how can we explain the under-representation of female composers in classical music?

Women composers are very rarely present in classical music programs, reveals a study by the Elles Women Composers association, published Tuesday March 5. This association, which campaigns to promote the work of female composers, analyzed 14,892 works programmed during the 2022-2023 season in 214 structures (theaters, orchestras, opera houses and festivals) in France. Of all these programmed works, only “6.4 % were composed by women”, underlines Héloïse Luzzati, cellist and founder of Elles Women Composers. The works of these female composers represented only approximately 4% of the total programming time.

A shared responsibility

“There are lots of different factors” which explain this under-representation of women, indicates Héloïse Luzzati. First of all, “the history of music was mostly written without women. Even those who were very successful during their lifetime subsequently disappeared”she emphasizes. “Everyone has their little share of ‘responsibility’” in this disappearance.

Firstly, there is the role played by musicologists and score publishers of the time, who did not necessarily maintain the legacy of female composers. Also, “Women rarely deposited their works in libraries so we lose track of the scores.” Finally, “many female composers, mainly in the 20th century, have not had children and if there are no descendants, in general, we see that there is a very rapid erasure of a brilliant professional life and sometimes full of success.

“We inherit this absence of inheritance”

Héloïse Luzzati

at franceinfo

Conversely, we observe the fundamental role played by certain relatives who have maintained the legacy of composers, such as Lili Boulanger and Mel Bonis, who are thus among those who have been the most programmed in France in 2022-2023.

Moreover, “we realize on a daily basis and through study that we almost always program the same works”notes Héloïse Luzzati. “The works of female composers are therefore rarely programmed due to lack of knowledge, because there are few books, because the scores are sometimes no longer published, but also out of habit. All these small reasons lead to programming difficulties” Today.

“Not a week goes by without discovering the name of a composer”

The number of female composers must also be put into perspective with that of composers throughout history. “It’s difficult to make a proportion. Instinctively, yes, probably there are fewer female composers than male composersreplies Héloïse Luzzati. However, not a week goes by without me discovering the name of a composer I didn’t know. It’s infinite, there are hundreds and thousands of them. We just don’t know them.”

To introduce these female composers, her association has produced videos of more than 100 of them. “We tell a little about their lives, we play their music. It’s very accessible, even to people who are not music lovers, just a little curious”, she explains. Among those that Héloïse Luzzati is particularly fond of, there are the composers on whom she has worked a lot, such as “Charlotte Sohy, Rita Strohl, Clémence de Grandval and Jeanne Leleu”.

A gradual awareness

The study published by Elles Women Composers being the first of its kind, an evolution over time of the programming of women composers is not yet possible. But through her experience and her work on the subject in recent years, Héloïse Luzzati has “the certainty that we don’t talk about it anymore”. “I think that it is evolving in the programming but perhaps not as quickly as it seems. That is to say that we often talk about it a lot but it is not necessarily in the actions “ there are changes, underlines the cellist.

“Of course there is an awareness in society about the place of women, it is obvious, and in the classical music sector too, I hope. But it is not a certainty for everyone”.

Héloïse Luzzati

at franceinfo

Héloïse Luzzati is surprised, for example, by the reading that some have made of the study, seeing in it a desire “to arrive at a policy of quotas between composers”. “Of course, that’s not the goal, we don’t say to ourselves that we have to arrive at 50/50, that’s anti-artisticshe specifies. The objective of all our work is to discover music, it does not take anything away from the history of music as it was written, it just adds a piece of the history that it is missing.”