ABSTRACT:
What is society’s perception of music composed by women?  Even in today’s standard musical canon, the number of works composed by women dims in comparison to that of men.  Is this merely a reflection of the social inequalities experienced by women or is there indeed an innate difference between music composed by women and that by men, espoused by the idea of essentialism?  Differences, I believe, exist not in the quality or characteristics of music, but in societal assumptions of music composed by women and men. In this study, I investigated my belief that there is no difference in piano music composition characteristics among male and female composers.  The results show that essentialism does not hold true.  All twenty-six subjects believed after the test that differences between music composed by men and women are not detectable.  Males and females possess both masculine and feminine traits, and one is just as easily reflected in their music as another, regardless of the gender of the composer.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
I would like to thank Dr. Miriam Zach for all her guidance and support.  She has been exceptionally helpful and encouraging, going out of her way several times to obtain the right resources and discuss issues related to the project.

RESEARCH:
Women composers have had less presence in the canons of Western music mainly because of the lack of attention paid to the female gender, caused by societal assumptions of women’s role according to the historical period.   Assumptions towards women in the past and even now, include their primary roles as child bearer, homemaker, and caregiver.  From these assumptions, gender-biased implications have arisen: associations of delicate-sounding, slower, lyrical music with women composers; and more complicated, virtuosic, fast, and dramatic music with male composers.

Citron’s Gender in the Musical Canon comprehensively explores essentialism, which ascribes to women innate characteristics, thereby diminishing the importance of social context and individual difference.  The canon is the means by which dominating ideologies spread and future trends are set.  Therefore, works eliminated from a time period will likely remain ignored in future musical canons.  In the past, especially, women have dealt negatively with their identity as a female composer.  Doubt and confusion were common feelings.  Additionally, because women were generalized as creating with their bodies, and not with their minds, those women who expressed desires to be creative with their minds felt secluded from women who played the traditional female roles.

Only professionals (those who received a proper education) were deemed worthy of inclusion in the musical canon.  In the past, women have not had the same access to education as men, and therefore, were less published in the field of musical composition than their male contemporaries.  This lack of education, including encouragement and means to succeed, kept many women within the boundaries of domestic life.  Reception towards works was confined to that of hearing pieces written by men.  Canon formation, therefore, was limited to men’s works.

It is, however, in our realm to change this now.  We can modify what we want the canon to represent.  Women need to be visible as teachers and scholars in order to confirm the presence of historical women in future canons.  By studying and exposing the underrepresented women composers, we can help make this happen.  Despite the social circumstances of their time, there were women who nonetheless succeeded as composers.  I researched the following composers of piano music in the International Women Composers Library in Gainesville, Florida.

Mademoiselle la Pierre, France (fl. 1689)
Unfortunately, little research exists on Pierre.  Information on her has only been garnered from unpublished original scores of piano works, including Chaconne and Fuga.

Elizabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, France (1664 -1729)
From an early age, Elizabeth was known as a harpsichord virtuoso and improviser.  King Louis XIV supported and protected her, and Elizabeth dedicated many works to him. After her husband and son’s death, Elizabeth became active as a public performer.  She wrote and published in every popular form, introducing the new Italian style to France.  She was fully recognized for her achievements and was one of the first females to compose in so many genres.  Her works include five-act operas, trio and solo sonatas, French cantatas, two books of biblical cantatas, cantatas on traditional mythological subjects, ballets, music for harpsichord, and violin sonatas.

Marianne von Martinez, Austria (1744-1812)
When Marianne was only nine years old, librettist Metastasio discovered her musical talent.  Haydn gave her lessons in singing, piano, and composition.  As a teen, Marianne performed her works in the Viennese court.  Most of her works are still unpublished and manuscript copies exist in Vienna.  She composed a Mass, oratorios, cantatas, sacred choral compositions, arias, piano concertos and sonatas, and symphonies. She performed with Mozart on his piano duets and opened a successful singing school.  Sonata in A Major is one of her two unpublished piano sonatas.

Maria Hester Park, England (1760-1813)
A composer and teacher, Maria was active in composition from 1795 to 1811.  Not much is known about her early life.  Her extant works include: Sonatas for harpsichord/piano with violin accompaniment, Op. 1; Three sonatas for harpsichord/piano, Op. 2; A Set of Glees with the Dirge in Cymbeline, Op. 3; Two sonatas for piano/harpsichord, Op. 4; Concerto for piano or harpsichord with strings, Op. 6; Sonata for piano, Op. 7; Two Sonatas for piano with violin accompaniment; Waltz for piano; and Divertimento for piano with violin accompaniment, Op. 13.

Jane Savage, England (fl.1780-1790)
Still remaining a mystery to scholars and performers, little is known about Jane.  She was a virtuosic keyboard player who wrote keyboard music.  Her extant works include: Six Sonatas for piano or harpsichord, Op. 3; Strephan, Pianoforte or Harpsichord; Two Duets for Voices, Op. 7 for two voices and basso continuo; and God Save the King, Op. 8, adapted as a Double Lesson for Harpsichord or Pianoforte.  Jane had a superb sense of what made appealing and popular gallant style keyboard music at the close of the eighteenth century, as well as a complete grasp of harmonic and counterpoint practices of the time.

Maria Agata Szymanowska, Poland (1789-1831)
A contemporary of Beethoven, Schubert, and John Field, she was the first female Polish pianist of stature.  The “Royal Pianist of the Court of Russia”, she was greatly admired by Liszt and Chopin.  Many of her piano works were composed before Chopin’s time.  Maria was self-taught, and improvised most of her themes.  In 1810, she started her performance career, which offended her husband and consequently ended their marriage in 1820.  She gave concerts and master classes regularly in Eastern and Western Europe, an incredible feat, considering her gender and background.  Even more impressive is her publication of more than 110 works for vocal, chamber music, and piano in Leipzig, Paris, Warsaw, St. Petersburg, Moscow between 1810 and 1828, a period when women’s compositions had little value!  She composed more than 90 piano miniatures, nocturnes, waltzes, polonaises, minuets, marches, mazurkas, and etudes.

Clara Schumann, Germany (1819-1896)
Clara was a very well educated musician and virtuoso pianist.   A child prodigy of both composition and performance, Clara was praised by the “new romantic” composers – Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt.  Because of society’s attitude towards women composers, Clara doubted her role as composer, only writing music for her own concerts.  She felt more comfortable with being an interpretive artist.  Her husband Robert encouraged her to write.  Between 1828 and 1840, her father Friedrich Wieck planned 182 programs for her, each of which contained at least one of her works.  In 1893, Clara and Robert began reading poetry and setting it to music.  In their first published collection of songs that were set to poetry, three were written by Clara.  The couple complemented each other’s music very well, prolifically writing for piano and each other.  Clara, for instance, dedicated Trio for Pianoforte, Violin and Violincello, Op. 17 and Variation for Piano on Theme of Robert Schumann, Op. 20 to Robert.  Her piano compositions include polonaises, caprices, romantic valses, character pieces, scherzos, impromptus, variations on themes by Robert, and cadenzas for concertos written by Beethoven and Mozart.

Cecile Chaminade, France (1857-1944)
Cecile studied with Le Couppey, M.G.A. Savard and B. Godard.  Composing at the young age of eight, she made her debut as a pianist at eighteen, and was world-renowned as a soloist.  Her compositions were popular in France, where she also appeared as a conductor and was appointed Officer of Public Instruction in 1892.  Often she performed her own works, and in 1908, her performance in Philadelphia of Concertstueck introduced her to the American public.  She composed many pieces in the salon style, which became popular in France, England, and the USA.  She wrote more than two hundred pieces for the piano, including songs, two piano trios, and piano sonatas that show her great virtuosity.  Her orchestra works, including a piano concerto, received less recognition.

Lili Boulanger, France (1893-1918)
Taught by older sister Nadia, Lili’s performance and sight-reading abilities shone in the French musical world as a teenager.  Her incredible grasp of harmony and counterpoint as well as performance of violin, piano, organ, and harp caught the attention of the faculty at Paris Conservatory.  After winning the prestigious Prix de Rome composition prize, an award until then won only by men, she was granted a publishing contract which ignited her professional career in music.  Between 1913 and 1918, Lili composed more than fifty works including cantatas, and psalms for voice and orchestra.  Short works included music for violin, piano, flute, and voice.

Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Grammate, Russia (1899-1974)
At the age of seven, Sophie began studying piano with her mother.  A child prodigy, she entered the Paris Conservatoire Nationale at age nine and performed in Paris, Geneva and Berlin.  By 1930, she had given up her concert career, devoting herself to composition.  In 1950, she received the Austrian State Prize for composition.  Sophie wrote extensively piano, chamber music and symphonic works.  In 1953 she moved to Canada where she was quickly recognized on the national music scene in terms of commissions, performances and pupils.  In 1970 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Brandon University.  A national Competition for the Performance of Canadian Music held annually at Brandon University is named in her honor.  Her Alphabet Pieces, written at the age of six, is a book of little piano pieces, labeled “Letter A” to “Letter Z”, in a variety of musical styles.

Ilka Vasconcelos Araujo, Brazil (b. 1972)
The winner of first prizes in both I Festival Jovem Instrumentalis and I Paurillo Barrozo Piano Competition, she has performed in Brazil, the USA, France, and Czech Republic.  Ilka studied composition lessons with Dr. Budd Udell at the University of Florida.  Her piano solo, Instants, which premiered in Paris in the summer 2001, won third prize in the 2002 CD and the 2002 Southeastern Composer’s League.  She performed these at the 6th International Festival of Women Composers March of 2000.  Ilka is currently a Ph. D student in Musicology with cognate in Performance with Dr. David Kushner at the University of Florida, where she also works as a Teaching Assistant.  She has worked as Administrative assistant of the Prague International Master Class.  Instants is a set of five short piano pieces that depicts and combines different moods and compositional languages.  Unresolved Clusters is based on whole tone clusters that grow, expand, and do not get resolved at the end, drawing a listener’s attention to clusters that pile up in our own lives.

Chan Ji Kim, Korea (b. 1973)
Chan Ji earned her BA at E-What Women’s University in Seoul, Korea and her MA at New York University, where she studied composition with Dr. Ron Mazurek and Dr. Dinu Ghezzo.  Her music has been released on CD’s and aired on KBS radio in Korea.  She traveled to Budapest and Romania where her piece for flute and tape was performed for the World Music Days in October of 1999.  Her chamber piece and multimedia piece were performed at the Summer Music Festival in Florence and Assisi, Italy in 2000, 2001 and 2002.  At Chan Ji’s graduate composition recital in 2001, she had dance pieces, electronic pieces, and chamber music performed.  She is the 1999/2000 recipient for best composer of INMC (International New Music Consortium).  Her electroacoustic music has been performed at FEMS (Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival) in 2002 and many dance concerts in New York.  Currently she is a graduate teaching assistant in the Ph.D music composition program, at the University of Florida, where she is studying electroacoustic music with Dr. James Paul Sain, and acoustic music with Dr. Paul Richards.

PURPOSE:
This study examines the issue of essentialism – whether listeners can indeed aurally distinguish a difference between piano music written by women and that written by men from Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionistic, and Contemporary periods.

The testing is performed through the 7th International Festival of Women Composers in the Friends of Music Room at University of Florida and will take place Monday evening, March 17, 2003.  During a fifty-minute piano program by piano performance major Emily Guey, the audience will hear works from each of the five musical periods, written by either and/or both men and women.  After one playing of the work, the audience will receive about half a minute to respond to questions in the survey.  Their written answers will help in answering my honors thesis problem, whether there is an audible difference in women’s music as opposed to the much more often programmed music by men.

METHODS:
After many hours of researching piano works of women in the International Library of Women Composers, I was able to select a few pieces for my study.  My original list of possible works for the program consisted of works by well-known unknown men, and well-known and unknown women.  By narrowing the research test to fifty minutes total, about thirty-five minutes of performance and fifteen minutes for listeners’ written response to questions; I had to wisely choose works for each of the five musical periods.

To best test my thesis statement, my advisor and I decided to use only women composers for the program.  Concert attendees were not aware whether the program would consist of works from female and male, only male, or only female composers.  By using the last option, we would be attacking the heart of the issue most efficiently!  In order to fairly test the issue, careful attention was directed in making the variables of the program as consistent as possible, including genre, musical background of composer, and musical style of work.  The following is the actual program:

BAROQUE
1. Jacquet de la Guerre: La Flamande, from Pieces de Clavecin (3:35)
2. Mademoiselle la Pierre: Chaconne (2:30)
CLASSICAL
1. Jane Savage: Moderato from Sonata I in G Major (2:00)
2. Marianna Martinez: Allegro brillante from Sonata da Cimbalo (3:00)
3. Maria Hester Park: Allegretto from Sonata in Eb Major, Op. IV (1:45)
ROMANTIC
1. Clara Schumann: Andante con sentimento (3:00)
2. Maria Szymanowska: Nokturn B-dur (4:50)
IMPRESSIONISTIC
1. Cecilé Chaminade: Pierrette (Air de Ballet, op. 41) (3:00)
2. Lili Boulanger: D’un Jardin Clair (2:30)
CONTEMPORARY
1. Ilka Vasconcelos Araujo: Unresolved Clusters from Instants (2:00)
2. S.C. Eckhardt-Grammaté: Etude M, in “From my Childhood” alphabet songs (1:00)
3. Chan Ji Kim: Andante from Memoria #2 (4:00)

(Total performance time: 34:05)

The Baroque period had the fewest women composers.  Very little was known about the two composers.  Among the Baroque music composed by women extant in the International Library of Women Composers, however, their works displayed the most similarity embellishment-wise, rhythmically, melodically, and harmonically.

The popularity of the piano sonata during the Classical period was extremely helpful in meeting the project’s need to keep consistent the variables within each period, such as genre of works.  Many women composers wrote sonatas.  For the purpose of the project, only the first movement is played due to time restraints.  To compensate for playing one movement, a representation of only a third or quarter of the work, three, instead of two, works were used.  The works all share a similarity in the length, harmony, and style.  Savage and Park, both English composers, have had much less exposure and probably less education than Martinez, whose extensive training with well-known male composers may reflect in her works.

The Romantic period, like the Classical, easily met the project’s need of consistency, its women composers coming from similar backgrounds.  Additionally, there was a much larger array of musical material from which to choose!  Both Szymanowska and Schumann come from similar backgrounds, musically, and achieved notable success as pianists and composers.  The styles of the pieces chosen for the purposes of the project are similar in tempo, style, use of rubato, and excitement.  Schumann makes great use of musical techniques such as tempo changes and key modulations.  Szymanowska expressively creates a lyrical mood for the nocturne.

The Impressionistic period had a much larger number of women composers than the preceding periods.  The “Allegretto” tempo of one work, and relaxed tempo of another make for a strong contrast in the chosen works for this time period for the project.  Even though works of Boulanger and Chaminade bear a similar French style, the slower, gentler tempo of the former will probably be perceived by the listener as bearing more feminine characteristics, and the much more energetic tempo of the latter, bearing more masculine attributes.

The Contemporary period holds much potential for women composers.  Equal educational opportunities for both males and females have slightly allayed the societal associations of more feminine attributes in works to female composers.  For the purposes of time and to conclude the program on a lighthearted tone, three rather short excerpts, written by composers from Russia, Korea, and Brazil are used.

After choosing the works of the program, my next step was to learn the pieces.  I myself had not studied music by females in my fourteen years of playing piano, so this part of the preparation was indeed the highlight of the project!  For two weeks, I spent about three hours a day practicing my new repertoire.  This learning process was exhilarating.  Composing works of such high quality is in itself an impressive endeavor, regardless of gender.  Writing these works, however, in spite of the social beliefs during the period of time, is absolutely fascinating!  My strong admiration for these composers inspired me to represent their works as well as I could for the program.  Even more importantly, it has changed my perception of my own self as a female, and has made me bolder in challenging some of society’s widely held beliefs.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION:
The results clearly show that listeners cannot perceive a difference between music composed by women and men (essentialism does not hold true).
Some responses directly indicated some subjects’ belief that although there are feminine and masculine traits, the presence of one or the other does not necessarily portray the corresponding gender of the composer.  A work with primarily feminine traits is not necessarily written by a female, and a work with primarily masculine traits is not necessarily written by a male.  Responses from these subjects were confined to indication of the work having either “feminine characteristics” or “masculine characteristics”.

Most responses, however, followed the trend of the subject being sure of whether the composer was male or female in the beginning of the program.  Towards the middle of the program to the end, however, most listeners changed their answers to “unsure”.  After viewing the actual works of the program, all twenty-six subjects (eleven males and fifteen females) were convinced that essentialism does not hold true.

Overall, female subjects displayed greater knowledge of women composers than the male subjects.  The most recognized composer of the program was Clara Schumann (recognized by nine males and eleven females), and the least recognized one was S.C. Eckhardt-Grammate (recognized by zero males and one female).

The average number of composers recognized by the female subjects was: 4.3
The average number of composers recognized by the male subjects was: 2.4
The average number of correct answers (that the composer was female) per subject was: 4.8
The average number of correct answers (that the composer was female) per female was: 4.4
The average number of correct answers (that the composer was female) per male was: 5.3

The data indicates that the male subjects scored better than the female subjects.  Because of the recognition of works on the program by some female subjects, however, their answers could not apply to this set of data.  Had these female subjects not recognized the composers, this set of data may have turned out differently.

Responses generated by serious musicians (those who had studied or taken lessons for at least two years) and non-serious musicians (those who have no or very little musical background) did not show a significant pattern.  The random nature of the data shows that even those with musical experience do not have more discernment than those without musical experience.  Essentialism does not hold true even with well-trained musicians!

The average number of correct answers per serious musician was: 7.1
The average number of correct answer per serious female musician was: 4.
The average number of correct answers per serious male musician was: 7.3
The average number of correct answer per non-serious musician was: 5.36
The average number of correct answers per non-serious female musician was: 4.5
The average number of correct answers per non-serious male musician was: 5

While interpretation of data leads to a strong conclusion that listeners cannot tell a difference between music composed by females and by males, a number of other factors may also have contributed to the random nature of the data.  One possibility is that the number of female subjects (15) was not balanced by an equal number of males (11).  Another possibility is that the sample population of musicians varied dramatically in musical experience and age.  These different characteristics in each gender may change the outcome of the responses, and hence, the data.  Finally, as mentioned above, responses from those subjects who recognized a work or only answered with “unsure”, “masculine characteristic”, or “feminine characteristic” could not truly apply to the purpose of this experiment.
One subject, for instance, guessed that all the composers of the program were women, but comments that his guess does not change his belief that there is no essentialism.  This subject’s answers could not be used in the generation of data.

Regardless of the discrepancies in data generation, all twenty-six responses to the post-test question, “Are there definite feminine characteristics of music?” adhered to one conclusion.  There is no question to what can be concluded from this project.  Even though feminine and masculine characteristics exist, both men and women can exhibit these traits through music.  It is impossible to distinguish between music composed by women and men.

In conclusion, this project has proven that music by women cannot be confined to the social stereotypes of the past.  Even in the music written in times when females received less education privileges than males, today’s society could not distinguish the men’s music from the women’s.  Pierre’s work, for example, written during the earliest time period of my program, was perceived as one of “male origin” by over 69% of the subjects.  It should, therefore, be in the best interest of society to be freed of the long-held belief that women’s music cannot hold as strong a place as men’s music in the musical canon.  If society, let alone professional and experienced musicians, cannot even sense a difference, how can one say that women’s music should remain hidden from the same public exposure that men’s music receives?

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