THERE WOMEN BETOVEN? I

“… If you ask me whether the known female composers today can find female Bach, Handel, Beethoven or Mozart, my truthfulness would make me answer, no! Is the woman created either really great job? My ignorance prevents me to say no; or that it ever happened, this question would be unnecessary. “With these words Stephen S. Stratton (if your name is not known, do not get confused – g. Stratton is absolutely irrelevant to the history of music, and the world in general) 1893 opened discussion of England’s Royal Academy of music on the position of women in music, and the main topic was the issue that really could no longer be ignored: where the hell all these women? End of the 19th century was already during the birth of musical modernism: the age of Debussy, Mahler, Schoenberg … Music has gone through a whole evolution in parallel with the history of the human race: of minimalist prehistoric pounding the rocks to the minimalist 20 centuries of pounding the piano. A woman? One at any point of this evolution were sastavan, vital, crucial part of the story. The record of this academic debate is coincidentally got in! Hen greedy claws.

Despite the distance of 100 or so years between us and the original question-riggers, themes and arguments of the participants were tickled our curiosity, so we decided to put together a brief overview of women who are involved in music throughout history, in an effort to give this debate a response to her needed – seeking, not a female version of Mozart and Bach, but composers that have excellent versions of themselves. Antiquity’s most famous painting Sappho. When you put aside well-known and oft-repeated theory that the first composers were just women, that are still in prehistoric times created songs are closely linked to rituals of life (lullaby for newborn children, lament for the death of people in the community), the first known and verified data on women and music in the western world occur in the time of ancient Greece. From this age stimulate the visual presentation of musicians: a woman of high class that played the lira and the slave girl that played the forerunner of today’s clarinet and oboe (which is undoubtedly considered very entertaining because, khm khm, the shape of the instruments).

When it comes to ancient composers, of course, it is difficult to know much more, since it is very little music from that period have been preserved. However, knowing that in this time of music and poetry went hand in hand (poetry is still recited to the accompaniment of an instrument), the first known composer takes the famous Sappho, which in its time of wearing even nicknamed the “tenth muse”. In addition to the data that was born about 630 BC, about Sappho life is actually very little is known, and much more speculation; us funniest data record was one of her ancient biographers that was supposedly married to the so-called. Kerkolasa with Andros (meaning: Djoko men of the city). Since they Sappho work was filled with meanings of various female friend and picturesque descriptions of the tender feelings which, according to them, nurtured, and given that it is due Sapfinog birthplace, the island of Lesbos, in general origin of the word “lesbian”, we can conclude that it is unfortunate was just a play on words, therefore, biographer already mentioned, that your job is clearly not understood too seriously, with the intent to Sappho appears as heterosexual. Existing fragments Sappho poetry are known to be some of the best examples of the ancient poetry lyric;Unfortunately, the musical portions of its creation have not remained intact.