Top 10 Composers: The Feminist Factor — An Open Letter to The New York Times’ Anthony Tommasini (and his Response)

Originally posted on The Progressive Heroine.

Hello! I am new to the community blog, but wanted to share this with everyone. Here are two things that are very dear to my heart–Feminism and Music!

Top 10 Composers: The Feminist Factor — An Open Letter to The New York Times’ Anthony Tommasini (and his Response)

Here is the open letter I sent to Mr. Tommasini yesterday, 1/19/2011:

Dear Mr. Tommasini,

I am writing this letter in response to your article, “Top 10 Composers: The Female Factor”, in the New York Times yesterday. While I find your project of determining the ten greatest composers admirably ambitious and intriguing, I consider your philosophy towards women in this matter to be conservative and somewhat uniformed from a woman’s perspective.

As a professional musician and feminist, I feel compelled to discuss how your disregard for women in compiling this list negatively impacts the progression of women’s influence in the arts.

About Clara Schumann, you write:

“She was also a gifted composer, though she mostly wrote piano pieces, songs, chamber works: things that she and a circle of musician friends could perform. If she had tried to compose symphonies and operas, even she, for all her renown, would have hit a dead end with male orchestras and opera companies, which would have been unwilling to champion the works of a woman. So why bother?”

It is stubbornly patriachal statements like this that smother the advancement of women in the field of music. If no one “bothered” then where would we be? It is the act of bothering, of changing social norms and expectations, that shape society. Yes, in times past, this was the prevailing attitude towards women, but do we allow it to dictate our assessments of talent and influence in the present day? Your assertion not only propagates the “deep-seated male chauvinism of our Western culture”, it contradicts the criteria that you initially identified for determining “The Top Ten”. You contemplated the following issues in determining the greatest composers. I will use Clara Schumann, a woman who bothered a great deal, as an example in making a case for the consideration of women composers:

1. “Would a composer’s influence and popularity factor in?”

Clara Schumann was popular in her day, widely concertizing and performing her own compositions. Her musical influence on the compositions of Schumann, and later Brahms, is undisputed. We can even find quotes of Clara’s music in her husband’s work. And I would also like to add, in regards to feminism, that her example was profound; managing the household, giving birth to and caring for eight children, supporting her husband’s career and his mental instability, all this while she also managed her own career, maintained a concert schedule and found time for composition. She was a superwoman, even by today’s standards.

2. “What about a composer whose range was narrow but whose music was astonishing?”

Yes, Mrs. Schumann wrote mostly piano music, but so did Chopin. And a good portion of Clara’s music remains unpublished. Who knows what gems are still hidden from our ears.

3. “Do you break music down by the elements and analyze, for example, who was the greatest master of counterpoint? The most inventive rhythmically? And then, of course, there is my personal take on things, which will, of course, factor in strongly but not be determinative.”

This is all subjective conjecture and there is no fault in that, but it does not specifically exclude Clara Schumann, or any other female composer, from the argument.

After presenting the above statements, you settled on these two items as the “ground rules”:

1. “I am focusing on Western classical music…And on the assumption that we are too close to living composers to assess their place and their impact, I am eliminating them from consideration.”

Fair enough. Clara Schumann is both of the Western tradition and deceased.

2. “Finally, I am focusing on the eras since the late Baroque.”

Clara Schumann was born 1819 in Leipzig and died 1896 in Frankfurt, placing her definitively in the era of German Romanticism.

So, how exactly, Mr. Tommasini, do these criteria disqualify women composers from making the list? You also stated:

“So if you were to try to compile a list of the 10 greatest composers in history, how would you go about it? For me the resulting list would not be the point. But the process of coming up with such a list might be clarifying and instructive, as well as exasperating and fun.“

Excellent premise. If the process is more important that the end result, then I implore you to include women composers and their contributions to music in that process. Here are ten of my favorite women composers that are worthy of investigation, in no particular order. All comply with the ground rules of your project:

1. Clara Schumann (1819-1896)

2. Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979)

3. Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1724)

4. Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847)

5. Nina Simone (1933-2003)

6. Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)

7. Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944)

8. Amy Beach (1867-1944)

9. Germain Tailleferre (1892-1983)

10. Louise Farrenc (1804-1875)

I would like to leave you with this quote by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel.

“It must be a sign of talent that I do not give up, though I can get nobody to take an interest in my efforts.”

Let’s take an interest. Let’s consider women composers on the merits of their influence and greatness. If this project is supposed to be “clarifying and instructive, as well as exasperating and fun”, I can think of no better example than the struggle of women in the arts.

Best Regards in the spirit of music, feminism, and exploration,

Nicole Crane

And here is Mr. Tommasini’s response to my letter, sent 1/19/2011 at 1:26pm:

“Dear Ms. Crane,

Thanks for your strong and thoughtful note. And you make many compelling points.

But please remember that this whole project is, in a way, an intellectual game, a game I’m taking seriously, but for the fun of it. I’m not talking about important composers, or even just influential composers, but the all-time greatest composers, admittedly a hard concept to grapple with.

Yes, Chopin limited himself to the piano and did not write anywhere near as much chamber music as Clara Schumann, who was a superwoman. But, like her, he wrote his pieces mostly for himself, to perform. I wasn’t criticizing Clara Schumann for mostly writing piano pieces and chamber music. I was simply saying that had she written symphonies and such she would have faced a dead end in trying to get them performed, which is true. Yes, women in all fields have advanced by “bothering” to push hard. I just meant to suggest that we could all understand why she might not have been compelled to try.

I then spoke of how different things are today, with so many prominent female composers that it is really pointless to even use the term “female composers.” And, in future decades, maybe some of the women who are thriving today will be viewed as contenders for a top ten list. But we will need time to sort this out, which is why I eliminated living composers from the project. Can we say today that John Adams, or even Elliott Carter will be viewed as all-time giants? We can’t. We’ll see.

The idea of considering Clara Schumann as an all-time top ten composer when I have no slots for Monteverdi, Haydn, Chopin or Robert Schumann is impossible.

Thanks for writing me.

Sincerely,
Anthony Tommasini”