way in which the women access to a field that is historically closed to them affect their achievements; contributing to the recognition of composers who are women both of the past and the present; arguing for the invalidity of the distinction between "female" and "male" composition/composer, specifying the problematic use of the engendered term of "woman composer", and the significance of gradual absence of the "male composer" term in the musical scholarship, and in order to make it happen, emphasizing the need for ensuring equality of opportunity for women's access to composition education and involving their compositions in the musical canon are the main purposes of this study. However the road to the achievement of these goals is tricky in that one has to avoid the essentialist approach, the way in which it compares the works of composers who are men and women, or it pins feminine aspects down in the works. Rather one has to draw on the various readings of the subject, interviews of the composers, the data collected from selected institutions and the analysed works per se. Thus it is the commitment of this study to analyse the effects of the notion of gender on the choice of a profession and to contribute to the musical scholarship through the promotion of the composers who are women and their works. The study involves issues such as, the myths in the fields of history and sociology claiming the women's lack of creativity in music; gender coding in musical production by means of feminist musical criticism and theory, feminine aesthetics, the semantics of music and gender; whether the technique of "blind listening/analysis" hints the listener on the composer's gender, which is conducted without that particular knowledge; the situation of women in terms of access to the composition education and the effects of gender on the choice of a profession in composition.

Müzik Disiplini Bağlamında Feminist Müzik Teorisi, Cinsiyet Semantiği ve Müzikal Üretimde Toplumsal Cinsiyet Kodlaması

Kadın bestecilerin eserlerindeki kompozisyon tekniklerinin incelenerek literatüre katkıda bulunulması; Avrupa Akademik müziği merkezinde, bestecilik ve müzik eğitiminin ve kadınların bestecilik eğitimine erişimlerinin incelenmesi ve kadın bestecilerin sosyo-kültürel arka planları ve bestelerinin yapısal ve biçimsel analizlerinin yapılması; sosyoloji alanıyla birleşen liberal feminist bilinç nedeniyle, müzikal hayatın kadın besteciler için nasıl olduğunun incelenmesi ve kadınların tarihsel olarak kendilerine kapalı bir alana erişiminin, bu alandaki başarılarını nasıl etkilediğinin araştırılması; geçmişte ve günümüzdeki kadın bestecilerin tanınmasına katkıda bulunulması; " kadın " ve " erkek " besteciliği/besteci ayrımının geçersizliğinin savunulması, " erkek besteci " tabiri literatürde kullanılmadığı gibi, aslında cinsiyetçi bir tanımlama olan " kadın besteci " tabirinin de kullanılmaması gerekliliğinin belirtilmesi, bunun gerçekleşebilmesi içinse, öncelikle kadınların kompozisyon eğitimine erişimleri ve yapıtlarının müzikal kanona dâhil olması konusundaki fırsat eşitliğinin sağlanması gereğinin vurgulanması bu çalışmanın başlıca amacını oluşturmaktadır. Ancak bunu yaparken " özcü " bir yaklaşımdan büyük ölçüde kaçınmaya özen gösterilip; kadın ve erkek besteciler hakkında karşılaştırmalı bir çalışma yapmak ya da kadın bestecilerin yapıtlarında feminen unsurlar tespit etmek ve bu yolla bestecilik yöntemlerine özcü bir yaklaşımla yönelmek yerine, literatürde konuya ilişkin farklı kaynaklı okumalar, bestecilerle yapılan mülakatlar, belirlenmiş kurumlardan toplanan veriler ve analiz edilen yapıtlardan yola çıkarak, toplumsal cinsiyetin, kariyer seçimini nasıl ve ne yönde etkilediğinin bestecilik özelinde incelenmesi ve kadın bestecilerle yapıtlarının literatüre kazandırılmasına katkıda bulunulması hedeflenmektedir. Çalışmada, kadınların müzikteki yaratıcılık yetersizliği mitini savunan tarihi ve sosyolojik faktörler; feminist müzik eleştirisi, teorisi, feminen estetik, müzik ve cinsiyet semantiği ile müzikal üretimde toplumsal cinsiyet kodlaması; yapıt/müzikal kompozisyonun, " kör dinleme/analiz " yoluyla yani bestecisinin cinsel kimliği bilinmeksizin incelendiğinde, inceleyen kişiye, bir erkek ya da kadın besteciye ait olduğunun ipuçlarını verip veremeyeceği; kadınların kompozisyon eğitimine erişim durumları ile toplumsal cinsiyet ve cinsiyet rollerinin kariyer seçimine-bestecilik özelindeki-etkisi gibi başat sorunlar ele alınmıştır.