2 Barriers
One of the biggest factors that has led to classical music repertoire being so male dominated is women composers’ exclusion from the classical music canon. Canon comes from the Greek word ‘kanon’ meaning a standard or rule. Applied to the arts, it means the series of timeless ‘masterpieces’ which are considered to represent the finest achievements within any given art form. The concept of a canon of artistic masterpieces first developed in literature and was then applied to music. The musical canon developed in the nineteenth century – a time when women had very few rights and were largely excluded from public life – and focused exclusively on male composers, such as Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Mahler.
The emerging classical music canon became firmly entrenched through performance. Public concert life developed rapidly during the nineteenth century, with many new concert halls and opera houses being built throughout Europe. The repeat performance of the composers and works that were gaining their place within the canon enshrined the idea that these were the ones most worthy of attention. Although there were many active women composers during the nineteenth century – such as Clara Schumann, Fanny Hensel (born Mendelssohn), Louise Farrenc, Emilie Mayer, Augusta Holmès, Cécile Chaminade and Ethel Smyth – women often struggled to gain opportunities, within such a deeply patriarchal society, to have their works performed. Consequently, they were then excluded from the canon. This exclusion normalised their absence from classical music repertoire and this problem persists to this day.
Until relatively recently, the canon also formed the bedrock of musical education and training. Women composers were only very rarely included within music history and many music students received a training which meant they never played, studied, or sometimes even heard a single piece of music by a woman as part of their musical education.
Absence is a powerful teaching tool. The absence of women composers from the canon and musical education has caused the ongoing absence of women from the performing repertoire today. These are the historical problems which we need to confront.