Women by the Score
by Jennifer Griffith & Gregory Tozian
Published in Organica (Fall 1996)
Here’s one way to know that you really are living near the end of the 20th century: You are attending a concert, and you don’t have a program. You realize that you’re not
sure whether the symphony you’re enjoying was written by a man or a woman. Until fairly recently, wondering about the artist’s gender would have seemed ridiculous. Because until the last decade or so, for all practical purposes, there was only one gender in classical programming-and it wasn’t female.
Before modern times, conductors (fueled by centuries of history-as-usual and discriminatory institutional support)almost never stooped to pick up a baton for a piece of
music written by a woman. How exclusionary was it? Oh, there were the “exceptions.” Many classical music aficionados have at least heard of Hildegard of Bingen, the amazing 12th century German mystic and nun, who among her many artistic talents, wrote highly spiritual songs and hymns (which even now enjoy worldwide popularity on CD). Still others are aware that-in the mid-19th century-Felix Mendelssohn’s sister, Fanny, and Robert Schumann’s wife, Clara, were talented composers in their own right (though they weren’t allowed a formal musical education, or the right to publish their compositions). But it wasn’t until after the turn of this century that women composers such as New England-based American composer Amy Beach, Mabel Daniels, CÈcile Chaminade (French), Ethel Smyth (British), and others succeeded in advancing women’s compositions in orchestral circles.
Now, thanks to a lot of feminist scholarship, we have plenty of books and articles, as well as music that’s been published, played and recorded, to show that times have changed. There has been a greater flurry of interest in and wider acceptance of women composers in the past 25 years than at any prior time in history. The music industry has finally acknowledged that women can write noteworthy (and prize-worthy) music. So why are we still writing and reading articles about modern women composers, as if they’d just walked off a spaceship? Obviously because where the string meets the bow (and even before that, where the printing press meets the score) women still are lagging far behind men in statistical representation.
Judith Lang Zaimont, a respected and prolific American composer who will be represented on no fewer than five CD recordings this year alone, calls it the “20 percent” rule.
“If women ever were able to break that 20-percent barrier, to represent more than 20 percent of the music being programmed (in concert halls), and published, and recorded, that would be of clear statistical significance,” says the artist, who is senior professor of composition at the University of Minnesota. Zaimont, a noted scholar on women-in-music, points out that in one of the most fecund eras in the publication of female composers, women (primarily from the Boston area) accounted for “16 to 17 percent” of the catalog of publisher Arthur Schmidt. That was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
She adds that French composer Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) was the sole woman in the famed group Les Six. As one of six composers, the lone woman was, Zaimont chuckles, “perfectly in keeping with the 16 to 17 percent ceiling” of female representation in classical music. Zaimont does not laugh when talking about the recent results of an international survey (unfortunately leaving out the U.S. and U.K.) unveiled at a recent Paris music symposium. It showed that women accounted for only nine percent (at best) of programmed music. “It’s just a little disappointing,” says Zaimont. “You’d think we’d be more readily and frequently programmed.” Still, while she would like to see women represent a larger part of the fabric of the classical music world-in education, publishing, composing and technical jobs-Zaimont deplores the “us and them” mentality that sometimes surrounds the issue of gender in music. “I’m looking forward to the time, to use the phrase that (Supreme Court Justice) Ruth Bader Ginsburg used upon her acceptance speech in the Rose Garden of the White House, when women in music are seen as a ‘one-at-a-time persons of accomplishment.'”
Does Gender Really Matter in Music?
Sometimes, in talking to and reading about women composers, it seems there are as many opinions on the subject of gender importance as there are women writing music.
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, born and raised in Miami, became the first woman to receive a doctorate from the prestigious Julliard music school (in 1975), and the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize (for composition, in 1983, for her Symphony No. 1). Yet, Zwilich, recently named the first composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall, does not dwell on issues of gender. In an interview earlier this year, she told the Associated Press, “No one ever told me a girl couldn’t write music.” And to a New York newspaper, she said, “The whole question of women in music-women composers-is a social one, not a musical or biological one.” However, some modern composers were told, one way or the other, that “girls can’t write music.”
“I was surrounded by some mega-brained men when I was getting educated (at Columbia University),” says renowned composer Joan Tower, who at 58 is the same age as Zwilich. “I didn’t have any women composers to use as role models. I was around people like Milton Babbit and Ben Boretz. It’s hard to evaluate the amount of chauvinism that existed then. But now that I look back on it, many years later, I don’t think any of those guys thought I would actually become an established composer. And I think they’re all looking at me now like, ‘How did this happen?’ Some of them, I would think, are a little bit bitter, because I pulled away from their (serial-music) style,” she says, laughing.
Though it may surprise some of her former teachers, Tower has definitely arrived as one of the most established composers of her day. After founding the critically-acclaimed Da Capo Chamber Players in 1969 to play her own and others’ 20th century works, she went on to break into the ranks of symphonic work with the widely played Sequoia (1980). Tower later won the lofty, international Grawemeyer Award for the orchestral Silver Ladders (1986). She has several discs forthcoming this year and next. As both a music professor at Bard College, and someone who “travels to a lot of colleges,” Tower says there still seems to be a low statistical representation of women among graduate composition students. “The first thing I notice is that there is one woman among 12 graduate composers, if that,” she says, though she admits female-male ratios can vary widely, “depending on the teacher and the structure of the department.” At Bard, for instance, she has three women among her eight composition students.
Are Enough Women Getting Published?
Tower thinks the education opportunities for some women composers may be better than when she went to school, and she applauds the now-heightened access to historical and musicological data on women composers throughout the centuries. But she feels there are other areas that could use work. “I’m very lucky because my publisher (Schirmer) has done an excellent job of getting my work out there. And there are obviously other women (composers) being published. But it’s not a great situation.” Tower still bristles a little when she tells of an incident that occurred during her visit to a large New York music store in recent memory. “I was looking for orchestral music by women. The young woman (behind the counter) practically laughed at me. When I asked to talk to her supervisor, she went back, and they were laughing in the back of the store. I got angry. And the manager came out. I said, ‘Do you have any scores by women?’ And he got very serious and said, ‘No. That kind of medium really doesn’t sell.’ I said, ‘How can you know that if you don’t have it out?’ He tried to come up with names of composers that he’d had in the past. He mentioned Ellen Zwilich. And then he said, ‘ …and Joan Tower’s clarinet music. We’ve sold some of that.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m Joan Tower.’ And he got quiet. He said, ‘Well, you just have to understand that we work on a profit line here.’ He tried to explain himself away. And I said, ‘Well, if it’s not available, it’s not going to be sold.'”
Tower goes on to point out that one area of music publishing has been particularly fertile for women as a group: the revival of “lost” works. Beginning primarily in the mid-70s, historians and musicologists (mostly women) unearthed, published and performed, as labors of love, many female-written works that otherwise would have languished forever in dusty archives. In so doing, women reclaimed the musical contributions of our foremothers. Composer Zaimont notes that, likewise, some women have solved the problem of accessibility to the modern marketplace by simply publishing and recording their own and other modern women composers’ works. Marnie Hall’s Leonarda Records company, founded in 1977, is one of the early female-run labels which served as a beacon for others who followed, such as Katherine Hoover’s Papagena Press.
Are Women’s Compositions Programmed Enough?
In Tower’s opinion, another avenue that deserves more attention is the programming of women’s compositions by musical organizations. “The programming of women is still very, very low,” says Tower. “If you look at any subscription series of a major orchestra, one woman on the entire season is amazing. If there are two women, it’s a miracle.”
However, Tower adds that all kinds of 20th century music is falling off, as orchestras tighten their belts in lean economic times for the arts. “Everybody’s running scared. A lot of organizations think, ‘We can’t do contemporary music because it’s going to alienate our subscribers.'” Zaimont agrees that musical organizations in America are cutting back on 20th century music, but she holds out hopes that younger audiences may keep the flame of modern-and women-composers’ music alive. “The youth come with fresh ears,” Zaimont observes. “They don’t hear through that little button of approval. Whomever cuts it for them, that’s what counts.”
Women’s Organizations and Orchestras Have Helped
Not everything is regulated by gender lines, of course. All of the women in music with whom Organica spoke were careful to note that male music professionals over the decades have made significant contributions toward fostering compositions by women, particularly in the commissioning of works. Tower gives thanks to the American Composers Orchestra and its conductor Dennis Davies, who commissioned her first big orchestral work, Sequoia, and to Zubin Mehta and Leonard Slatkin, who took the work to international venues. The American Composers Orchestra also commissioned Zwilich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Symphony No. 1, and debuted it under the baton of Gunther Schuller.
Numerous examples of men championing women’s compositions exist. Yet, women’s organizations have also, rightly, been among the strongest champions of women’s music.
In January of last year, three important organizations-the International League of Women Composers (founded in 1975), the American Women Composers (1976) and the International Congress for Women in Music (1979)-joined to form the new International Alliance for Women in Music.
Likewise, women’s orchestras have made major contributions to spreading the influence of female composers. One of the most famous organizations to consistently program women’s compositions in the 1980s and 90s has been the (San Francisco) Bay Area Women’s Philharmonic. Nan Washburn, the Women’s Philharmonic co-founder, former artistic director and associate conductor, is now an established conductor with several northern California orchestras. “I can still remember the snickers from the 70s, when I was working with an early women’s orchestra in Boston,” Washburn recalls. “People said, ‘How many pieces of Amy Beach could you do?’ And when I got to California, they didn’t even know Amy Beach.’ But that changed over the years. We programmed works by Libby Larson, Joan Tower, Ellen Zwilich. By 1990, it was hip to have a woman’s composition on the program. The snickers have subsided.”
Washburn acknowledges that for most orchestras around the country, programming of 20th century music is shrinking, bringing with it an even lesser amount of new music by women. (It’s pretty much accepted that major orchestras almost never programmed revivals of “historical,” pre-20th century women’s music.)
In the past couple of years, Washburn has continued featuring women’s works under her baton at the Camellia Orchestra (Sacramento), including pieces by Hilary Tann, Elinor Armor, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Linda Robbins Coleman, Mary Watkins, and Laura Carnibucci. “Next year, I’m doing four world premieres by women,” she adds.
Washburn is also featuring some world musics and innovative children’s concerts in the interest of keeping a diversity of sound alive on the classical stage.
She’s not the only musical professional who is trying to extend the definition of what is worth playing (beyond the large, complex symphonic works of-let’s face it-dead, white male composers).
Illinois-based musician-scholar-broadcaster Ann Feldman has spent the past couple of years producing a nationally syndicated radio program called Noteworthy Women for the WFMT Fine Arts Network. She defines the hour-long shows as designed, “…to help make women composers visible in a medium where they have traditionally been invisible.” Towards that end, she has featured musical influences as diverse as Pulitzer Prize-winner Shulamit Ran, Mexican and Chinese women composers, classical figures such as Beach, and even Chicago blues singer Koko Taylor. Above all, Feldman says she hopes to shake the staid notions of what can rightly be called “worthwhile” in music. “Most orchestral programming doesn’t allow for women’s compositions. But this ‘canon of masterpieces’ also doesn’t allow for Mexican or Chinese compositions,” notes Feldman. “That’s not right. There’s a richness in music out there that we simply can’t afford to ignore.” Or, at least there’s a richness out there that shouldn’t be ignored. Joan Tower says the jury is still out on the future of the treatment of women in music. “I don’t want to get too optimistic,” she says. “Because I see a lot of women who are struggling. They can’t get jobs. They can’t get their music heard. They’re on the periphery of a lot of environments. It’s better than it was,” Tower acknowledges. “But it’s still got a long way to go.”
RECOMMENDED RECORDINGS
Judith Lang Zaimont-Neon Rhythms (includes “Hidden Heritage,” a dance symphony, and “Sky Curtains,” quintet), Arabesque 6667; Summer Melodies (four-handed piano music, featuring “Snazzy Sonata”), 4-Tay. Joan Tower-Sequoia (for orchestra; includes “Silver Ladders”), Leonard Slatkin and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Elektra/Nonesuch 79245-2-ZK; Amazon; Breakfast Rhythms; Petrouskates-Da Capo Chamber Players, CRI CD 582.
Sofia Gubaidulina-Piano Works; Introitus (piano concerto), Andreas Haefliger, Radio-Philharmonie, Hannover Desnder, SK 53960.
Shulamit Ran-Music of Shulamit Ran (features “Concerto da Camera II,” clarinet, string quartet, piano, and “For an Actor: Monologue for Clarinet,” Univ. of Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players, Bridge BRI- 9052.
Germaine Tailleferre-Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello (includes “Quartet,” “Image” and “Forlane,” Troubadisc TRO 01406.
Katharine Hoover-Lyric Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano, Huntington Trio, Leonarda LE 325.
Libby Larson-Symphony “Water Music,” Neville Marriner/Minnesota Orchestra, Elektra/Nonesuch 79147- 2; Missa Gaia (Mass for the Earth), for chorus, Gilbert Seeley/Oregon Repertory Singers, Koch International Classics 7279.
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich-Symbolon (for orchestra), Zubin Mehta, New York Philharmonic, New World 372-2.
Anthologies:
Chamber Works by Women Composers-Clara Schumann, Amy Beach, Teresa CarreÛ, Lili Boulanger, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Germaine Tailleferre and CÈcile Chaminade, VoxBox CDX 5029.
Women at an Exposition-Music by women composers performed at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Amy Beach, Kate Vannah, CÈcile Chaminade, Maude Valerie White, Liza Lehmann, Clara Kathleen Rodgers and Mary Knight Wood, Koch 3.7240.2H1.