Centrala, Birmingham: Illuminate Women’s Music

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Chris L

…to help flesh out and expand the all-too-easily accepted narrative of music history…

The words I’ve italicised are important, and I’m glad you’ve used them: “flesh out” and “expand”, but not change. Too many articles I’ve read about the injustices suffered by female composers over the centuries, while undoubtedly and laudably well-intentioned, seemingly fail to make that distinction. Musical history is largely a process of composers being influenced by other composers, but then taking those earlier ideas and reworking them in some way. If a piece isn’t listened to, not only shortly after being written, but in later years, it can’t influence, and too much music written by women has met this fate. That’s obviously musical history’s very great loss, but our urge to right this wrong retrospectively shouldn’t blind us to, or tempt us to ignore, this reality.

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