women in (classical) music

[mousmous]

fight between my sisters.
watched eurovision last night and saw that the austrian brass band in the interval was very male heavy.
at college/uni it's about 50/50 in brass section but in orchestras it's more like 95/5 (if that, the most famous austrian only 'allowed' women to join after a court case recently).
one sister and I are at the 'angry' stage whilst our younger sister is in 'they didn't practice enough to get through a fair selection procedure'.
fair selection my arse

The other day I was actually thinking about how I couldn't think of a single female classical composer.

Are there any?

What about with modern classical music like film themes, are any of these written by women?

Music was very much seen as a girls subject at school so where do all the female musicians go?

where do all the female musicians go?

good question, unis and conservatoires are full of women.

there are a few female composers, fanny mendelssohn for example. others have worked under male names, for example j.s.bach's second wife.

Athena - list for you, off the top of my head:

Hildegard of Bingen (Medieval)
Barbara Strozzi (renaissance - generation after Monteverdi)
Clara Schumann (19th century)
Fanny Mendelssohn (19th century)
Judith Weir (contemporary)
Laura Rossi (contemporary: I'm currently playing one of her pieces in the orchestra I play with)

There's a very long list on wikipedia, and a long list on Oxford music online.

Forgot to mention - Judith Weir was appointed first woman "master of the Queen's music" last year.

Lurcio - my last comment was in response to a pp who seemed to be labouring under the misapprehension that women shouldn't play brass instruments because their puny little arms couldn't lift a french horn.

Charles Burney (I assume that's who you meant) was probably quite surprised at girls playing french horns as this was long before the invention of valves or slides, meaning the instrument was even more difficult to play than it is today. The "trombe de chasse" was still a relatively new instrument when Burney visited Italy during the 1770s, and still had strong associations to hunting, which is another reason it was an unusual instrument for girls and women to play.

Burney - thanks Ugly, I couldn't remember his name.

I realised you were responding to our new little friend with the somewhat strange views (what a shame one can't just say troll) - but weight really isn't the reason Wagner scored the way he does. And believe me (current violinist - didn't have time to keep up both instruments) I know how knackering the violin is, especially in the classical repertoire oddly, because you get hardly any rests at all - Mahler symphonies may be enormously long, but at least you get to stop playing every so often.

Lurcio thanks

I'll admit my knowledge of classical music comes almost entirely from watching university challenge!

To my knowledge though I've never heard of a female classical composer being mentioned on that show.

Lurcio - yes, that is true. Tired lips are what make the horn the unreliable squeaky bastard in every orchestra, not actual weight.

Athena - there are actually quite a number of internationally recognised female composers around now: Judith Weir and Rossi, as Lurcio says, Sofia Gubaidulina, Christina Kubisch, Meredith Monk, Younghi Paagh-Paan, Yoko Ono, or Olga Neuwirth. But contemporary composers are generally less popular or well known as a whole, and so they are a lot less visible. The professional orchestras I've worked with have generally been anything from 70% to 95% female!

And of course, as always, there's the social hurdles women composers had to overcome, and the fact that their music is often dismissed as trivial by critics. I've just remembered another and very interesting case: Alma Mahler. Gustav Mahler made it a condition of their marriage that she give up composing in order to become his helpmeet because he felt a marriage couldn't cope with two creative people in it!

I know several well known musicians who all work as pro's. The difference I find is they take more of what in the old days would be considered a male attitude.
They don't have children and if they do their o/h is not career driven and happy to be at home with dc when they are gigging or touring.

My dd is 11 and already getting the comments about girls not being as strong as males physically and because of this not being able to play as well.
It is sad that to prove your worth you have to be seen as "one of the lads" because it automatically presumes it's a male profession.

Sally Beamish is fairly well known?

Athenaviolet, thank you for asking about female composers. This gives me a chance to promote one that DH and I have just discovered.

Cecile Chaminade. She has a wonderful piece called Automne

Athena, if you like the cello, this CD is really lovely:

www.cwilmers.co.uk/cello-century.html

If you are anywhere near Hertfordshire, this cellist regularly gives concerts including works by women.

Classical music is, I believe, still pretty sexist. A piano player I know said she had to disguise her pregnancy or lose her place in her professional orchestra (this was a few years ago).

Brass is, however, fairly physical, especially in the higher ranges, and men, on average, will have bigger lungs and stronger lip muscles. Having said this, this would probably be more an issue in jazz than classical, where the highest scored more is a C. Alison Balsam does have a beautiful tone and is one of my favourite trumpeters, but she does tend to be chosen for more gentle melodic pieces.,.

Isay

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Larry - actually I think it's more of an issue in classical music, because legato phrases are often longer and written that way into the score, so the player gets less choice about where to breathe.

I also think we need to be careful talking about "strong" muscles. Most of musical excellence on various instruments has much more to do with fine coordination and control of muscles, than with sheer physical grunt. I don't know of any evidence that men have "stronger lip muscles" than women to any significant extent that would affect bess playing, and I don't even know whether brass players have stronger lip muscles than non-brass players, or have just learned to use them more effectively.

Further to Lurcio's correct points above, the french horn is considered hard among brass instruments because of the closeness of the harmonics and skill difficulty in distinguishing them aurally and physically, not because of anything to do with physical strength.

About the only innate difference I can think of that might affect all this is lung capacity. Men do on average have more of it than women, but then it also varies with lots of other physical factors as well. It also doesn't seem to have stopped Alison Balsam or the many excellent female brass players in music colleges. It would be surprising if they were all perfectly capable of getting that far, but then innately unable to play in professional orchestras because they can't sustain long notes well enough.

It would seem likely that the main factor is laddish male brass playing culture. Male chauvinism is gradually dying out in classical music but it hangs on in some areas (like Austria, or brass sections generally) more than others. It can also be exacerbated by the insular "not what you know but who you know" nature of classical music. When 99% of gigs are booked over a pint at the pub after the previous gig, who you go for a pint with and how gender shapes your social life makes a big difference.

If your younger sister is actually in the music industry and says it's a meritocracy sounds like she's in denial!