Composing the Music School: Proposals for a Feminist Composition Curriculum

Susan Parenti April 1995

Prologue 5. Thus the world of new music mirrors, un- fortunately, the society in which it exists. Who 1. As composers we are allocated a tiny spot composes the composer? Do we composers in society, with almost zero function. compose the world of new music composition? Do we compose our function in society? 2. We defend a society that does not defend us. The Project 3. We even take it as a challenge to live in The area I wish to explore, which I tentatively a system hostile to the well-being of its mem- call “Composing the Music School: Proposals bers. If we end up doing well, retroactively we for a Feminist Composition Curriculum,” com- think we deserved it. As for the other com- prises the articulation of connections between posers, who therefore didn’t get the job (so feminist ideas and the teaching of music com- few), or the support (tiny), or the opportunities position. (scarce), we secretly think they didn’t try very The exploration has involved a process, and hard, weren’t as exceptionally talented, there aims towards a product. The process has been was always something about them we had never to work with composing women, involving our- liked. . . selves in discussions of our reactions and cri- tiques of the current music composition cur- 4. We strain to make it into the few cushy riculum, and then to brainstorm ideas for a not- spots of this undesirable system. We spend yet-existent but highly desired curriculum. The years pushing upward; we spend our youth aimed-towards-product is to compile a hand- pushing upward. What alternative do we have? book of some sixty to one hundred pages, pre- (We’re smart, we’re talented, we deserve to get senting four or five different proposals for mu- those jobs!) Once in those cushy positions, the sic composition curriculi with a feminist orien- system doesn’t look so undesirable any more. tation. So that when composers talk about themselves, a business transaction is already taking place.

SUSAN PARENTI 1 Composing the Music School Background of Project few women composers: we’re happy to be ar- ranging things in the living room, coordinating While the feminist movement has manifested the blue of the carpet with the green of the cur- itself in many academic and commercial ar- tains. eas over the past twenty years, it seems that in In response to the data’s emphatic thud (and the area of music composition the influence of with the interior-designer metaphor making a the movement has yet to be significantly felt. terrible, noncomposed tune in my head) I de- Women are not swelling the ranks of music cided it’s not sufficient to galvanize women composition departments; if they’ve found a to compose music pieces only. In addition, voice, then they’re not composing with it, but women must turn architect and educator and taking it elsewhere. start composing the music school, themselves. Research conducted in September 1992 The project “Composing the Music School: shows that in the Top Ten universities few Proposals for a Feminist Composition Curricu- women are teaching music composition; of ap- lum” takes women’s criticisms and reactions plicants to grad school in music composition, to their educational experiences as a point of only an average of six per cent are women (and departure. In this project, the emphasis has of these, half are from countries other than the been to go from criticism of the existent so- US). A comparison between these figures in ciety into learning to articulate statements for l992 and of figures twenty years ago demon- a desired and different society. How do we strates little change in the “scene” concerning move from our complaints about the present so- women (and racial minorities) in the composi- ciety’s notions of how it wants to educate its tion departments of American universities. composers, into making the premises, asser- The emphatic thud of these data—plus the tions, blueprints, and poetry of a desired so- experience of having lived it, being for three ciety’s way of educating its composers? The years one of two persons to use the women’s handbooklet hopes to trace the results of this bathroom on the composition floor of the Uni- query. versity of Illinois—makes a curious person, cu- riouser: why do music departments not attract young women to study composition? Why does Methodology of Project music composition itself (and of the “art mu- In the last three years, the project has gone sic” kind) not attract women, or at least repel as follows: eleven composing women in them so strongly that women angrily decide to the Champaign-Urbana area were interviewed be composers, willy nilly? Are women seeking (also, some women who, in the process of being training in composition (in counterpoint, or- university-trained in composition, dropped out chestration, voice-leading, instrumentation, et of this training). The women responded with cetera) in other places—and if so, where? their reflections on the overlapping and divided A friend has proposed that women have areas of being simultaneously a composer, a long had the experience of seeing themselves as student in a musical institution, and a woman. coordinators, moderators, arrangers—in short, Transcripts of interviews were made available of seeing themselves as “interior designers” in to all participants. a system constructed by men, who (to carry the At meetings held in spring and summer of metaphor through) have acted as the designers l992–93, the composing women discussed their and builders. Perhaps that’s why there are so reactions to each other’s experiences. In the

SUSAN PARENTI 2 Composing the Music School summer of l993 smaller groups met to draw out 2. Investigating Language One of the main of the reactions to the existent music curricu- mechanisms for producing and reproducing im- lum, those ideas for a not-yet existent curricu- ages and behavior is language—the language lum that would address our needs and desires. we speak, and that speaks us. In a field that— Other composing women joined the project at o absurdity!—prides itself on its verbal inartic- this stage, participating in discussions, analy- ulateness (again and again we’re told that the sis, and brainstorming. Tapes and lengthy notes composer is a person who expresses himself in on these discussions were made. music, not in language) the language used by The next stage (not yet accomplished) is composers is an inherited one—inherited from to create proposals for a feminist composition mass media, from the entertainment industry, curriculum that would be gathered together in from institutional reclaimings of past artistic in- a handbooklet. We imagine that one proposal puts. We wish all courses in composition to will be written in conventional academic for- be linguistically self-referential: at all moments mat, while the others will use writing formats the language used in the course be critiqued for of a more playful kind: a dialogue, an opera- assumptions and paradigms. like libretto, a short play, a story told from many points of view. 3. Creating community and service Miss- ing in the vocabulary of music composition de- Current Results partments are two words we find necessary to our happy and persistent survival as compos- So far, out of these discussions have emerged ing women: the words are “community” and criteria, notions, and sketches—some held in “service.” We wish to function in our society, common by us all, some the burning empha- to be needed by it, and to need it. At present, sis of one participant. They can be briefly de- the experimental music we write is maligned, scribed: allegedly in the name of our society, as being We composing women desire a curriculum elitist or academic; our existence as composers that would incorporate the following subjects is permitted (not supported or celebrated) and as part of the education of young people in mu- permitted only if we function within a small, sic composition: circumscribed area. We insist that composers be taught skills in how to create a community 1. Interrogating imagery Images of the role and context in which what we do be seen as and function of composer and composition in an offer, and in which the pleasure is not what society have been inherited from the nineteenth we are “getting out of it,” but in what we are century, commercialized for the advantage of putting into it. the few in the twentieth century, and passed on as natural and unchangeable to students of mu- 4. Designing imaginary, and real, spaces sic composition in current years. Projects and The physical setting of the music composition courses are needed that would critique this im- department and the behavioral ramifications of agery (with its ideological baggage of the com- those settings, needs to be addressed. Spaces poser as lone individualist struggling competi- (room shapes and sizes, concert hall designs, tively) and stimulate discussion of other images chair placements, availability of refreshments, that composers could invent, and then turn to, distance from the community, from the home) for ways of functioning desirably in society. and the behaviors they implicitly encourage,

SUSAN PARENTI 3 Composing the Music School are socially, politically, artistically not neutral. current society, and proceeds by condemning this society for its “higher” and “lower” places, 5. Seeing the composer as the Fool—and and attempts to instigate activities, language, not the King or Queen—in the court The and imagery that would lead us to create de- permission for the composer to make spec- sirable social structures. tacular mistakes, take unforgivable risks, plan and execute irritating tomfooleries—in short, to Practical Spin-Off: function as beloved fool or imp—has slowly been removed by society. The composer can When we composing women are asked, “Well, no longer think of herself as explorer, adven- beyond making us aware of past women turer, as something slightly dirty and irrelevant, composers, and supportive of present-day greeted with both a grin and a sigh; rather, she women composers, what difference would is forced to account for herself along the lines feminists make to the field of new music of the expert, the knowing one, not the unknow- composition?”—at that moment, none of us ing one. And she must be serious, because mass wants to be speechless. And indeed, in the media has made the face of new music a seri- past, many of us have found ourselves sputter- ous one, so as to save the laughing, pleasurable ing, filled with a spirit of rebellion that unfortu- face of Puck for popular culture. We wish to re- nately got watered down by a language of mere claim the Fool, and the reputation of the Fool, complaint. for ourselves. Wanting to contribute to society With the production of this handbooklet of what hasn’t been there yet—will the attitude of proposals connecting feminism and the teach- the serious expert really enable us to do so? ing of music composition, we imagine the sit- uation could go differently. We imagine an at- (The composing women involved in this project mosphere of audacity: the moment when we so far are: In-sook Choi, Bethany Cooper, Eliz- can take out of our purses (out of our knap- abeth Hinkle-Turner, Lucinda Lawrence, Jen- sacks, our briefcases, our kitchen drawers, out nifer Masada, Susan Parenti, Patricia Repar, of the pockets of our tuxedos) the handbooklet Carla Scaletti, Sarah Wiseman, Sallie Wormer, of proposals generated by our discussions, slap Roseanne Yampolschi). it on the table in front of our interlocutor, and answer, loudly, “Here, read this—this will give Theoretical Ramifications you an idea of what we want!” We imagine the handbooklet to be a stimu- What does it mean: “to act with a feminist ori- lant of discussions for other composing women, entation”? Marianne Brun¨ once drew a distinc- and, indeed, for all people interested in com- tion between “women’s lib” and “feminism” posing the function of the composer in rela- which we, in our discussions, have found use- tion to the society they see, and to the soci- ful: ety they wish to see. We dream of five years “Women’s lib” starts with the observation hence, when friends come prepared to parties that women have a lower place than men in our with handbooklets of their own tucked under current society, and proceeds with the action of their arms, eager to discuss with us their pro- raising the position of women in this society; posals, their audacious ideas and constructions. “Feminism” also starts with the observation that women have a lower place than men in our

SUSAN PARENTI 4 Composing the Music School