Have we ever really asked ourselves why there
are so many male composers and so few female ones? Apart from
some "female" composers in Scandinavia, such as Cecilie
Ore (Norway) and Kaija Saariaho (Finland), the only female exponents
of "New Music" are in the USA: Pauline Oliveros, Joan
LaBarbara, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson to name but a few with
the exeption of Sofia Gubaidulina, of course. Otherwise, it is
"virtuosos" of both greater and lesser significance
who tend to be women (mainly with Bel Canto voices) and there
are many of these. However, these artists are only interpreters
of music written by men, they are not composers themselves. There
are of course female composers who write good music, but those
women who write music without necessarily following male musical
and ethical structures and thoughts are extremely few.
SOME EXCEPTIONS
With a few exceptions, this has always been the
case. While women have played a considerably greater role for
other forms of art (literature, theatre, cinema, visual art) since
the 19th century, the musical language of women is conspicuous
by its absence in the world of "art music". By creating
a musical language that is male (we often speak about male and
female themes, the powerful male initial theme and the
female vocal theme, female cadences that are weak,
etc.), men have either sublimated or displaced the real core of
the reality being expressed. "Classical" music is essentially
a limited type of language because it is an artistic and cultural
form of expression of one gender : the male gender. A language
created by men and that is therefore an expression of power, a
power that does not only encompass music but art in general.
EQUIVALENCE
Considering this background, to speak about "equivalence"
between women and men is merely a way of deceiving oneself and
ending up in a vicious circle of legal terms that do not shed
any light on the naked truth. And social equivalence does not
solve the problem, but it is instead a new way of enabling men
to legitimize their power or their leading role to an even greater
extent by granting reforms which do not really influence the system.
This is particularly applicable to art and culture. It is here
more that anywhere else that language creates the values which
are then used by the social and political apparatus against women.
Is it possible for a woman to become a composer? Does she have
a musical artistic language of her own or does she just use the
"male" musical language? Men or "the patriarchy"
have committed countless cruel crimes against women. Not only
have men and the social system created by men (capitalist and
socialist alike) excluded women from their place in history for
three centuries, but they have also succeeded in killing women's
own language and linguistic expression. The language we speak
is based on gender rules, even the grammar is a result of the
consistent murder of cultural identity, in which the victims are
women. Even though women during the 20th century have begun to
take their place as a historical subject in some societies, this
process has not yet completely taken place within the linguistic
and artistic spheres.
LANGUAGE OF THEIR OWN
Women have an artistic language of their own which
distinguishes itself from that of men, their powers of expression
are different. If we disregard our little region called Sweden,
we find that art and musical language (the powers of expression,
NOT what I say but how I say it) on the continent
is something with a neo-romantic flavour, something sacred, something
similar to a DNA structure, a form of reason that has to be protected
against all contamination and madness. Women’s language is mad,
because it tells us about something else, about a form of “otherness”
that men are afraid of. This "otherness" is something
that has to flee way into exile from reason. Reason is structure,
reason is male, reason in art just as in life - is the cause of
all barbarism. "What fine teeth!" said Buddha when he
saw a dog in an advanced stage of decomposition. A few days before
his death my father’s body was already unrecognizable, but his
hands were perfect and white...if Buddha had been there, he would
almost certainly have said: "What beautiful hands!"
NARCISSUS AND THE GREAT MOTHER
It is taboos and it is sacred impatience that defend
what men (the world) call art (nature); not a "good"
upbringing, neither is it the law. If a tree is sacred for a god,
no one will touch it; if an animal is sacred, no one will eat
it. But the sacred (holy) prohibitions that protected the Great
Mother are gone and a monotheism that has become more and more
of a man-theism has destroyed all cults and cultures, all the
sacred (holy) horrors of nature.... So art has become the mirror
of this fear.... The mirror that accentuates physical beauty is
also the symbol of vanity, an involvement with one's own image
of self that men – right up until our times – have not been able
to show in the same way. Men do, women are. (When men in popular
films of today, for example, look at themselves in the mirror,
they are either in a psychological crisis or have something wrong
with their masculinity.)... The only man that it is customary
to show looking at his reflection is Narcissus. The world or the
woman can be destroyed because it no longer speaks! (According
to Plato and Spinoza). The most plundered of all sciences has
suddenly emerged in a vacuum without any taboo attached to it.
THE LAW
Each different thought, each new word is threatened
by the law. The male law. The law and sound judgement (which is
also common sense) and...morals. The law takes form within an
innocent being that meticulously destroys every inner organ. It
is like a type of cancer. The French "female" philosopher
Luce Irigaray claims that the only female language that historically
has been solely female is the language of mysticism. The language
that nuns formulated in their diaries and prayer books (for example
Teresa from Avila, Angela from Foligno and Marie Guyon) and also
women from the East and Middle East was religious, of course,
but their language was also a metaphor - if not a parody - of
something different which otherwise would never have been accepted
by the patriarchy. This means that if women do not also rediscover
their own language, their "otherness" in art, they will
always remain "the black continent", to which Freud
and Lacan banished them, the other part of heaven, which, however,
does speak the language of Adam.
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