The Year 2022 for Women
Classical Music as a microCOSM for the World
22 Ways We’ve Failed Women in Classical Music
It’s the end of 2022, and we are overcome with year-end wrap-ups, summaries, and recommendations. But all the phony congratulations and male-centric mock awards are an insult to this truth: 2022 was a violent and backward year for women worldwide. I will start with seemingly faraway and perhaps irrelevant events to those of us in the US but ask you to stick with me. I will follow with twenty-two ways our global culture failed women in classical music in 2022. Except, it’s not exactly twenty-two ways because it is impossible to fully quantify the failures. I’ll conclude with some suggestions to rectify the travesty including tips specifically for men who want to help.
We begin with Afghanistan: This past December, the Taliban forced women to abandon positions at international organizations for not fully complying with conservative Islamic dress, affecting not only them but beneficiaries of their work. In addition to these retaliatory limitations on bodily autonomy and employment, degrading women’s status, Afghani women were also banned from both elementary and university education. Unequal access to education, a tried-and-true method for undermining women’s potential and influence, is not surprising in a landscape that normalizes “mass murder and gang rapes of Afghan civilian women and children” [Amnesty International] including midwives who provide forbidden reproductive health services.
In Iran, 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini “was arrested at a metro station by the morality police who enforce the dress code” and “died after being held in their custody on Sept. 16” according to Time. A sustained uprising has followed, the longest in the 43-year history of the Islamic Republic. Islamic Republic Law requires women to wear the hijab regardless of their religion or nationality, and Amini allegedly wore her headscarf too loosely. Anti-government protests have caused the deaths of more than 500 protestors, including 69 children. Women are leading protests with the slogan, “Women, Life, Freedom.” Women protesters are sexually assaulted, some fatally, with sham trials resulting in executions, torture, and jail terms for all genders involved. Women are being jailed for “encouraging prostitution” after removing their headscarves in protest of headscarf laws. While the vigor of Iran’s morality policing has fluctuated over time, it has increased since 2021 and the election of Iran’s ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi. While there are reports that the morality police may be relaxing in response to protests, Iran still forbids women from singing and playing music in public.
Meanwhile, home in the USA, proud Americans like to think we are far removed from these regimes. We might prefer to think our political system does not diminish women on the basis of ultraconservative religious affiliations with our government. However, in June 2022, the reproductive freedom that all women have enjoyed by law since January 1973 was revoked by our United States Supreme Court. This decision about the bodies of women was made by a court which was 2/3 male and based in religious definitions of humanity. Women in many states were sent back nearly a century in bodily autonomy because of this decision, regardless of words and legal explanations. While some states such as Texas (operating now under a law from 1925, just five years after women’s suffrage) have a complete ban on abortion regardless of rape and incest, others have severe limits, with only 16 of 50 states allowing full, legal access to abortion. Dobbs further threatens contraception, interracial marriage, and same-sex marriage, potential punishments for all genders of Americans delivered by a powerful group of majority men. Thirty-four of fifty states have restrictions on abortion. Like Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wisconsin ban all abortions with no exceptions for rape and incest. In Mississippi, all abortions are banned except for rape (but you’re still out of luck for incest, if you can explain that one.) Access to abortion and reproductive healthcare is imperative for women to pursue liberty and justice as citizens. Laws which punish women disproportionately (or exclusively) serve to make women second-class citizens in every corner of the world.
The November 2022 elections in the US, while they offered somewhat of a referendum against those politicians who seek to control women’s bodies, did not offer any significant gains for women’s representation. The population over age 18 (voting age) of the US is 51.7% women. In 2023, we will have just 27.8% of 535 total voting congresspeople who identify as women.
Okay, my dear readers, thank you for reading this far. Here we arrive at the point where I am afraid I am going to lose you. No, I am not worried about incels with handles such as @mensrightsnow69 and @BrosBeforeHosMAGA, but I’m more afraid for the self-described good men who read my page, the ones who think they are trying to do better but actually aren’t willing to do much real work or submit to any discomfort in their efforts to make the world a better place for non-male people.
Get ready, strap in, and try to stay with me for the next few paragraphs where I describe how the same malignancy that characterizes these foreign regimes festers in all of us, even in our beautiful little world of classical music. It’s not going to feel good, and if I do my job right here in this essay, you’ll feel at least a little icky. Think of Afghanistan and Iran like a Stage 4 metastatic cancer in terms of their codified misogyny, with the artistic world we live in displaying various stagings of that same degenerate genotype.
KEEPING WOMEN SUBORDINATE IN CLASSICAL MUSIC AND WHY IT MATTERS
Let’s consider why women would be banned from singing and playing music in Iran. Music is a reflection of our culture, inextricable from it. Throughout history, leaders who wish to diminish or extinguish certain groups of people have looked to artistic minimization as a powerful tool. The Nazi party realized the power of controlling art early on. They were neither the first nor the last group to attempt to control society through art, though they codified this control and brought it to new levels of efficiency. Worldwide leaders who do not value women as equal people restrict their influence on society by limiting their contributions to cultural media in addition to diminishing their legal status, educational potential, and bodily autonomy as described above. The position of women as artists, creators, and thinkers in a society cannot be separated from their value in society. When we control cultural output, we control people and their futures.
Music is a vehicle for political and social commentary, celebration, and mourning, as well as something which can connect people over disparate times and places. It is a record of our time. The Koussevitzy Music Foundation calls composers “the creators…who are providing our legacy to the future” on their website. I know you, my dear readers, are not card-carrying Nazis or Taliban or Morality Police. But when we even passively allow women’s voices to be marginalized, we allow the malignancy to grow. Efforts to mitigate the cultural contributions of women are efforts to control their place in society and ensure that it is subordinate. In classical music circles throughout the world and USA, most of us continue to support the marginalization of women’s voices, with some of us liking to think that it is only subconscious. Women were actively silenced and ignored this year in classical music, an extension of global attitudes. While the approach to women in western classical music is often less overtly malignant and physically violent than Taliban or Morality Police activities, we need to start acknowledging how seminal it is to our art form.
The many forms the subjugation of women in classical music took this year were: barriers to equal education; devaluation of women’s voices as composers, professors, and critics; gatekeeping by critics; discrepancies in high profile commissions and awards based upon gender; lack of women in leadership positions at the biggest institutions; lack of important men who program works by and concerts with women; lack of women in musical leadership positions at the biggest institutions; near absence of women composers in test repertoire for orchestral auditions; inappropriately low representation of women on competition juries and their repertoire lists; and support of the denigration of women by large, public broadcasting institutions working in global cooperation.
METHODS OF KEEPING WOMEN SUBORDINATE IN CLASSICAL MUSIC
22 WAYS WE’VE FAILED WOMEN IN CLASSICAL MUSIC IN 2022
BARRIERS TO EDUCATION THROUGH RAPE AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
While the New York Times recently published a congratulatory piece on the New York Philharmonic for having one more female player than male players, it ignored the “open secret” of the rapes that have taken place in that institution, rapes which had been covered in more moderate words earlier by the same publication. Rape and sexual violence against women and lack of access to education as a result of sexual violence is still a problem for women in classical music today, in 2022.
A woman on my page reported that her teacher who sexually assaulted her—and whom she reported at the time—was just promoted this year to lead the music school at one of the Cardinal Direction Illinois Universities. Raping of women students, including underage ones, is almost standard classical music news now, along with the news that schools have been receiving complaints for decades while still allowing these male professors to hold their positions.
Recent coverage of the composition department at The Juilliard School of Music alleges quid pro quo sexual exploitation of female students as well as unequal access based upon gender to the man who is arguably the most famous person on the faculty. Even today, women are often expected to provide sexual favors, or face career retaliation by men in power in classical music. Sarah Kirkland Snider said in the Washington Post this month: “It tends not to be about your abuser; it’s about the network of men at the top of our field who are friends and who protect each other. … If you come forward and name one person, you’re asking for retribution from basically a cabal of older, successful men who hold the keys to all the opportunities.”
“Fellow faculty members, administrators, and staff didn’t want to address Shipps’s behavior,” an anonymous victim of jailed-this-year Stephen Shipps at the North Carolina School for the Arts conveyed in The Daily’s piece by Sammy Sussman. “Those in charge seem to have determined that it was better to ignore the problem than to risk the fallout of acknowledging it, until they couldn’t… I guess that’s why it took a student newspaper to care enough to take on a member of the faculty who preyed on countless students.”
Are you still with me, dear Readers? If so, please digest that “ignore the problem” part in the last paragraph. And, good news, it gets easier to read from here, but I am going to ask you to stop ignoring the problem at the end. This network or cabal Ms. Snider referenced is highly effective at preventing women from appropriately reporting abuse. I will for the rest of this piece refer to the “cabal of older, successful men” as “COSM.”
DEVALUATION OF WOMEN’S VOICES AS COMPOSERS, PROFESSORS, AND CRITICS
DISCREPANCIES IN HIGH PROFILE COMMISSIONS AND AWARDS BASED UPON GENDER
The Koussevitzky Music Foundation, administered by the US Library of Congress, seeks to fund composers of our growing musical canon. Works such as Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra and the third symphonies by both Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein were commissioned by this fund. Of 444 completed commissions since 1942 listed on their website, I counted just 44, or 9.9%, by women composers. When asked why 6 of 7 commission recipients in 2022 were men, the press contact answered: “By Serge Koussevitzky’s design, the advisory committee includes accomplished composers, performers and other leaders in the music community. The current committee includes Antony Cheung, James Kendrick, Fred Lerdahl, Ursula Oppens, David Rakowski, David Sanford, Fred Sherry and Augusta Read Thomas. Beyond the required scores and recordings, materials submitted about the composer are at the discretion of the applicant ensemble; the foundation does not provide a set of prepared questions. The selection committee would be aware of the composer’s name and any demographic information provided by the applicant, but that information is not required.”
The committee which selects composers to write works which are destined to be part of our canon is not using anonymous scores, is looking at biographical information provided by applicants, and is only one quarter women. I had to ask over an extended period of time to get the names of the jury members, as that was not provided on their website. There is also no reference to required anti-bias training for jurors on the Koussevitzky Music Foundation’s website.
Similarly, outside of classical music, the Library of Congress gives the Gershwin Prize as the nation’s “highest honor award” in popular song. Their website further states that the prize “celebrates the work of an artist whose career reflects the influence, impact and achievement in promoting song as a vehicle of musical expression and cultural understanding…It acknowledges the preeminent place of popular song in modern society and its vital role in expressing and deepening the personal and shared values of our time.” Only two of 14 recipients of this award ever have been women. One must conclude that the KMF, with their lack of women commission recipients, and the Library of Congress, which also administers the women-marginalizing Gershwin Prize, think women are less important cultural contributors than men.
The Pulitzer Prize in music is another one of the most prestigious awards for composers. Nine of 80 recipients have been women, though five of those have happened in the last decade. Again, this award is not given blindly and there is no reference to anti-bias training for those making awards found online. A composer must pay a $75 entry fee. While we do not know how many women have applied for these awards historically, it is possible that women might be deterred from application by the historical lack of women winners and entry fee. The board which “presides over the judging process which results in the…winners and finalists” does not appear to have any musicians on it. The website does not appear to name any musical judges and did not respond to my questions about who makes these decisions. The website says: “The music jury, usually made up of three composers, one music critic and one presenter of musical work, meets in New York to listen to recordings and study the scores of pieces, which number more than 150. The category definition states: For distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year.” Given the lack of women historically who have won, one can hope that at least three of those five jurors are gender-marginalized people, though again, those at Pulitzer have not answered my questions about this matter.
The unnamed jury makes one wonder again about COSM. If a woman were to offend a powerful male player by declining, reporting, or otherwise screwing up a quid pro quo sexual overture, he and his colleagues are likely to staff anonymous prestigious juries such as this one. It sounds like the jury selects finalists, and then the published board listens to performances, but no one on that published board is listed as a musician.
LACK OF WOMEN COMPOSITION PROFESSORS
In February of this year, I made graphs of women on various important music faculties in the US. Of eleven surveyed institutions, I noted that six had no women music composition faculty (Yale, Curtis, Eastman, Cleveland, University of Texas at Austin, and Oberlin). I noted that Rice, University of South Carolina, Juilliard, Indiana University, and San Francisco Conservatory each had one professor, with San Francisco Conservatory having the largest percentage of women faculty members at only 25%. It’s likely those numbers have changed slightly with the onset of a new school year.
While the Juilliard School is the most recent one in the news with allegations of gender discrimination, it is not the only music school to under-represent women on its composition faculty, as described in the previous paragraph. Juilliard has one woman faculty member and five men. Composer Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, in Sammy Sussman’s recent piece about Juilliard for Van Magazine, Tainted History, “emphasized that these events continue to affect the industry. ‘This is not deep history. We’re not looking at the 18th century,’ she said. ‘There’s this idea that whoever is on faculty is part of the canon. The implications are massive. It’s why we don’t see female faculty at so many institutions.’”
CRITICAL GATEKEEPING
Critics are gatekeepers as well. Any mention for a performer or living composer in a respected publication can go a long way toward securing notoriety, management, and more performances. I have read more “end of year best of” reviews than I can recount here, but I did not see any where women composers or performers were mentioned as often as men. For example, in the New York Times’s “Best Classical Music Tracks of 2022” issued last week, five of 25 works were by women composers, or 20%. (Just three of those 25 are works by black or brown composers—all men.) Seth Colter Walls, Zachary Woolfe, Joshua Barone, David Allen, and Oussama Zahr were the critics making these choices, and they are 100% men. We saw less representation in the Washington Classical Review’s “Top 10 Performances of 2022,” at 10% and written by a man, Charles T. Downey. The Washington Post’s year-end piece, also written by a man, Michael Andor Brodeur, mentioned about 9% women composers as “best of.” In the Star Tribune’s “Minnesota's best theater, classical and dance performances and art exhibitions of 2022,” zero of ten “best” concerts mentioned a woman composer. The critic is another man, Rob Hubbard.
It is difficult to quantify performers and composers in the Boston Globe’s “Favorite Classical Albums of 2022” written by three classical music writers from that publication. I believe that just two women were mentioned at all (a performer and a performer/composer) in the course of a long article which mentions too many men to count easily over nine albums. The two women were mentioned from one album by a critic who uses they/she pronouns. They spoke of only men in their other two chosen albums. The two male critics who each reviewed three albums spoke of entirely men performers and composers over the course of their total six recordings. (Though one of the recordings featured women composers, they were not mentioned by name.)
LACK OF WOMEN IN PROGRAMMING OF MAJOR CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS
AT THE USA’S LARGEST PERFORMING ARTS ORGANIZATION
In classical music, the ultimate authority figure is the composer, the person giving us things to interpret and say. Yet, women composers are still being excluded, as if their inclusion never occurred to the COSM. Of 215 opera performances this season at the Metropolitan Opera, the nation’s largest performing arts organization by budget, zero are by women. A recent report in the New York Times indicates that the Met will draw from its endowment to stage more operas by modern composers. Music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin explained that “Opera should reflect the times we’re in. It’s our responsibility to generate new works so that people can recognize themselves and their realities on our stage.” No operas composed by women were mentioned in the six modern operas planned for next season. Of course, excellent living women composers abound, and the MET plans to feature works by five living men according to the New York Times. But when the COSM is speaking of the importance of living composers being presented by the country’s “largest performing arts organization” in arguably the US’s most important newspaper, women are not being mentioned, despite talk of allowing the public to “recognize themselves.”
“The challenges are greater than ever,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. “The only path forward is reinvention.” How can we reconcile the absence of women musical creators with the music director’s talk of responsibility and self-recognition? Perhaps the reinvention should include some people in charge who will program women composers on this important stage.
LACK OF MEN WHO PROGRAM WOMEN
According to Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy, the following orchestras with all male music directors programmed works by women composers this season at the following rates: Boston Symphony at 12.6%; Chicago Symphony at 5.9%; Cleveland Orchestra at 4.6%; Los Angeles Philharmonic at 7%; Milwaukee Symphony at 3.6%; National Symphony at 5%; New York Philharmonic at 13%; San Diego Symphony at 6%; San Francisco Symphony at 13%; and the Seattle Symphony 5%. Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy notes the following conductors programmed zero works by women in their schedules this season: Bernard Labadie, Cristian Macelaru, Edo De Waart, Fabian Gabel, Herbert Blomstedt, James Conlon, Michael Tilson Thomas, Roderick Cox, Sir Donald Runnicles, and Thomas Ades. They note that conductors who only led one piece include Gustavo Dudamel, Ken-David Masur, Matthias Pintscher, Rafael Payare, and Riccardo Muti. When these men program the top orchestras nationwide with women composers at such low rates, they do so in order to reinforce the cultural narrative that women are second-class citizens. It is no longer possible to argue that they do this accidentally: in a 2021 interview, Riccardo Muti said, “There is a campaign according to which, when preparing a concert season, there should be a balance between men, women, different skin colours, people who are transgender, and so on, so that all social, ethnic, and genetic issues are represented. I find that very strange. The choice should be made on the basis of worth and talent, without discrimination one way or the other.” And then, the next season, he programmed only one work by a woman, aware of the “campaign.” The point these men are making is that the voice of women is less valuable, less worthwhile, and less talented. It is a malignant statement which should no longer be tolerated.
LACK OF WOMEN IN MUSICAL LEADERSHIP POSITIONS IN BIGGEST ORCHESTRAS
While we use the repertoire of almost exclusively men to determine access to our orchestras, we have still not as of the date of my writing seen any women hold a tenured principal chair in any of the following positions in the US Big Five Orchestras: concertmaster, bass, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, or timpani principals. Neither have we seen a woman music director in these places. While some people argue that the moniker “Big 5” is no longer as important as it once was and might argue for inclusion of another few orchestras in that number, the case is pretty much similar no matter which of those orchestras you count. These auditions for positions of national leadership are hardly ever done blindly. Often, orchestras will have a blind preliminary round, advance hardly anyone or no one, and then invite players to later rounds which are unscreened. Or they will have a failed audition process which enables them to invite people they know or want to play trials in the orchestra.
In this way, the Los Angeles Philharmonic hired a Principal Oboist this year (there is only one female principal—viola—in that orchestra). Online reports detail six people who were invited to take part in this process after a failed screened audition, only one of whom was a woman. This has not been confirmed by the LAPO but detailed in the ALLISYAR blog, which correctly projected the winner of the audition and claims to have connections to players in the LAPO. Countless other orchestras similarly carried on hiring men outside open auditions for leadership positions. I detailed another concertmaster hiring that took place in this way from an anonymous woman on my Facebook page this year. Also this year, Rebekah Daley detailed in a series of Instagram videos her experience playing trial weeks after taking an audition for principal horn of the Cleveland Orchestra, only to learn via the classical music blog, Slippedisc, that someone else was hired after a private, one-person audition outside of the advertised audition process.
LACK OF WOMEN MUSIC DIRECTORS
Music directors are the primary musical figureheads, leaders, and decision makers of any classical music organization, as well as the highest paid musician any organization has. While Marin Alsop was hailed as the first woman music director of a major American orchestra in 2007, at the Baltimore Symphony, others might dispute that it was JoAnn Falletta of the Buffalo Philharmonic in 1999. Regardless, since that time, there has been no significant growth in women music directors in this echelon of orchestra. While Alsop no longer holds an American music directorship, only one woman has taken her place at a similarly ranked orchestra—the second to hold such a position, Nathalie Stutzmann, who took the reins of the Atlanta Symphony this year. Decades since the beginning of the tenures of Falletta and Alsop, we would expect to see more than one woman leading a top-20 US orchestra.
Talia Ilan, Israeli conductor, had the following to say about the resistance to women conductors in Where are the female conductors? by Joshua Kosman. “Ilan subscribes to a mathematical explanation as well. If we assume that conducting talent is evenly distributed throughout the population, she points out, then an all-male profession makes space for the weakest 50% of men, who would be squeezed out of a workforce that was half female. That’s a lot of mediocre men with an incentive to oppose gender equity.”
LACK OF WOMEN COMPOSERS IN TEST REPERTOIRE
For many instrumentalists, winning a tenured position in an orchestra is the most viable option for making a living wage in music. While most orchestra audition repertoire lists will often require dozens of excerpts, most include no works by women. A quick scroll through audition ads in the International Musician this month took me to three repertoire lists with one work each by a woman composer, and one list with two excerpts. I found 25 orchestras, many of whom were advertising multiple positions with multiple separate repertoire lists, with zero required works by women on any list. Advertised positions for principal viola and horn at Riccardo Muti’s Chicago Symphony require no performance of any excerpts by women composers, but that is just the beginning of the alphabet. The York Symphony Orchestra in PA, a regional orchestra, was extremely unusual and noteworthy with its inclusion of just two works by women composers on its repertoire list for a principal oboe audition advertised several months ago. Similarly, the orchestra this month advertising two required works by a woman composer, the Louisiana Philharmonic, was advertising an English horn/oboe position (their violin audition requires zero works by women.) Choosing new colleagues who may fill a position for their entire career is one of the greatest responsibilities orchestral musicians have. To do it with repertoire that excludes women sends a message about misogynist institutional values. It shows that an institution does not value women as cultural contributors to our most important repertoire.
LACK OF WOMEN ON JURIES AND REPERTOIRE LISTS OF BIG COMPETITIONS
Competitions build careers of elite soloists, give music students something to strive for and repertoire to focus on, and connect young soloists to managers and conductors who can build their careers. Yet, it is common that these competition juries lack or under-represent women. The following is an incomplete list of competitions this year that did this and comments from a few of those organizers. The screening jury for The Cliburn (piano competition) this year was 25% women. It admitted only 10% women to the competition, and the next jury admitted 8% women to the semifinals. The Eleventh International German Piano Award was overseen by a jury of 100% men and went to a man. While the repertoire was free choice for many rounds, none of the accepted competitors offered a work by a woman composer. The Concurso Bottesini (bass competition) had seven male jurors and a 100% male repertoire list. The Eighth International Oboe Competition “Giuseppe Tomassini” had a jury of six men and five required male composers. The Fifth Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann (cello competition) had a jury of 22% women, the highest it’s ever been. (The finalists were all men.) The Eighth International Jorma Panula Conducting Competition had a 25% female jury and 100% male repertoire list with all male finalists and few women admitted to the competition at all.
I questioned the Sony Music Foundation, who is running the 13th International Oboe Competition of Japan, about their all-male jury and all-male competition repertoire. They responded, “It is commonly understood the selection of Jury members is one of most important element in any significant lnt'l competition, and without doubt The lnt'l Oboe Competition of Japan which Sony Music Foundation organize, also consider the same. We have been selecting the Jury based on objective and fair criteria, including candidates' experience and past records. Also, the competition process has been managed rigorously, and we understand that there has been no gender bias in the Jury's judgment.” I contacted four of the all-male jurors (two of them twice) to encourage them to encourage the inclusion of women and never received a response. There is no information about required anti-bias training for jurors on SMF’s website or any of the other competitions mentioned in this section.
When I reached out to the Seventh Maurice Andre International Trumpet Competition this year to complain about the complete absence of women on the jury of nine men (they later added two) and repertoire list, I was told, “Let me tell you this, my dream is to have a trumpet world, a brass world, a music world and a world where women and men are perfectly equal… And in the music history, women were not so visible in classical music, that's why in the repertoire there are not visible either…Also, the competition is open to ALL WOMEN. Which is not true in sports for example, where men and women are competing separately.” The competition generated no women prizewinners.
WOMEN DENIGRATED BY LARGE PUBLIC BROADCASTING CORPORATIONS
One of the biggest international celebrations of music, musical elegance, and culture is the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s program, which will round out this year’s programming and bring us into 2023. Vienna Philharmonic is an orchestra famous for its misogyny (and racism and anti-semitism), only appointing its first woman musician in 2003 but not allowing her to speak to the press. PBS broadcasts this program in the US, and the BBC broadcasts to the UK, with a total broadcast to over 90 other countries as well. EBU (European Broadcasting Union) had broadcast the program to 50 million people previously. In the event’s 83rd year this year, there has never once been a woman conductor, nor do I believe there has even been a piece by a woman composer programmed. There are 15 works by men composers, many relatively unknown, this year, to give an idea of the purposefully avoided opportunity. Photos of rehearsals for this event appear to show no women playing any principal chairs in the orchestra, either. Daniel Froschauer, orchestra spokesperson says, “The orchestra keeps working with excellent female conductors, such as the German Joana Mallwitz at the last three Salzburg Festivals. However, the Vienna Philharmonic only invite conductors to the New Year's Concert after they have worked with them for at least ten years.” Since neither Mallwitz nor any other woman conductor is conducting a VPO subscription concert this year, it seems their convenient rules will keep women from this position of honor indefinitely.
Classical musicians and musical institutions are always seeking to prove their relevance to society and the donors who make their art possible. We speak of the importance of culture, cultural reflection, and connecting people. If we actually believe classical music can do these things, these choices to exclude women on so many levels is a message we send that women are not important parts of our culture. We also send a message of violence with our exclusion as we watch that exclusion being taken to frightening extremes around the world. Will fixing global attitudes toward women fix classical music? Will fixing classical music’s attitudes toward women fix the world?
We must understand that our society has been talking about the exclusion of women for centuries now. These exclusions of women in classical music are not an accident of numbers. We cannot even claim they are the result of unconscious bias. They are the result of active, conscious misogyny and sexism. We are all aware of it now, even though looking at it is uncomfortable. If classical music is indeed the reflection of our culture we think it is, will improving our attitudes toward women here improve society’s attitudes toward women globally?
WHAT’S NEXT? SOME SUGGESTIONS.
If you think something is not right with regard to the marginalization of women in classical music, but are unwilling to do any work or experience any discomfort in service of fixing it, it means you actually don’t care.
The men of Iran have been commended for their presence in these recent protests. From men supporting women and being jailed and killed for it to the Iranian men’s soccer team’s choice of dress in big games to show support for women, the presence of male support is a rather rare sign of allyship. These men are leveraging their privilege toward those who do not have it.
I will close this essay by describing some notable interactions as the operator of an overtly feminist musician page and making some suggestions for people who wish to be allies toward the cause of improving the condition of women in classical music, and hopefully in society, as a result. Don’t worry! I will not suggest anything nearly as risky as what the Iranian men have taken upon themselves.
In the past 18 months of coming out of the closet and operating my overtly feminist musician page, I’ve had a lot of interactions with people outside of public comment. This year, after engaging in several long-winded and frustrating conversations with men who have reached out and asked to speak with me privately (about organizations they are involved in and are in some way embarrassed by my coverage of), I’ve learned a bit about how to reclaim my time (with gratitude to Maxine Waters.) When we finish speaking, they often follow up by sending me photos showing how great they are at including women or black people or whatever. This is called “virtue signaling.” I always follow by asking, “why haven’t you done anything about the NameThatMisogynistDisplayYouWereInvolved in yet?,” and I never hear back. So, I’ve decided I do not even engage until I see evidence of their concerted effort to do better. I do not even respond. In retrospect, I could have predicted these interactions and saved myself time by refusing to engage after initial aggressive, condemning communications. This is a recommendation for women, actually: if someone wants to talk to you about their misogynist display, but they preface the request with something rude and accusatory, save your breath.
Of course, reactions from men reading my page have run the real gamut. Early on, one man I’ve never met who remains employed by several reputable organizations sent me chainsaw videos. When I asked if I should view them as threats, he indicated that I should and followed by sharing my home address on his Facebook page. I had committed the mortal sin, you see, of suggesting that the diverse students at NYO-2 should be represented as changing faces in our profession over the next couple of decades. While he tried to backpedal in court, I represented myself and ended up getting a permanent peace order against him, and the judge suggested he stop talking because he would only further incriminate himself. My only regret is that Baltimore County Courts failed to audio record cases properly that day and I could not buy a recording after the fact. Just this month, an employee of AMC Networks (the channel responsible for blockbuster shows such as The Walking Dead) sent me a death threat from his work computer on company time. My crime this time? I had supported Lara St. John by saying that the guy who said she should be euthanized based upon the way she played the Tchaikovsky Concerto was an asshole and probably worse. I don’t ever take talk of killing women lightly or as a joke. AMC refuses to provide me any information on their employee who sent said death threat (and KKK references) but did confirm that it was their employee and that messages from the KKK are not ones they endorse. As an aside, AMC’s website is full of talk of diversity, but the way their personnel interacted with me even after the initial racist and threatening communication was extremely unprofessional and rude.
I hear from a ton of women telling me horrendous stories about their experiences. Most of them, you never see anywhere near the public light of my page. I try to sympathize with them and try to help them share their stories and seek justice. I know the vast majority of people who read this page are people I’ll never hear from. Facebook tells me that my biggest audience is men ages 25-34. Here is my message for men of all ages for 2023:
WHAT YOU CAN DO IF YOU’RE A MAN:
If you are embarrassed by being called out (for whatever reason, it is not important) for participating in or organizing an event/institution which excludes women (fully or partially, it need not matter), sit with and understand your embarrassment before lashing out. If your response is to be angry at or denigrate the messenger, first realize the messenger is not the problem. Don’t argue about small details which distract from the point being made. Don’t engage in tone policing. Whatever you do, do not point out that you have chosen to involve men of color in your institution, so everything is okay. This is using the men of color inappropriately and shows unawareness of the fact that you chose to exclude women of color. Before responding with words, think about what you might be able to do to improve the situation.
Don’t make sexual overtures to or harbor any sexual expectations from your students. If there is anyone who could be even tangentially considered your subordinate in a musical workplace, approach them similarly. Find sex elsewhere. There are plenty of other opportunities for creative people. There are even opportunities for uncreative people.
If you’re playing in a concert or festival where personnel is flexible (not a unionized orchestra with tenured players), ask why women are under-represented when you see that happen. Ask how these choices are made. Indicate that your participation is predicated upon inclusion of women—if you can afford to. It’s not hard comparatively and will become even easier the more men do this together. If you are a man, you can almost always afford to speak out more than the affected women. If you are an All-Star or other Fancy Festival faculty, ask who else is invited when you get your invitation. If women are under-represented or non-existent, say “no thank you, not this year. Please invite a woman or other gender-marginalized person instead of me. I’d love to come back when women are not inappropriately excluded.” Make it a matter of policy to ask who else is invited when you are. It’s likely that when women are excluded, racial diversity will also be poor. You can also point that out when it happens, whether that be alone or in conjunction with absent women.
Perhaps it should be mentioned here that in Costa Rica this year, Rodrigo Chaves handily won an election to become president on May 8. Chaves had previously worked at the World Bank, where an internal investigation of multiple sexual harassment complaints caused him to sanctioned for misconduct and demoted. But then he went and got elected president of a whole country.
Do you have a male colleague or several who participate in the harassment and denigration of women, or treat them unequally and unfairly? Do not help them by amplifying their positions or helping them to maintain their status quo. Limit your interactions as much as possible. Don’t seek to work extra with them, make nice with them, give them extra opportunities, write them commissioned works, or attempt to reform them; report them if you can.
Scroll through your social media photos and look at the ones you share of yourself and your professional colleagues. If women are sorely under-represented, ask yourself why instead of just changing the photos (but change the photos, too). If the only photos you have of you with women are your wives, daughters, and students, go re-read my essay. Imagery is important. Some institutions focus their marketing imagery to completely different places than their actual programming, but if you look at your own subconsciously generated imagery, it can tell you a lot.
If you are involved in the programming of a concert, make sure you have a good reason to exclude women composers if you choose that route. (Spoiler alert, there is very rarely a good reason.) If you have connection to the people (usually men) who make the decisions to exclude women composers, reach out to them and let them know why you disagree with those choices. You can do it.
If you are on an audition committee or other type of competition jury, make sure women composers are represented appropriately. This means more than one token composer and certainly more than zero.
If you are in an orchestra section which has zero to few women, make sure that substitute choices are made without bias. There is no likely no good reason women can’t be on your sublist. If you have a bunch of reasons you think are good, sit and think about the reasons for your different approaches to different genders a bit. Request anti-bias training for you and your colleagues.
If you are on a competition jury, make sure there are more than zero or one women jurors at all stages of the competition. Ask what safeguards are in place to make sure women are admitted appropriately to the competition and request anti-bias training (gender and racial trainings are a great start) for all jurors. If people decline to participate because they do not want to engage in such trainings, you have eliminated bad jurors before the competition and congratulations.
If you are part of an orchestra which has had a failed audition for a fancy titled position, ask yourself if the group of people being invited to temporarily fill that vacancy, or have a “special” audition process, are appropriately gender (and racially, while you’re at it) diverse. Often failed auditions are used as a vehicle to allow men in power to install their friends and compatriots from the COSM and COSM-to-be. Request that all members of audition committees and people who make recommendations for personnel to bypass blind audition rounds undergo anti-bias training as described above. Again, those who refuse should never have been involved at all.
If you are a broadcaster, curator, or critic, and the things you choose to amplify are consistently majority male-composed or -performed, ask yourself why. If your answer is “quality,” consider what biases you have and how they may play into your perception of quality.
To summarize: say something. Get over your discomfort and say something; the women and other gender marginalized people have far more to lose than you by speaking up.