ABSTRACTS FOR GENDER AND MUSICIANSHIP IN NORTH (-)/EASTERN EUROPE, 13 FEBRUARY 2024
The symposium will take place on February 12–13, 2024, at the Helsinki Music Centre.
Cecilia Ferm Almqvist and Ann Werner
Female orientations through Western classical music conservatories towards musicianship in North, Eastern and Central Europe
As a part of an ongoing project, exploring belonging in terms of nation and gender within classical music programmes at conservatoires, this paper aims to explore and discuss orientation through higher classical music education among female students in Estonia, Finland, and Hungary. In the presentation we argue that classical music is an artform symbolically and materially constructing nation and gender. The conservatoire is a central institution for classical music, where gender has been shown to regulate access through gendering of instruments and ideas about feminine and masculine styles of music (Creech et. El., 2008), and through career paths. The master-apprentice model contributes to recreating gender, nationality, and race in the classical musician (Bull, 2019; Bull et al., 2022). Further, patriotism and nationalism are evident in classical music education in selections of composers, compositions, and styles in education as well as in orchestras. Sarah Ahmed (2006) discusses how human’s possible orientations influence how the world, from a queer phenomenological perspective, can be experienced. “What is reachable is determined precisely by orientation that is already taken. Some objects don’t even become objects of perception, as the body does not move toward them: they are ‘beyond the horizon’ of the body” (ibid. s.55). To be able to understand how female students orient their bodies through conservatoire education, 15 students identifying themselves as women musicians studying in classical music programmes at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Sibelius Academy, and the Liszt Ferenc Academy were interviewed in 2022. The interviews that concentrated upon the students’ experiences before and during their studies, as well as their vision regarding the future, were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The material was analysed in a phenomenological-hermeneutical (van Manen, 1994). Drawing on Ahmed the presentation discusses how nation, gender and sexuality is participating in the students’ bodily orientations through education. The results show orientations– free vs. repetitive – as varied lines of bodily directions, related to what music educational spaces for dwelling, and musician related objects that are made available for the female students during their education, and how they influence possible imaginations of the future.
Keywords: orientations, western classical music, higher music education, gender, professional future
Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke Univesrity Presss.
Bull, Anna (2019). Class, Control and Classical Music. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bull, A., Bhachu, D., Blier-Carruthers, A., Bradley, A. & Seferin James, 2022. Slow Train Coming? Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in UK Music Higher Education. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Music Studies network.
Creech, A., Papageorgi, I., Duffy, C., Morton, F., Haddon, E., Potter, J., de Bezenac, C., Whyton, T., Himonides, E. & Welch, G. (2008). From music student to professional: the process of transition. British Journal of Music Education, 25(3), 315-33.
van Manen, M. (1994). Researching lived experience. London. Aalthouse Press.
Ramstedt, A. (2019). Imaginary Bodies in Piano Performance. Musiikin suunta: Suomen etnomusikologinen seura ry:n julkaisema musiikkialan tieteellinen mielipidelehti, 2019(1).
Biographies
Cecilia Ferm Almqvist, PhD in music education, works as professor in pedagogy at Södertörn University, and as professor in music education at Stockholm Institute of music education. Since she defended her thesis Openness and awareness, a phenomenological study of music teaching and learning interaction, her empirical and philosophical research has centred around democracy, equality, inclusion, norm disruption, and aesthetic communication in pedagogical situations. For example, she has studied experiences of participation in music ensemble education among female electric guitarists in upper secondary school, and female experiences of musical being in relation to Spotify use. Her research is widely spread and published internationally. Currently she is involved in the research project Conservatory Cultures, led by associate professor Ann Werner.
Ann Werner’s research interests are in gender, power, music and media and she has published widely on for example streaming and algorithmic culture, and gendered uses of music, drawing on feminist theory. Her latest book is titled Feminism and Gender Politics in Mediated Popular Music (2022, Bloomsbury Academic). She is a senior lecturer in Musicology at Uppsala University and an associate professor in Gender Studies at Södertörn Univeristy, Sweden. She is also the PI of two research projects Conservatory Cultures (2021-2024) examining the construction of nation and gender in European classical music higher education and Culture of Silence (2022-2025) examining sexual harassment and preventive measures after #metoo in the Swedish performing arts.
Tuire Kuusi and Ann Werner
Diversity in gender discourse: Examples from three Higher Music Education Institutions
This presentation is part of a research project focusing on nation and gender in higher music education (HME) institutions. We present findings from a recently collected interview data from three HME institutions: Sibelius Academy of the Uniarts Helsinki (Finland), Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (Estonia) and the Liszt Academy (Hungary). Our study focuses on how discourse about gender and gender equality is constructed in talk among leaders, teachers, and students. Our presentation is situated in feminist scholarship on gender equality and music education research. We will take as the point of view the diverse examples (or exceptions) on opposite ends of the spectrum found in the discourse on gender equality, with which we will draw a picture of the broad scope of the phenomenon. We argue that gender and gender equality is mainly constructed as being about women and that the cause of gender inequality is often individualized.
Keywords: Gender, gender equality, higher music education, qualitative interviews, women
Biographies
Tuire Kuusi works as a professor of music research in the DocMus Doctoral School (Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts, Helsinki). She is the PI in two research projects, one about the perception of harmony and one about musicians’ welfare. Additionally she conducts research on effects of music in an individual’s life, on doctoral education in the arts field, and on gender issues in higher music education institutions. Her tasks also include development and evaluation work both in Finland and internationally. Further, her work as a professor involves seminars, lecture series, and supervising doctoral students.
Ann Werner’s dissertation in Cultural Studies examined teenage girls’ uses of popular music. From 2009, she has held various positions at Södertörn University, Stockholm University, The University of Auckland, Uppsala University and Linnaeus University respectively. Her research interests are in Gender, music and media and she has published widely on dancing videos on YouTube, streaming and algorithmic culture, and gendered uses of music, drawing on feminist theory. Her latest book is titled Feminism and Gender Politics in Mediated Popular Music (2022 Bloomsbury Academic). She is the PI of two research projects, one about nation and gender in higher music education (2021-2024) and the other about culture of silence and the performing arts (2022-2025). She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Musicology at Uppsala University.
Hanna Chorell
Feminist perspective on commissioning new music – a case study
In this presentation I will talk about Rakkaat (Beloved ones), a monodrama for soprano, piano and electronics, which will premiere on the international women’s day, 8th of March 2024. It is composed by Minna Leinonen and the libretto is by Milka Luhtaniemi. The working group also includes stage director Riikka Oksanen and sound engineer Maija Turunen. We are Finnish artists working mainly in Finland. The piece is the final artistic component of my artistic doctoral degree and the process leading to the premiere is a part of my artistic research project investigating gender performances within the genre of art song.
The aim of Rakkaat is to create an alternative, fluid, and contemporary representation of gender within the culture of Western art music and song recitals specifically. It seeks to answer questions such as: What is living in/ having a gender today? What kind of loves/relationships form through/despite of gender? What is being a mother or a wife in today’s world? Do previous generations and their traditions live on and if so, how? The piece is loosely based on Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und -leben.
Commissioning new music gives a singer more agency than usual on what kind of values and ideals are embodied in performance. The question of class is also linked to commissioning new music, since financial resources are needed to fund the work. Employing Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism I will argue, that for a singer, commissioning new music is a way to act ethically within the culture of Western art music. Being transparent about the world view directing the creative process and the use of funds is a necessary part of taking ethical responsibility both as an artist and a researcher.
Biography
Hanna Chorell is a doctoral candidate in the DocMus doctoral school of the Sibelius Academy in the University of Arts Helsinki. Her artistic research project focuses on gender performance and meaning making of song recitals in the culture of Western art music through a new materialist lense. As an opera singer her artist name is Hanna Rantala. During her career she has performed over 30 leading and supporting roles of her voice type in the Finnish National Opera, Savonlinna Opera Festival and Royal Danish Opera among others.
Paola Livorsi
Medusa: Voicing the Feminine
Through the artistic research “Human voice and instrumental voice: an investigation of voicelikeness” (2015–2023), I have been visiting the multiple ‘in-between’ of voice and musical instrument: an ‘in-between’ rich in consequences about how we approach voice and music-making, how we see the underlying relations between them, and finally, how we intend art in the present societies.
Voice as phoné is the forgotten sister in a cultural construct based on written transmission, often oblivious of the body: as Cavarero (2003) suggests, what if we learned to listen to the voices of the Sirens instead of fearing their indecent appeal? Whose voices go unheard? What dares to emerge from the realm of the silenced?
The resonating, sounding human being is but a ‘voicer’: she ‘voices’ her worries, her oppositions, in a word, her identities. This process shows how identity is a multiple construct, made of the voices within and without – a relational process where the ‘who’ matters more than the ‘what’ (Arendt 1958, 179). The ’voicer’ reveals herself in the performative act signifying her appearance to the world.
In the present paper, I will focus on the revaluation of the figure of Medusa: an abused woman punished by Athena, one of the guarantors of the social order (Medusa was abused by Poseidon and killed by Perseus). As other feared feminine mythical beings, she inhabits the intersection between the monstrous and the magical. I will unfold hidden aspects of the myth through my stage work Medusa (Aleksanterin teatteri, 2022) and connect this experience with my own research of a ‘monstrous’ voice (see: Research Catalogue).
It will be also the occasion to connect Mediterranean and Nordic experiences of the feminine through the work of a migrant composer.
Biography
Paola Livorsi, composer/researcher. Lives and works in Helsinki since 2001.
Realized many multidisciplinary projects, such as: Rooms of Elements (Northern textile art exhibition 1: infinite, 2006-07); Sense Disorder (H.Kozári image and smells, Helsinki Taidehalli 2013); Imaginary Spaces (J.Laitinen cello, M. Pluciennik live video, R.Pugliese live electronics, Helsinki Music Centre 2016). Voices and Spaces (Uusinta Ensemble, Helsinki Music Centre 2017); Voice & Cello, A.E. Egecioglu voice & cello, defunensemble, Helsinki Music Centre 2019); Sounding Bodies (M. Pluciennik projectors, G. Convertito, V. Lapitskaya dance makers, Jousitus ensemble, Space for Free Arts, Helsinki 2020); Medusa (stage work with Piia Komsi voice/cello, Sara Orava visual artist, cl, koto, percussion, five dancers, Aleksanterin Teatteri 2022).
Carrying out the doctoral artistic research “Human voice and instrumental voice: an investigation of voicelikeness,” at the Centre for Music and Technology, MuTri, Sibelius Academy (graduation on 28.10.2023).
Links
Research Catalogue
Paola Livorsi` Homepage and Interview
Brandon Farnsworth
DEI and Visibility Regimes in Neoliberal Work: The Case of Borealis – A Festival for Experimental Music in Bergen, Norway
Borealis – a Festival for Experimental Music is a yearly 5-day New Music festival in Bergen, Norway that has implemented numerous DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives since 2015 in its programming and festival organisation. This 20-minute presentation will draw on the results of my institutional ethnographic analysis of the festival in order to analyse the work of its festival team. The presentation will show how specifically experimental music’s commitment to ‘pushing boundaries’ combines with a commitment to going ‘above and beyond’ to realise DEI initiatives within the case study. It will detail how workers negotiate these two ‘ruling relations’ (Smith 2005), producing working conditions that promote the affective, self-actualising, and precarious dimensions of labour in the creative industries. The observation that the continued implementation of DEI is being done by female-identifying workers with immigration backgrounds will then be used to connect these working conditions to a regime of visibility within a ‘neoliberalised’ feminism and post-colonialism produced by Norwegian cultural funding. The presentation will conclude by contrasting this case study with the literature on DEI within classical music in order to argue for the historical specificity of experimental music’s interaction with both neoliberal governance and DEI measures.
Works Cited
Smith, Dorothy E. 2005. Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People. The Gender Lens Series. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Biography
Brandon Farnsworth is a Swiss National Science Foundation postdoctoral researcher in musicology and music curator based at Lund University, Sweden. His current project, Another Break with Tradition?, is an ethnographic analysis of how diversity initiatives are changing an experimental music festival in Norway. After studying at the Zurich University of the Arts, he completed his PhD in Dresden with the publication Curating Contemporary Music Festivals (2020, Transcript). As a music curator, Brandon has worked on projects with Ultima Festival Oslo, Montreal New Musics Festival, Sonic Matter Zurich, the Berlin New Music Society, and Malmö Konsthall.
Marika Kivinen
Finding inspiration in Marian Anderson – challenging racism and working towards accountability in musicianship (Ensemble: piano, singer)
This lecture-concert takes as its starting point the two concerts ”Tribute to Marian Anderson and Kosti Vehanen” from 2021 and ”In the footsteps of Marian Anderson and Kosti Vehanen” from 2022 that mezzo-soprano Marika Kivinen planned in collaboration with pianist Jenna Ristilä. The concerts were inspired by Anderson’s concerts in Finland in the 1930s and by her programming. She often performed compositions and arrangements by African-American composers, alongside the musical canon.
In the lecture-concert Marika and Jenna will perform music by Margaret Bonds, Florence Price and Harry T. Burleigh. In the 1920s and 1930s Black poets, composers and classically trained singers challenged anti-Black racism, segregation, cultural stereotypes and the racialized norms of both performance practice and the musical canon of classical music.
This lecture-concert will address ways in which historical concerts can be used as inspiration, but will also address ethical questions concerning performance and programming. Marika will discuss the challenges of doing artistic work, which seeks to make racism visible. She will especially discuss musical style and voice technique and discuss ways of making conscious musical choices, which include an awareness of the performers’ positionalities in gendered and racialized structures. She will also discuss how racializing, stereotyping and appropriation can be addressed in artistic work. At the heart of the work are the questions: How can the musician’s awareness of her own gendered and racialized positions be integrated into every stage of the artistic process? How can the work challenge racism today and make historical resistance to racism visible?
Biography
Marika Kivinen is a historian, gender studies scholar and mezzo-soprano and is currently working on her PhD in General History at Åbo Akademi University entitled ”Tracing Colonialism in Music: Orientalism and Exoticism in Finnish Art Songs 1900–1939”. She is principal investigator of the project Untold Stories — a project combining music and creative writing with archival research and historical scholarship to tell forgotten stories of the relationship between Finland and colonialism (Kone Foundation). The project seeks to highlight processes of racialisation and anti-Blackness and lived experiences of Black singers and performers in Finland ca 1860 to 1940. Her research has also been funded by the Swedish Cultural Foundation of Finland, among others.
Marika’s previous academic work includes analyses of whiteness and racialisation in Finnish travel literature and feminist magazines. Together with musicologist and pianist Anna Ramstedt she has recently co-written an article on positionality and the embodied experiences of researcher-musicians (to be published 2024). The article highlights subtle ways in which power, race and gender interact in our positionalities. She is a member of the research association Suoni ry and works as a singing teacher at the Arts Academy of the Turku University of Applied Sciences.
Verena Liu
Opera (s)heroes. Reinterpreting traditional opera canon with a feminist spin
Opera – the impressive building as well as the complex artform – still is important as a medium to manifest national representation. At the same time, the operatic canon is under scrutiny for being „a system of cultural upbringing“ (Parakilas 2014, Newark/Weber 2022), which sustains with mostly public money an elitist artform in a conservative way. How can opera practitioners find a legitimation that merges the traditional canon and today’s demands for inclusion and diversity?
When Latvia celebrated the 100th anniversary of its proclamation as an independent nation from 2017 to 2021, one cultural highlight of the festivities was a new production of what is called Latvia’s first national opera: Baņuta. It premiered in 1920 with music by Alfrēds Kalniņš after a libretto from Artūrs Krūmiņš, and had several revised versions during the Soviet era. A national commemorative stamp of 2020 featured 100 years of Baņuta and thus presents the opera as important cultural heritage from Latvia’s history.
The latest interpretation of Baņuta of the Berlin-based “Musiktheaterkollektiv Hauen&Stechen” under the stage direction of Franziska Kronfoth with new music by Jēkabs Nīmanis and dramaturgy by Evarts Melnalksnis was unfortunately heavily affected by the Covid-19-pandemic and had to appear as opera film in 2021 (Banuta. Love is a battle). The original concept had nevertheless intended to mix filmed sequences with live opera segments and performance. Dramaturgically, it empowers the title role Baņuta, who is a young female partisan entangled in a tragic love story, and deals with female self-determination.
My paper seeks to interrogate the feministic approach of the Latvian-German production team and to transfer it to a broader discussion of approaching operatic canon today. How is this production of Baņuta situated within the discourse of opera as a cultural heritage and contemporary music theatre, and how is it interweaved with feminist ideas?
Literature
Cormac Newark/William Weber (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Operatic Canon, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2022, Introduction.
James A. Parakilas: „The operatic canon“, in: The Oxford Handbook of Opera, ed. by Helen M. Greenwald, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014, pp. 862–880.
Biography
Verena Liu is a postdoc researcher at the University of Greifswald. After her studies in Weimar and Hanover, she received a PhD from the University of Oldenburg in 2021 with a dissertation on historical music education. She currently works on contemporary opera practice as well as on popular music and publishing houses during the period of Nazi Germany and fascist Austria. First results of that project on „Populäre Musik im Nationalsozialismus“ (popular music in National Socialism) were published in February 2023 in a special issue of the journal Die Tonkunst that was co-edited by her. Verena Liu’s research on 21st century operahouses and opera practice in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Poland is part of the project “Fragmented Transformations/Shared Heritage” at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Baltic Sea Region Research IFZO in Greifswald.
Inka Rantakallio
Feminist women & non-binary artists in Finnish rap music: intersectionality, norms, and fluid identities
Finnish rap music developed in the 1980s thanks to US cultural imports such as hip hop records and films and became a mainstream, chart-topping phenomenon in the 2010s. During its 40-year-long history, Finnish rap has been dominated by heterosexual middle-class white men; this differentiates Finland from many European countries where largely working-class immigrant communities of color have been central to the development of local rap scenes. In recent years, however, more and more rappers of color as well as women and non-binary artists have entered the Finnish scene, challenging the middle-class white male norm.
Against this backdrop, the paper focuses on gender, race, and sexuality in contemporary Finnish rap from the point of view of contemporary women rappers. Specifically, I analyze 1) how Finnish feminist women rappers talk about their intersecting identities vis-à-vis perceived norms in Finnish and global rap music, and 2) how these aforementioned themes are reflected in their music.
The paper draws from Black feminist and hip hop feminist theory, critical race and whiteness studies, queer studies, and feminist musicology. The analysis is based on research material from the project “Women rappers in Finland – The multimodal construction of hip hop feminism, gender, race, and whiteness” (Academy of Finland, 2021–24). The project focuses on eight rappers through interviews, participant observation at concerts, and music and music videos.
Biography
Dr. Inka Rantakallio works as a postdoctoral researcher in Musicology at the University of Helsinki. Her publications deal with the various intersections of rap music, identities, worldviews and ideologies. She is co-editor of three books that focus on hip hop culture, hip hop feminism, and musical meaning. Rantakallio also works as a freelance journalist/editor and DJ.
Diāna Zandberga
Women Composers in Latvia: Historical and Stylistic Aspects of Piano (Music Ensemble: piano, dance)
Feminism and decolonial art research are very important in the context of Latvian music, as this country is a part of the post-Soviet region. One of the first professional Latvian women composers was Lūcija Garūta (1902-1977). Her creative method is often described as very feminine because her emotions were immediately, and seemingly directly, transformed into a musical image. This is especially vividly manifested in her very romantic and emotionally spontaneous Preludes for piano, which are a true masterpiece recalling Scriabin’s tonal colours.
Lūcija Garūta was one of the leading Soviet-Latvian women composers until the 1970s when a new generation appeared on the Latvian music scene as a representative of postmodernism, striving for consonant harmony and a sense of neo-romantic beauty, as well as uniting semantically diverse subtexts and associations, for example Maija Einfelde (1939) and Selga Mence (1953). Also, the majority works of Latvian exile composer Dace Aperāne (1953) are dominated by a light-filled or melancholic gentle mood, mildly dissonant character and inner expressiveness. Her piano work Song of the Goddess (2001) is inspired by haiku of Japanese poet Ueshima Onitsura.
At the piano music of the post-soviet generation of Latvian women composers’ new tendencies appeared. For example, at her recent interdisciplinary piano work Prophecy for Piano and Choreography (2022) Anitra Tumševica (1971) explains care about social and environmental justice. The choreographer, dancer of the Latvian National Ballet Milana Komarova has created a spectacular dance episode illustrating the except from Bible (Matthew 25:1-12) about the parable of ten virgins with the lamps – it will be performed by soloist of Latvian National ballet Baiba Kokina and pianist / dancer Diāna Zandberga. The main dance movements are fixed in the score of “Prophecy” by Anitra Tumševica.
“Now is the time to prepare your lamp! Now is the time to get serious. I want you to be ready for what’s coming. This is our time! You can’t postpone it! Don’t delay it, don’t take it lightly! This is your time!” is the composers’ epigraph of the work, which transforms idea of a historical text into modern language, expression and understanding.
Biographies
Diāna Zandberga is a pianist specialising in Artistic Research. She completed her PhD at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music and improved her performance with pianists Lazar Berman and Alicia de Larrocha. Diāna Zandberga has won acclaim for a succession of recitals in European countries and the USA. Her discography includes eight solo albums. Since 2015 she has been a faculty member of the Piano Department and from 2021 a Researcher at the Scientific Research Center of Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music and the Director of the Joint Professional Doctoral Study Programme in Arts.
Baiba Kokina is a prima ballerina of the Latvian National Opera and Ballet Company. She has participated at the project Butterflies in Denmark (1999), the International Bartolin Ballet Seminar in Denmark (2001), as well as at the festival Baltic Ballet Star in Italy (2000).
In 2006, she became an award winner at the International Ballet Competition Arabesque in Perm, Russia. In 2013, Baiba Kokina received Latvian Theatre Award as a Best Ballet Dancer of Season.
She has performed main roles with the LNO Ballet company in Italy, Japan, Germany, Russia, England, Finland, Netherlands etc.
Petteri Nieminen
The first performance in 1935 and the the dismissal of Helvi Leiviskä’s Piano concerto
Helvi Leiviskä (1902-1982) composed one of her first major works, the piano concerto in D minor between 1931-1935 and it was premiered in November 1935 by Professor Ernst Linko as the soloist. The work has been preserved only as the piano arrangement and as instrument parts but no manuscript of the score remains. Based on the existing material the soloist made several revisions to the solo part, while only few modifications were made by the composer’s handwriting. Several difficult passages were omitted, while the instrument parts show no omissions. Thus, it is very likely that several key passages were played without the soloist. In addition, the markings show layers of omissions, especially in the third movement, where the soloist has gradually crossed over more and more measures around difficult passages. When the press reviewed the performance, the work was criticized for lacking a culmination, but the omissions and possible technical issues of the soloist were not mentioned except in personal letters to the composer. Following the first performance, Leiviskä’s work was never again performed during her lifetime, but in the 1970’s she became insecure about her skills and revised the concerto into a conventional and shortened form. Furthermore, the characteristic first theme group in 5/4 time appears in her third symphony and other motives of the concerto in her cantatas and 1sttymphony. Based on these findings, the pao concerto and its initial partial dismissal had probably a pivotal effect on the composer. The findings on the piano and instrument parts and the appearance of the concerto’s motives are discussed against the framework of the reviews and the probable quality of the first performance.
Biography
Petteri Nieminen works currently as the professor of Medical Biology, School of Medicine, University of Eastern Finland and as the chairperson of the Savo Music Society that concentrates on engraving and layout editing forgotten large-scale works by 19th and 20th century composers, principally women. Nieminen studied medicine at the University of Helsinki, biology, environmental science and musicology at the Universi of Joensuu and theology at the University of eastern Finland and holds PhDs from these disciplines. In addition, Nieminen studied classical guitar, viola and composition at the North Carelia Vocational Collage and did diploma exams of these disciplines. Since 2017, the Savo Music society has typeset and edited approximately 25 works by woman composers, including the symphonies by Elfrida Andrée, the collected orchestral works by Ida Moberg, and several others. At the moment, the Society has started to typeset the nine symphonies by Johanna Senfter.
Outi Nieminen
Notes on Laura Netzel’s Suite for Flute and Piano op. 33 (Ensemble: flute, piano)
Laura Netzel was born in 1839 to the noble family of Pistolekors in Rantasalmi, Finland, but moved to Stockholm before the age of one year. As a daughter of nobility and later the wife of a professor she gained excellent musical education in Stockholm and in Paris becoming a prominent composer, pianist, conductor, concert organizer and philanthropist.
There are two different versions of the chamber music work op 33. by N. Lago (the pseudonym of Netzel) in, the hand written manuscript “Fantasie sur les Melodies nationales Suedoises pour Violon ou Flute avec accompagnement de Piano (not dated, based on the opus number composed around 1896) and “Suite pour Flute et Piano” published by Paris Hachette et Cie (1. edition in 1989). Both versions are dedicated to Paul Taffanel, a famous French flute virtuoso. Both are based on variations of a Swedish folk song “Allt under himmelens fäste” (All beneath the firmament).
Op 33. derives from Netzel’s highly productive Paris era of the 1890’s. Presumably, she got acquainted with composers and musicians, assumably also with Taffanel. It is possible that Taffanel found the composition interesting and could have suggested revisions to Netzel paying more attention to his virtuosity and technical possibilities of the modern flute. Or, perhaps the Editor of the publisher asked for revisions. The introduction of the published version is composed de novo with improvisatory passages compared to the plain beginning of the handwritten version. It is also harmonically more versatile, the ambitus more “flautistic” and technically more demanding.
As I have performed both these versions of Netzel’s Suite, the differences between the hand written and the edited versions raised my curiosity. These will be discussed and performed in the presentation.
Biography
Flutist and medical doctor, specialist in hand and general surgery, subspecialty in musicians’ medicine. Member of board of Savo Music Society with special interest in chamber music of female composers. Studied flute in the Conservatory of Kuopio and Sibelius Academy. Winner of the 1st Tampere Flute Competition. Has performed in Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra’s Concert for young soloists. Today an active amateur musician. Member of World Doctor’s Orchestra.
Natasha Loges
Pauline Viardot as Feminist Icon?
This paper explores the challenge of writing a popular biography of the singer, composer, and pedagogue Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821-1910). With both primary and secondary literature in numerous languages, she has attracted significant scholarly attention, including publications of some correspondence; detailed accounts of her professional activity especially in relation to canonic men such as Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, and Brahms; descriptions of her extensive cultural network; and speculation on her unconventional personal life.
Yet despite this extensive documentation, Viardot-Garcia eludes typical biographical categories. Her cosmopolitan identity slides between national affiliations (Spanish, French, Russian and German). Her cultural interests correspondingly spanned Europe and Russia. A prolific composer in numerous languages, her output was nevertheless focused on her own voice. Her extensive collaborations with male contemporaries call into question the category of ‘composer’ altogether, but she attempted no traditionally masculine genres such as the symphony (in contrast with Emilie Mayer).
As a woman, Viardot-Garcia’s actions slip between changing visions of a feminist ‘hero,’ both historic and modern. Her approach to work was only partially typical of her day, in that she maintained a stage career after marriage and motherhood (unlike her contemporary Amalie Joachim nee Schneeweiss). Her favoured roles (such as Fidès in Meyerbeer’s Le prophète, or the trouser role Orfeo) complicated feminine ideals, unlike Jenny Lind (the ‘Swedish nightingale’) who embodied idealised 19th-century femininity. Her long and affectionate marriage to Louis Viardot coexisted with her equally deep commitment to Ivan Turgenev, even today an unconventional constellation. Her approach to motherhood was typically pragmatic, with long stretches away from her children, and ferocious control of their subsequent professional trajectories (like Clara Schumann). Given the relative scarcity of popular biographies of women composers, I consider here the implications of the choices available to a writer of Viardot-Garcia’s biography.
Biography
Natasha Loges is Professor of Musicology at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. Her research interests include voice-keyboard repertoire, concert culture, global classical music, gender, and performance studies. Her books are Brahms and His Poets (2017), and the coedited collections Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall (2014), Brahms in Context (2019), Musical Salon Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century (2019) and German Song Onstage (2020). She has published in journals such as the Zeitschrift für Musiktheorie, 19th-Century Music, Participations, and the Journal of the American Musicological Society. Her research has been funded by the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK, the American Musicological Society, and the Royal Philharmonic Society. Natasha works regularly for the BBC and leads events for Southbank Centre, Wigmore Hall, the Oxford International Song Festival UK, Heidelberger Frühling, and Liedfestival Zeist. She belongs to the member of the Equality and Diversity in Music Studies Network and the Advisory Board of the Institute of Austrian and German Music Research.
Nicholas Ong
‘Strange to imagine my petty figure next to him’: Valentina Serova, Widowhood, and the Emancipation of Creativity
Valentina Serova (née Bergman, 1846–1924) was the first woman to have an entire opera – Uriel Acosta (1885) – staged in Russia, an achievement accomplished more than a decade after the death of her first husband, the critic-composer Alexander Serov (1820–71). Contrary to being engulfed by grief and the persistent fear of instability typical of widowhood in the nineteenth century, what had seemingly befallen Serova was, instead, a burgeoning of creative energies and increasing levels of productivity. Indeed, the intervening years between Serov’s death and the premiere of her first opera saw Serova’s venture abroad to enhance her compositional skills and to the Russian village to ameliorate musical culture by leading peasant choirs and a choir school, eventually garnering herself honours from the nascent Soviet state.
Whilst womanhood has been thoroughly investigated in musicology through numerous figures, widowhood, in isolation, is often overlooked despite its significant ramifications on nineteenth-century women’s lives. This paper evaluates the impact of widowhood on musical creativity and productivity by drawing on Serova’s largely untranslated memoirs and publications, and existing literature by Andrew and Lomas (2020) amongst others. In doing so, I refine the lens with which to view widowed musicians in the long nineteenth century.
Biography
Nicholas Ong is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge where his research focuses on critic-composer Valentina Serova (1846–1924) and, more broadly, on women and music in nineteenth-century Russia. His wider research interests include musical nationalism, biography, music criticism, and music in Singapore. He is co-presenter of Crafting Musical Lives, a six-episode podcast which explores the life-writing process of musical figures and was involved with the Midlands Music Research Network (MMRN) where he hosted the flagship podcast Midlands Music Musings. Nicholas is co-founder of the Women and the Arts in Eastern Europe Network (WAEE) which promotes interdisciplinary research and facilitate knowledge exchange centred on east European women’s creativity and leadership in the arts. His music-making experience includes his previous service as a military musician in the Singapore Armed Forces Band and as a current choral scholar in the Choir of Clare College Cambridge.
Barbora Vacková
“The Unfriendly and Envious Comrades”: Women Composers’ Activism and Feminism in State Socialist Czechoslovakia
The opportunities granted to women composers of the late 20th century in the socialist bloc are often described as superior to those in the capitalist West. The Czechoslovak socialist state, which normalized women’s employment and public activity, and prided itself on ending gender-based discrimination in the country, is frequently regarded as generally supportive of women’s social progress and open to letting them reach their full artistic potential. At the same time, the gender equality agenda is often characterized as being introduced from above by the leading party, pre-empting and preventing any activity by independent feminist movements.
In this paper, I am going to discuss the discoveries I made during my PhD research, which significantly disrupt this narrative. Drawing on archival materials such as event programmes, letters, and diary entries, I present Czechoslovak women composers and their supporters as deeply critical of the socialist state’s approach towards creative women and determined to take the matter of their own position, representation, and career opportunities into their own hands. The case studies of the women’s association Minerva, composer Sláva Vorlová, and pianist Ludmila Novotná, show that most of the activity directed at empowering women composers or increasing their numbers emerged from individual or small community efforts, with the official state institutions treating them either with disinterestedness or hostility. These efforts were not always congruent, creating dialogues and conflicts typical for many grassroot feminist movements, including of course those on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Disrupting the myth of the non-existence of feminist thought and organizing in Czechoslovakia of the 1950s and 1960s, the presentation also touches on issue of female solidarity which transgresses political systems and challenges some of the present-day epistemological dichotomies.
Biography
Barbora Vacková graduated in Musicology and English and American Studies at Charles University in Prague. During her degrees, she was also a visiting student at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and McGill University. Her thesis on Scottish-Czech composer on Geraldine Mucha received the Prize of the Czech Minister of Education, Youth and Sports in 2017. In 2019, Vacková was awarded Scholarship in Contemporary Music Studies at the University of Huddersfield, UK, where she is completing her PhD dissertation on Czechoslovak women composers during the communist era (1948-1989) and conditions for female compositional activity within the socialist state. Vacková has presented her research at many conferences, and in 2022, she co-organized an international conference „Women and Gender in Art Music of the Eastern Bloc: Current Perspectives, Future Directions”. During her PhD, she was also a chair of the Royal Musical Association’s student committee.