O objetivo do presente trabalho é demonstrar como se estabeleceram as relações de gênero nos processos de criação musical ao longo da história, e a oposição das mulheres compositoras em relação à dominação masculina, termo cunhado por Pierre Bourdieu, trazendo à tona questões como a visão androcêntrica, legitimadora das práticas de submissão feminina, bem como a dominação simbólica, pela qual as mulheres incorporam as relações de poder e reconhecem a sua submissão a um agente dominante. Ao analisar os papéis sociais desempenhados pelas mulheres, identifica-se que suas práticas cotidianas estão calcadas na visão androcêntrica, e que a estrutura patriarcal está presente tanto na esfera social como na esfera política e econômica. Ao longo da dissertação, foram também abordadas questões relacionadas à temática de gênero, através da análise de literaturas em outros campos do conhecimento humano. Em face ao alijamento da mulher na criação musical, detectar as composições ditas do universo feminino traz uma grande contribuição para a história da música e análise musical. Partindo do referencial da nova história, cuja contribuição consiste em questionar as categorias de dominação a partir das quais a história foi constituída, surge a questão: como analisar o contexto histórico musical partindo da experiência composicional feminina? Sobre a questão, é oportuno mencionar o que Joan Scott ressalta: que, ao se incluir à história a versão feminina, tem-se um novo entendimento daquela que os historiadores apontavam como a verdade total. Nesse sentido, Pilar López e Lucy Green também defendem que a mulher teve uma trajetória de muita luta para compor gêneros musicais que não aqueles preestabelecidos pela sociedade dominadora, ou seja, para criar obras ditas complexas, atividade que era considerada própria do universo masculino. Apesar dos obstáculos que a mulher teve de enfrentar no âmbito da criação musical, e de muitas compositoras terem criado peças ligadas mais à educação musical ou canções para poucos instrumentos, como piano e canto, algumas delas conseguiram compor obras mais complexas. / The purpose of this work is to demonstrate how gender relations were established in the musical creation processes throughout history, as well as the opposition of women composers against male domination, a term dealt by Pierre Bourdieu, bringing up issues like androcentric view, legitimizing practices of female submission, as symbolic domination, in which women incorporate power relations and recognize their submission to a dominant agent. Investigating roles played by women, some identifies that their quotidian practices are grounded in this androcentric sight, and that the patriarchal structure is present as in social as in political and economical spheres. All over the text, issues related to the theme of gender were also approached, through the analysis of literature in other fields of human knowledge. In light of women\'s casting off in musical creation, detecting compositions said to be part of feminine universe brings up a great contribution to the History of Music and Musical Analysis. As from the referential of New History, whose contribution consists in objecting the domination categories from which history was built, the question arises: How to analyze historical and musical context from the female compositional experience? About the question, it\'s appropriate to mention what Joan Scott emphasize, that, by including the female version of the history, one has a new understanding in spite of that the historians pointed as the whole truth. In this way, Pilar López and Lucy Green also defend that women have had a trajectory of hard struggle to compose musical genres other than those predetermined by the domineering society, that is, to create works said complexes, an activity that was considered proper to male universe. Despite the obstacles that women faced under the musical creation, and many composers have created more connected parts to music education or songs for a few instruments such as piano and singing, some of them managed to compose more complex works.

Whereas conditions have existed for many centuries which served to exclude or marginalize female participation in music, many women have written compositions of musical worth sufficient to justify their contemporary performance. Although most women composers wrote works more fitting for the "salon" than for the concert hall at the turn of the century, Boulanger and Mahler are representative of the few women composers whose complex approach to art song fell within the mainstream of the genre. Many of their accompaniments attain a level of technical difficulty not previously found in women composers' writing. They offer an interesting comparison between nationalities and styles in that they both favored Symbolist texts. However, each represents a different side of the coin in her musical interpretation of Symbolism: Boulanger, Impressionism, and Mahler, Expressionism. In addition, even though their styles involve opposite musical expressions, they both show a strong influence of Wagner in their writing. This study includes background on turn-of-the-century music and musicians encompassing the role of art song among women composers. Symbolism is addressed as it applies to the poets selected by the composers, followed by information regarding the specific musical representation of Symbolist texts in the composers' art songs. The chapter of analysis serves as a means to guide musical decisions in the actual performance of the works. The conclusion briefly discusses performance practice issues and the possibility of a turn-of-the-century feminine aesthetic.

Young Ja Lee (b. 1931) is regarded as one of the most important living female composers in Korea. She leads and contributes to the Korean classical music society as a gifted composer and a dedicated educator. This study focuses on how she has combined Western compositional techniques with elements of Eastern traditional music in some of her compositions, in particular, her Variations pour piano "Umma ya, Nuna ya." An interpretation of her Variations pour piano "Umma ya, Nuna ya" reveals that the composition features many of the particular and sublime aspects of Western compositional techniques in conjunction with traditional Korean music style. This study is an investigation of the interaction and assimilation of these disparate elements. The results of this study may inspire further research into traditional Korean music and bring recognition to important Korean composers, as well as encourage music educators to teach Korean composers' compositions.

This essay introduces readers to the music of the Venezuelan composer Modesta Bor (1926-1998) and provides a resource for interpretation of her art songs for voice and piano. Bor was an important composer in Venezuela with a successful career in composition, pedagogy, and conducting. However, she is not widely known outside of Venezuela and scholarship on her art song is limited. This study seeks to fill that void by examining Bor’s twenty-nine published art songs for solo voice and piano. These works include the song cycles/collections Tres canciones infantiles para voz y piano, Canciones infantiles, Primer ciclo de romanzas para contralto y piano, Segundo ciclo de romanzas para contralto y piano, Tríptico sobre poesía cubana, and Tres canciones para mezzo-soprano y piano, as well as nine ungrouped songs. Bor’s art songs are notable for her imitation of Venezuelan folk and popular music in the vein of Figurative Nationalism, her sophisticated harmonic language, and neoclassical techniques such as ostinato and motivic variation. This essay aims to help performers begin to understand the allusions to the national music of Venezuela. Her music elevates the llanero, the common rural laborer, and comments on the social issues of her people. This essay provides a brief history of Venezuelan music, a biography of Bor, and brief biographies of the poets used. It also contributes original poetic and musical analyses of her art songs, exploring the areas of form, melody, rhythm, and harmony. Venezuelan Spanish and the lyric diction appropriate for Bor’s songs are discussed. Poetic translations, word-for-word translations, and International Phonetic Alphabet transliterations are included for all of the poetry used.

In My Vicious Angel, wave-like musical time, with its rhythms, echoes and repetitions, is counterposed in both harmony and discord to linear narrative time, with its implied causality and its imperative need to subordinate the journey to the destination. In drawing on the tension between certain musical and narrative modes of address, the author has tried to foreground the volatility of time's relation to trauma and to memory. It is an anecdotal truism that in accidents, time slows down, emotion is suspended and sensory impressions acquire an extraordinary clarity and intensity. If traumatic incidents form a kind of rupture to the fabric of narrative time, how might this impact on the ongoing weaving of narrative? What kinds of rhythms, shock waves, stammerings result? Further, if the emotional charge of any event affects the subjective organisation of time, very quickly the tight weave of the linear narrative begins to resemble something more like beginners' macrame. If the writing has resonance, it does so because it finds a sympathetic emptiness, an echo chamber within the listener where the dialogue can move in counterpoint to lines of story already begun elsewhere which rub up against each other and whisper in the dark, travelling (like water, like memory) in waves. / Master of Arts (Hons)

While hundreds of operas were composed by American women during the twentieth century, very few people, even seasoned operatic performers and audiences, know of their existence. Most of these operas have not been performed beyond their regional or private premieres, and little is written about them in sources addressing the topics of women composers, twentieth century opera, or American opera. Therefore, those responsible for programming them in educational and professional opera companies have had limited exposure to these works. My focus is on ten composers and a total of nineteen of their operas, providing short biographies about these women (Joyce Barthelson, Mary E. Caldwell, Vivian Fine, Eleanor Everest Freer, Miriam Gideon, Libby Larsen, Mary Carr Moore, Julia Smith, Faye-Ellen Silverman, and Nancy Van de Vate) and entries for each of their featured works. These listings detail the resources required for programming the operas, such as the types of voices and instruments needed, as well as musical styles and salient features within the work. In addition to addressing the components of the operas as a whole, six arias extracted from the nineteen works are examined closely, illuminating common themes that unite these operas. Prejudices and stereotypes concerning the perceived inferiority of the creations of women composers have helped to keep these works unknown, but by making these operas more accessible, by analyzing their possible performance difficulties and by simply bringing these works into the light, it is hoped that they may have a greater chance of being performed and studied in the future. / text

This study is a practical tool for all conductors of women’s voices, in the form of an annotated and indexed bibliography of repertoire. This resource will specifically present literature by women composers, with texts by women authors, written intentionally for women’s choral ensembles. I invite the reader to become an informed consumer of music by and for women. We owe it to our women performers to find works that meet the collective musical, social, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional needs of the ensemble members. Making music is a personal and emotional experience, thus, our performers deserve to sing music that represents, in part, what they believe in, and embodies who they are. This document contains annotated entries for more than 150 musical compositions of choral music for women’s voices. Each annotation is intended to inform and educate readers as to the specific characteristics of a given piece. Annotation entries include: title of work, composer name and dates, author name and dates, date of the composition, voicing, accompaniment, duration, subject matter, and publisher’s information, as well as detailed commentary related to the textual and musical aspects of the piece. All compositions are also given ratings for level of difficulty in each of six categories: Range and Tessitura, Vocal line and Melody, Harmony, Rhythm and Meter, Text setting and Language, and Expression. By the very nature of this topic, a fully comprehensive list of all available choral repertoire written by women for women will never truly exist. It will always be a work in progress. However, it is my hope that the information contained within this study will assist conductors of women’s choral ensembles in the continuing search for material that best suits the voices and interests of their singers. Women’s ensemble conductors must be familiar with the literature in the ‘by women, for women’ category, so that each individual may make an informed choice regarding repertoire for his or her own ensemble. The literal and figurative voices of women deserve to be heard. As conductors of women’s choral ensembles, it is our responsibility to let those voices sing. / School of Music

Women composers have not traditionally been at the forefront of genre development. Western classical musical genres and formal structures tend to operate by conventions codified by male composers of European and North American descent, and, accordingly, reflect patriarchal aesthetics and viewpoints. The nascent genre of vocal theatre, however, has been primarily defined by the works of women composer/performers. Artists Meredith Monk, Diamanda Galas, and Pauline Oliveros have created new modes of theatre for the voice; in their personal explorations of extended vocal technique, the female voice is used as a tool for discovering, activating, remembering, and uncovering a consciousness that is primordial, pre/anti-logical, and oracular. My thesis proposes that the vocal theatre of these women functions as musical ecriture feminine, a term first introduced by French feminist theorist Helene Cixous. As a theoretical framework, ecriture feminine provides a particularly useful tool for interpreting these works, which, in the importance they place on openness, transcending language, embodied performances, and personal visions of womanhood, reveal aesthetic concerns that in many ways have more in common with the literary genre of ecriture feminine than those of canonical Western art music. I argue that these works are important not only as musical ecriture feminine, but as examples of an alternative, "feminine" compositional practice that prioritizes collaboration, improvisation, and intuitive modes of creativity. In doing so, they destabilize the traditional "maleness" of genre creation.

Thesis (M.A.) (Hons.) -- University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1998. / Submitted for the degree of Masters (Honours), 1998, University of Western Sydney, Nepean.

Zugl.: Berlin, Universiẗat der Künste, Diss., 2006.