Women and Music: A History (review)

Women and Music: A History. Edited by Karin Pendle. 2d ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. [x, 514 p. ISBN 0-253-33819-0. $59.95 (cloth); ISBN 0-252-21422-x. $24.95 (pbk.).]

A second edition of Karin Pendle's anthology on the history of women in music is welcome. Its primary emphasis continues to be on women composers in Western art music. Most of the eleven chapters on concert music have been rewritten to very good effect. Some are more than doubled in length, making the coverage of this area more thorough as well as more consistent. The rest of the essays (now five of the sixteen chapters, up from four) are on popular music, jazz, and world music. Accounting for a third of the chapters but less than a quarter of the new edition's length, this section is very little changed in spite of the added chapter; it remains the weaker part of the book, especially in comparison to the improved three-quarters.

The representation of women in standard music history texts remains below the token level, Hildegard von Bingen and Ruth Crawford notwithstanding. Pendle's volume is intended to supplement such texts; thus, the sections on Western art music are designed with an easy correlation in mind. Yet it is also meant to be a stand-alone text for a course on women in music. For that purpose, its value would be greatest for a course that mimics the syllabi of standard music history courses rather than one more oriented toward women's studies.

Pendle's introduction points out that the new edition "has proved necessary because research and resources have increased beyond expectations, perhaps even beyond dreams" in the intervening decade (p. viii). Much of that increase is visible here. In addition, the author raises a series of questions not present in the earlier version:

"How far can we go in thinking about music in ways that perhaps its composers did not intend? To what extent do nonmusical factors determine a work's style or content? Why is a feminine quality in music only laudable if the composer is a man? Is music by women excluded from study because it is deemed to be of inferior quality in comparison with music by men? What counts as quality anyway? Do evaluative standards differ according to the gender of the composer?" (p. viii)

Even though these questions aren't consistently addressed in what follows, it is more important than ever that they be asked.

The book is centered on Western art music and its composers, the scope now expanded (in keeping with the reach of Western culture) well beyond the geographical boundaries of Western Europe and the United States. The pre-nineteenth-century sections are rewritten and updated, with about 50 percent more material. A short section on historical Chinese music is now included in J. Michele Edwards's chapter on music to 1450, breaking into the monolithic Western orientation of the historical sections and (I hope) suggesting something of what might come in a forthcoming edition in another decade. The nineteenth-century chapters by Nancy Reich and Adrienne Fried Block, strengths of the first edition, remain little changed, updated only slightly. (In what looks like an editing slip, both Reich and Marcia Citron have added paragraphs on the Swedish composer Elfrida Andrée, offering the reader an unexpected chance to compare differing approaches of these two contributors.)

The chapters on twentieth-century art music are much enlarged and improved, though here the additions are sometimes pasted onto the ends of chapters. For example, the new section on Rebecca Clarke appears at the end of the chapter on British composers, following an account of "the present generation." (This time around, we read of Ethel Smyth's "courage and pluck" and her work in the British suffrage movement, including her prison time, significant extramusical matters omitted from the first edition.) Similarly, Jean Eichelberger Ivey, active in the 1970s, follows Judith Shatin, who is a...