Gender issues

Question 1

What is ‘Piece Romantique’?

Answer 1

• Composed by Cecile Chaminade
• Able to publish because of educational element/pedagogical function e.g. important notes were printed bigger
• Was considered a piece for women, emphasising social grace by lots of hand crossing
• Not virtuosic, rather enabling decorum

Question 2

What questions/issues does Cecile Chaminade’s career raise about gender?

Answer 2

• Only publishable because of pedagogical function/for women
• Despite her music containing intellectual content (Eugene Gigout referred to her piano trios as ‘well-worked’), she could never be canonised
• By end of her career she only published salon music for commercial benefit, so not canonised
• Class issues: didn’t suffer from class restriction

Question 3

What issues arose from female composers linked to male composers (by marriage/family etc)?

Answer 3

• The woman in the pair always undermined/put down
• E.g. Gustav Mahler asked Alma if he could read ‘my music as yours’ and would ‘prefer not to discuss “your” music’.
• But later he encouraged her to publish compositions e.g. No.5 of 5 songs (1910) which is even more chromatic, and more declamatory in style than Gustav’s work,
• Sense of loss in what could have been for Alma.

Question 4

Describe some 19th century views of women that might impact their role as composers:

Answer 4

• Binary between women seen as the ‘angel of the house’ and a ‘sexualised hysteric/whore’
• Freud did experiments with women, linking mental illness to sexuality
• Jean Jaques Rousseau, 18th century theorist: had a theory of women as underveloped/childish
• Mind-body split between men and women: men have intellectual power, but women possessed with dangerous emotional power which had to be protected (veiled method of control)
• Therefore women were seen as needing to be kept in the house, away from composition etc
• J.Swinburne, ‘Women and Music’ (1919-20) describes women’s ‘evil effects’ on music. Argues they don’t have intellectual capacity for composition.

Question 5

What was the musical expectation of women at the beginning of the 19th century?

Answer 5

• Only sung or played piano
• Piano kept them ‘locked in the house’
• Both a social accomplishment, to make them seem more attractive
• Wind instruments unseemly as they obscured/contorted the face

Question 6

What implications did Holmes’ gender have on her success?

Answer 6

• Holmès only successful when composing nationalist music
• She wasn’t allowed to go to the paris conservatoire and instead was taught privately
• Flop was the opera La Montagne Noir (1895) wasn’t nationalist so got all the typical critiques of women. Love story, so critics said it didn’t contain any originality; compared to the ‘very real talent…with nothing of the feminine about it’. For them, feminine=failure.

Question 7

How did Lili Boulanger overcome male prejudice at the Prix de Rome?

Answer 7

• In patriarchal society with pervasive/male-dominated views of the role of women in society Lili had to adapt in order to gain recognition (as femme fragile/androgynous)
• Not able to rely on the genius of her musical ability, like men could
• Cantata ‘Sirenes’ - both her and Nadia set music about sirens, women able to control men.

Question 8

How did Lili Boulanger portray herself at the Prix de Rome?

Answer 8

• Nadia had entered in 1907 and had presented herself as a ‘femme nouvelle’ (early feminist movement, pushing the boundaries of what women could do in patriarchal society)
• Lili presented herself as a ‘femme fragile’ - not openly threatening the gender ideals of the time.
• Young enough to come across as androgynous child genius - her conducting described as ‘subdued’, and wore androdgynous clothes (likened to a sailor’s outfit).