The Songs of Fanny Hensel

Fanny Hensel is arguably the most gifted female composer of the nineteenth century—a composer of over 450 works, including 249 songs, who created some of the most pathbreaking music of her era. As much as Hensel has finally moved out from behind the shadow of her more famous brother, however, and as much as we now know about her life, there is one aspect of this astonishing composer that still remains understudied: her music. This book focuses on Hensel’s contributions to the genre of song, the art form that she said “suits her best,” where her gifts as a composer are especially evident. Its twelve chapters consider such topics as Hensel’s fascination with certain poets and poetic themes; her innovative harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, and textual strategies; her connection to larger literary and musical trends; her efforts to break free the constraints placed on her as a woman; and her place in the history of nineteenth-century Lieder. No matter their particular topics of inquiry, the authors are guided by the conviction that the best way to honor Hensel’s achievements as a composer and to appreciate her historical importance is to thoroughly examine what she wrote within its many diverse contexts, be they biographical, historical, cultural, or musical.

Olga Neuwirth, Orlando. Wiener Staatsoper, December 2019.

The Vienna State Opera made headlines around the world last December, boasting that it had finally commissioned a full-scale opera by a female composer. Olga Neuwirth, known for her difficult, unrestrained character (both musical and personal), was a curious and adventurous choice for the Wiener Staatsoper, the embassy of a conservative cultural landscape and gatekeeper of highbrow art. Choosing Virginia Woolf's seminal novel about a poet who lives through the ages and who one day miraculously changes sexes was a fitting choice for this maverick, whose work blurs the lines between genius – in all its anachronistic complexities – and fremdschämend, the well-established German equivalent of the facepalm, always scoring particularly high on listicles of ‘quintessential German words’.

Nature, Reason, and Light in Vision—Aus dem Leben der Hildegard von Bingen

Historical understandings of Hildegard (1098–1179) occupy a central position in the recent revival of the Middle Ages. Viewed as a protofeminist and the first documented female composer, Hildegard is often used as a role model in contemporary times. Through an examination of Margarethe von Trotta’s film Vision, this essay uncovers another image of Hildegard, as an enlightened thinker, deeply invested in the acquisition of knowledge, and as a scientific medical practitioner who abhors the idea of the mortification of the flesh. Using iconic sounds and musical references, the sound design for von Trotta’s film strongly supports this image. In acoustic, as well as in visual and narrative terms, the film epitomizes the contrast between the grotesque and the romantic that is so important to our reception of the Middle Ages.

Labels, Inequity, and Advocacy: The “Woman Composer” in the Wind Band World

Is it time to retire the “female composer” label? While music educators would perhaps like to think society is beyond the need for such labels, gender inequity exists in programming, publisher’s offerings, and college programs. This article considers some of the arguments advanced to explain these inequities and the social/systemic biases that consideration of this topic necessarily involves. Finally, the author suggests paths and some resources for those interested in seeking out and advocating for excellent music that happens to be composed by women.

Maddalena Casulana, “Per lei pos’ in oblio” from Cinta di fior (1570)

The chapter examines the madrigals of Maddalena Casulana, a sixteenth-century Venetian composer, teacher, and singer who was the first female composer in western music history to have her music published. When she was only twenty, four of her madrigals appeared in a volume with those of Orlando di Lasso and Cipriano de Rore, but later published collections were devoted exclusively to her compositions. Her madrigals exhibit not only what she must have learned singing poetry to the lute, but mastery of sophisticated compositional craft as well. This skill is particularly evident in her handling of chordal music, a basic feature of the mid-sixteenth-century madrigal arioso. This chapter explores her compositional techniques in general and looks closely at the form of “Per lei pos’ in oblio.”

EUPHEMISM AND GENDER: THE EUPHEMISM USED BY MALE AND FEMALE IN MINANGKABAU SONGS

This study aims to identify the differences types of euphemism as an expression in deriving meaning used by the composer of male and female Minangkabau in their song lyrics. The subjects of this research are male and female Minangkabau composers. Data taken from this study were downloaded from youtube and transcribed. The procedure of collecting the data was taken from two of song lyrics by the composers Ipank and Ria Amelia “Rantau Den Pajauh” and “Harok di Rantau urang”. The procedure of analyzing the data was descriptive qualitative method, by having the lyrics identified and underlined to get the types of euphemism that used in their lyrics. The result of analyzing the data indicated that there were three types of euphemism used by male and female composers. The female composer used euphemism more than the male composer. The female composer used three types of euphemism such as ; Circumlocution, Metaphor, understatement and Hyperbole while the male composer only used Hyperbole in the Lyrics.

Combat at the Keys: Women and Battle Pieces for the Piano during the American Civil War

During the American Civil War, women in the parlor imagined life at the front through music, playing pieces and singing songs on topics related to the conflict. Among the genres that they performed were battle pieces for the piano, episodic works that depict incidents of battle and their outcome in victory. These pieces constituted a genre that had long been a favorite of female amateur performers, their lineage beginning with Frantisek Kotzwara's 1788 Battle of Prague, which remained steadily popular throughout the nineteenth century. This article examines Civil War battle pieces by tracing their roots to Kotzwara's famous piece. By constructing a reception history of that work as it appears in nineteenth-century literary sources, the article retrieves some alternatives to the abundant satirical readings of the Battle of Prague in period fiction. It suggests that Civil War battle music played several important roles in the lives of its players. The music invited women to imagine and embody the conflicts on the battlefield, to challenge society's expectations of women as both pianists and as contributors to the war effort in public capacities, and to reflect on the costs of the war. The article goes on to examine a battle piece by a female composer and to consider amateur women's performances of battle repertoire during the war years. Finally, drawing inspiration from the accounts in fiction of Kotzwara's Battle of Prague, it concludes by imagining a woman's performance of a battle piece on the heels of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Hungry women: sin and rebellion through food and music in the early modern era

Longing for food has always had different implications for men and women: associated with power and strength for men, it tends to have a worrying proximity to sexual pleasure for women. Showing an interesting parallelism throughout the Cinquecento, Italian humanists and teachers insisted on forbidding women music and gluttony. Food and music were both considered dangerous stimulants for the female senses, and every woman was encouraged to consider herself as a kind of food to be offered to the only human beings authorized to feel and satisfy desires: men and babies. Women could properly express themselves only inside monastic circles: the most prolific female composer of the seventeenth century was a nun, as was the first woman who wrote down recipes. Elaborate music and food became the means to maintain a lively relationship with the external world. Moreover, nuns also escaped male control by using the opposite system of affirming themselves through fasting and mortifying the flesh.