Women In Music: Historical Trailblazers
"It’s a boys’ club." Women everywhere have borne the brunt of this statement. Across all industries, women have been cast in men’s shadows. Women are rejected, held to double or unfair standards, and generally not given the same amount of respect as their male counterparts.
Women absolutely deserve the same attention, respect, and money that men get in the music industry. While things are slowly starting to change, there’s still a long way to go. Hopefully, we can get there someday.
While the sign on the boys clubhouse saying “No Girls Allowed” has long been stripped away, the sentiment is slow to follow. Sure, women can enter the club, but will we be granted acceptance? Working doubly hard for half the reward, it seems that we have to fight for the same privileges that men are granted.
We tend to focus on the now, at a time when women are more present than ever. However, fun fact, women have always been around. Stretching all the way back to medieval times, we have Hildegarde of Bingen repping women in a world that was entirely dominated entirely by men. She was a badass who created her own language, composed, and even made her own musical play. I'm a 21st century woman who struggles to do my ecology homework!
Our heroes continue through the classical times. Even though it was considered unacceptable for women to receive the same education as men, there were still prolific women composers at that time. Consider Mozart’s sister, Maria Anna or Nannerl as she was nicknamed. A virtuoso of equal if not greater ability than her brother Wolfgang, the two siblings learned, played, and toured together. However when Nannerl got older, her father ceased to see her as a musician, but as just a woman so she was condemned to sit and home and wait to be married. While Wolfgang went on to bring fame to the Mozart name, Nannerl's music was unfortunately lost to history.
Other composers also wrote and performed alongside their male counterparts, such as Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann. Fanny wrote around 500 compositions total, mostly existing only in manuscript form. Some of her works were even published under her brother Felix's name. Incredibly, Clara Schumann managed to not only compose, but even tour. All while managing eight children and a husband.
The classical period is heavily focused on in music education, with names like Beethoven, Mozart, and Liszt being thrown around constantly. For good reason. These composers were fantastic! However, the education system is not. There's a gap in music education when it comes to learning about historical (and even contemporary) women in music. Female composers are often relegated to a single chapter in the textbook. These composers deserve to share the same limelight as men, not simply be cast as supporting characters.
Nowadays, classical music is still tough on women. Look at how many female conductors there are. I can almost bet, you've never even seen one. There’s severe underrepresentation. It’s not due to a talent gap or inability, but lack of encouragement and being shut out of spaces. If we don't even learn about female composers in the same detail as we do men, how are we supposed to even know there's a possibility of existing in the classical or even music space in general?
Fast forwarding some two hundred odd years to today, despite women now being allowed and even encouraged to pursue a career in the arts, we are still underrepresented in the music industry. I hope that by shedding some light on some incredible women in the industry, from past to present, I can encourage more of us to break into the music world.