NYPR Archives & Preservation
The Influence of Women in American Classical Music
(This article was originally published in the March 1987 WNYC Program Guide).
A few years back, I read an unsettling magazine article about dinosaurs. According to some experts, the thundering reptilian heroes of our childhood imaginations may not have been reptiles at all, but birds. They may even have had feathers.
I mention this because I want you to read what follows with a certain sense of the historical vertigo that a woman who is a composer feels in writing it. It is comfortable to speak of "the influence of women on American classical music," on music in general, and to see that influence as a consequence of the feminist movement or of the 20th-century enlightenment to see music as one more field where women are at last taking their "rightful place." But women have always been a vital force in music. Their contributions have been excluded from histories and women themselves, until recently, have been excluded from highly visible institutional positions in the music world, for reasons having nothing to do with their abilities or energies, reasons which ought to be (but are not) as dead as Tyrannosaurus.
The contributions of women composers to classical music are not suddenly happening; they are at last — and gradually — being uncovered and encouraged, often by other women who have achieved on-going influence in the practical affairs of the music world: these women are performers, conductors, impresarios, and orchestra managers and administrators.
Performers do more for a composer than maximize the merits of her music by their virtuosity. Importantly, by actively collaborating with the composer, by advocating performance of her work and sharing their own international visibility with the work, outstanding performers place musical compositions in the orchestral repertoire alongside the "masterworks." Eugenia Zukerman, for instance, was responsible in great measure for the Premieres and recordings of two works of mine, Aubade and Ulloa's Ring, and for the nationally broadcast performance by Neville Marriner and the Minnesota Orchestra of Thea Musgraves' Orfeo. It was guitarist Sharon Isbin who proposed to Henry Charles Smith, Resident Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, that he program and conduct the premiere (broadcast nationally) of lvanna Themmen's guitar concerto. Isbin also premiered and recorded (with flutist Carol Wincenz) works of Joan Tower. Arlene Auger sought out and commissioned Judith Lang Zaimont.
At the same time, performers are being challenged by women composers working in experimental areas. Joan LaBarbara's intensive work with extended vocal techniques has introduced music for alternative voice into the orchestral world, specifically through her piece Chindra, which I heard Houston Symphony perform. Perhaps more sweepingly influential, the musical socio-theatrical compositions of Meredith Monk, the high tech performance art of Laurie Anderson, and the young Ellen Fullman, the ferocious Diamanda Galás, are not merely affecting, but defining the American musical avant-garde.
The careers of both female and male composers are being encouraged by women impresarios such as Nancy Shear of WNYC, Fran Richards, Director of Serious Music at ASCAP, Nancy Clarke, Director of the American Music Center; by Marnie Hall, founder and director of Leonarda Records, and Rosetta Reitz of Rosetta Records. Marsha Mabrey, a conductor and Professor of Music at the University of Oregon, Eugene, founded, organizes and presents the Women Conductors and Composers National Symposium, a forum for women professionals to discuss trade issues. And composers such as Vivian Rudow, Marga Richter and Marjorie Rusche have all instituted performance series focused on composing colleagues, men and women.
Very much alive, but with a new focus, are all-women orchestras. Until the musicians' union in the U.S. affiliated with the American Federation of Labor in 1904, professional orchestras systematically excluded women performers. In response, women formed their own ensembles, yet the press tended to treat them derisively, as "girl bands," or not at all, as in the case of black women orchestras like the Boston Fadettes (1888-1920), the Ladies Orchestra of Chelsea, Massachusetts (founded 1884), and in the 1940's, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm.
Today's women's orchestras are associations of choice, not necessity. A flourishing example is the Bay Area Women's Philharmonic, now in its sixth season. Formed of union musicians who have opted to play here rather than elsewhere under the direction of conductor Jo Ann Falletta, the Bay Area Women's Philharmonic concentrates on the highest caliber performances of music primarily, but not exclusively, by women composers.
Finally, women hold influential positions with established orchestras, a long overdue situation which can only help in the uncovering of musical genius independent of its gender. While Deborah Borda was Artistic Administrator of the San Francisco Symphony (she is now Executive Director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra), she oversaw commissions and premieres of works by Vivian Fine, Janice Gitek, and Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Zwilich. The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, under the artistic administration of Sarah Solotaroff, has programmed works by Miriam Gideon, Thea Musgrave, Janika Vandervelde, Gloria Coates, Carol Barnett, Kim Sherman, Sarah Aderholdt and yours truly. In Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., women are managers or artistic directors of symphony orchestras. Most importantly, music directors such as Catherine Comet, Tania Leon and Victoria Bond are stepping onto American podiums and into power.
Women's contributions to American classical music are becoming more apparent — because they are being heard. And they are being heard because women are involving themselves professionally in all the aspects of the music business. As the music of women is heard, I anticipate it will more and more be valued purely as music. Perhaps when the histories of music in the late 20th century are written, the concept of "women's contribution" will be obsolete.
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Libby Larsen (b. 24 December 1950, Wilmington, Delaware) is one of America’s most performed living composers. She has created a catalogue of over 400 works spanning virtually every genre from intimate vocal and chamber music to massive orchestral works and over twelve operas. Grammy Award winning and widely recorded, including over fifty CD’s of her work, she is constantly sought after for commissions and premieres by major artists, ensembles, and orchestras around the world, and has established a permanent place for her works in the concert repertory.
As a vigorous, articulate advocate for the music and musicians of our time, in 1973 Larsen co-founded the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composer’s Forum, which has become an invaluable aid for composers in a transitional time for American arts. A former holder of the Papamarkou Chair at John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, Larsen has also held residencies with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony and the Colorado Symphony.