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* This article is an
expanded version of a paper presented in the
session "Cultural and Aesthetic Issues" at the annual meeting of
the American Musicological Society, November 1988, Baltimore.
1 See also James Briscoe, "Integrating Music by Women into the Music History
Sequence," College Music SymposiumXXV (1985), 21-27; and Diane Jezic and David
Binder, "A Survey of College Music Textbooks: Benign Neglect of Women Compos-
ers," The Musical Woman, volume 2, ed. Judith Lang Zaimont, Catherine Overhauser,
and Jane Gottlieb (Westport, Ct., 1987), 445-69.
2
"Treason Our Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon," Tulsa Studiesin
Women'sLiteratureII (1983), 83-98. For an earlier essay on women's role in the literary
canon see Elaine Showalter, "Women and the Literary Curriculum," College English
XXXII (1970-71), 855-62.
3 Published in
1987 by Indiana University Press; accompanying tapes are forth-
coming. A companion volume, the first comprehensive history, is the forthcoming
Womenand Music: A History,cooperatively written, and edited by Karin Pendle. Another
resource is Diane Jezic's biographical overview of twenty-five composers, WomenCom-
posers: The Lost TraditionFound (New York, 1988), with accompanying tapes.
4 One fundamental difference between the Briscoe
anthology and traditional
anthologies is the former's assumption of gender as a necessary condition for inclusion
and as an essential analytic category for the prose introductions to each work. In
traditional collections gender is not a stated necessary condition for inclusion nor a
category for analysis, although the de facto result is the near or total exclusion of
women. Gender thus functions as a non-issue. Such categorical non-existence generally
occurs when the norms and values of the dominant culture, in this case male society, are
assumed for all of society. A similar pattern pertains to the categories of class and race.
See Joan W. Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," AmericanHis-
torical Review XCI/5 (December 1986), 1053-75. Regarding compensatory history see
Gerda Lerner, "Placing Women in History: A 1975 Perspective," in LiberatingWomen's
Yet the ultimate goal is not separatism but integration into the
mainstream of Western musical history. But at this juncture we have
to wonder about the reasons for women's absence from the tradition
as represented by the canon, an absence that denies validity, voice,
and authority. This article will attempt to provide some answers by
examining the complex web of factors involved in canon formation,
and by demonstrating how certain gender-specific factors have
worked to the detriment of women with regard to that process. Com-
posers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries will serve as
examples. The study will also pose challenges towards the adoption of
works by women into the canon.
I
First let us hone in more precisely on what we
mean by canon. For there are several different canons, for example
the canon of early music, of avant-garde music, of ethnomusicology.
I am focusing mainly on the mainstream of Western art music as
embodied in the teaching of music history. By and large, especially
104 after 1725, this coincides with the canon of professional performing
organizations.
Canon formation is complex and embraces a wide swathe of fac-
tors that rest on a dual chronological base: conditions and attitudes
prevalent at the time of composition and those in force at present. Let
us trace briefly the etiquette on the early end.
A composition first has to be written, then it has to be published
in order to be circulated, at least after ca. 1780. It has to reach public
consciousness by a first performance and then remain there through
some regularity of performance. This is less likely to happen without
some critical attention in print and a positive assessment at least some-
time near the work's debut. Although these steps seem the most basic
stages on the road to permanency and potential canonization, they
actually take place well into the process. As we back up a few notches
we confront gender-linked conditions and conventions that thwart
women's chances for professional status, a requisite for potential
canonic inclusion.
History, ed. Berenice A. Carroll (Urbana, 1976), 357-67. Another seminal study is
Hilda Smith, "Feminism and the Methodology of Women's History," in the same col-
lection, 368-84. The historical model of the "exception woman" is that only few
women-the exceptions-have been able to escape the more typical path expected of
women and overcome male-imposed obstacles and achieve success. These issues serve
as backdrop to Ruth Solie's discussion of biography and gender in her review of Nancy
Reich's Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman(Ithaca, 1985), in 19th-Century Music
X/i (Summer 1986), 74-80.
... five years ago women were not allowed to study counterpointat
the conservatory.In fact, anything more advancedthan elementary
harmonywas debarred.The abilityof the feminine intellect to com-
prehend the intricaciesof a stretto, or cope with double counter-
point in the tenth, if not openly denied, was severely questioned.
The counterpointclass is now open to women, although as yet com-
parativelyfew availthemselvesof the opportunity.Formerly,too, all
the teachers in the conservatorywere men, but one finds today two
women enrolled as professors among the forty on the list.6
7 From
chapter 2 ("Women's Training Hitherto") of Smyth's Female Pipings in
Eden (1933), as quoted in Neuls-Bates, p. 286.
8
J. Peter Burkholder has written on this salient but neglected aspect of music
sociology. See his "Museum Pieces: The Historicist Mainstream in Music of the Last
Hundred Years," Journal of Musicology 1/2 (Spring 1983), 115-34; and "Brahms and
Twentieth-Century Classical Music," 19th-CenturyMusic VIII/i (Summer 1984), 75-83.
9
Many of these difficulties were subtle. Ethel Smyth, in her typically forthright
and common-sensical way, brought up two fundamental points. "To take the bull by the
horns, the chief difficulty women musicians have to face is that in no walk of life do men
like to see us come barging in on their preserves." Although casting this as a criticism,
Smyth characterized the situation as natural and understandable. She felt the same
towards her next point, which is that "innocent clannishness" among men has excluded
women. "You can't get rid of the colleague element, nor deny that men are nearer to
other men than they can ever be to women" (FemalePipings in Eden [1933], as excerpted
in Neuls-Bates, pp. 290-91).
'o See note 20 below.
" The great majority of his letters to the family are located in the New York
Public Library. No complete edition has yet appeared, but many key letters have been
published, as in Rudolf Elvers's compilation of selected letters, MendelssohnBartholdy
Briefe (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), and in Peter Sutermeister's edition of the Continen-
tal Tour, Eine Reise durch Deutschland,Italien und die Schweiz(Zurich, 1958).
12 See
Citron, "Felix Mendelssohn's Influence on Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel as
a Professional Composer," CurrentMusicologyXXXVII/XXXVIII (1984), 9-17; and the
introductory essay "The Relationship Between Fanny and Felix" in Citron, Lettersof
Fanny Hensel to Felix Mendelssohn(New York, 1987), xxxi-xliv.
13 The case of Brahms's
SymphonyNo. 4 illustrates the advantages of performance
prior to publication. It was issued in October 1886 only after numerous public perfor-
mances from manuscript, from early November 1885 to at least mid May 1886. Brahms
apparently used these performances as "Proben," both tests and rehearsals, to try out
the piece and make revisions as needed prior to the permanent version. Another angle
on the importance of performances is provided by Ethel Smyth, who observed that
"until a work is performed, it is impossible even for the composer to form a true
judgment on its merit" (Female Pipings in Eden, as excerpted in Neuls-Bates, pp. 286-
87).
But the analytical category has obtained for all types of pieces. It
became entrenched around 1900, when women were attempting to
crack the professional-composer enclave in greater numbers. The
criticism set up a no-win standard that boiled down to "damned if you
do, damned if you don't." Women composers were criticized as being
true to their sex if their music exhibited supposedly feminine traits,
yet derided as attempting to be masculine if their music embodied
so-called virile traits. Judith Tick and others coined the term sexual
aesthetics to describe this gender-based theory.l7
The compositions of Cecile Chaminade, for instance, were regu-
larly deemed charming and graceful-aesthetically in accord with the
sex of their creator-and often criticized for being too feminine. Yet
on other occasions Chaminade was berated for stepping beyond ac-
ceptable limits, as in the following review, from 1889, of her Concert- 109
stiick, Op. 40, for piano and orchestra:
[It is] a work that is strong and virile, too virile perhaps, and that is
the reproach I would be tempted to address to it. For me, I almost
regretted not having found further those qualitiesof grace and gen-
tleness that reside in woman'snature, the secrets of which she pos-
sesses to such a degree.l8
II
Thus far we have discussed the obstacles facing
women in attaining professionalism because of social realities of the
musical machinery and because of two significant assumptions under-
lying musico-critical theory. All, however, are symptoms of a more
basic reality: pervasive philosophical bias against women as creators.
In the last few hundred years polemics on women's attributes and
abilities have centered on the essentialism of women, that is, on her
innate characteristics, by definition present in everyone of the sex.
Whereas many manifestations of this line of argument have dwelled
on the biological, in the case of composition they have usually em-
phasized some non-tangible quality of her persona as the source re-
sponsible for the particular flaw or weakness. In the late nineteenth
century George Upton's seminal book Woman in Music both crystal-
lized current thinking and served as a point of departure.19 Upton
19 Upton, Womanin Music (Chicago, 1892). It first came out in 1880 (Boston) and
went through another edition in 1886, which apparently served as the basis of reprints,
as in 1890 and 1892.
Women, in general, don't like any art, are not well versed in any, and
have no talentfor it. They can acquireknowledge... and all that can
be acquiredthrough hard work. But that celestialfire that emblazens
and ignites the soul, that quality of genius that consumes and de-
vours, . . . those sublime ecstasies that reside in the depths of the
heart-these will alwaysbe lacking in the writingsof women.20
20
"Les femmes, en g6enral, n'aiment aucun art, ne se connoissent a aucun, et
n'ont aucun genie. Elles peuvent acqu6rir de la science ... et tout ce qui s'acquiert a
force de travail. Mais ce feu celeste qui echauffe et embrase l'ame, ce genie qui consume
et d6vore, . . . ces transports sublimes qui portent leurs ravissemens jusqu'au fond des
coeurs, manqueront toujours aux 6crits des femmes, ..." (Lettrea M. d'Alembertsur les
spectacles[Amsterdam, 1758], p. 193n). Kant viewed woman as an aesthetic object of
beauty and refined sensibility in whom erudition was inappropriate, in his Beobachtun-
gen iber das Gefihl des Schinen und Erhabenen,published in 1764. My thanks to philos-
opher Carol Van Kirk for bringing this work to my attention. Kant's belief in woman's
ornamental value was espoused by other Enlightenment figures, such as Moses Men-
delssohn and his son Abraham, Felix and Fanny's father. Abraham, in fact, had ad-
monished Fanny to remain true to her sex by limiting the extent of her learning and by
utilizing her musical gifts for decorative enhancement rather than professional prep-
aration (letters to Fanny of 16 July 1820 and 14 November 1828, in Sebastian Hensel,
The MendelssohnFamily 1729-1847, tr. Carl Klingemann, 2 volumes, 2nd ed. [New
York, 1882], volume i, pp. 82, 84).
21
"Why Haven't Women Become Great Composers?," XXIII/2 (February 1973),
46-53. Judith Rosen argued the case for women based primarily on their lack of access
to the musical machinery.
22 Carl Seashore, "Why No Great Women Composers?," Music EducatorsJournal
XXV/5 (March 1940), 21, 88. Reprinted in Neuls-Bates, 297-302.
the goals of the course and the work's relationship with others of its
era, genre, and function.
For the last decade musicology has been moving inexorably to-
wards a societal framework, a view advocated so eloquently by J. Peter
Burkholder, Gary Tomlinson, and others. Women's activity in music
has been vital and continual but for various reasons submerged and
absent from present-day eyes. Certainly, if we believe that music
viewed in its societal context is a prime goal, then we must retrieve
that surprisingly large, rich body of music composed by women. Not
doing so, if for no other reason, presents a false image of music-
making in the past. It obscures the realities inherent in the long path
from recognition of creative talent to recognition of professional sta-
tus. It reinforces the inaccurate notion that there were no women
composers and also renders it that much more difficult for women to
emerge as creators in the future. Neglect also leaves buried some
wonderful music that we would probably be delighted to incorporate
into our ever-growing repository of music.
III
114
_~114 ~When the foregoing was presented at the Ameri-
can Musicological Society meeting it elicited provocative commentary
from Professor Don Randel, the scheduled respondent. He agreed
with the basic thrust but felt the paper did not go far enough in
suggesting the most fruitful framework for coming to grips with
women creators and their works. In short he called for nothing less
than the establishment of a critical and theoretical framework appro-
priate to doing feminist musicology. For musicology's values, catego-
ries, pioneers, leading practitioners, and most important, its episte-
mology about music itself have been male-defined. In order to carve
out a meaningful framework for assessing women musicians one
should not rely solely on traditional conceptual modes. They are in-
adequate and inappropriate.
Randel's challenge is laudable and has been raised by others, for
example Joseph Kerman and Richard Taruskin.26 It has already been
26
In ContemplatingMusic: Challengesto Musicology(Cambridge, Mass., 1985), p. 17,
Kerman does not make a direct plea for "serious feminism" in musicology, but indi-
rectly acts as its advocate as he laments its absence, along with post-structuralism and
deconstruction, from musicological writing. See also Taruskin's review of The Musical
Woman, volume 2, in Opus IV/2 (February 1988), p. 64. I am indebted to Professor
Deborah Hayes for pointing out Taruskin's piece. An interesting response is made by
feminist musicologist Susan McClary: "It is significant that the voices calling for a
feminist criticism are those of well-established men. Women in musicology tend to read
such appeals not as open encouragement but as taunts, as invitations to professional
suicide" ("Foreword. The Undoing of Opera: Toward a Feminist Criticism of Music,"
This mindset and style set the stage for a sustained immersion in
broad intellectual life. And, as feminist literary critic Elaine Showalter
has asserted, such broad immersion is a requisite for doing feminist
work:
28
"The Feminist Critical Revolution," in The New Feminist Criticism:Essays on
Women,Literature,and Theory,ed. Showalter (New York, 1985), p. 4.
Rice University
29 In his presentation, Don Randel drew attention to the potential in reader/
listener response theory and also quoted from the section "Reading as a Woman" in
Jonathan Culler's On Deconstruction(Ithaca, 1982). See also the collection Gender and
Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts,ed. Patrocinio P. Schweickart and Eliza-
beth A. Flynn (Baltimore, 1986). The attractiveness of psychoanalysis as a mode of
analysis for women composers has been demonstrated by Dr. Anna Burton, psycho- 117
analyst, in her thoughtful work on Clara and Robert Schumann. This includes her
presentation at the November 1988 meeting of the AMS Committee on the Status of
Women; her article "Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck: A Creative Partnership,"
Music and LettersLXIX/3 (July 1988), 321-34; her forthcoming essay, "The Childhood
of Clara Schumann: A Psychoanalytic View," in PsychoanalyticStudies of Music and Mu-
sical Creativity,ed. Stuart Feder, Richard L. Karmel, and George H. Pollock (Madison,
Conn.); and her major contribution to Nancy Reich's perceptive biography of Clara
Schumann.