Women Musicians Research Articles

Queer episodes in music and modern identity

Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity approaches modern sexuality by way of music. Through the hidden or lost stories of composers, scholars, patrons, performers, audiences, repertoires, venues, and specific works, this intriguing volume explores points of intersection between music and queerness in Europe and the United States in the years 1870 to 1950 - a period when dramatic changes in musical expression and in the expression of individual sexual identity played similar roles in washing away the certainties of the past. Pursuing the shadowy, obscured tracks of queerness, contributors unravel connections among dissident identities and concrete aspects of musical style, gestures, and personae.On one end of the spectrum are intense, private connections and tantalizing details of musical expression: romantic correspondence between Eugenie Schumann (a daughter of Clara and Robert) and the singer Marie Fillunger; John Ireland's confessional letters to a close friend of an illicit passion for young choristers; 'closet formations' in the music of composers such as Maurice Ravel, Edward Elgar, and Camille Saint-Sens.At the other extreme are public, often flamboyant intimations of deviance and their repercussions: the craze for male impersonators in American vaudeville between 1870 and 1930; the politics of appropriation implicit in showy transcriptions by pianists such as Liberace; the increasingly homophobic reception accorded Tchaikovsky's music in the early twentieth century. The authors also explore how traces of queerness can mark communities, such as groups of German men who fashioned homosexual identities by way of the cult of Wagner or women musicians who were assigned suspect or deviant status by virtue of being jazz instrumentalists. Throughout these discussions, music provides the accompaniment for confrontations between disparate conventions of social propriety and diverse forms of sexual identity. These provocative essays open the consideration of music and sexuality to an exciting new sense of inbetweenness, passage, and diversion.

Performing Race, Culture, and Gender in an Indigenous Australian Women's Music and Dance Classroom

One perpetual concern among Indigenous Australian peoples is authenticity of voice. Who has the right to speak for, and to make representations about, the knowledges and cultures of Indigenous Australian peoples? Whose voice is more authentic, and what happens to these ways of knowing when they make the journey into mainstream Western academic classrooms? In this paper, I examine these questions within the politics of “doing” Indigenous Australian studies by focusing on my own experiences as a lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland. My findings suggest that representation is a matter of problematizing positionality and, from a pedagogical standpoint, being aware of, and willing to address, the ways in which power, authority, and voice are performed and negotiated as teachers and learners of Indigenous Australian studies.

?Singing for Our Lives?: Women's Music and Democratic Politics

?Singing for Our Lives?: Women's Music and Democratic Politics

Phyllis Weliver. Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860–1900: Representations of Music, Science, and Gender in the Leisured Home. (Music in Nineteenth‐Century Britain.) x + 330 pp., illus., tables, apps., bibl., index. Aldershot/Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2001. $79.95.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewPhyllis Weliver. Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860–1900: Representations of Music, Science, and Gender in the Leisured Home. (Music in Nineteenth‐Century Britain.) x + 330 pp., illus., tables, apps., bibl., index. Aldershot/Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2001. $79.95.Cynthia Ellen PattonCynthia Ellen Patton Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 93, Number 3September 2002 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/374099 Views: 21Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: "Encroaching on All Man's Privileges." By Paula Gillett and Women Performing Music: The Emergence of American Women as Instrumentalists and Conductors. By Beth Abelson Macleod

Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: "Encroaching on All Man's Privileges." By Paula Gillett and Women Performing Music: The Emergence of American Women as Instrumentalists and Conductors. By Beth Abelson Macleod

Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860-1900: Representations of Music, Science and Gender in the Leisured Home (review)

Those chary of the Victorian novel should not be misled by the title of Phyllis Weliver's Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, for her book is about much more than novelistic fiction. Rather, it is an ambitious and wide-ranging study that explores the intersections between nineteenth-century discourses of science, gender, and narrative fiction, with music being the knot in that nexus. Indeed, it is the pivotal presence that music assumes in these other fictions that is the book's great insight.

Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: "Encroaching on All Man's Privileges." by Paula Gillett (review)

Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: "Encroaching on All Man's Privileges." by Paula Gillett (review)

“Singing for Our Lives”: Women's Music and Democratic Politics

Although democratic theorists often employ musical metaphors to describe their politics, musical practices are seldom analyzed as forms of political communication. In this article, I explore how the music of social movements, what is called “movement music,” supplements deliberative democrats' concept of public discourse as rational argument. Invoking energies, motions, and voices beyond established identities and institutions anticipates a different, more musical democracy. I argue that the “women's music” of Holly Near, founder of Redwood Records and Redwood Cultural Work, exemplifies this transformative power of musical sound.

Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: "Encroaching on All Men's Privileges", and: Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860-1900: Representations of Music, Science and Gender in the Leisured Home (review)

Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: "Encroaching on All Men's Privileges", and: Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860-1900: Representations of Music, Science and Gender in the Leisured Home (review)

"Singing for Our Lives": Women's Music and Democratic Politics

Although democratic theorists often employ musical metaphors to describe their politics, musical practices are seldom analyzed as forms of political communication. In this article, I explore how the music of social movements, what is called "movement music," supplements deliberative democrats' concept of public discourse as rational argument. Invoking energies, motions, and voices beyond established identities and institutions anticipates a different, more musical democracy. I argue that the "women's music" of Holly Near, founder of Redwood Records and Redwood Cultural Work, exemplifies this transformative power of musical sound.

The Personal Characteristics and Environmental Circumstances of Successful Women Musicians

This study investigated the personal characteristics and environmental circumstances of successful U.S. and European women in music and compared these findings with 14 specific characteristics from previous research on eminent people and high-achieving adolescent girls. Data were gathered through a survey questionnaire completed by 60 professional musicians and 61 trained female musicians who decided against a career in music, and 12 interviews of professional women musicians. Results indicated that both groups surveyed appeared to have many of the characteristics of other eminent and high-achieving people. Differences in personal characteristics suggested that professional musicians are highly self-directed, motivated, less conforming to gender stereotypes, and aware of a career goal at an early age. Differences in environmental circumstances suggested that professional musicians come from highly musical families and may come from homes either without brothers or with much younger brothers.

Review of book. Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: 'Encroaching on all man's privileges'. P Gillett

Review of book. Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: 'Encroaching on all man's privileges'. P Gillett

Performative Pedagogy in Teaching and Learning Indigenous Women's Music and Dance

Using hooks' understandings of engagement as an underlying theme, in this paper I will focus on the effectiveness of performance in pedagogy, performative pedagogy and the pedagogical as performative practice (Giroux, 1997:3) in teaching Indigenous women's music and dance.

From Hildegard to Holiday

Women musicians were virtually ignored in the literature of Western music until their recent inclusion in standard reference sources and other publications. However, making these works available to the researcher becomes a challenge for library collection development departments, especially for small libraries unaffiliated with music schools that have only a modest music collection and budget. This paper offers guidance in developing a small collection of books on women in music that will complement the current collection and provide a more accuratehistory of Western music. Justification for building a collection on women musicians and an annotated list of recommended books are included.

An Historical Perspective on Contributions of American Women Music Educators

An Historical Perspective on Contributions of American Women Music Educators

Eden Built by Eves: The Culture of Women's Music Festivals (review)

In Eden Built by Eves, Bonnie Morris surveys the twenty-five-year history of women's music festivals--temporary but annually recurring communities ("Eden") created by lesbians ("Eves"). Morris's qualifications for such an undertaking are personally and professionally substantial: she is a festival veteran and history professor. Having attended her first festival in 1981, she has since devoted her summer vacations to the festival circuit. She is honest about writing from the biased perspective of an insider who has attended festivals in the roles of anonymous "festiegoer" (paying attendee), stage performer, backup singer, emcee, workshop presenter, and coordinator. Throughout her years of festival attendance, Morris archived her own experiences and those of others by means of journal, camera, and tape recorder. Her training as a historian has enabled her to transform her personal archives into a well-documented history of women's music festivals and their culture. The importance of her contribution lies in the fact that previously published feminist histories do not reflect the experiences of a great many women; in contrast, some women will recognize themselves in this history, the first comprehensive exploration of the festivals.

Resisting the Historical Locations of Tunisian Women Musicians

Resisting the Historical Locations of Tunisian Women Musicians

Review: Stacy Holman Jones (1998). "Caleidoscope Notes": Writing Women's Music and Organizational Culture

Review: Stacy Holman Jones (1998). "Caleidoscope Notes": Writing Women's Music and Organizational Culture

An Analysis of Gender in a Spanish Music Textbook

The main aims of this article are to examine whether women musicians are represented in, or excluded from, a music textbook used in Spanish schools and, if represented, how their participation in the music world is reflected in such textbooks. I develop a model of analysis to examine the portrayal of women in the illustrations, the written text and the song lyrics. Textbooks still constitute one of the most used educational materials in many music classes in Spanish schools. As in other countries and educational systems, textbooks define the curriculum and determine the music practices in the classes. As a result, they dictate what pupils learn about music in Primary and Secondary education. A critical analysis of these educational materials is absolutely necessary. I shall analyse whether women musicians' disadvantages in relation to men in the music world are perpetuated, examined or questioned and criticized in this textbook, and whether this textbook is therefore maintaining or resisting the dominant power relations associated with gender in society.

Women, musics, bodies, and texts: The gesture of women's music

This essay grew out of my exploration of gesture as a conceptual rethinking of linguistic constructions of the body. There is, of course, the literal sense of gesture‐physical action that communicates cognitive and tactile knowledge. But there is also the gesture of subjectivity‐a forceful, pleasurable, and excessive experience‐in‐creation. This experience‐in‐creation is dramatically realized in the making of women's music. I use Julia Kristeva's theory of signifying to argue that women's music is gesture in examining the work of women's music artist Peggy Seeger, along with my attempts to write her music in my own artistic practice. For Seeger, performing is the gesture of bodies in a state of music, a gesture that challenges and transforms gendered subjects through song.