the cambridge companion to women in music since 1900

Cambridge University Press978-1-108-47028-5 — The Cambridge Companion to Women in Music since 1900Edited by Laura Hamer FrontmatterMore Information

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The Cambridge Companion toWomen inMusic since 1900

This Companion explores women’s work in music since 1900 across a

broad range of musical genres and professions, including the classical

tradition, popular music, and music technology. The crucial

contributions of women to music education and the music industries

feature alongside their activity as composers and performers. The book

considers the gendered nature of the musical profession in areas

including access to training, gendered criticism, sexualisation, and

notions of ‘gender appropriate’ roles or instruments. It covers a wide

range of women musicians, such as Marin Alsop, Grace Williams, Billie

Holiday, Joni Mitchell, and Adele. Each thematic section concludes with

a contribution from a practitioner in her own words, reflecting upon the

impact of gender on her own career. Chapters include suggestions for

further reading on each of the topics covered, providing an invaluable

resource for students of feminist musicology, women in music, and

music and gender.

laura hamer is Staff Tutor and Lecturer in Music at The Open

University. She is the author of Female Composers, Performers,

Conductors: Musiciennes of Interwar France, 1919–1939 (2018) and

co-editor, with Helen Julia Minors, of The Routledge Companion to

Women and Musical Leadership: The Nineteenth Century and Beyond

(forthcoming).

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The Cambridge Companion toWomen in Music since 1900

Edited by

laura hamer

The Open University, Milton Keynes


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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Hamer, Laura, author.Title: The Cambridge companion to women in music since 1900 / edited by Laura Hamer.Description: New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. | Series: Cambridge companionsto music | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2020056954 (print) | LCCN 2020056955 (ebook) | ISBN 9781108470285(hardback) | ISBN 9781108556491 (ebook)Subjects: LCSH: Women musicians. | Women composers. | Women in the music trade. |Music by women composers – 20th century – History and criticism. | Music by womencomposers – 21st century – History and criticism.Classification: LCC ML82 .C36 2021 (print) | LCC ML82 (ebook) | DDC 780.82/0904–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056954LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056955

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Contents

List of Figures [page xiv]

List of Boxes [xv]

Notes on Contributors [xvi]

Preface [xxi]

List of Abbreviations [xxx]

part i the classical tradition [1]

1 Women in Composition before the Second World Warsophie fuller [3]

2 Women in Composition during the Cold War in Musicrhiannon mathias [18]

3 Behind the Iron Curtain: Female Composers in the Soviet Blocelaine kelly [33]

4 Still Exceptional? Women in Composition Approaching

the Twenty-First Centuryastrid kvalbein [48]

5 On the Podium: Women Conductorslaura hamer [64]

6 Soloists and Divas: Evolving Opportunities, Identity,

and Receptionfrancesca placanica [80]

In Her Own Words: Practitioner Contribution 1elizabeth hoffman [95]

part ii women in popular music [101]

7 Most of My Sheroes Don’t Appear on a Stamp: Contextualising

the Contributions of Women Musicians to the Progression of Jazztammy l. kernodle [103]

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8 Leaders of the Pack: Girl Groups of the 1960sjacqueline warwick [119]

9 Women and Rockleah branstetter [131]

10 ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’: Women

in Songwritingkatherine williams [145]

11 The British Folk Revival: Mythology and the ‘Non-Figuring’

and ‘Figuring’ Womanmichael brocken [163]

12 How MTV Idols Got Us in Formation: Solo Women and Their

Brands Make Space for Truth Telling, Trauma, and Survival

in Popular Music from 1981 to the Presentkristin j . lieb [176]

In Her Own Words: Practitioner Contribution 2virginia kettle [192]

part iii women and music technology [197]

13 Case Studies of Women in Electronic Music: The Early Pioneerslouis niebur [199]

14 The Star-Eaters: A 2019 Survey of Female and Gender-Non-

Conforming Individuals Using Electronics for Musicmargaret schedel and flannery cunningham

[213]

In Her Own Words: Practitioner Contribution 3manuella blackburn [228]

part iv women’s wider work in music [235]

15 Women and Music Education in Schools: Pedagogues, Curricula,

and Role Modelsrobert legg [237]

16 Women in the Music Industries: The Art of Jugglingclare k. duffin [254]

In Her Own Words: Practitioner Contribution 4: From Polymath

to Portfolio Career – Reclaiming ‘Renaissance Woman’steph power [270]

xii Contents


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Afterword: Challenges and Opportunities: Ways Forward

for Women Working in Musicvictoria armstrong [276]

Appendix: Survey Questions for Chapter 14 [291]

Select Bibliography [296]

Index [308]

Contents xiii


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Figures

5.1 Ethel Leginska, English pianist, conductor and composer, 1935. Photo

credit: Tully Potter/Bridgeman Images [page 69]

5.2 Marin Alsop. Photo credit: Grant Leighton [74]

6.1 Dame Evelyn Glennie. Photo credit: Caroline Purday, courtesy of

Evelyn Glennie’s managing team [86]

16.1 Singer-songwriter Emma Gillespie and her son, Oscar. Photo credit:

Thomas Brumby [263]

16.2 Singer-songwriter Carol Laula featured on the front cover of her eighth

studio album, The Bones of It, released in 2016 by Vertical Records.

Photo credit: Julie Vance. Sleeve design: John Eaden [264]

xiv


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Boxes

10.1 Tapestry, track listing and songwriter credits [page 148]

10.2 Blue, track listing. All songs written and performed

by Joni Mitchell [151]

10.3 The Kick Inside, track listing. All songs written by Kate Bush [154]

10.4 19, track listing and songwriter credits [156]



xv


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Notes on Contributors

victoria armstrong is a Lecturer at the University of Surrey. Her

research revolves around gender and inclusion. She is the author

of Technology and the Gendering of Music Education, and her second

monograph, Women’s Musical Lives, uses digital ethnography to explore

the gendered dimensions of labour in cultural work. She serves on the

editorial board of Music Education Research.

manuella blackburn is Lecturer at Keele University in Music

Technology (since 2019) and previously worked at Liverpool Hope

University between 2010 and 2019. Her practice-based research covers

the exploration of short sound-file use within compositional activity

along with methodologies for handling larger quantities of these

materials. Manuella has written on topics such as sampling, cultural

sound borrowing, intercultural creativity, and music education.

leah branstetter, PhD, is a music historian and educator. She runs

womeninrockproject.org, a web project preserving the stories of women in

early rock and roll. She has also contributed to education initiatives for the

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Steven Van Zandt’s Rock and Roll Forever

Foundation.

michael brocken was one of the first Popular Music Studies PhDs at the

Institute of PopularMusic (University of Liverpool).While Senior Lecturer

at Liverpool Hope University he devised and taught the world’s first

master’s degree concerning the Beatles. He currently presents Folkscene

on BBC Radio Merseyside and lectures at Wirral 3Ls.

flannery cunningham is a composer and musicologist who investigates

the voice, compositional processes, and live electronics aimed at amplifying

themusicality of human performers. She is a winner of the National Sawdust’s

Hildegard Competition and her work has been performed at festivals

including Aspen, June in Buffalo, and Copland House’s CULTIVATE.

clare k. duffin is Lecturer in Commercial Music at the University of the

West of Scotland and has a portfolio career that sees her practice span overxvi


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a wide range of musical operations, including her role as an artist manager;

as a drummer with Suspire; and in various community music practice

positions.

sophie fuller’s main research interest is in ensuring that women

composers’ voices are given the hearing they deserve. She is the author of

The Pandora Guide to Women Composers (1994) and numerous articles

and chapters on women’s engagement with music and music making.

Sophie currently works at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and

Dance (London).

laura hamer is Staff Tutor and Lecturer in Music at the Open University.

Her research interests lie in women in music. She is the author of Female

Composers, Performers, Conductors: Musiciennes of Interwar France,

1919–1939 (Routledge, 2018) and co-editor, with Helen Julia Minors, of

The Routledge Companion to Women and Musical Leadership: The

Nineteenth Century and Beyond (Routledge, forthcoming).

elizabeth hoffman is a New-York-City-based composer. She works in

acoustic and computer-driven media. Compositional interests include

a focus on timbre and spatialisation as means of creating signification and

immersive sound worlds.

elaine kelly is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Edinburgh.

Her work focuses on music and politics during the Cold War, with

a particular emphasis on the GDR. She is currently a Leverhulme Major

Research Fellow and is researching musical relations between the GDR and

the postcolonial world.

tammy l. kernodle is Professor of Musicology at Miami University in

Ohio. Her scholarship, which focuses primarily on African American

music (popular and classical) appears in a number of anthologies and

journals. She is the author of Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary

Lou Williams (Second Edition; University of Illinois Press, 2020).

virginia kettle is a singer-songwriter born in Manchester, UK. She

performs both solo and with award-winning folk rock band Merry Hell.

Since childhood, Virginia has been influenced by all styles of popular

music. Her songs create snapshots of humanity, using equal measures of

beautiful imagery and kitchen-sink irony.

astrid kvalbein is a researcher at the Norwegian Academy of Music,

specialising in Nordic music history, particularly twentieth-century

Notes on Contributors xvii


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processes of modernisation, gender issues, and contemporary music. Her

PhD was on the composer Pauline Hall (1890–1969), and she has written

for A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries (Brill,

forthcoming).

robert legg’s research uses critical social theory and narrative methods

to interrogate aspects of schooling. He has written extensively on social

justice in music education. In addition to his regular involvement in music

theatre, he is active as a choral conductor and as a composer of music for

young voices.

kristin j. lieb is an Associate Professor at Emerson College. Her

interdisciplinary research, about the production and consumption of

popular music, sits at the intersection of media studies, production

studies, and gender and sexuality studies. Her writing often investigates

how popular music stars are created, branded, popularised, credited, and

received.

rhiannon mathias is Lecturer and Music Fellow at Bangor University,

and is the author of Lutyens, Maconchy, Williams and Twentieth-Century

British Music (Ashgate, 2012). She is Editor of the Routledge International

Handbook onWomen’s Work in Music (forthcoming), and Editor-in-Chief

of Cambridge University Press’s Elements: Women in Music series.

louis niebur is Associate Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno,

and received his PhD from UCLA. His research examines post-war music

bridging high and low culture through media technology. Special Sound:

The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was published

in 2010 by Oxford University Press.

francesca placanica (PhD, University of Southampton, 2013) currently

lectures and directs the Performance Programme at Maynooth University

(Republic of Ireland). She is co-editor of Cathy Berberian: Pioneer of

Contemporary Vocality (Ashgate, 2014). She is the recipient of a Marie

Curie Individual Fellowship at the University of Huddersfield, due to start

in September 2021.

steph power is a composer, writer, and critic. Recent commissions

include music for Uproar and the Vale of Glamorgan and Fishguard

International Festivals. Amongst other publications, she writes for BBC

Music Magazine and The Stage. A contributor to The Music of Simon Holt

(Boydell, 2017), she chairs Tŷ Cerdd, Music Centre Wales.

xviii Notes on Contributors


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margaret schedel has an interdisciplinary career blending classical

training, audio research, and innovative education, which transcends the

boundaries of disparate fields to produce work at the nexus of computation

and the arts. She has a diverse output, ranging from books to sculptures,

and is internationally recognised for the creation and performance of

ferociously interactive media.

jacqueline warwick is Professor of Musicology at Dalhousie University,

Canada. She is the author of Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and

Identity in the 1960s (Routledge, 2007) and co-editor, with Allison Adrian,

ofVoicing Girlhood in PopularMusic: Performance, Authority, Authenticity

(Routledge, 2016). She is currently preparing Musical Prodigies and the

Performance of Childhood for Oxford University Press.

katherine williams is Lecturer in Music and Performance Pathway

Leader at the University of Plymouth. She has published on the singer-

songwriter and on songwriting more widely; gender and music; music and

geography; jazz; improvisation; and Duke Ellington. She is currently editor

of the Jazz Research Journal.

Notes on Contributors xix


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Preface

The situation of women inmusic has evolved significantly since 1900. At the

start of the twentieth century, female musicians faced considerable gender-

specific barriers. Prior to the First World War, much of women’s musical

work was confined to the private sphere; strict social conventions still

dictated which instruments were deemed appropriate for women (piano,

harp, guitar, the higher strings, and voice) and which were not (woodwind,

brass, and percussion); and the work of female composers was largely

confined to smaller-scale genres. The situation improved undeniably over

the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Access to education

and training increased; the full range of genres within which to write music

became available to female composers, as the full range of instruments did to

performers; and women’s music was performed, published, broadcast, and

recorded with increased frequency. In the period since 1900, women

musicians have achieved many significant firsts, although a number of

these have come shockingly recently. In 1913, Lili Boulanger became the

first woman to win a Premier Grand Prix de Rome in composition, and in

1930 RuthCrawford Seeger became the first woman composer to be awarded

a Guggenheim Fellowship. Despite these early victories, however, it was not

until 1983 that Ellen Taafe Zwilich became the first woman to win the

Pulitzer Prize for Music, and 1990 that Joan Tower became the first

woman to win the Grawemeyer Music Award. More shockingly still,

Marin Alsop could claim a first for women in 2013, when she became the

first woman to conduct the Last Night of the BBC’s Proms, and Rebecca

Saunders could claim one as late as 2019 when she became the first woman

composer to win the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. Alongside these

developments in the world of classical music, popular music has developed

rapidly since 1900, andwomen’s voices have been present across a vast range

of genres, although there too they have faced significant gender-based

barriers and obstacles. In recent years there has been both a growing

awareness of the gendered nature of the music industries, and some steps

taken towards enabling positive change; as seen, for instance, in the PRS

Foundation’s Keychange initiative to encourage ‘festivals and

music organisations to achieve a 50:50 gender balance by 2022’.1 xxi


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That such enterprises are necessary highlights the fact that – despite

undeniable improvements in some areas – the music industries remain

highly gendered, and significant gender-based constraints for women still

exist. In particular, women musicians are still regularly subjected to

gendered criticism, which often undermines their artistry by focusing

upon their appearance and is sometimes highly sexualised. The career

choices of women musicians are often dictated by their family

circumstances. Much musical work takes place outside of family-friendly

hours, childcare remains extremely expensive, and the gender pay gap

persists. Some musical fields – including, but not limited to, conducting,

music technology, parts of the music industries (company executives,

managers, promoters, and producers amongst other roles spring readily

to mind), and certain popular music genres (such as hip-hop and heavy

metal) – remain extremely male dominated. And gender, of course, is only

one factor – amongst which, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, age, disability,

faith, and others are also of great significance – in exclusion, from music

andmore widely. That we are nowmore consciously aware of the gendered

nature of the music industries stems in part from the development, over

recent decades, of the branch of musical scholarship which seeks to address

the work of womenmusicians. Intended as both celebration and critique of

women’s musical work since 1900, this book fits within this wider academic

trend which seeks to create a more gender-balanced music studies.

Notwithstanding the work of such early pioneers as Sophie Drinker,

women in music studies – sometimes referred to as feminist musicology or

included more broadly within music and gender studies – developed

through the critical work of such as scholars as Eva Rieger, Nancy

B. Reich, Marcia J. Citron, Suzanne Cusick, Susan McClary, Judith Tick,

and Jane Bowers during the 1980s and ’90s. The publication of Aaron

I. Cohen’s International Encyclopedia of Women Composers in 1981

(revised and enlarged in 1987 through collaboration with the

International Council of Women),2 followed by The New Grove

Dictionary of Women Composers, edited by Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian

Samuel, in 1994,3 and The Pandora Guide to Women Composers: Britain

and the United States 1629–Present, by Sophie Fuller, in 1994,4 marked

a new level of recognition for women composers. Meanwhile, the work of

such trail-blazing scholars as Sheila Whiteley increased awareness of the

centrality of gender and sexuality within popular music studies.5 Like

women’s history itself, however, the development of women in music

studies has been non-linear. Once the initial activity of the 1980s and

’90s – a period which I like to refer to as the first wave of feminist

xxii Preface


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musicology – subsided, research interests in women musicians seemed to

drop off somewhat around the turn of the twenty-first century. Working

upon a doctorate on womenmusicians in interwar France in the late 2000s,

I sometimes felt as though I was pursuing a rather lonely research

endeavour. In a 2017 article, Sally Macarthur, Dawn Bennett, Talisha

Goh, and Sophie Hennekam perceptively referred to ‘The Rise and Fall,

and the Rise (Again) of Feminist Research in Music: “What Goes Around

Comes Around”’,6 as we have recently seen something of a renaissance of

interest in women in music studies. What I find so exciting about

this second wave of feminist musicology is the broadening out of the

field, away from a focus upon composers – which could be seen as being

in danger of replicating patriarchal historiographical tendencies to focus

upon the lives of ‘great’ individuals – to a more inclusive view of women’s

work in music, encompassing, amongst others, roles such as performers,

conductors, educators, songwriters, sound artists, as well as those, such as

journalists, promoters, managers, and arts administrators, working in the

music industries more broadly. The cross-genre focus of much of this more

recent work, and a new willingness for scholars and practitioners to come

together at a plethora of new conferences, festivals, performances,

collectives, recordings, and publications, is equally exhilarating. The

opportunity to edit this book, focused upon women’s musical work

specifically in the period since 1900 from a cross-genre perspective, is an

honour.

It would be impossible to consider every single woman working inmusic

since 1900 within one book. Rather, the women and topics covered here

represent examples and case studies of the sorts of musical work which

women have done and the lived experiences which they have had, covering

as broad a range of professional fields and musical genres as possible. Each

chapter concludes with suggestions for ‘further reading’ intended to direct

the interested reader towards more information on each topic. The focus of

this book is upon Western music since 1900, including classical music,

popular music, music technology, and women’s wider work in music. The

vast contributions which women have made to non-Western musics in the

same period deserve specialist consideration in a further volume. The

authors brought together within this book have taken a wide range of

approaches to their specialist topics, including broad surveys, archival

research, and detailed ethnographic micro-studies. Each section ends

with a shorter ‘In Her Own Words’ reflection written by a female

practitioner active within the field which that particular part of the book

covers.

Preface xxiii


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Part I considers women working within classical music. The first four

chapters cover the changing situation of female composers between the

early twentieth century and the early twenty-first. In Chapter 1, Sophie

Fuller considers the musical landscape which female composers working in

the earlier twentieth century inhabited. From the early days of the

twentieth century, when women were expected to concentrate upon song

and small-scale piano works, to the wider opportunities which opened up

during the interwar period, Fuller considers a wide range of composers,

including, amongst others, Cécile Chaminade, Maude Valérie White, Ethel

Smyth, Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and

Germaine Tailleferre. Chapters 2 and 3 move on to consider women

working professionally as composers during the Cold War period of the

mid-to-later twentieth century. Chapter 2, ‘Women in Composition during

the ColdWar inMusic’, focuses on women active in theWest, where, for all

the apparent government liberalism, in musical terms, composers had to

face what could often, at the time, seem like the monolithic regime of total

serialism. Through a range of case studies, including Williams, Maconchy,

Elisabeth Lutyens, Thea Musgrave, Betsy Jolas, Louise Talma, Julia Perry,

and Miriam Gideon, RhiannonMathias deftly considers the compositional

strategies which women developed to respond to this musical

environment. Chapter 3, ‘Behind the Iron Curtain: Female Composers in

the Soviet Bloc’, turns to the situation of women composers working within

the Soviet Bloc, where, despite the public advocation of gender equality by

state-socialist regimes, more traditional constructs of gender difference

actually tended to be propagated. With a particular focus on the careers

of Galina Ustvolskaya and Sofia Gubaidulina in the USSR, Ruth Zechlin in

the GDR, and Grażyna Bacewicz in Poland, Elaine Kelly probes the

possibilities open to female composers working under state socialism.

Chapter 4 discusses the situation of contemporary female composers and

poses the question: to what extent are they ‘still exceptional’? Ranging

across a wide range of figures, Astrid Kvalbein considers how

contemporary women, including, amongst others, Kaija Saariaho,

Jennifer Walsh, Judith Weir, Olga Neuwirth, Du Yun, Unsuk Chin, and

Gabriela Lena Frank, explore feminist themes and provide gender critiques

through their works, the tendency for women to engage with wider societal

issues, including environmentalism, and the strategies that women have

adopted to respond to an increasingly globalised world. In Chapter 5, I turn

to the situation of women conductors. Through a case study of Ethel

Leginska, I consider the early women conductors of the twentieth

century, the majority of whom founded and led their own women’s

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orchestras. I explore how many of these lost opportunities following the

Second World War, and examine their re-emergence in the later twentieth

century, with a particular focus upon Marin Alsop. I conclude my chapter

by discussing the important work that Alsop and others, notably Alice

Farnham, are doing through mentoring and training the younger

generation of women conductors through such initiatives as Alsop’s Taki

Concordia Fellowship and Farnham’s Women Conductors programme at

the Royal Philharmonic Society. Chapter 6 shifts the focus to female

performers within the classical music industry. Francesca Placanica

considers the increased opportunities which female performers gained

throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; not only in terms of

being able to achieve star status, but also through being able to integrate

into professional orchestras. Focusing upon the trumpeter Alison Balsom

and percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, she considers the new

opportunities that have developed over recent decades for women to

maintain careers as virtuosa performers of instruments historically

deemed unsuitable for women to play. Placanica also deftly probes the

high degree of sexualisation which many contemporary performers,

including Yuja Wang, Katherine Jenkins, and Vanessa Mae, face in the

contemporary classical music industry and how this can be negotiated in

a mediatised culture. Composer Elizabeth Hoffman concludes Part I with

a searching consideration of how gender has affected her own career and

how it continues to affect women within the academy.

Part II turns to the rich tradition of women in popular music. Chapter 7,

‘Most of My Sheroes Don’t Appear on a Stamp: Contextualising the

Contributions of Women Musicians to the Progression of Jazz’, considers

the vital part that women – both vocalists and instrumentalists – made to

the development of jazz, although they have tended to be excluded from

standard historiographical narratives of the genre. With a focus on the

development of jazz in the United States, Tammy L. Kernodle considers

women jazz musicians’ work from the early days of New Orleans jazz;

through jazz in Chicago, New York, Kansas City, and Europe; to the

emergence of women jazz singers, including Billie Holiday and Ella

Fitzgerald; and to the all-girl swing bands of the 1940s. Chapter 8 turns

to the girl groups of the 1960s. Although often not taken seriously, they

were one of the most successful musical phenomena of the first half of the

1960s in the United States. Jacqueline Warwick skilfully unpacks ‘girl

culture’, the intersection of the girl groups with the contemporaneous

Civil Rights Movement, and key figures and groups of the era, such as

the Shirelles, the Ronettes, the Shangri-Las, and the Supremes. Chapter 9

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probes the ‘women-in-music’ trope through a rock music lens. Leah

Branstetter deftly draws upon the work of Joanna Russ to examine how

women have been marginalised within rock. She considers the tendency of

historiographies of rock to construct female rock musicians as anomalies,

to devalue their contributions, and to resist categorising their music as

‘authentic’. In Chapter 10, Katherine Williams considers female

songwriters, focusing upon singer-songwriters who write and perform

their own material, as opposed to songwriters who compose material for

other artists. Concentrating upon four case studies, Williams interrogates

the music of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, and Adele. Turning to

folk music, in Chapter 11, Michael Brocken focuses upon the British folk

revival to consider both the traditional marginalisation of women’s voices

and the recent emergence of a more open folk scene within which women’s

voices ‘figure’. Blending an auto-ethnographic and an ethnographic

approach, Brocken considers not only his own growing awareness of

gender issues within the folk scene as a male researcher, but also draws

upon interview material with folk musician Emily Portman and folk and

acoustic music promoter Rose Price. Chapter 12 presents a discussion of

female solo artists in the popular music industry, with a particular focus on

the influence and lasting effects of MTV and superstar branding. Through

considering the careers of Tina Turner, Sinéad O’Connor, Alanis

Morrisette, and Fiona Apple, Kristin J. Lieb probes the recurring themes

of the human sacrifice of being a pop star, the sharing of narratives about

abuse and exploitation, the recasting of the hot mess as a survivor, and the

exploration of taboo subjects and identities. Virginia Kettle concludes Part

II through a reflection of her career as a folk musician.

Acknowledging that music technology was (and to an extent remains)

one of the most male-dominated musical fields, Part III turns to the theme

of women and music technology. Louis Niebur’s Chapter 13, ‘Case Studies

of Women in Electronic Music: The Early Pioneers’, considers a range of

the earliest ground-breaking women working with electronic music,

including Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire at the BBC’s Radiophonic

Workshop in the UK, and Wendy Carlos, Pauline Oliveros, and Suzanne

Ciani in the United States. Moving forward to the later twentieth and early

twenty-first centuries, Chapter 14 provides a survey of contemporary

female and gender-non-conforming artists using electronics for music.

Margaret Schedel and Flannery Cunningham highlight how greater

access to affordable means to manipulate digital sound from the

autonomy of personal computers – away from difficult-to-access studios

staffed by technicians and equipped with complex technology, which were

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previously largely the domain of male ‘experts’ – has opened up electronic

music to a wider demographic of people (in terms of gender, race, and

class). Taking an ethnographic approach which draws upon survey

material from twenty-four respondents variously identifying as

composers, sound artists, instrument builders, and programmers, this

chapter explores some of this diversity through the artists’ own words.

Electroacoustic composer Manuella Blackburn concludes this part through

an exploration of how motherhood, and a new interest in domestic sound

sources, inspired by prolonged time spent in the home during pregnancy

and the early days of motherhood, changed her compositional practice.

Part IV broadens the scope to consider women’s wider work in music.

Chapter 15, ‘Women and Music Education in Schools: Pedagogues,

Curricula, and Role Models’, surveys women’s contribution to music

education. Although women in music studies has gained a steady

foothold in university and conservatoire education over the last two

decades, music education at school level (this chapter’s focus) has tended

to remain fairly conservative. Robert Legg discusses women’s access to the

teaching profession, highlighting that, while it has always been relatively

open to women, persistent barriers remain, including a lack of women in

leadership roles, and the gender pay gap. He also critiques the body/mind

dualist view of music education, the lack of female role models in many

curricula, and recent pedagogical debates of the twenty-first century.

Chapter 16, ‘Women in the Music Industries: The Art of Juggling’,

considers the persistent male-dominated nature of the popular-music

industry and the space which contemporary FIMAs (Female Independent

Music Artists) have carved out within it to sustain portfolio careers. Clare

K. Duffin also presents two detailed case studies of Glasgow-based FIMAs,

Emma Gillespie and Carol Laula. Steph Powers concludes Part IV ‘In Her

Own Words’ through an auto-ethnographic exploration of her own

portfolio career, which combines work as a performer, composer, music

examiner, and critic. In the Afterword, Victoria Armstrong turns to the

working conditions of women in the contemporary UK classical-music

industry. She draws upon her recent UK-based ethnographic study into the

working lives of twenty-four professional, classically trained female

composers, conductors, and performers to examine the concepts of

‘good’ and ‘bad’ work within the cultural industries through a gendered

lens.

The final stages of editing this book happened during the 2020 Covid-19

pandemic. As the devastating effects of the virus, and the lockdowns which

governments worldwide imposed in an effort to try to contain it, became

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more fully felt, it became apparent that the particular consequences for

women seemed to represent in microcosm the wider gendered conditions

which have shaped women’s lived experiences for so long. Insidiously,

domestic abuse and violence increased in lockdown, when victims found

themselves trapped in homes with their abusers. Women often took on the

brunt of childcare and other caring and domestic responsibilities. An

analysis of the impact of the pandemic on working parents by the

Institute of Fiscal Studies (UK) in May 2020 found that working mothers

were more likely than working fathers to have lost their job or been

furloughed; that their working hours had fallen more; and that their time

was interrupted more often by childcare.7 Women’s loss of employment –

and the lack of childcare (rendered more acute by childcare providers

facing long-term financial crises) – has led to many women facing

a future of economic insecurity. Women of colour often suffered the very

worse impact of the pandemic, as the virus affected BAME communities to

a disproportionately high degree. The lives of all the authors in this book

were touched in one way or another by the pandemic. I hold each one in

awe for being able to maintain their focus upon completing this project

during that time. The words used by Elizabeth Hoffman in her practitioner

contribution about valuing female friendships as a ‘special category of

relationship’ often echoed in my own thoughts as regular online ‘girls’

nights’ with my friends, musicologists Helen Julia Minors and Laura

Watson and composer Manuella Blackburn, became the weekly glimmers

of light which sustained me during that difficult time.

This book would not exist without Kate Brett at Cambridge University

Press. Her enthusiasm for the topic and support throughout the project

were truly tremendous. My thanks go also to Eilidh Burrett and Hal

Churchman at CUP. I am also grateful to the agents of Marin Alsop and

Dame Evelyn Glennie, and to Emma Gillespie and Carol Laula for allowing

us to reproduce images. My thanks go to The Open University for

supporting this project through study time, to my colleagues in Music

and within the AHSENT team for their interest in the project, and

especially to my Staff Tutor colleagues for providing cover for me while

I was working upon writing and editing. My interest in women in music

was first sparked by my Oxford tutor, Prof. Susan Wollenberg. I could not

imagine a more inspiring role model. My heartfelt thanks go to my parents,

Christine and Robert, for all their support and encouragement over many

years, and also to my parents-in-law, Wauki and Anthony. I am deeply

grateful tomy husband,Mark, who provided tremendous support, not least

through taking on a great deal of the work in our home, while I was

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engulfed in the final stages of editing this book during the lockdown period.

My thanks as always go to my daughter, Clara, who makes me smile

every day.

Notes

1. See https://prsfoundation.com/partnerships/international-partnerships

/keychange/ (accessed 21 June 2020).

2. Aaron I. Cohen (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Women Composers, second

revised and enlarged ed. (New York: Books & Music USA, 1987).

3. Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel (eds.), The New Grove Dictionary of Women

Musicians (New York: Norton, 1994).

4. Sophie Fuller, The Pandora Guide to Women Composers: Britain and the United

States, 1629–Present (London: Pandora, 1994).

5. See, in particular, Sheila Whiteley (ed.), Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and

Gender (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), and SheilaWhiteley,Women

and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity and Subjectivity (London and New York,

2000).

6. Sally Macarthur, Dawn Bennett, Talisha Goh, and Sophie Hennekam, ‘The Rise

and Fall, and the Rise (Again) of Feminist Research in Music: “What Goes

Around Comes Around”’, Musicology Australia, vol. 39, no. 2 (2017), 73–95.

7. Alison Andrew, Sarah Cattan, Monica Costa Dias, Christine Farquharson, Lucy

Kraftman, Sonya Krutikova, Angus Phimister, and Almudena Sevilla, ‘How Are

Mothers and Fathers Balancing Work and Family Under Lockdown?’, Institute

of Fiscal Studies Z (27 May 2020), available at www.ifs.org.uk/publications/

14860 (accessed 14 June 2020).

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Abbreviations

AR Augmented Reality

BASCA British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (UK)

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation (UK)

CMOs Collection Management Organisations

DAWs Digital Audio Workstations

EFDSS English Folk Dance and Song Society (England, UK)

EMPAC Experimental Media and Performing Arts Centre (New York,

US)

FIMAs Female Independent Music Artists

GDR German Democratic Republic (East Germany)

IRCAM Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique

(Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music,

France)

ISME International Society for Music Education

MENC Music Educators National Conference (US)

MU Musicians’ Union (UK)

NAfME National Association for Music Education (US)

NAME National Association of Music Educators (UK)

NIMEs New Interfaces for Musical Expression

PPL Public Performance Licensing (UK)

PRS Performing Right Society (UK)

RCM Royal College of Music (London, UK)

RTF Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (France)

SARC Sonic Arts Research Centre (Queen’s University, Belfast,

Northern Ireland)

SNL Saturday Night Live (US)

TOBA Theater Owners Booking Association (US)

VR Virtual Reality

WIM Women in Music Organisation (US)

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the cambridge companion to women in music since 1900

Documents