Introduction
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Scope of Course
1. Women and Music: Three Approaches
 Women’s Music-Making in Society: A global view
 Herstory: Women in Western Art Music to 1900
 Women in 20th Century and Contemporary Music
2. Music Written by Women
 We will be studying music composed by women, whether songs by
Joan Baes or symphonies by Louise Farrenc.
 We will be examining the parameters, constraints and opportunities
for women creators, and study the interplay between social context
and musical creation.
3. Music Performed by Women
 Not all of women’s music was written by women. Some were
written by men for men, but appropriated by women; some were
written specifically for women performers; this is valid in both art
music and popular music, and we will be studying what it means if
a woman appropriates a male-gendered voice, and – on the other
side – how women perform music gendered female composed by
men.
Two music examples:
 The Argentinian singer, Mercedes Sosa and Violeta Parra’s song:
“Gracias a la vida”
 Jazz diva, Ella Fitzgerald, performs Cole Porter’s “You’d be so nice
to come home to”
Uncovering Women’s Music
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A historical and critical perspective
Women and Music: A historiography
Early Key Texts in the Historiography of Women Musicians
 September, 1847
o Maurice Bourges: “Des femmes-compositeurs,” Revue et
Gazette musical de Paris
 First article series dedicated to women composers as a
distinct group of musical creators
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1876
o Fanny Ritter: Woman as a Musician: an Art-historical Study
 A study sponsored by the Association for the
Advancement of Women
1888
o A.T. Michaelis, Frauen als schaffende Tonkunstler: ein
biographisches Lexikon
 A 55-page dictionary of women composers, probably
the first dictionary dedicated to women composers
1895
o Eugene de Soleniere: La Femme compositeur
 A 57-page book written by the French librettist, poet
and music critic.
 It contains an introductory text, biographic sketches of
contemporary women composers and a short dictionary
of women composers.
 The author planned to write a more substantial history
of women composers, but died at age 31 in 1904,
during his research on the book. He described his new
project on women composers as “a critical and
documentary study, followed by a biographical and
bibliographical dictionary of women’s composition from
Antiquity to today.”
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1902
o Otto Ebel, Women Composers: A Biographical Handbook of
Women’s Work in Music
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First major dictionary dedicated to women musicians,
with more than 750 entries.
It is translated into French in 1908 as Les Femmes
compositeurs de musique.
1903
o Arthur Elson: Women’s Work in Music
 A history of women’s roles in music, from antiquity to
the beginning of the twentieth century.
 Women as muses, performers and composers.
1917
o Kathi Meyer, Der chorische Gesang der Frauen: Teil 1: Bis zur
Zeit um 1800
 One of the key early 20th-century study of female
musical groups
1948
o Sophie Drinker. Music and Women: The Story of Women in
Their Relation to Music
 First large-scale feminist study devoted to women in
music
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Topical and multicultural approach, using
anthropological, iconographical, mythological, and
historical sources
Signal Texts in the Launch of Women’s and Gender Studies in Music
 1979
o Catherine Clement, L’Opera ou la defaite des femmes
 The first feminist engagement with music under the
umbrella of gender representation in opera, written
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by a psychoanalyst
A signal work with major repercussions, including her
influence on the American musicologist, Susan McClary
1981
o Eva Rieger, Frau, Musik & Mannerherrschaft
 First major feminist study of women and music, a very
self-consciously political book, influenced by feminism
and post-1968 politics
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1986
o Jane M. Bowers and Judith Tick, eds., Women Making Music:
The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950
 First major historical survey in English on women’s
music
 A collection of essays from some of the leading scholars
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in the field
Essays bring some major creators to the attention of
discipline
1987
o Ellen Koskoff, ed., Women and Music in Cross-Cultural
Perspective
 First major collection of essays in ethnomusicology
which focuses on women’s roles in traditional musics
1990
o Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender and
Sexuality
 First major feminist study in the U.S. engaging with
both the general musical repertoire and contemporary
women’s music
 Focuses on gender studies, keeps distance from
historical work on women composers
1993
o Marcia J. Citron: Gender and the Musical Canon
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A study which engages not only with women musicians
and their contributions to music history, but also asks
questions about the exclusion of women from
musicological and historical discourse
Major monograph that explored the ideology of gender
in women’s creations since the 19th century and its
impact on the formation of the musical canon
1994
o Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood and Gary C. Thomas, eds.,
Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology (NY
and London)
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First important collection of essays which brought gay
and lesbian musicology into the main stream
Developments in the Study of Women’s Music Since the 1970s
1. Making available women’s music
 The emergence of publishers and record companies dedicated to
women’s music (ex. Furore Verlag)
 The publication of anthologies of women’s music. One of the earliest
was the Historical Anthology of Music by Women, edited by James
Briscoe (Bloomington, 1987), which came with a recording that
allowed us to listen to music by women for the first time.
 Increasingly broader catalogue of recordings, especially when more
and more scores became available
 With the edition of Louise Farrenc’s collected works, begun in 1982,
the first female composer has received the same scholarly attention
to her compositional work that is usually still reserved to male
composers
2. The historical study of women’s music and biography
 Collections of essays were dedicated to women’s music
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The biographies of individual composers and performers are
uncovered in articles and monographs
 Several dictionaries and databases dedicated to women musicians
make names, dates, etc. available as a starting point into research
 Music in female institutions such as convents become the topic of
scholarly studies
 Studies also focus on groups of performers (ex. Women pianists,
women jazz players, women saxophone players, etc.)
3. Feminist Approaches to Women’s and Men’s Music
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In addition to the “compensatory” history of women’s music,
scholars have engaged with critical approaches towards women’s
music
Approaches reach from sociological to anthropological enquiries,
from cultural histories to feminist analysis of music.
Topics embrace anything from sexually and gender performance to
class and biography.
Women and Music: Critical Perspectives
1. Major issues addressed in the “Introduction,” in Textbook
 need for an interpretation of materials about women’s musicmaking unearthed in historical and ethnographic enquiry
 this led to enquiries about social and cultural contexts: class, status
and power of women
 1980s introduces questions about the construction of gender and
sexuality, in particular the binary construction of gender. Suzanne
Cusick proposes to embrace an “eclectic multiplicity” (where
inquiries into sexuality, race, ethnicity and class intersect with
feminist musicology)
 1990s bring focus on performance/performativity of gender in the
context of music
2. Women’s Studies verses Gender Studies in music? The Difference
Dilemma
 “The body of knowledge about women musicians has continued to
grow and flourish, and its importance for the feminist goal of a fully
representative music scholarship is immeasurable, but its
relationship to what may be referred to as feminism proper varies
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with the degree to which each project makes use of interdisciplinary
feminist theory and methods.” – Ruth A. Solie, “Feminism”
“By 1990 women’s history in music had developed within three
interlocking categories – repertory, social process and ideology…
The process of integrating women’s history into mainstream
narrative texts, and into the methodology of historiography itself,
remains a profoundly important challenge. Nevertheless, the study
of gender in music from various perspectives and through diverse
approaches is now more widely countenanced.” – Judith Tick,
“Women in Music”
“Most persistently debated are the opposed feminist positions that
have been taken with regard to “the difference dilemma’, a
primarily strategic disagreement about whether the similarities
between the sexes, or their differences, should underlie feminist
argument. Put differently: since the category ‘women’ has been so
burdened with historical and cultural resonance, as well as unjust
laws and unfavorable material conditions, there is intense and
continuing discussion of the extent to which it can be recuperated
either for the celebration of achievement or for the exploration of
women’s particular experience. An equally energetic argument
asserts that the unitary category ‘women’ inappropriately obscures
differences in race, class and other aspects of social identity which,
like gender, distribute power and authority differently within
different social contexts.” – Ruth A. Solie, “Feminism”
Women’s Lives
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Motherhood and Music
Are women’s musical roles gender specific?
 In many societies, women and men do appear to occupy separate
spheres, creating not necessarily two separate and self-contained
music cultures, but rather two differentiated yet complementary
halves of culture
 Reference to women’s music and musical practices are not
uncommon in ethno-musicological literature
 When ethnographies focus on female initiation rites, birth, or child
care, women’s musical activities associated with such events are
frequently noted
Music as an global expression
Lullabies:
 Music is embedded in our memories from the earliest moments of
childhood and is strongly connected to many moments –
insignificant and important – in the life cycle
 Hearing a lullaby before sleep is one of the first musical experience
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Common features
o Repetition: engaging to children since babies wake up to new
sound; as a calming and soothing agent
o Tight/narrow range of sound: not something to catch
attention
o Vocal: higher pitch as in baby talk; women solo; intimate
o Lyric: teaches value in that society; or just nonsense syllables,
the sound effects of the lullaby take precedence over meaning
Bengali Lullaby:
o Moderate pace, low volume, and extensive repetition with
both instrumental and vocal parts
o Refrain: recurring line
o Interaction of the instruments: echoes and then repetitive
o Ostinato: four-beat drum rhythm, descending melody, two
strokes of the small brass bells; mimic the rocking motion
o Culture representative
o Soothing, not very fast
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o Repetitive
o Complex lyrics
o Flexible with multiple repetition
Hebrew Lullaby
o Only sung to baby girls
o Identify origin and date
o Feminine
o Use of images: grape is perceived as feminine
o Rhythm emphasized is unrelated to the word but the melody
o Secular, no religious content
o Only sing in private to sooth
Kiowa Lullaby
American Lullaby: “Hush, Little Baby”
Summary
o Flexible form
o Rocking motion
o In all societies, children are particularly attentive to the
gestures and postures which, in their eyes, express
everything that goes to make an accomplished adult – a way
of walking, a tilt of the head, facial expressions, ways of
sitting and of using implements, always associated with a
tone of voice, a style of speech, and a certain subjective
experience
“Gender” is socially constructed opposed to “sex”.
 We inscribe different characteristics which overlap with our gender.
 “Feminine”: can be very problematic within contexts
 Men are not comfortable crying in public: gender construct
Music can be powerful acting as a drive
 National Anthem at international events
 Music has to be regulated since it can be problematic when
associated with different situations
 Lullabies can be soothing, but it would not fit into any sorrowful
situation, like funerals. This is why we need laments.
Women’s Lives
1/12/2012 5:09:00 AM
Women as mediators of grief
Laments in Antiquity
 Women are considered the one who lament opposed to men are not
supposed to.
 The assertion that weeping is for women does not merely express
machismo in either its Spanish or its English sense; it is a cultural
fact of the Mediterranean tradition, just one manifestation of the
principle that the uninhibited expression of emotion belongs to
women and not to men. In Greek tragedies, full-scale ‘monodies’
sung by individual characters are largely characteristic of women,
above all in Euripides, the tragedian par excellence from his death
till the Romantic era, whose female characters articulate emotions
(and frequently in song) with a clarity that astounded his early
audiences, but who never assigns a monody to a mature Greek
male. The vivid representation of female emotion continued in
Hellenistic literature, most notably in the passionate Medea of
Appolonius’ Argonautica, one of Virgil’s models for his Dido, but also
in laments put in the mouth of a women scorned or abandoned by
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the man she loves. – Leofranc Holford-Strevens
As the voice of lament, women’s ritual chanting is ancient Greek
society’s instrument for expressing sorrow at the deaths of kings
and heroes in epic and for effecting the separation between the
living and the dead that is one of the functions of funerary ritual. In
both activities, it has a dangerous side and awakens ambivalence in
the male-dominated society of early Greece, in part because
women are associated with pollution, corruption, decay, and
disorder. – Charles Segal
The Sound of Lamenting
 Female lamenters often serve as intermediaries, making public
the private grief of an individual. In so doing, they turn personal
mourning into a communal experience. In some cultures, they
take on magico-religious powers, where their musical performances
act as a link between the living and the spiritual world of the dead.
Though lament traditions vary widely around the world, they exhibit
certain striking similarities in vocal expression and melodic
construction. In many cases, the prominence of intermediary
sounds, such as cries and wails, blur the boundaries
between speech and song. More melodic than speech-like, the
lament is punctuated with sobbing and shouts to express grief.
Often the melody hovers within a limited range of a fifth or less.
The songs generally consist of a series of improvised variations on a
pattern of narrow melodic intervals that begin on a high pitch and
cascade downwards three or four notes, as seen in the ritual wailing
called sa-yalab sung by women of the Kaluli people in the rain
forest of Papua, New Guinea.
Uncovering Women’s Blues in Rural America
 During the early period of blues recordings, female vocalists like Ma
Rainey and Bessie Smith were active in urban areas, while singers
recorded from the rural South were largely male. The perspective
of rural blues is usually male, and when I asked James Thomas
where blues comes from, he replied: ”Where they come from? They
come from men, all I know.” - William Ferris
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Although many histories of the blues hardly mention the
contribution of women, the music was central to their experience. If
not in the fields, they often worked alone – … - and blues were the
lullabies they sang, standards rooted in tribal memory, or songs as
slow articulation of their own lives. Evidence of this is reflected in
the recorded subject-matter of female blues artists – not only do
they sing about their relationships, but they also use the domestic
imagery of cooking (as Memphic Minnie’s ‘I’m Gonna Bake My
Biscuits’) growing plants, making honey or keeping hens. Blues told
their story just as accurately as it did that of a the male
sharecropper. – Lucy O’Brien
Since the early 1920s, there has been a fascination with black rural
practices, especially the blues. The result is a vast literature that
documents the early blues, mainly from the point of view of the
southern black male experience. Only during the past decade has
much attention been paid to female blues singers. Scholars have
focused on the life experiences and songs of woman who sang the
urban, classic blues in the 1920s and early 1930s. Through their
readings of song texts, they have placed classic blues at the center
of black feminism in early twentieth-century America. While these
analyses provided depth and dimension to the blues discourse,
there is still a facet of the blues tradition that scholars have
ignored: the role women played in the antecedents of the classic
blues, most specifically the rural blues tradition. – Kernodle
Musical Structure of the Blues
 As the blues was created largely by musicians who had little
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education and scarcely any of whom could read music,
improvisation, both verbal and musical, was an essential part of
it, though not to the extent that it was in jazz. To facilitate
improvisation a number of patterns evolved, of which the most
familiar is the 12-bar blues. Apparently this form crystallized in
the first decade of the 20th century as a three-line stanza in which
the second line repeated the first, thus enabling the blues singer to
improvise a third, rhyming ling while sing the second.
This structure was supported by a fixed harmonic progression,
which all blues performers knew: it consists of four bars on the
tonic, of which two might accompany singing and the fourth might
introduce a flattened seventh; two bars on the subdominant,
usually accompanying singing, followed by two further bars on the
tonic; two bars on the dominant seventh, accompanying the
rhyming line of the vocal part; and two concluding bars on the
tonic. Such a progression could be played in any key, though blues
guitarists favored E or A and jazz musicians B. Many variants exist,
but this pattern is so widely known that ‘playing the blues’ generally
presupposes the use of it. – Paul Olivier
Music Example from W.Africa
 West-African Yoruba Chorus
o Expressiveness
o Interactions between the drum and the vocal
o Get-togethers
 Traditional West-African Folk Story
Bessie Tucker: Rural Texas Blues
 Penitentiary
 The high-pitched opening moaning (holler tradition) that segues
into the first phrase of the chorus
 The echoing of the vocal lines in the piano which begins to imitate
rural guitar playing
 The increasingly improvisatory performance style of Tucker
 The shift in Tuckers performance in the last verse from moaning to
a type of crying-singing
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Work with texts to express emotion, different stresses/emphasis
Memphis Minnie: Rural Blues Becomes Classic
 Biography
 Hustling’ Woman’s Blues
o Her own experience as a prostitute in the South
Blues as Black Women’s Lament
 In 1930, Memphis Minnie recorded “Memphis Minnie-Jitis Blues,”
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which recalls her infection with bacterial meningitis and the
substandard medical care more received. Despite the humorous
pun in the title, the song tackles a tragic topic. Bacterial meningitis
was fatal in the 1920s and 1930s, and lower classes in the ghettos
were especially vulnerable to the disease.
Strugglin’ Woman’s Blues – Clara Smith
Outdoor Blues – Memphis Minnie
Women’s Voices
1/12/2012 5:09:00 AM
Seduction and Sexuality
Music are said to have magical powers:
 Women are constrained where, when and to whom they can
perform
 Society pressure regulates
Sirens
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Sirens feature in ancient legends throughout the world and have
repeatedly been associated with the enchanting, inspirational and
prophetic quality of music. Sirens are related also to knowledge,
seduction and danger, most famously in Homer’s Odyssey.
o Clog their ears
o Tied to the pole
o However, seduced when he heard the singing
o By telling the story, we realize how powerful the music is
As a result of the nineteenth century's fascination with sexuality,
nature and culture, the siren became a trope for the alluring threat
of female seduction, in particular the femme fatale. Countless
paintings show beautiful women holding a lyre and singing. Their
victims either are the spectator or painter lured into the scene, or
are represented as doomed or already dead male bodies.
It is not surprising that the mechanical sound that warns us from
danger-the siren-takes the name of its female embodiment.
Definitions of a Siren
 a woman-like creature who caused the wreck of ships and death of
men by the use of their sweet singing and instrumental playing
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a dangerous beautiful woman
Greek root meaning to bind or attach
Something which makes a loud warning sound often found on police
cars, ambulances and fire trucks
Sirens are often associated with water. They don’t physically kill the
men, rather lure them into extremely dangerous situations.
Marilyn Monroe as Loreley Lee: An American Siren
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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with Jane Russell
Soft voice, which would make “victims” more vulnerable
Rather than doing the dance numbers, she sang with a more
breathy voice
Curtain: blue and sparkles, making the scene of water
Dress: long slit and red sparkling, how sirens are portrayed in
public culture
Blonde
Contrast from the other performers
The Siren of “Lurley Rock”
 Loreley, the siren of the river Rhine, is rather young for a mythical
creature. We even know her year of birth, 1802, and her genealogy
as the main character in a long ballad by Clemens Brentano,
included in his novel Godwi, which told the transformation out of
betrayed love of a beautiful young fisherman's daughter into the
sorceress Loreley. Loreley was named after the "Lurley" or "Lorle"
mountain, a rock formation above the Rhine near Goarshausen,
which had featured in various texts about the Rhine valley and its
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geography since the thirteenth century.
The presence of a "spirit" in the rock was first mentioned in the
early seventeenth century in Origines palatinae, and by the mideighteenth century, local folklore started gendering the spirit as
female. The first literary text that turned the spirit into a woman
and thus fixed the local narratives into a quickly and widely
accepted pan-German legend was, however, Brentano's Lorelei
ballad.
Through it, the modern Rhine siren was born, and the landscape
transformed into its female embodiment by naming the siren after
the rock. Within a short span of time, Loreley became a widely
appropriated legend, and her transformations—of which Marilyn
Monroe's Lorelei Lee is but one of the more recent—provide a
fascinating case-study of the cultural tropes involving the alluring
but ultimately fatal seduction attributed to sirens in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries
Loreley: The German Siren
 The Loreley myth played an important role in forging of German
national identity in the 19th century, particularly through Friedrich
Silcher’s 1837 setting of Heinrich Heine’s Loreley. The strophic song
in a lilting 6/8 barcarole rhythm was conceived as a melody in the
folk-tone, appropriate for a poem that depicted an “old fairy tale.”
Silcher’s version acquired the status of a popular national hymn,
which travelled with immigrants to the shores of the U.S.A. and to
the German colonies in S.W. Africa. The iconic power of the Silcher
song becomes evident at the beginning of the 1979 TV drama
Holocaust, when a wedding party, comprising a wide range of the
political and religious strands of 1930s Germany, unites in singing.
Loreley had become the symbol for German “Rheinromantik”,
invoking patriotic nostalgia and nationalism.
Representing Loreley
An English Traveller
Robert Schumann, 1840
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Lied
Music of poetry, transform music into lyrical
Conversational
Descriptive not only in words, but in the music
o Riding horse, rhythmically decisive, sharp,
o Excited when saw the women/siren
o Seductive singing when singing in drawn-out style,
hypnotizing
Women’s Voices
1/12/2012 5:09:00 AM
Dance as a Female Voice in Japan
Main issues in Text:
 Nihon buyo is a genre dominated by women, while kabuki remains
an all-male genre
 While kabuki theater began with onna kabuki, women were banned
from performing on kabuki stages in 1629. Public  private
 Women studied dance and music
o Geisha
o Middle class studied as part of basic etiquette training
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o During the 18th century, wealthy merchant class studied in
hope for employment in samurai households
Traditions and embodiment of cultural knowledge
o Concept of shifting sense of self
What is nihon buyo?
o A genre primarily based on a narrative
o Dancers tell the story with their bodies; while a vocalist
narrates the plot in song, including the voices of all the
various characters
o In some dance pieces, performers assume single role; in
others, they take on multiple roles.
Learning through example: Ame no shiki (Raining in the four
seasons)
o A male traveler encountering seasonal rains in Edo (Tokyo)
o Numerous contrasting roles to illustrate his journey
o Use of kimono supports character shifts
Codeswitching: enculturated behavior and speech in Japan; mirrors
a social coordination of self with clear among people
o Shifting notions of self that are relational
o Surface (omote) and inner (ura) self do not need to
correspond
o Shifting as “meta-level” knowledge about social relations and
interactions
o Codeswitching relies on shared modes of communication
within a subculture
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Interpreting multiplicity in relation to notions of female self
(fragmentation or empowerment). In the safe environment of dance
lessons, role playing can offer an emotional outlet as well as an
expanded vocabulary of identity.
Ame no shiki
Opening scene
 Entering, with three-stringed lute; very slow lyrical melody, male
vocalist; masculine position, shielding his face from the rain with
the fan as a straw hat
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Japanese music often indicates atmospheric changes. Rain stops:
faster pulse, bells, flutes and drums, chorus singers.
What he sees: birds, musicians, a mother with a child
The mother with child: feminine movements; slower tempo, higher
range, lilting melody
Buddhist temple, candy peddler, four fruit peddlers
Women’s Theatrical Embodiment of Male Characters in Other Cultures:
 Indrani: Kuchipudi
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Javanese: sword fight
Giuditta Pasta in the role of the warrior Tancredi in Rossini’s
eponymous opera
Class Discussion
 Whose voice is it anyway?
 The singer’s voice or the listener’s?
 The author’s or the singer’s?
 To what extent do these voices embody and/or transgress the
gender boundaries of their societies?
Women’s Voices
1/12/2012 5:09:00 AM
Umm Kulthum, the Voice of Egypt
We hear our own stories in her song.
 She is a vessel of her voice.
 She is a transmitter, at the same time, this is very gendered as
women are the ones who give birth.
Umm Kulthum became a powerful symbol, first of the aspirations of her
country, Egypt, and then of the entire Arab world.
Music Examples:
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El Hob Kollo (“All the Love”)
o Music by Baligh Hamdy, who worked with Baligh from 1957 to
1974
 Rich voice, authoritative performance
 Her voice and the music switch in domination
 Uses male pronoun in the text
 One big opponent was a male performer: traditional vs.
modern (Western); had and sing-off, a concert with the
two, and after two hours, she declared winning
o Lyric by Ahmad Shafiq Amel, text is Egyptian Colloquial
Al Atlal
Virginia Danielson on Umm’s Impact
 Most famous singer in the 20th century Arab world
 Performed over 50 years, 1910 (wedding and special occasions with
her father) to 1973 (her final illness)
 300 songs, one of the first recording artists
 Monthly, she broadcasted her concert over radio waves, and
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became one of the first radio artists
People gathered to listen to the broadcast
When she died in 1975, her funeral was described as bigger than
that of President Jamal ‘Abd al Nasir.
She was the voice and face of Egypt
From extracts
 Sang in universities, motivated the revolution in years following
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Even as a high class woman, she could blend in with students
Her voice was super powerful and confident
Never planned on becoming the “voice of Egypt”, but how she
presented her music lead her into what has become
Where does she come from?
o Rural Egypt
o Purity
o Authenticity of traditional singing
Professional Women
1/12/2012 5:09:00 AM
European Courtesans
The tradition of the Courtesans
 Music in entertainment at royal court
 Institutionalized in many art traditions of Asia and N. Africa, and
Europe, eg. Moorish Spain and 15th century Venice
 Powerful men restricted their own wives and daughters
 Women who are wives and daughters who were planned to be
married were put aside from public performance, dancing or singing
 A small fraction of women from the lower socioeconomic class, or
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even slaves, were considered performers, courtesans, dancers,
prostitution and so forth
Women performing in public are not considered good women
Using her voice as a method of seduction while performing in public
Concerto delle Donne: Professionalization of the Female Musician Courtesan
 Concert of women
 Ferrara, N. Italy in the late 16th century: famous for music for about
100 years, splendid music, musical center
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Patrons: Alfonso and Margherita d’Este
Aristocratic marriageable women played chamber music in the
original concerti di donne at Ferrara, lower-born women has
ambiguous status
Object of Envy: The Concerto delle Donne. It complemented the
"public" splendor of the court chapel with a sublime musical group
to whose performances only selected members of the court and
only specially chosen guests were admitted. Access to exclusive
pleasure instead of more widely accessible festivities are the
supreme distinction for a person at court.
New musical group that performed in private apartments of the
ruling couple
Later on, the concerto delle donne was part of courtly life; every
princely household had to have at least one
Beginnings
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1580 with one male singer (Giulio Cesare Bancaccio) and three
women musicians (Laura, Anna, and Livia)
The women appear in the court-rolls as ladies-in-waiting to the
duchess
Torquinia joined in 1583
These four women were brought in and paid richly by the court
because of the beauty of their voices, and they sing regularly on
demand
Peverara, beautiful, virtue of singing, playing excellently, became
the prima donna of the group
Singers
 The Women singers
o Upper middle class, artists or merchants
o Musical education: talent and careers
 Laura Peverara
o Mantuan merchant
o Education for being groomed for courtly society
 Anna Guarini
o Poet and court secretary
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Money
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o Musical education
Tarquinia Molza
o Poet
o Educated
o Poetess and singer
Livia d’Arco
o Minor Mantuan nobleman
o Without a noble woman’s education
o Two years of guidance before singing publicly
Cesare Brancaccio
o Hired as a musician, fired because he refused to sing once
o Musica secreta
Highly paid
Brancaccio: 400 scudi per year, house, and horses
Peverara: 300 scudi per year, married, house furnished
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Molza: 300 scudi per year, rooms
Luzzasco Luzzaschi:135 scudi per year, rooms and a farm
Music
 Madrigals: songs for several singers, often love poetry
The Composer
 Luzzasco Luzzaschi
o Singer at court
o Organist and keyboard player
o Musica secreta
o Publish music after the death of the duke
Music Examples
 Cantate ninfe
o Repeated verses, top level singers, word emphasizing
o Singing nymphs
o Male singing started at second line
o Sound mimic for joking and laughing, male voice missing,
gender difference
 O dolvezz’ amarissime
 T’amo mia vita
The imitators
 Northern Italy
Composer, singer, courtesan? Barbara Strozzi, La Virtuossissima Cantatrice
Biography
 Daughter of a poet
 Celebrated for her singing, published compositions, cultivated
 Suspect of prostitution, not a professional musician
Compositions
 Le tre grazie a Venere
o Consort of Musicke
o Settings in her lyric
o Turning the female body into a musical piece
o Music are highly sexualized in Venice
o Eroticize the piece
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o Writing her own music and her own poems
Amor dormiglione
Professional Women
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India’s Public Dancers
Nacnis
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Female dancers who perform in public
Sexually active yet free, one of the rasikas is her partner
Bound to her keeper by love and art
Out-caste
Associated with fertility
Master of musical activities that are considered male
Couples
They are more integrated into the patriarchal world
Mardana or Men’s Jhumar
 Gendered
 Drums with a clear and loud sound
 A duple division of the beat
 Bouncing and jumping
 Sexual allusions in texts
 Ex. Kistomani dancing mardana jhumar, musical gathering in Sanga
Village
Janani or Women’s Jhumar
 Without drums or softer and more diffuse sound
 Lilting triple subdivision
 Uniform
 Co-ordinated, swaying, hip-to-hip and in line
 Texts are about women
 Ex. Janani Jhumar at Brown University
The voice of the Nacni
 Accommodations to the men’s style ultimately reconcile the gender
difference
 Refashion her vocal technique, lower her range
 Hard to distinguish voices in singing
 The nacni along makes the accommodation, in effect capitulating to
a man’s timbral world, following his lead.
Pancpargania Style
 Rasika leads his nacni
 Link arms for long periods of time to enact their romantic union
 In Nagpuri style, a nacni daces independently
Quiz Review
Review Introduction
History dates: overlap to the intro from book
Developments since the 1970s
Lullaby
Laments: not very detailed
 Styles
Sirens
 Marilyn Monroe
 Blondes
Nihon Buyo
 Video
 Dance
 Props
 Code switching
 Ame no shiki
Umm Kulthum
 Webpage
Courtesan
 Concerto delle Donne
 Geishas
Jhumar
 Gendered difference
 Social role of nacni
Listening
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2 min top per piece
name the piece while listening
Cantate ninfe
o Concerto delle Donne
o Coming from the rural countryside
o Natural
Penitentiary
o Bessie Tucker
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o Field holler
o Coming from Africa, AA women stick with their cultural
heritage
o 20th century Blues
"Come O Sleep"
Bengali Lullaby
Dorothy
Whitehorse
Delauny
"There's a little bunny
swimming"
Kiowa Lullaby
Hebrew
folksong
"Hush now, go to
sleep"
Noumi, noumi, yaldati
American
folksong
"Hush little Baby"
Hush little Baby
1580
Luca Marenzio
(1553–99):
First Book of Madrigals, Cantate ninfe
1644
Barbara Strozzi First Book of Madrigals Le tre Grazie a Venere
1840
Robert
Liederkreis op. 39. no.
Schumann
3
Waldesgespräch
(Conversation oin the
Forest)
1928
Bessie Tucker:
Penitentiary
1930
Memphis Minnie
Memphis Minnie-Jitis Blues,
1950s Umm Kuthum
"All the love," music by
Baligh Hamdy, lyrics by El Hob Kolloh (extract)
Ahmad Shafiq Amel.
Short Answers and MC’s
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Be aware of multiple answers
Marilyn Monroe
o Breathy
o Seductive
o Siren
o Costume
o Stage décor
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Barbara Strozzi
Sophie Drinker
Eva Rieger
Marcia Citron
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