The past few months have been crazy busy, since we adopted an adorable puppy and things have started opening back up! But now that little Eevee has settled into things, I’m back to blogging.

Photo Credit: Peter van Heesen

In the next few weeks and months, I’ll be releasing some blogs about Undine Smith Moore, Florence Price, Luise Greger, and several living composers whose works I’ve recently recorded. Stay tuned for some great information and a few tips about where you can hear music by women being performed, and how to choose the best repertoire for your recital or concert.

As always, let me know if you want to request a particular Topic Thursday or are curious about a specific composer!

Stay safe and healthy everyone, and I hope that you are all getting to enjoy this glorious summer weather 🙂

Today’s Topic Thursday is about one of the most well-known piano pieces of all time. No, I’m not talking about Claire de lune or Moonlight Sonata. I’m talking about Chopsticks.

If you ever had a music class in school, you probably tried this easy ditty out, and if you had a piano at home, you likely drove your parents mad by playing it over and over.

But… did you know Chopsticks was written by a woman? Although it was published under a male pseudonym, Euphemia Allen, a Glaswegian, wrote “The Chop Waltz” as a 16-year-old.

Euphemia Allen

Euphemia Amelia Nightingale Allen was born in 1861 in Glasgow to a musical family. Her father was a highly regarded dance instructor, and her brother, Mozart Allen, went on to become a music publisher.

In 1877, Euphemia composed “The Chop Waltz” at the tender age of 16. She published two versions to allow for solo playing or a duet. It earned the title chopsticks because she instructed players to hit the keys with a chopping motion.

Euphemia went on to become a piano teacher and a music publisher but never published another piece of her own.

Popularity

Chopsticks is probably one of the most widely known piano pieces. I had no idea who it was by, let alone that a woman wrote it, until a few weeks ago. It’s been featured in other composers’ works, movies, TV shows, and pop music. From Sesame Street to Bugs Bunny, Chopsticks is everywhere.

Next time you hear someone say, “but if women wrote good music, it’d be well-known,” send them a recording of Chopsticks.

Women of color have long been excluded from the classical music world. Much of the current literature focuses on white women. However, there is a wealth of music out there written by women of color across the world. 

As I’m starting to do more research on this subject, I’ve found a few websites and books that I’m really excited to delve into. Since my last Topic Thursday, which included resources for finding sheet music, was pretty popular, I thought people might appreciate a round-up of resources for learning more about black women composers. 

There are tons of incredible pieces out there, and I’ve only skimmed the surface so far. Through these resources, I’ve found many more recordings that I can’t wait to listen to. 

African Diaspora Music Project

This fantastic project, led by Dr. Louise Toppin and Videmus, has compiled a massive list of black composers. They’ve got biographies and a search function to help you find songs appropriate to your voice and concert repertoire. 

Dr. Louise Toppin is a soprano and professor specializing in contemporary music and has also spent years promoting the performance and research of music by black composers. Her organization Videmus is dedicated to performing under-represented composers, including composers of color and female composers. 

Music By Black Composers

Music by Black Composers has a massive directory of all known historic black composers and a separate one for living composers. They’ve also published several anthologies (at the moment, for violin, but more works are coming) and a blog that often features biographies of historic black composers.

Women’s Philharmonic Initiative

Although not entirely focused on black composers, the Women’s Philharmonic Initiative is a fantastic organization. They provide grants to orchestras in the US that would like to perform music by women. Past grant winners include the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra (2015), San Jose Chamber Orchestra (2012), and the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, 2020 grants are on hold.

If you’re an orchestral ensemble looking to perform music by black women composers, check out their list here. They also have parts available on request, which makes life a lot easier.

African American Composer Initiative (AACI)

Founded in 2009 in San Francisco, the AACI performs a wide variety of music by black composers, including Florence Price and Duke Ellington. They’ve got tons of recordings and performances on their website and a list of composers with links to sheet music.

Chamber Music America

This organization exists to promote chamber music of all types, including classical and jazz, across the United States. They have a Composers Equity Project, which has a massive list of composers of color, women, and gender non-conforming composers with links to their websites. 

Most of these seem to be living composers, so if you’re looking for composers from previous eras, you might want to check out another site. 

Black Women’s Music Database

This database is dedicated to researching music by black women across genres. They’ve got a huge PDF, which is a fantastic resource whether you’re interested in classical music, jazz, blues, theater, or opera – seriously, they have all the art bases covered.

Hildegard Publishing

Often, a significant barrier to programming music by under-represented composers is finding sheet music. Hildegard Publishing has several anthologies focusing on black women composers, including Art Songs and Spirituals by African-American Composers and Black Women Composers: A Century of Piano Music. 

Enjoy Exploring

This music deserves to be performed just as much as the standard existing canon, and all of these organizations are doing fantastic work getting it out there. Whether you’re a musician looking for new rep, a teacher wanting to include more diverse composers in your materials, or just want to listen to some seriously underappreciated music, you should check out these websites.

For those wanting to listen, here are a few Spotify playlists:

Black Women Classical

The Vocal Music of Black American Women Classical Composers

Awesome Music by Black Female Composers

When Did This Start? 

Anna Beer argues that the shadow of the courtesan goes all the way back to the Book of Samuel, which states that “listening to a women’s voice is sexual enticement.” Even today, women are not allowed to sing in Orthodox synagogues, partially due to this line. 

The Catholic Church stayed on the same track. Nuns were only permitted to sing certain types of music and never in front of men. Even in areas where Lutherism or other Protestant religions replaced the Catholic Church, the story remained the same. Women’s compositions and performances have always been viewed in terms of their sex. Many composers received reviews complimenting their pieces, saying they almost sounded like a man wrote them. 

Reputation Mattered

For much of western history, the reputation of a woman – and the intactness of her virginity – were decisive factors in her ability to function in society. With the increase of distinct noble families and national structures in the Middle Ages and beyond, virginity and purity became a large factor in women’s marriageability status. Marriage was a key instrument in connecting families and making alliances in Europe. To expand their power, influence, or rise in rank, families used tactical marriages. A “spoiled” daughter was of no use to them. 

Aside from the often intrusive examinations and extensive bedding ceremonies, which included a next-morning check for bloody sheets, women could also lose purity through reputation alone. Through the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment, powerful men in nobility and the Church structured society so that it favored them and used the threat of ostracisation to restrict women’s movements. Women couldn’t be alone with a man (what if people talk!), couldn’t use their creativity (what if they enticed a man sexually?!), and above all, couldn’t perform in front of men. In Shakespeare’s time, all the women’s parts onstage were played by men because of this societal restriction. 

Women in music in the 1600 and 1700s suffered from these strict societal rules. Some women could participate in music by only performing in private concerts for female royalty. Many princesses and queens, including Princess Anne, in whose court Josina van Boetzelaer worked, asked their ladies-in-waiting to perform for them. (Netflix and chill wasn’t an option for entertainment yet). 

Other women braved the reputation hit and performed in the open royal court for both men and women. However, there were limited options for them. Many performed as young children and were taken under the protective wing of a lady of the court, like Jaquet de la Guerre or Francesca Caccini, and they were rarely, if ever, offered the position of court composer. A notable exception to this rule was, in fact, Caccini, who became the highest-paid member of the Medici Court under Maria Magdalena.

Choices for Women

For much of western history, and in some cases, until women received the right to vote, the choice for women has been the convent or marriage. Some talented musicians chose the Church, joining particular convents renowned (and often denigrated) for their music writing and singing. If a woman wanted to pursue music outside the Church, she would either have to hope that her husband allowed it or remain unmarried. 

Unfortunately, many of these unmarried singers were pressured into relationships with their benefactors, like Barbara Strozzi. Others chose this route as the best option that allowed them some semblance of independence outside the rigid social structure. In some areas, there was more leeway for courtesans. If a woman gained a noble’s attention, she could become influential, like Madame de Montespan in France. As the mistress of Louis XIV, she had enormous influence over the court. She often influenced his decision when choosing musicians for the court and composers for his official events. 

In the 1800s, the acceptance of courtesans had waned in polite society. Composers like Mariana Martines and Clara Wieck-Schumann had to navigate a new world where music-making was delineated by gender lines. Men wrote symphonies and operas, while women remained in the home concert sphere, writing songs and small chamber pieces.

Even in the 1900s, Amy Beach struggled against society. She wasn’t permitted to study abroad, and her husband forbade her from performing in public more than twice a year (for charity, of course!). It wasn’t until her husband’s death that she could travel to Europe. 

Today

Even today, the shadow of the courtesan lingers. Perhaps our reputations aren’t affected by our interactions with men, but singers continue to experience harassment, even on the biggest stages in opera. #MeToo hit the opera world hard. If we haven’t experienced this type of harassment ourselves, we have a friend who has. 

Why am I talking about singers? Because most women who composed throughout history were singers first. The idea of a composer, and not a performer, is a relatively new one (although that’s a whole other post). 

The Impact

I could write a whole book on this. In fact, Anna Beer has. The shadow of the courtesan has informed women’s decisions throughout history. How many talented women didn’t pursue music because their husbands forbade it? Or wrote fantastic pieces only for small groups of friends without publishing them? 

And how many composers have been forgotten because they were merely courtesans?

Unfortunately, we can’t know the answer, but many talented researchers are searching for more composers from every era. The great thing is that we do have many composers who broke the mold and shared their talent with the world. I think we owe it to them to perform it. 

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