Listening to different spaces

A hard-hitting interview with the composer Olga Neuwirth has appeared in VAN magazine in which the distinguished composer tears the patriarchal structures of the classical music world into little bits and pieces. (The interview took place in November last year and has been translated, in what the magazine says is abridged form.)

It is also fairly horrific to discover that on one occasion an opera commission together with the author Elfriede Jelinek was cancelled, and the reasons Neuwirth alleges were behind this. Jelinek subsequently won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Here's a taste of Neuwirth's work: this piece is all about listening to different spaces...



Neuwirth also asks in this interview where those people who now speak up against sexism in the industry were 25 years ago, when she'd already started doing so.

That got me thinking. Where were we? Why are we late starters? Why were we listening to different spaces then?

Well, some of us were pretty young and green, for a start. I was in a junior post, learning how magazines were put together. I got my first music journalism job on The Strad when I was 24 and I had not the first clue about the structures and traditions of the music business. I was resistant to the notion that music was a business at all. Until a year earlier I'd spent three to five hours a day practising the piano, and I was still licking wounds that resulted from that dreamectomy. My mother had cancer and her illness hung over our family like a sword of Damocles. I had other preoccupations, too, as one does at 25, and was basically trying to find my feet, do my job and learn my way around the industry in which I'd landed.

My elder sister was the family feminist and activist. She was a lecturer in French history and politics, at that time at Bath University (she subsequently moved to Sussex). Although she sometimes berated me for my head-in-the-clouds devotion to music, I somehow imbibed the sensation that feminism was her patch and that should I turn in that direction I would never in a thousand years be able to live up to her standards and her expectations.

I'd found the male-dominated aspects of my university sometimes unpleasant, arrogant and intimidating, but I was there and determined to do my own thing - or so I thought. Actually I buried ideas of composition lessons within three weeks of going "up", having spotted how unwelcome a girl composer would be... but the crucial point is that it didn't occur to me that one could challenge this. Surely one didn't need to, not in 1985?!? A woman was prime minister: that proved a woman could now do anything. Ours was the first generation that thought we could have it all. Even so, I did not experience a single lesson with a woman at that university in three years. Unless I'm very much mistaken, the only women teaching in that music faculty were one ethnomusicologist and a brilliant composer (a Schoenberg expert) who was doing a doctorate. It was just how it was. I certainly had daydreams of sneaking down to the faculty by night and spraying on some graffiti, or smashing a window or two, but a) that was for other reasons, and b) I'd never have dared.

Still, I think the sorry underlying truth was probably the syndrome I see in many young women today. They've made it, so why can't others? What's the problem? I am fairly sure that at 25 that's how I must have seen things. It never occurred to me that I'd be overlooked because I was a woman; I applied for jobs and got them, so pas de problème...

What happened? I spent 20 more years in the business. My sister died of cancer, aged 45, and I realised that life is short, short, short. I began writing for the Independent. If I'd approached a national newspaper wanting to write about sexism in the music industry as an importunate upstart of 25, I reckon I'd have been laughed out of town. Then I interviewed Pierre Boulez. He said you can't sit in front of a situation you see is wrong without wanting to do something to change it, and I realised he was right. It wasn't long after that that I found myself sitting in front of something that I felt was very wrong and I decided to do something at least to raise awareness of it, because now I could.

The floodgates of consciousness have opened all around us now and it has been heartening to see the industry's decision-makers responding: festivals from baroque to contemporary programming music by women, International Women's Day taken very seriously on Radio 3 (now we need to address the rest of the year too), the launching of awards for women in the creative industries under the auspices of the Southbank Centre's WOW festival. The argument has widened to consider diversity as a whole, and necessarily so. Chineke! has got off to a flying start, and now Sound and Music is taking direct action to address the lack of diversity in new music "because it's 2016" - here's what they're doing and how and why.

Of course Neuwirth is right: it would have been good if more people had spoken up 25 years ago. But we can't change the past. With any luck, though, we can make some impact upon the present and future.

(Meanwhile, anyone who still requires proof of the ugly nature of misogyny in the music world need only go to the reader comments thread following a Slipped Disc post about Khatia Buniatishvili - some of the views expressed below the line are nauseating. I'm not linking to it - find it yourself if you wish.)

A home in music: Streetwise Opera does the Passion

Don't miss this on BBC4 this evening at 7pm. The Sixteen joined forces with Streetwise Opera, the charity that works with the UK's homeless, to stage Bach's St Matthew Passion in Campfield Market, Manchester, last night, directed by Penny Woolcock. They introduce it in this film for The Guardian, and while the BBC is screening a one-hour version tonight you can see the whole premiere on the G's site from Monday.

"The whole of civilisation is founded on art," one of the homeless participants reminds us.

Do stop it with the "sweet"...

I've reviewed Anna Beer's book Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music for today's Sunday Times. It's a great read, exploring the lives and times of eight remarkable people who were significant both to their day and beyond: Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, Marianna Martines, Clara Schumann, Fanny Hensel, Lili Boulanger and Elizabeth Maconchy. The whole review is here. (There's a paywall. Which, let's face it, is probably the only way forward.)

The only thing I really didn't like was the title: "sweet airs" is exactly the sort of nonsense that women who compose have had to face across century after century and not far off "tinkling prettily" (a term I've seen applied to two very different composers whose works, had they been by men, would probably have been lauded instead for their Bergian expressivity or their contrapuntal rigour). Perhaps in this case it was picked for irony...

And meanwhile, it's Bartók's birthday

Here is Sir András Schiff talking about Bartók, whose birthday is today.

The music shall continue. Great art is eternal...

A farewell to the home pages

The Independent produces its last print edition tomorrow. Many unknown quantities remain regarding the future - as I'm a mere freelancer I work from home and I know nothing, but a great many superb journalists are losing their jobs and/or their columns, there's been a roaring silence thus far concerning future arts coverage and let's say I'm not holding my breath regarding classical music articles.

So here's what's probably my last piece, barring some miracle, and I'm glad to say it's a Glyndebourne preview. They've got an absolute peach of a season coming up and I enjoyed a lovely chat with Gus Christie - but it has to be noted that if you want a top-price seat for Meistersinger it'll cost rather a lot. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/glyndebourne-preview-seats-at-britains-best-known-opera-festival-this-summer-will-cost-up-to-300-a6946276.html

My heart is with my friends and colleagues today, editors, writers and columnists, people at the very top of their profession who in some cases have devoted almost their entire working lives to that newspaper and never ceased trying to make it the best in the business. I'm proud to have worked with you for 12 years and I am going to miss you very, very much.

Over and out.