Read on to discover if female composers are really as respected as their male counterparts….
Are female composers more respected today?
Let’s start with a truism: no composer ever wants to be judged as a female composer. Perhaps there are artists who do not wish their work to be judged solely on its own merits – but I’ve yet to meet one.
That can’t happen if we never experience the art of half the population. And so, around a decade ago, there was a flurry of interest, not to say anger, over the dearth of female conductors and composers in concert programming. It sparked efforts to change this situation for good; and, for a while, they seemed to be working. I previously caught up with some female conductors to assess progress in the past ten years. While they welcomed change, they also feared it was skin deep. What about composers?
Judith Weir, the first woman ever to hold the post of Master of the King’s Musick, is the perfect person to start our stocktaking. ‘I wouldn’t say I’ve been starved of opportunities, personally,’ she comments wryly. ‘Now I’m seeing people, whom I mentored ten years ago, making great strides and having fantastic opportunities. Also, I think that some of the big names have become more visible. It’s sad that Kaija Saariaho left us last year, but everyone could see she was a towering figure. And for me Sofia Gubaidulina is an incredibly major composer. In the last decade it’s been more possible to appreciate them without prefacing that by thinking, “Oh, I’d better mention a woman composer…”’
Programming works by female composers is a risk
Nevertheless, progress has often been a question of two steps forward, one step back – and perhaps worse, as global challenges have caused untold disruption, notably the Covid pandemic. Additionally, in the UK the knock-on effects of Brexit are rebounding on composers in myriad Kafkaesque ways – the extra expense and delays in obtaining scores and orchestral parts from Europe being one notable example. Arts funding cutbacks have meanwhile resulted in a general sense of precarity across Britain’s music industry, exacerbated by the ‘levelling-up’ process that has counterproductively wrecked several touring opera companies.
Everywhere, belts are tighter and nerves tauter. In such times, promoters become less willing to take risks. Music by women, in many cases relatively new to the concert ‘market’, is less familiar to a wide public and therefore represents more of a risk, no matter its content. As for commissions, those cost money too.
The negative effects of Brexit and the pandemic on female composers
Before the pandemic, a remarkable 2015 initiative from the PRS for Music Foundation, Keychange, set out to sign music festivals and promoters across 12 countries to a pledge committing to 50-50 gender-balanced programming by 2022. Sound and Music responded in 2017 with the aim of ‘50-50 by 2020’. They have had real and proven impact, and continue to exist and evolve – but it was nobody’s fault that the pandemic proved disruptive. ‘The combination of Brexit and the pandemic could not have been much worse,’ comments the composer Nicola LeFanu, emeritus professor of music at University of York. ‘The new music part of the industry is always precarious, but now it’s been put it in a position that’s almost unviable in some cases.
‘During the first lockdown, which was disastrous for performers, it was not so bad for composers because you could write. You couldn’t do anything else! But thereafter, there were no opportunities for performances: a lot of ensembles and orchestras were nervous about box office and when audiences returned, they weren’t going to take risks. Those who were willing to take risks first had to play the existing commissions that they couldn’t play during the pandemic. They weren’t about to make new ones. Music by women, being slower to have gained exposure, was often less familiar to audiences, and therefore represented a greater risk.’
Notes of hope… Radio 3, NMC and The Proms
Nevertheless, notes of hope have arrived; not least, BBC Radio 3’s programming has become far more inclusive, and not only around International Women’s Day. ‘I think Radio 3 is really to be congratulated,’ LeFanu says. ‘I often switch on the radio and find that, oh good, they’re playing Grace Williams. The record company NMC has been exemplary too, and they now have the Imogen Holst Fund which enables the recording of more music by women.’
The UK, despite various own goals in the past five years, is doing better on this front than some other places. I write this three days after watching an Asian female conductor, Elim Chan, and a Black British concert pianist, Isata Kanneh-Mason, raise the roof with Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto at a sold-out First Night of the Proms. Such things rarely happen at certain international festivals I could mention.
The picture generally looks more positive for a generation fired up by high-profile role models, LeFanu suggests. ‘Now young women can hear and see music that is composed and conducted by women, and I think they feel very empowered by it. Looking at the quantity of women composers in conservatories and universities, and also among the emerging composers, it’s quite a good number.’ Today, on courses that she teaches, she finds roughly a 50-50 gender balance; but when she was first professor at York, ‘it was more like one third women’.
Female composers… ‘to effect real change, we have to look deeper’
But is the change more than skin deep? She isn’t so sure. ‘At the moment, I think there are still a lot of concert organisations that are box-ticking. They might think of a programme that they want, then think, “Oops, we haven’t got a woman composer in there.” The same thing regrettably applies to the diversity issue. They then just reach for a name they know.’ To effect real change, we have to look much deeper.
‘It’s easier than it used to be to search for repertoire,’ she points out. ‘In the last ten years a number of books about women composers have been published, with useful bibliographies and lists of catalogues.’ There are more recordings, too, and streaming services bring the chance to hear them at the touch of a button. ‘My main advice to promoters is to be bold, and not just go for the familiar name.’
Anna Clyne… creating opportunities for female composers of all ages
The Grammy-nominated, London-born composer Anna Clyne has lived in the US for 22 years and injects a note of international optimism. ‘In the US I am very encouraged by the leaps and bounds that my colleagues are making in creating opportunities for the next generation,’ she says. ‘In the UK, organisations are also being more mindful in diversity representation in programmes for young composers, such as the Philharmonia’s Composers’ Academy.’
Clyne is among those taking proactive steps to help build the infrastructure necessary to ensure lasting change. This, she suggests, involves strengthening awareness of women composers’ works from the past as well as the present. ‘It was the previous generation of women composers, including my mentors Julia Wolfe and Marina Adamia, who enabled the beginning of a shift in public awareness. Passing the baton, and with awareness of past struggles, I am eager to create and develop new opportunities for women composers of all ages.’
This has included founding such initiatives as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s New Stories programme for emerging women composers. ‘I have also been mindful to programme and suggest works by some of classical music’s most vibrant but underrepresented voices from the past. We must breathe life into both new and old works, created by women from all cultural backgrounds.’
The importance of 50/50 programming
But while all art deserves to be assessed only for its own merits, not the ‘origin’ or ‘identity’ of its maker, how can we encourage this actually to happen? Perhaps a ‘level playing field’ would help. Roxanna Panufnik, fresh from writing a Sanctus for King Charles III’s coronation, comments: ‘Four other women were commissioned for the coronation too, so it was approaching equal representation.’ This is not just ideal, she suggests, but crucial: ‘I’d like to see more 50-50 programming. I still see entirely female composer programming, which I think is a mistake.’ That is because so many names are still unfamiliar, creating a vicious cycle: ‘I worry that that’s probably a deterrent to people coming to concerts. I think you have to mix it 50-50.’
A composer… not a woman composer
I can’t help wondering what the great Elizabeth Maconchy, LeFanu’s mother, would have made of today’s situation. ‘She was always extremely clear that she was a composer, not a woman composer – and that’s true of all of us,’ LeFanu says. ‘She was the sort of person who was instinctively a feminist, but probably wouldn’t have thought to call herself that – she simply got on and lived an independent life. At the time when I was beginning my career, she was very well known and was often on the radio being asked these questions. She was quite forthright in saying that men and women had equal talents and just needed the opportunities so that we could all hear the results.’
Exactly so – and to make change lasting, we need to keep sight of the ideals that underpin it. ‘My hope is that future generations from all backgrounds are fearless in exploring their dreams and that support networks nurture their individual voices,’ Clyne says. She finishes by quoting Serena Williams: ‘Every woman’s success should be an inspiration to another. We’re strongest when we cheer each other on.’