Welcome back to my blog, this is my second blog post and looking at the title, you guessed it! It’s all about the ladies in this post. As I previously hinted about my struggles of being a woman in this industry, I want to talk about other female composers who have been on their own journey that’s inspired me to be resilient.
Like I mentioned in my first blog post, I have received much doubt about my passionate for music and my drive to pursue a career in the industry. I was supported a lot more as a child because I think most people thought music was just a hobby for me but I was instantly enchanted by the unbreakable spell that music cast on me and there was no way music was just going to be a hobby of mine.
Before my late teenage years, I would push my musical abilities to the limit, I’d perform classical piano pieces in school assemblies, churches, awards evenings and even weddings. I eventually started performing my own piano compositions and in 2016 I was presented with an award for my original composition. This gave me the confidence I needed to reassure myself that music was going to become my career.
However, during my late teens/early 20’s I started to see a different side of the music industry. When people discovered that I was actually pursuing a music career and I identified myself as a professional, I noticed that people weren’t taking me seriously and I experienced my first encounter with sexism.
I decided to enrol at the University of Hertfordshire due to the diversity and down to earth atmosphere that I experienced on the open day but before this I had to explore different options to extend my musical curriculum. On one occasion, I attended an open day of a musical facility and was welcomed with “oh you are here for the open day, you don’t look like a composer”. I was put off completely from the open day and decided against that music facility as an option of study. It wasn’t just that occasion where i’ve been treated differently but on numerous other occassions too where I really experienced the gender difference in the music industry.
Having witnessed the prejudice against the female gender only motivated me to push harder and thrive for a successful career in music.
Not only myself but other women have endured the same kind of prejudice in the music industry.
I came across an interesting book, Women & Music A History, that discusses many things especially how women who were born in the 20th century and studied at the Royal College of Music and even worked under the likes of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst still ‘struggled with their careers, not only because they were forward-looking composers but also because they were women.’ (Pendle,1991, pg.227) Pendle then goes on to say that although these women never felt discriminated against during their time at the RCM, when they were out of college and in a professional environment, they did struggle to ‘organize performances where their works could be heard’ (Pendle,1991, pg.227). This correlates with my own personal challenges that I faced and I mentioned it earlier in my blog that I too was faced with sexism when I entered a professional environment.
So how did these women manage to musically thrive in such a patriarchal society ? It seemed very difficult but certain women made sure that girls like myself could follow their musical ambitions. In 1911 the ‘Society of Women Musicians’ organisation was founded, to ‘deal with the problems of invisibility among women composers and performers’ .(Pendle,1991, pg.227). Also, in the early 1920’s ‘Anne Macnaghten in collaboration with conductuer Iris Lemare and composer Elisabeth Lutyens, established the recently disbanded Macnaghten-Lemare series as a platform for performances of modern British Music’ (Pendle,1991, pg.227). So even as early on as the start of the 20th century, women were standing up for their passion.
I feel that myself and Elisabeth Lutyens, one of the female composers I mentioned, are very similar. After reading through a passage in Women & Music A History, I couldn’t help but notice similarities in Lutyen’s life compared to mine, she was brought up in a none musical family and she ‘studied both piano and violin practicing many hours a day, and began to compose in secret’ (Pendle,1991, pg.228) she also developed an interest in Debussy too. Maybe I am ELisabeth Lutyens reincarnated…
Anyway, what i’m trying to say is that female composers in the 1900’s weren’t too different from female composers today, there is still a battle going on for women to be heard and accepted in this industry.
Speaking of women in the industry today, I was very pleased to see the BAFTA Cymru award-winning composer Alexandra Harwood invited to one of our lectures to give a talk on what its like to be a part of the music industry. She gave such a great talk that left me inspired. I noted down a few points she made during her lecture:
-Firstly, Harwood spoke about the late James Horner and how he said “In the film world you can’t revisit your own composition as it no longer belongs to you” (Harwood, quoting a comment from Horner)
-To use the ‘gentle art of manipulation’
-To be open minded and objective
-‘find a way to sound like you around the temp track you were sent’ but without sounding like the temp track too much or you’ll get sued
-Write in the style thats ‘in trend’ for example she spoke about Hildur Guðnadóttir and how her style of music is in trend right now and many film directors are looking for her type of sound and will hire composers if they can replicate her style
-Directors can be difficult, do what they ask but dont lose your sense of uniqueness.
After Harwood’s talk, I went home to reflect on the points she made. I thought about the style of music I compose in and if that would secure me a job or would I have to adapt my style to fit with the trend that’s occuring at the current time. Harwood’s talk was very reassuring and inspiring, to see a female composer score succesful films like ‘The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society’ and working for companies such as ‘Disney’ and the ‘BBC’, I was left feeling very hopeful that I was on the write path in life.
sources-KARIN PENDLE ed. Women & Music A History Second Edition, (1991),{Accessed online},Indiana, Indiana University Press, link to Ebook can be accessible by: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XBXggAcjnEoC&oi=fnd&pg=PP2&dq=women+in+music&ots=Xd9UvDl2P4&sig=qbg8mw5-QQG3HJxrIf5jWQANY8A&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=women%20in%20music&f=false, (ebook accessed on 5th October 2019),
ALEXANDRA HARWOOD, (2019), Breaking into the film composing business. {Lecture}, (MA), University of Hertfordshire, (lecture attended on the 14th November 2019)
Film and Game Music by Amber Durant 
