How Would It Feel If You Changed Your Assumptions About The World?
credit: Donne, Women In Music. Caption says: “Someone, I tell you, in another time, will remember us. We are oppressed by fears of oblivion.” SAPPHO (c.630-c.570 BC)
One morning I was driving along the A6 north, enjoying the familiar twists and turns in the road, changing gears smoothly to glide towards my destination.
No kids in the car, quiet and glorious solitude.
I remembered that this week, the week beginning 8th March 2021, was a week celebrating International Women's Day.
I was flying high off my own successful world premiere on BBC Radio 3 the evening before, and I remembered that this week, BBC Radio 3 would be playing only women composers.
The memory rushed at me with a gasp, and I felt a joyful lift of anticipation as I turned on the radio - a new assumption that every piece of music would be written by a woman.
I wouldn't need to listen for the composer's name just in case to work it out. The composer would be a woman. Period. Someone like me!
The music that came out of the radio felt familiar.
Ahh, maybe I'd heard it before not realising the composer was a woman?
Then I realised my mistake. This was Bach/Beethoven/Mozart (can't remember exactly, but to be honest, in this context they are interchangable and disappointing).
I'd remembered wrong.
Once again, there were snippets of female composers on that week (and hats off to the producers because this was much better than previous years), but not solely us.
However I held onto the feeling. That new assumption - I could be assured that any music I listened to was by a woman. I wasn't having to search her music out, I wasn't going to a dedicated concert. The normal assumption had been flipped on it's head.
I had assumed that every piece of music I was going to hear would have been written by a female composer.
I could dip in and out, but for a week, I could assume this new normal.
It was breathtakingly refreshing. I felt joy, an uplift in my expectations. I felt free and excited.
And I realised just how oppressed I felt on a day to day basis, with the knowledge that most concert composers, film composers, TV composers, video game composers, songwriters, producers, sound engineers, and the list goes on: are men.
That weighty feeling knowing that I am statistically less likely to get work because of my gender - before anyone has even heard my music.
So an idea formed in my head. It's time to #WriteUsIntoHistory. We exist, we have always existed. We are always whitewashed out and erased.
This is why:
I have self-published the scores of my music.
I have financed the professional proof-reading of my scores.
I have had them professionally printed and bound by Halstan Printers, a renowned music printing company.
I have put together a collection of fourteen of my best pieces of music to be stocked in academic and public music libraries.
I have published PDF versions of individual pieces of music up for sale on my website as performance or study scores.
I want future generations of women composers to know that we exist and that they can too.
That they can assume that there is an equal, no, equitable, balance of composers represented throughout history.
If this is your vision:
- supporting the next generation of composers to thrive, succeed and see themselves in the world of composing music -
then help me to change our ready-made assumptions.
Fill your libraries with composers who challenge the "norm" and help to embrace our next generation of music-makers.
Get Your Signed Copy Of My Collection
Not a librarian?
Other ways you can help are:
Forward this email to friends and colleagues who will resonate with this message
Look at the curriculum you are teaching your students and ask yourself if there is a way that you can make it more inclusive.
Ensure that when you commission a composer, ask yourself if you have a true intersection of society on your short-list? Some call this positive discrimination. I call it ensuring that you get a wide variety of creative expression.
Programme mine and other composers' works as part of your normal repertoire - normalisation is key
Perform and study music from the global majority of composers, rather than sticking to the formal curriculum.
Check out my social media posts detailing the behind the scenes of self-publishing and share