Chapters with Listening Guide Repertoire, CW Links, and Quizzes:

Chapter 06

Chapter Goal

  • To understand relationships between gender, music, and culture.
  • To learn how music reflects and shapes cultural understandings about gender.
  • To become familiar with important trends, composers, and compositions that exemplify gender issues in music.

CW6.2 Reclamation History

Here is a brief overview from the New York Times called “A History of Classical Music: (The Women-Only Version):

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/02/arts/music/01womencomposers.html Hildegard of Bingen’s biography (with Naxos links to some of her music) Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel Clara Schumann

For more information on women in Western art music see:

  • Bowers, Jane, and Judith Tick, eds. Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150–1950. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986.
  • Neuls-Bates, Carol. Women in Music: An Anthology of Source Readings from the Middle Ages to Present. New York: Harper and Row, 1982.
  • Pendle, Karin, editor. Women & Music: A History.  Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991.
  • Samuel, Rhian, and Julie Anne Sadie. The New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers. W.W. Norton, 1995.

CW6.3 David Bowie

Read this blog on David Bowie’s musical and wardrobe reinventions.

Reed, Katherine. “From Ziggy to Blackstar: David Bowie’s Musical Masks” The Avid Listener 2016.

CW6.4 Women’s Gamelan in Bali

See this article by Desak Nyoman Suarti titled “A Woman’s Gamelan” on the second page of this link. Desak Nyoman Suarti was born in and grew up in Bali but lived in New York City for many years before she returned to her homeland.

For additional videos of “Mekar Sari Women’s Gamelan,” search the internet.

CW6.5 Lucia di Lammermore

Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermore tells the story of two feuding Scottish families: the Ashtons and the Ravenswoods. Lucia Ashton is in love with her brother’s archenemy, but is forced to marry a family ally. On her wedding night, crazed by guilt, Lucia murders her husband in their wedding chamber, then sings “Il dolce suono” (“The Sweet Sound,”) in opera’s most famous mad scene:

https://metopera.org/

Video:
Search YouTube for performances of “Il dolce suono.”

Quizzes