Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Women Composers
- Cambridge Companions to Music
- The Cambridge Companion to Women Composers
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Music Examples
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Prologue
- Part I Themes in Studying Women Composers
- 1 Historical Women Composers and the Transience of Female Musical Fame
- 2 In Search of a Feminist Analysis
- 3 Composing Women’s History
- 4 Progress and Professionalism
- 5 Women Composers and Feminism
- Part II Highlighting Women Composers before 1750
- Part III Women Composers circa 1750–1880
- Part IV Women Composers circa 1880–2000
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
2 - In Search of a Feminist Analysis
from Part I - Themes in Studying Women Composers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2024
- The Cambridge Companion to Women Composers
- Cambridge Companions to Music
- The Cambridge Companion to Women Composers
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Music Examples
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Prologue
- Part I Themes in Studying Women Composers
- 1 Historical Women Composers and the Transience of Female Musical Fame
- 2 In Search of a Feminist Analysis
- 3 Composing Women’s History
- 4 Progress and Professionalism
- 5 Women Composers and Feminism
- Part II Highlighting Women Composers before 1750
- Part III Women Composers circa 1750–1880
- Part IV Women Composers circa 1880–2000
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
‘I don’t think you intend to be discouraging in your book. I think you have merely overlooked those who are routinely overlooked, that is to say half the world’s population.’1
The words of Reta, in Carol Shields’s Unless, are applicable to the analysis of women composers’ works. Among areas forming a musical canon, the sub-discipline of musical analysis has only recently displayed awareness of the attention to women composers and their music that has taken root in the practice and productions of musicology over the past few decades. Yet at the time from the 1980s onwards when literature on women composers began to present a significant challenge to the pedagogical canon, a new wave of interest in analysis was sparking the publication of textbooks and journals that could have offered an opportunity to include women’s works as valid subjects for analytical interpretation.2
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Women Composers , pp. 36 - 49Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024