Galileo was convicted of heresy in 1633 and placed under house arrest. Your ideas have taken a pounding on this thread - your ideas not you personally - but do you really compare yourself to Galileo? If so, you're wrong:

1. Galileo was one of the West's first experimental scientists, relying on quantitative experiments to test a theory. He represents the precise opposite of the technique you first applied on this thread: the production of a theory with no supporting evidence. Galileo backed up his theories. That's why the Church was so frightened of him.

2. After some prodding you did, finally, produce evidence, in the form of Louann Brizendine's pop science book 'The Female Brain'. But she turned out to be so discredited she was forced to amend future editions of her book.




* Andante-Galileo - Martyr to the PC Brigade *

Obviously the fact that women were oppressed as nothing to do with anything. And the fact that women still are oppressed today has nothing to do with it.

The problem with what you are saying is that you have no evidence what so ever that it is what happens, only that there is a chance. But considering there has been no study into it and it is a fact that women are and have been oppressed there is no reason to believe your un-backed-up beliefs.

Women are much better off than they are now, but society has a way of backhandedly oppressing women, even if it is cool for girls to be dumb, that situation oppresses women.

That said, western countries are considerably better than Japan for example.

__________________

Have they??

I think Artemis' distillation of some's point is the most persuasive contrary argument to date. To review, the point appears to be: now that there are fewer sociological barriers to female composers, the gap has narrowed to the point where we can consider their accomplishments co-equal, and, by extension, they would likely have been close to level terms all along, if only equality of opportunity was present.

Andante's latest post made a valid riposte, which was: even at this stage in history, are the contributions of female composers (generally speaking) valued anywhere near to those of the most well-known male composers? Based on our observations, I (we?) have preliminarily answered "no."

This would be a fruitful field for further inquiry. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), purple's most recent post made no attempt whatsoever to address that point.

Re: the "we have no evidence" straw-man-- To repeat myself, I've made my conclusions based on OBSERVATION and SENSE-EXPERIENCE. (Merely italicizing this point the last time I made it was clearly insufficient, so I'll capitalize it too, this time.) Now, I'm a humble dilettente, and am willing to acknowledge that my observations can be flawed. (Relating back to Galileo, observation is (in)famously how the ancient Greeks concluded that the Sun revolved around the Earth!) However, the normal course of inquiry is for those who make claims contrary to observation to bear the burden-of-proof why we should distrust our observations.

I humbly apologise for addressing the point which I wanted to make rather than the one which you wanted me to make. But I did say earlier I'm more interested in the conducting side of the question:

Chi, you have put your finger on the one crucial point, your observations. How valid are they? Well, in spite of your protestations of humility, I'm going to guess that you really do believe that your observations (which you have not favored us with, note--you've just put the word "observation" in all caps) are valid. But let me ask, anyway: how much music do you listen to? How much of it has been composed since 1900? Since 1950? How well do you understand the musics that have been written since 1950? How receptive are you to the kinds of things that composers of today are doing?

You and Andante seem to be arguing from very limited experience. Seem, indeed, to be arguing that not only is your limited experience perfectly capable of providing you with valid conclusions but that ONLY your limited experience is valid, that more experience is less valid. (I don't really need, do I?, to point out that "generally speaking" classical listeners are woefully ignorant about twentieth and twenty-first century classical music. That they don't know all that many male composers, either.)

So it's not your observations you should distrust, but your conclusions. And not even so much your conclusions as your willingness to make conclusions on such scanty evidence. That was the point of my second list, to suggest that there were also fine, well-known, well respected, successful men who were unknown to you all.

People who listen to new music, who understand it, who enjoy it, who read about it, who keep current with it, will know many of the composers on both those lists. Not all, certainly. But they will not think "I've never heard of X. Must be worthless." They are much more likely to think "I've never heard of X. I must get a hold of some of her music."

Isn't that just a better attitude, generally?

This may prove surprising to some people (no pun intended), but- if you review my contributions on the "What's in Men conductors..." thread, you'll find that I'm actually inclined to agree with you on the conducting front.Wouldn't be the first time I've made myself insufficiently clear. No women composers have reached parallel esteem to composers like Bach, Beethoven... or even Shostakovich (I'll throw a new name into the mix... WTH) is a previous observation. I did cite Andante's list and asserted that even at the present time, no women have come into similar renown- that's another observation. You may question the validity of those observations- but they were made, all the same.

Yes, I will cop to the "limited experience" charge. It is up to the individual readers to conclude whether that is a more critical flaw than more comprehensive but more agenda-driven experience.Yes. Most of us pups would benefit from the unquestioned auditory nutrition of it all. BUT... (to complete the metaphor) in order for us dogs to reap the dietary benefits it contains, we need to get it past our noses, first.

Two interesting remarks.

and

To take the last one first, could you explain what an agenda-driven experience is?

As for the first one, could one also say that no men composers have reached parallel esteem to composers like Bach and Beethoven? That is one message of my second list. If you're going to talk about equal esteem, then we should make other elements of the situation equal, too. Are there living women composers of equal value to living men composers? And the answer to that is "yes."

Otherwise, I think perhaps that it's time and past time to make something explicit: that the notion of "esteem" is probably a red herring. The real issue is, or should be, are female type humans as capable of male type humans of composing good music? And that requires a definition of "good" that we can all agree on. Hah! That's not too likely, is it? So we're left with this: if you don't think Pauline Oliveros is an important, significant composer, fine. But you probably don't think LaMonte Young is, either. And so it could go; for each valuable female composer you could dismiss, I could come up with a similarly talented male composer you would also dismiss, and probably for the same reasons.

It is not, since we're talking about compositional activities in the past 60 or 70 years, so much a matter of male and female as it is a matter of how one views the compositional activities of the past 60 or 70 years. That fact has hamstrung this discussion. If the "females may not be as good" camp were to give its opinion of living male composers, that opinion would be something along these lines, I'm sure, "no living composer is as good as the dead ones." That's my take on this discussion. Until we are all equally conversant with the music that's been written since 1950, we cannot reasonably discuss the relative merits of the music written since 1950 by females.

And, in spite of Chi's doggy nose, I venture to guess that becoming familiar with the music of the past 60 years will be neither as frightening nor as disgusting as many people seem to think. Any more than broccoli or cooked carrots are nearly as unappetizing as I used to think when I was a kid. (Brussel sprouts, yes. Broccoli, no!)

I've not fully read that thread - why passively read dusty old debates when there's a brand spanking new one to engage in? - but you're right, thank you: I should and I will.

If male v female achievements in, say, literature are judged with a cut off point of 1900, those doing the judging will arrive at a skewed picture of female writers. There'd be no analysis of Virginia Woolf, Iris Murdoch, Sylvia Plath, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein or Rebecca West.

The same argument applies across Western society: female lawyers, doctors, judges, painters, actors, business executives, politicians. Each time the sexists are given a good kick, usually by a war when women must run the factories and till the land while the men are away fighting (and aren't too happy about being shoved back in the kitchen when the men return) it's the same story: a blossoming of female talent once they achieve a degree of equality of opportunity with men, once the sexists are given a bloody nose.

There's no reason to believe conducting and composing are any different. But if judgments are made on the achievements of women which occurred while the sexists were still abusing them, you may find women lacking. It's analogous to giving a child a good beating, then complaining he cries more than other children, and then blaming him for crying and claiming he may have a brain inadequacy which makes him more liable to cry.

Chi_town/Philly

This thread is never going to produce an attempt at addressing the OPs question, too many agendas and Red Herrings, I could add more but that would get some Knickers in a twist!

Yeah... I guess we have a couple of warehouses full of dry powder...

Lots of thanks to some (we're lucky he's favored TC with some of his energies lately)... but then, it's been fun to read purple when this person has shown humor that's not a matter of personal targeting. Whom should I answer first-- well, since some directly addressed me, I'll answer him first.I think I've isolated part of the problem, which is that it's possible that I (we?) have been cursed by benighted reference texts. You see, more than half-a-week ago, when you made that list of female composers, I actually went to my three most comprehensive references (a 'listeners encyclopedia' and a couple of fat CD review tomes) and searched for each and every one of the female composers you mentioned. Nearly three dozen names, there were, and I found an entry for all of ONE (Gubaydulina, for those keeping score at home). Now, there are three possible explanations for this:
1) They were omitted, on account of the lingering effects of sexism in this male-dominated Art-music paradigm.
2) They were omitted, not on account of any pernicious campaign, but by mere ignorance and oversight. (This explanation has the merit of interfacing well with the 'Hanlon's Razor' tenet "avoid attributing to malice that which can be fully explained through stupidity.")
3) [Possibility posited timorously by a complete non-expert:] perhaps the lack of entries is not entirely out-of-phase with current views re: their relative accomplishments.

Now, I know that 'consensus view of accomplishment' is the talk of squishy relativism, and has little to do with artistic merit. (During Bach's lifetime, the post that hired him viewed him as a 'second-nuts' choice, and originally sought Telemann.)

At the least, you can see a little of the kind of exposure that has informed (or mis-informed) my view.

Oh, TalkClassical members, forgive me for "doubling up" here. But this point by purple is far too fascinating for me to delay my response. Yes... but we would have Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, the 'Georges' [Eliot and Sand], the esteemed author of the Sonnets from the Portuguese, "The Belle of Amherst" et al. Not taking anything away from the inarguable accomplishment of all of the writers you cited... but it's not really a parallel situation to composing, is it?

You know, now that I think about it, if sexism was a bar to the acceptance of women's music pre-20th century, what was to stop a woman from trying Mary Ann's trick and releasing material under a male pseudonym?!

Thank you. When Andante compared me to Robert Mugabe (and himself to Galileo) and claimed he was being silenced and complained of 'vitriol' and bemoaned ‘political correctness gone mad’ - repeatedly - I tried my best to stick to 'ball not man' principles. I remained courteous even when Andante's 'evidence' - extracted with much effort - turned out to be demonstrable bilge published by a discredited 'pop' scientist.

Here's the original question:

Despite Andante's excitability, this thread's gone some way to answering it. Sorry to hear of your reference book problem. The same happens in other fields, e.g. history. Endless stories of Kings and Queens and other top people, little about the great unwashed mass of the population. Authors and publishers tend to be more careful nowadays - an effect of 'political correctness gone mad'? - so perhaps your library needs updating. I’m sure some guy could recommend some good solid texts.

Maybe. The current book du jour on modern music is "The Rest is Noise." I haven't sampled it yet (I'm spending too much time enjoying Cooke and Simpson to start it just now), but I am wondering: how much treatment of modern women composers will I find in that volume? [I ask sincerely, in all naïvete...]

I've been following this debate from the start, and I think it's produced some very interesting points. I was open minded when I started reading the points made, and I have to say that for me it's the ideas of Andante / Chi_town/Filly that I am agreeing with.

Just one more thing, I looked up all the women composers mentioned on this topic in the book I recently bought- The Rough Guide to Classical Music. This book is "an A to Z survey of over 200 of the most significant composers in the history of western music", quoted in the introduction. Anyway, the only one of these women mentioned in the book was Sofia Gubaidulina (and a few others not on the list- Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann for example). I'll also mention that it was published in June 2005, and includes all their considered 'significant' composers up until then.

Chi, agreed about the books, but don't be too hard on them. Just think for a bit about what kind of thing a book is. First of all, it will be published months if not years after it was written. Second, some parts will have been written years before other parts. If it were updated continuously, it would never get to the printers! (One advantage, at least, of the Internet.) Third, book publishers, having invested a lot of effort and money into making an object which will then have to take a lot of effort and money to be distributed to the places where people will buy it, not to mention the advertising to get them interested in the first place, well, how many risks would YOU be willing to take regards the content? So reference books will play it safe, more often than not. As for R-F's "Rough" guide, well, what else could one expect? Books on "classical" music do pretty well up until 1890, start to fall apart until they reach 1920 or so, and then just collapse. The better ones parrot each other, especially if they include a small section on electroacoustic music, which no one seems to know what to do with. If you've read one entry on e.m., you've read them all, in a quite literal way. (R-F's rough guide probably leaves out thousands of fine composers from all centuries, for that matter.)

There are books that focus on the twentieth century. Some of those are quite good. But even the best one of the lot, David Cope's New Directions in Music, has never mentioned Luc Ferrari, not in seven editions. I don't think Ferrari is mentioned in Peyser's book or in Nyman's. I do not keep up with the books, though. There may be much finer books than any of these three that I simply don't know about.

Otherwise, your comment about nineteenth century writers misses one salient difference between writing a book and writing a piece of music. The book doesn't have to be performed to come alive. (Add to that the fact that to get a book published, you only have to convince one person that it's good, and you see how different those situations are. A composer has to convince sometimes hundreds of people that her (or his) work is worth playing. A lot more work goes into a performance of a piece of music, or the production of a play or ballet or opera, than goes into hanging a painting in a gallery or publishing a book. A lot more people have to be involved.