A Day of Discoveries with abcd

Selfie or it didn't happen...

I spent a richly rewarding day on Saturday sight-singing through choral music by women. The day, hosted by the Association of British Choral Directors, was the brainchild of Amy Bebbington, who led us through the repertoire with clarity of gesture and purpose, and shared insights into the pieces’ backgrounds and musical detail. We also had the pleasure of the company of three of the composers whose music we sang, along with several publishers and agents. One of the things abcd has always been good at is connecting people who want to supply choral music with people who want to sing it.

Beyond the interest (and, let’s face it, sheer pleasure) of spending a day furtling through music I didn’t previously know, there were lots of interesting insights to be had about the practicalities of the marginalisation of women’s music. Some people seem to think that gender equality has arrived (on the grounds that they don’t personally regard themselves as being sexist), and that all this attention on women’s music is therefore just special pleading. And the term ‘systemic exclusion’ is sufficiently abstract not to make much a dent in that belief structure. But thinking through the nitty-gritty of what facilitates or inhibits both the act of composition and the integration of that composition into the regularly- and widely-performed repertoire reveals all kinds of reasons why we don’t get to hear nearly enough of the music that women have written.

At this point I realise my notes will provide enough content for at least two posts, possibly three, so I’ll talk about some specifically musical insights in this one, and move onto the wider contextual ones in the follow-ups (which may not be published immediately, and I’ve got some other things lined up that are more time-bound).

One of the themes that came out repeatedly during the day was the accessibility and/or singability of the music we were exploring. Singability is specifically an issue of singer-experience: do the lines suit the voice well?, do they help you make intuitive sense of the musical flow?, is the voice-leading good? Accessibility encompasses this, but also considers audience experience: will a general audience find the expressive mode of the music readily graspable?, will amateur singers and non-expert listeners get the benefit of this music?

These qualities are not the same as difficulty level, though they are not unrelated. We sang through a piece by Joanna Marsh that was definitely not easy – both metrical and harmonic structures presented significant musical challenges – but you’d still say it was written well for the voice and would have a striking expressive impact in performance.

Anyway, this led me to wonder to what extent these qualities are generalisable to women’s music overall? There’s a strong argument that this was actually just an artefact of selection bias: given the nature of the day, Amy had chosen music that could be viably sight-read, and could reveal enough of their expressive qualities in the process to be rewarding. Another participant remarked that they were glad to be singing music chosen by the session leader, because sometimes these kinds of session are full of pieces sent in by publishers that don’t respond well when sight-read. And Amy chose to play us a couple of items, rather than have us sight-sing them, on the grounds that, whilst they were perfectly viable to bring to performance, sight-reading probably wouldn’t bring out enough of their qualities to make us want to.

But I suspect that you might find singability and accessibility more readily in women’s music anyway, owing to the circumstances in which they are working. Opportunities come harder to female composers, and their competence is often doubted by default. A man can call himself ‘a composer’ and thereby tap into the mythologies of genius to gain status; when a women announces herself a composer, she often gets the response of, ‘oh yeah? Prove it!’

So, male composers can write fearsomely difficult stuff and frame it as evidence of their smarts. If the poor performers have to work really hard to bring it to life, that is a sign of its complexity, and by extension, profundity. (Flashback to student days, telling a composer whose work I was due to perform that I had eventually figured out the patterns in the ostinati, and he was most put out; apparently they weren’t meant to be discoverable.) If a woman writes music that seems on first sight unplayable or unsingable, it is more likely to be dismissed as evidence of poor writing.

And given that it can be harder to get work performed as a woman, and your work will probably be given less rehearsal time than that of your male colleagues, it’s all the more important to write stuff that will get through and reach both performers and listeners despite the obstacles placed in its way. Women don’t get the luxury of writing ‘expensive’ music (as in music that demands great cognitive and/or technical investment from performers and audiences) very much, particularly in their early careers.

From this perspective, the singability and accessibility we experienced was an artefact not just of selection bias, but also survival bias. This was all work by women who had made through to publication, and it seems that a strong sense of both technical pragmatism and expressive commitment had been key to achieving that.

It’s also possible of course to read this as women just being kinder and less arrogant. And of course not all men (as they say) flaunt their egos all over their aesthetic outputs. It occurs to me that some of the most successful male choral composers of our time are also widely known to be kindly folk, who make a good living keeping amateur singers happy both through their vocal writing and their in-person musical leadership. But I suspect it is harder for women than for men to build a career by adopting the prickly standoffishness of the modernist aesthetic that was the accepted mode for high-status composition in my undergraduate years, and even if it weren’t, a more considerate approach is possibly more in line with our typical socialisation.

I will explore the interaction between the cultural concepts of ‘the composer’ and the practical experience of making a living as one further in my future posts. For now, I’d just like to note a point that came out during the day: how strong the Canadian game in women’s composition seems to be. Turns out they have an education system that values choral music, and moreover that seems to provide good opportunities for women to excel in it. Way to go, Canada; everyone else: watch and learn.