NEWSLETTER v 3 n 2 October 1994
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A $ by your name on the mailing label means your membership is due. Membership is $3.00 (US, UK or Canadian currency acceptable). Make cheques payable to Queen's University. Send cheques, names and addresses (add e-mail &/or phone number, if you wish) to: Dr. Roberta Lamb, School of Music, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6. |
In this Issue:
2.1 The Society for Ethnomusicology's 29th Annual Meeting
2.1.1 Pre-Conference Symposium "Gender Trouble" in Music Research:
Theoretical Challenges, Problems, and Approaches
2.1.2 SEM Education Committee Pre-conference Workshop: Teaching World
3.1 AERA Workshop on Feminist Research
3.2 With a Song in Her Heart: A Celebration of Canadian Women Composers
Through Performance and Discussion
3.3 University of Western Ontario Symposium
3.4 CMS Symposium on Music & Gender
4. Book Reviews
A Review of School Music Texts by Susan Wheatley
5. Previous Conferences: A Call for Reports
6. Announcing: Music Gender and Education Newsletter
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A. The name of this international organization shall be Gender Research in Music Education (GRIME).
B. The purpose of GRIME shall be: to provide a forum for promoting scholarship that addresses gender issues in music education; to share research and classroom materials that focus on gender issues in music education; and, to work towards establishing a climate within the music education discipline that addresses issues, concerns and scholarship pertinent in any way to gender. GRIME provides an opportunity for networking among those people concerned with these issues.
C. Membership is open to all those who subscribe to the aims of the organization and pay its annual dues. Membership shall not be restricted based upon employment or student status or upon affiliation or non-affiliation with any professional music society. Annual dues shall be agreed upon at an annual meeting and published in the GRIME Newsletter. Membership shall include a subscription to the GRIME Newsletter and a Membership Directory.
D. Annual meetings shall be held at the MENC (even-numbered years) and Feminist Theory and Music (odd-numbered years) conferences.
The above Statement of Purpose is the result of discussion at the April 1994 MENC followed by a mail-in ballot. By mid-July, a total of 26 ballots were received. Twenty were in favour of the change to international, while a majority voted (15-11) to retain GRIME as the name. Although 10 wanted the purpose to remain as first proposed, 16 favoured the change as indicated. These will be the guidelines under which we operate as an organisation until such time as we affiliate with a larger association or we change them at an annual meeting.
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2.1 The Society for Ethnomusicology will host the 29th annual meeting on October 20-23, 1994 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Milwaukee, WI.
Registration $50 for regular SEM members and $25 for student and retired members. Non-SEM members $65, non-member students $30. One-day registration $25 day. Pre-conference symposium fee $10. Contact: Elizabeth Price
ph# 703-528-1902, x3025;
e-mail: LIZ@AAA.MHS.CompuServe.COM
or Jane Bowers at ph# 414-229-4393
or 414-332-9420;
e-mail:jmbowers@csd4.csd.uwm.edu.
2.1.1 Pre-Conference Symposium "Gender Trouble" in Music Research: Theoretical Challenges, Problems, and Approaches. Wednesday, October 19, 1994 1:00-5:00 pm Hyatt Regency Hotel, Milwaukee
This year's pre-conference symposium features an afternoon devoted to the open exchange of ideas and work in progress. The conveners seek to promote interdisciplinary dialogue among researchers working in diverse fields, including ethnomusicology, folklore, anthropology, and musicology, who are also engaged or interested in feminist and/or gender approaches to the study of music. The roundtable features a discussion of recent writings in these fields and brief presentations from a number of scholars on their work in progress. For more information please contact:
Susan C. Cook
School of Music
University of Wisconsin
Humanities -455 N. Park
Madison WI 53706
ph# 608-263-4926
Elizabeth Tolbert
Peabody Conservatory of the
John Hopkins University
1Mt. Vernon Place
Baltimore, MD 21202
ph# 410-659-8158
2.1.2 SEM Education Committee Pre-conference Workshop: Teaching World Music in the Schools. Wednesday Oct. 19, 1994. Milwaukee Public Schools, all day.
During this workshop ethnomusicologist clinicians will work in individual Milwaukee Public Schools, after which area music teachers will be invited to a late afternoon forum to discuss issues in teaching world musics in the classroom.
For more information contact: Dick Mennicke, Music Supervisor for the Milwaukee Public Schools ph# 414-475-8175 or Workshop Coordinator Kari Veblen ph# 608-238-9902.
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3.1 AERA Workshop on Feminist Research (April 1994)
By Mary Hookey, (Nipissing University College)
As one of the special extended sessions during the AERA conference five women offered a training session on feminist research:"Feminist Approaches to Research Methods; Renovation or Revolution?" Each of these women worked in different contexts, including the Educational Testing service, the university and private practice. Each brought her own interpretations of what it means to apply a feminist way of knowing to research.
Although this is the second time this group had presented at AERA, the similarities and differences among their beliefs often seemed as much a revelation to them as well as to the workshop audience. To provide the basis for illustrating the way that a feminist approach would affect their research, each prepared a research proposal based on the same call for a proposal. While Suzanne Damar began with a feminist standpoint "examining the world as women experience it," the other three presenters did not restrict themselves to women's experience alone or to a single research methodology. Like Pat Campbell, they applied commonalities in feminist research methods centering around issues of power, distance and access to a variety of research methods.
It was clear that from a feminist perspective, individual understandings of the possibilities in a feminist perspective and the degree of political freedom allowed by a funding agency created entirely different research frames. As the presenters described the elements of her research proposal, the issues around how the problem would be stated, how the questions for the study would be asked and answered, which literature would be consulted, and how the conclusions and implications would be focused, challenged our personal images of research. Gwyneth Boodoo's stories of addressing feminist issues within traditional large-scale projects using quantitative methodologies was particularly thought provoking. At what point could one say research is touched by feminist concerns?
By the end of the session there seemed to be far more questions than answers. Responses to the workshop format remind me how difficult it is to either encourage, or do, reflective work in a short time period.
The workshop format itself has, in the past, been the ideal context for providing neat and tidy explanations of one idea or another. Somehow this workshop fell short of providing the support necessary for collaborative sense-making or for deliberate opportunities to explore our own values. However, each of the presenters provided an example of a research proposal influenced by feminist thought from which each of us could draw to enrich our own understanding. Based on the number of people at this workshop and the level of dialogue, other research organizations might also wish to provide space for people to consider the impact of feminism on research.
3.2 With a Song in Her Heart: A Celebration of Canadian Women Composers Through Performance and Discussion. University of Windsor, Windsor, ON (March 11-12, 1994)
By Andra McCartney (York University)
Who are Canadian women composers? Do they speak with different voices? What areas of music are less open to women? Do we emulate or tell our own stories? How is the musical canon constructed and how do we re-write it? These are just some of the questions discussed at the University of Windsor's conference in celebration of Canadian women composers.
Saturday morning panel session entitled "The Other Side of Silence: Issues in Women's Music," included presenters Virginia Caputo, York University; Marie-Thérese Lefebvre, University of Montréal, Geraldine Finn, Carleton University, and Elaine Keillor, Carleton University.
Virginia Caputo's talk, "Exploding Canons: Places for Music by Women," interrogated the relations of power in the musical canon, its myths of neutrality and universality that perpetuate the values of the dominant group through the exclusion of those in a marginal position. She pointed out that the Canadian League of Composers, for instance, began with 10% female membership, and still has only 10% women now.
Marie-Thérese Lefebvre discussed "The Emergence of a New Reality for Québec Women Composers." She reported on the work of Québec women composers from the 1960s to the present, beginning with Micheline Coulomb St.-Marcoux and music theatre, and the multi-media work of Marcelles Deschenes, continuing with the humour of Giselle Ricard and the multi-media and instrumental music of Anne Laubert. The network of influence of Québec women composers had expanded by the 1980s to include such women as Lorraine Vaillancourt, Veronique LaCroix, Ginelle Bertrand, Nicole Carignan, Syvelle Martin, Isabelle Panton, Linda Bouchard, Maria Pelletier and Michelle Boudreau. These contemporary composers express a feminine imaginary world, a new tradition of "femmes fameuses (femmeuses)."
Geraldine Finn, in "The Power of Music: The Music of Power" explored the implications of music as an agent of power. The phallogocentricity of Western music, with its insistence on a conception of the composer as exclusive, rational author bypasses the fleshly body, mother and mat(t)er. Sound is devalued and displaced on to and as woman, and the control of sound, body, flesh are parallel to the control and production of women. Finn cited Gayatri Spivak's caveat that we need to negotiate the structures of violence that enable us to do what seems both impossible and necessary as a woman: to create.
"Are We Really Minorish?" asked Elaine Keillor. She pointed out that as far back as Boethius, certain musical modes were described as lascivious and effeminate, and some as restrained and rational. Rameau also conceptualized the minor triad as feminine and less natural, an expression of sad, doubtful sentiments.
This gendering of basic musical elements continued into the development of sonata form, and the devaluation of "feminine" compositional styles. If we are not minorish, what are we? Can we think of ourselves as one "we" at all?
The second panel, entitled "Ourselves, Our Work: The Composer's Perspective." The panelists were Carol Ann Weaver, from Waterloo; Mary Gardiner from Toronto, myself, and Elma Miller from Burlington.
The session began with Carol Ann Weaver's talk, "Themes in Composition--Uniquely Feminine?" Her paper asked several important questions: "1. Do we emulate the known canon of male musical composition and aesthetics, hoping for a sort of gender anonymity? 2. Do we enter the world of music in order to create our own independent canon and aesthetics, complete with implied new rules as to what "feminine music" means? 3. Do we tell our own musical stories in our own manner(s) and trust that canonization, theories, and aesthetics will follow?"
Mary Gardiner spoke about her experience of beginning to compose later in life in her presentation, "The Late Bloomer." She considers herself a teacher by profession and a composer by expression, coming to composing after a career as homemaker. Gardiner was encouraged to perform and to teach, but never to compose. She is aware that some of her colleagues have quit composing because of the difficulties of getting performances and commissions. She spoke of the importance of networking, and the great work of the Association of Canadian Women Composers, the American Women Composers, and the International League of Women Composers in this area.
My presentation, "Creating A World For My Music to Exist," reflected my dual roles as composer and academic. I spoke about the area of electroacoustic music as a particularly difficult one for women, giving examples of some of the sexist and violent language associated with music technology. For instance, a customer in a Toronto store, on hearing sounds he wanted to copy, said "Oh, I've really got to rape that disk," while a professor in an electronic music course told a student that she "had to learn to ejaculate" if she wished to become a good electroacoustic composer. Music technology magazines, meanwhile, compare synthesizers to tanks and the studio to a battlefield. At the same time, electroacoustic music has great possibilities: there is a whole spectrum of sound, encouraging us to listen to environmental sounds in new ways.
Elma Miller's talk entitled "Merely Conventional Signs"spoke of the music establishment's tendency to go with a winner, and then, if it's successful, play it again. To decide whether it is a winner, they ask themselves whether it is not too difficult, too long, too inaccessible, too unknown, or uses too many odd instruments. She also spoke of our responsibility to let composers' leagues know whether they are working for composers or not. Miller said that if they are not fulfilling our needs, we should quit, and let them know why.
Lunchtime keynote address was given by Elaine Keillor, entitled "Where Do We Go From Here?" Keillor pointed out how, in societies based on "culturally constructed and maintained notions of power and control," music plays an important role because it is believed to have the power to control and manipulate emotions. In the distinction between control and out-of-control, women are associated with the latter. Keillor noted that Ellen Koskoff makes a distinction between inner-oriented societies, where control is not as central an issue as in outer-oriented societies.
In early historical references to Canadian composers there was a greater percentage of women mentioned than elsewhere. Keillor speculated that this may have been because of the influence of the ideas of First Nations peoples, whose society is more inner-oriented.
She concluded by suggesting that we look to the example of female musicians of the First Nations, and that we should depart from the conference with the goal of hearing the songs in every heart.
Full conference proceedings will be published by the University of Windsor, and should be available later this year.
3.3 University of Western Ontario Symposium (March 5, 1994)
By Charlene Morton (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education)
Rebecca Green was the "mystery speaker" at the symposium in honour of her father's retirement from the Faculty of Music at the University of Western Ontario, London. Although in attendance with the rest of the Green family for the full day of presentations, Rebecca was not suspected as the final speaker by many present, including her father. After acknowledging her father's contributions to her education, she presented her paper titled "Teaching Music as Cultural Studies: Why Not Music in Education? " Rebecca stated that, for the most part, cultural studies has not included music in its critical analysis (except in its background roles such as in film and marketing). Neither have musicologists taken up the critical discourse of cultural studies. She noted the lack of critical analysis of influences of capitalism, patriarchy, and imperialism on music, compared to work on text or visual images. Although both Bennett Reimer and Wayne Bowman alluded to "situated cognition" and "contextual sensitivity" respectively in their presentations earlier in the day, Rebecca examined key issues that directly took up the challenge of situatedness and contextual sensitivity. She did this by sharing three pedagogical components that she has found helpful when teaching her classes in cultural studies and music. First, she proposed to explore the question "What are the contexts that make music meaningful?" and the relationship between the author/composer and the power of the listener/performer. Second, she tries to develop a kind of musical literacy in her students, i.e., an ability or vocabulary to communicate musical meaning. She has found music scores useful as aids to objectify musical concepts. They help students to focus on specific musical elements during "the wash of sound." Similarly, she asks students to write their ideas during listening exercises as many are more willing to offer their comments once they have been written. Her third suggestion was to question the values implicit but not acknowledged in aesthetics as a route to a critique of music that would acknowledge the power of music in people's lives.
Rebecca has been on leave this past academic year working on her doctoral dissertation, and will be returning to teach cultural studies at Trent University, Peterborough.
3.4 CMS Symposium on Music & Gender (Oct 14, 1993)
by Sondra Howe, University of Minnesota
This symposium preceded the 36th annual meeting of The College Music Society in Minneapolis, MN. During the opening plenary session Carol Robertson spoke on exploring cross-cultural differences and Leo Treitler addressed issues of iconological interpretations of women. Jane Bowers reported on the 1993 Institute for the Study and Teaching of Women and Music.
Participants then broke into small discussion groups to discuss various issues: professional relations in academia, feminist analysis, mentoring and networking, research implications relating to gender, curriculum, cross-cultural approaches to the study of gender. In the evening there was a concert of works by Libby Larsen, Diane Thome, and Judith Lang Zaimont.
During the CMS meeting there were many excellent sessions devoted to women and music. There were lectures on Helen May Butler's Ladies Military Band (J. Michele Edwards), repertoire of the Ospedali Veneziani (Joan Whittemore), Carrie Jacobs-Bond (Joan O. Epstein), Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel's "Sunday Musicales" (Margaret E. Freeman), and Barbara Garvey Jackson (Annie Janeiro Randall).
There were performances of works by CMS composers Lily Hood Gunn, Joan Tower, and Carol Barnett and concerts of lieder by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, a song cycle by Libby Larsen and songs of Lili Boulanger.
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A Review of School Music Texts by Susan Wheatley.
The Silver Burdett and Macmillan publishing companies have released a new series for elementary school and one has a brand new high school text. The focus of this review is on listening repertoire composed by women composers. There are more women musicians in these latest series, but the number of inclusions are disappointing.
In Silver Burdett's series, The Music Connection (Grades K-8, 1995), the 6th grade book reveals that out of 103 listening selections, there are 3 examples by two women composers: "December", from Judith Zaimont's Calendar Set along with her Reflective Rag, and Indigena, by composer/conductor Tanya Leon. The 5th grade book has 81 listening selections and two are by women: Libby Larsen's string quintet, Four on the Floor, and Judith Zaimont's, Serenade to Music. In Grade 4, nestled among 80 listening lessons there is another selection from Zaimont's Calendar set, this time "July". The 3rd grade book which has 61 listening lessons includes one woman composer, Nettie Simon, and grades 1 and 2 have no selections by women composers, except for Bessie Jones, who is a wonderful collector of African-American folk songs, and Charlotte Diamond who writes children's tunes.
In the junior high books Silver Burdett has over 80 listening lessons in each book, and 4 pieces by women: Cecille Chaminade's Rmanza appassionato", "Concertino for Harp," by Germaine Tailleferre, an excerpt from Suzanne Ciani's Composition for Synthesizer, and Thea Musgrave's "At Most Mischief" from Four Madrigals.
Summing up Silver Burdett's selections, there are only two women composers mentioned that were born prior to the 20th Century, and only eight "classical" composers in the series as a whole. The Silver Burdett series as a whole has 619 listening selections, with eleven selections - or a mere 1.6% - by women composers.
The Macmillan McGraw-Hill series Share the Music (K-6, 1995) looks a little more promising. There are selections by women which at least span four centuries through music history. There are three selections by women in Grade 6's listening repertoire of 51 pieces: Judith Ficksman's Amoeba, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Celebration for Orchestra, and Rondeau for harpsichord by Elizabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre. Grade 5 has 29 composers represented in the listening selections, and four are women: String Quartet in B Minor, by Teresa Carreño (1853-1917); Suite for Wind Quintet by Ruth Crawford-Seeger; an excerpt from Thea Musgrave's opera Harriet, the Woman Called Moses; and Intrada by Guild Keetman. This fifth grade book also has a lesson about chamber ensembles accompanied by a sample program of a "typical" chamber music concert which lists four works and two are by women. Middle grades 3 and 4 in Macmillan have fewer inclusions by women. Among 45 listening lessons for Grade 4 includes Scherzo from Teresa Carreño's string quartet, and Island Rhythms, by Joan Tower. There are also two interviews of famous musicians Eva Legene, world renown recorder player, and Marian McParland, jazz pianist.
The 41 listening selections in Grade 3 include Cortege by Lili Boulanger, and a song by Emma Lou Diemer, "Seven Limericks." Four of Macmillan's 46 listening selections in Grade 2 are by women: Hummingbird by Amy Beach; Intrade from Paraliopomena by Gunild Keetman; Waltz No. 1, a piano piece by Viennese composer, Katharina Cibbini-Kozeluch, and "Breezes", by Anna Rubin. In Kindergarten and Grade 1 there are 44 and 40 listening lessons respectively. Grade 1 includes a selection from Libby Larsen's The Settling Years and a piano piece by Amy Beach, Waltz No. 3. The Kindergarten text includes a two-piano piece, "Cache-cache mitoula" (Hide and Seek) from Jeux de plein air, by Germaine Tailleferre. In summary, out of 250 listening selections in the Macmillan books K-6, sixteen selections were by women composers - 6.4%.
In addition to the elementary text, Glencoe, a division of Macmillan, has released a brand new publication which is designed as a high school music appreciation text: Music! Its Role and Importance in Our Lives (1994), leaves one wondering whose lives the authors had in mind. There are over 400 listening selections which accompany the text. There are 10 selections by Mozart, another 10 by Bernstein, about 15 by J.H.S. Bach, and 8 by Beethoven, to name just a few "standard repertoire" male composers. Searching through this text to find the works of women results in the shocking exposé that Libby Larsen is the only composer represented with excerpts from her works Settling Years, Four on the Floor, and the opera Frankenstein. It is hard to believe that Glencoe could release a publication like this one to high school audiences at a time when the educational community is focused on encouraging gender and ethnic diversity across the curriculum.
These sources were reviewed in April at the Music Educators National Conference in Cincinnati. With regard to at least the elementary texts, it looks like both series have made important first steps to include some music of women composers. In past series one was hard pressed to find any. (There is actually only one piece in Macmillan's 1991 series - Joan Tower's Petroushskates.) A comment heard from the Silver Burdett and Macmillan publication staff was that because of high royalties this may be their last series. Perhaps companies could get a lot more for their money by sticking to historical repertoire. This search found no examples of historical composers like Francesca Caccini, Ethel Smyth, Josephine Lang, Fanny Mendelsson Hensel, Maddalena Casulana, Barbara Strozzi, Mariann Martinez, Louise Reichardt, Maddelena Lombardini-Sirmen, Clara Wieck Schumann, Carrie Jacobs-Bond, Pauline Viardot-Garcia, Mary Lou Williams, Louise Talma, Undine Smith Moore, and many more.
And here's a find from Hildegard Publishing Company (Bryn Mawr, PA): they offer a new poster this year called "Notable Women Composers" (1994) that gives a listing of almost 400 women composers from the ninth through the twentieth centuries. Hang it up in the classroom, and perhaps students will soon be asking, "But, why haven't we heard any of this music?"
REMINDER Please submit your suggestions for the GRIME bibliography of materials pertaining to gender and music education or ask your colleagues to submit their suggestions! Guidelines: This bibliography will be in 2 parts--1) an annotated list of sex-equitable teaching materials, including sources that help reinscribe women into music history. We are looking for materials that are suitable for use in preschool, elementary or secondary school curriculum. 2) an annotated list of published and unpublished research on gender and music education.
Send your ideas to: Dr. Julia Eklund Koza, Dept. of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 225 N. Mills St., Madison, WI 53706, USA
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5. Previous Conferences: A Call for Reports
The Philosophy of Music Education: International Symposium II, June 12-17, 1994 at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. Some GRIME members presented. Did anyone attend? We would like a conference report.
Qualitative Methodologies in Music Education Research Conference, May 19-21, 1994 at the School of Music, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Some GRIME members presented. Did anyone attend? We would like a conference report.
ISME (Florida), Summer 1994. Some GRIME members presented. Did anyone attend? We would like a conference report.
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6. Announcing: Music Gender and Education Newsletter Linking teachers, lecturers, composers, arts administrators, and anyone involved in education who has anything they want to contribute on gender issues. To receive the next Music Gender and Education Newsletter, please send your name and address to: Rosemary Evans, 28 Yarmouth Drive. Manchester, England. M23 OBT
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7. GRIME Newsletter, Roberta Lamb, Editor
The goal for publication of Vol. 4, No. 1 is April; send your newsletter contributions by early-March, 1995. If you would like to write a conference or book review, please do!! Reviews of available recordings or videos would be good, too. The articles that came in for this issue were too interesting to cut any further, but please try to write short articles (500-900 words). If the newsletter gets thicker, the postage cost goes up.
PLEASE! DON'T FORGET TO SEND IN YOUR $3 GRIME MEMBERSHIP!!!
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