This brought to mind a thing that happened when I was in high school. The HS band director also taught music history which I didn't take, but my girl friend did. She told me this story:
The teacher said that before 1900 (1950, something like that) there were no major female composers. This annoyed them greatly, so when he assigned a paper on "a major composer", several of the girls in the class "invented" a female Russian composer who lived in the early 1800s. They all submitted papers based on this fictitious women, complete with dates, repertoire, etc. He was quite taken aback that he had never heard of this "composer" up until he figured out it was a hoax. Good thing that he had a good sense of humor ;-)
OK, just for the record (and I think this information is accurate):
The earliest known women composers whose music has survived date from the 12th century: Beatrix, Countess of Dia (one song), who was a Trobairix (female Trobador) in southern France, and St. Hildegard von Bingen (about 70 pieces of music, including the major large-scale work "Ordo Virtutum."
Since male musicians were trained in the church's choir schools--no girls need apply--the girls who did get a musical education usually got it in the home, from parents who were musicians. That's the case with Francesca Caccini, one of two daughters of Giulio Caccini (a member of the Florentine Camerata and thus one of the "inventors" of opera) who became professional singers, and composer of the first Italian opera to be produced outside Italy. There were other 17th century women composers as well. Elizabeth-Claude Jaquet de la Guerre was a contemporary of Francois Couperin le Grand, and I much prefer her music to his. The 19th century gives us, just for starters, Fanny Mendelssohn Henzel and Clara Schumann (both, again, from musical families).
The femininst scholars have turned up many more, and some darned good music that's been ignored for too long. Of course the kicker is how one defines "a major composer." As a job description it was indeed a man's world, as were the worlds of science, medicine, law, scholarship and business, for far too long, so there were no acceptable jobs available to women that included composition. That did wait until after 1900.
John
-- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
