Top 10 Composers: The Female Factor By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

January 18, 2011, 3:58 pm

Top 10 Composers: The Female Factor By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Anthony Tommasini has been exploring the qualities that make a classical composer great, maybe even the best of all time. Watch videos and vote for your own top 10 here and read previous posts here and share your thoughts in the comments field. Mr. Tommasini’s final list will be posted on Friday.

As my two-week project to identify the top 10 composers in history has been rolling out, I have been wondering whether any readers would write in asking why no female composers are under consideration. Few have even been mentioned as long-shot contenders.

Well, some strong advocates of female composers have now spoken up, especially Elizabeth M. Williams, who proposed that, at the very least, there might be a separate, female top 10 project. Among the candidates she proposed, excluding living composers, are Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Amy Beach, Ruth Crawford Seeger and more.

The sad truth is that until relatively recent decades, women have had severely limited opportunities within all the arts, especially music and, even more, composition. Some of the prejudice stemmed from the deep-seated male chauvinism of Western culture. Mozart’s older sister Nannerl, for example, though not as talented as Wolfgang (has anyone been as talented as our Wolfgang?), was an accomplished prodigy who was initially sent on showcase tours with her brother. If the conditions for women had been more favorable, Nannerl might have been encouraged to continue with music and become a professional. Instead, once she grew out of the cute little girl prodigy stage, she was directed on a path toward marriage. She eventually settled down with a twice-widowed Austrian prefect who had five children, and she lived to 78 (while her high-stressed brother died at 35).

But the main reason, I think, that there were so few female composers during the glory centuries of classical music is that composers depend on performing musicians and ensembles to play their works, and until relatively recent times, musicians, ensembles and musical institutions were overwhelmingly male.

There were a significant number of female novelists, poets and painters in earlier times. But if you were a Jane Austen, you could sit at home and write your novels. As long as you found a sympathetic publisher, you could get your books distributed and be acknowledged. Compare this to the situation facing Clara Schumann, one of the most celebrated pianists of the 19th century. 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?

There would be several obvious female contenders for a list of top 10 novelists. Or poets. But consider this: Where are the great female playwrights of earlier centuries? Again, this is the same problem as with female composers: what theater company was willing to present plays by women?

The last 50 years, especially the last couple of decades, have brought expanding opportunities for women in music. Our orchestras are filled with female players. In most conservatories, usually half of the composition students are women these days. A list of important living composers would absolutely include many women, among them Kaija Saariaho, Sofia Gubaidulina, Libby Larsen, Judith Weir, Joan Tower, Chen Yi, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Augusta Read Thomas, Jennifer Higdon and more. So if we have a top 10 composers survey 100 years from now, the finalists might well include both sexes. For now, alas, my list is all male.

An earlier version of this post included Ms. Larsen in the list of female composers who are not living, as clearly noted later in the post, she is thankfully alive.