Five Lives in Music: Women Performers, Composers, and Impresarios from the Baroque to the Present

Preface

Preface I began writing for the Washington Post as a music critic in 1963, a few days before John F. Kennedy’s assassination. With time away for raising a family and obtaining a doctoral degree, I resumed reviewing for the Post, totaling over twoand -a-half decades so far. During that time, I have covered hundreds of concerts, recitals, operas, and other musical events. In the early years, I seldom encountered compositions by women or concerts publicized as “music by women.” Indeed, in conversations with audience members, including musically enlightened listeners , I was asked not infrequently, “Have there ever been any really good women composers?” or “Where do we go to hear women’s music?” These questions may sound shocking today, though at times they still crop up. When I mentioned some women composers’ names in those days, I had to admit that music by these women was rarely performed before general audiences in public concert halls. Additional questions arise: What kind of sound do we expect to hear from women instrumentalists and singers? Is their musical expressivity distinguishable from men’s? With solo vocal music written for a female voice and settings for women’s choruses, we assume a certain kind of sonority and range. Consider, for instance, the wide span of pitches and timbres identified with coloratura or mezzo sopranos and contraltos as contrasted with countertenors, tenors, baritones, and basses. The questions continue to multiply. What level of skill and stylistic interpretation do we anticipate in performances by a “woman violinist” or a “woman pianist”? Or, what do we listen for while hearing a “woman’s composition”? For that matter, why do we not speak in gender-specific terms of “men’s music”? As time passed, such queries also stirred questions of my own: Why do we not hear more compositions by women? And, for that matter, what is “women’s music”? A number of these questions remain unanswered today, at least for the general public as distinguished from scholars voicing specific feminist issues in music. I have sought to address some of these questions in this book, for even today—though less so than in the past—many concert audiences and readers tend to think of music, especially composition, as primarily men’s domain. Besides these issues, others have surfaced, such as appraisals of women’s physical and mental—that is, creative—capabilities. And the matter goes deeper than in music alone, as the following comment illustrates. A certain Mrs. Jameson wrote in 1846, “The intellect of woman bears the same relation to that of man as her physical organization, [that is,] it is inferior in power, and different in kind. . . . In men the intellectual faculties exist more self-poised and self-directed— more independent of the rest of the character, than we ever find them in women, with whom talent, however predominant, is in a much greater degree modified by the sympathies and moral qualities.”1 Such a view diminishes the potential role of women in creative—that is, in all intellectual—pursuits, including the domestic ones. Chance played a crucial part in this book. Because the subject of cultural contexts has long been a major interest of mine, I was inspired a few years ago by the suggestion of William A. Frohlich, the director of Northeastern University Press, that I consider writing a work “about the role of selected women in music over several centuries set in the context of the social traditions and restrictions of each era.” After reflecting on Bill’s remark, I decided to take him up on his proposal and set out on the road that led to this book. My intention was bolstered by my own professional and personal experiences as a critic, scholar, musician, wife, and mother of four. I felt ready to begin a search for women who would meet Bill’s criteria. Fortified by the important critical arguments put forth by leading feminist musicologists, I set about choosing the specific women whose musical roles I would explore for this undertaking. My wholesale foray into the literature on women seriously engaged in music required surveying page by page numerous older and more recent biographical dictionaries, personal memoirs, library archives, court records, autographs and published scores, monographs on women composers and performers, and the bibliographies listed in these studies, music histories, professional music journals, concert reviews and other articles, extensive interviews, and, of course, the wide open spaces of the Internet.2 Then began this portrayal of the role...