Incorporating Early Female Composers in Today's Violin Repertoire

Jane Etherington, University of Utah
Today, the most popular violin pedagogy systems, such as the Suzuki Method, fail to include any works by women. The reality that female musicians and composers have existed and thrived throughout music history dawned on me only in my last semester as a violin performance major while taking a "Women in Music" course. I recognized that until this course, my music school experience, including over five semesters worth of music history classes, had neglected to teach me about any female musicians or composers except one–Clara Schumann. What was more shocking, was that as a female violinist of 20 years, I had never once played a piece of music written by a woman before the 20th century. I was never taught to question why female composers weren't part of the textbooks I read or why I never saw the names of women on any of my violin concertos. Although violin pedagogy methods and music history textbooks lead us to believe otherwise, the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries are spattered with impressive women who both composed and performed great works of music for violin–even in a time when such a career was less socially acceptable. The value of incorporating works by these female composers as part of the repertoire for young violin students reaches far beyond the hours spent in lessons. Neither a young girl nor boy's music education can be complete without role models of both female and male contributors to repertoire and music history. English music educator and composer, Margaret Lucy Wilkins, observed, “change can only take place by re-educating ourselves, listening to music which we've grown accustomed to dismissing, and revisiting the content of our courses." In response to this, I have begun a project to incorporate works by early female composers into the pedagogical repertoire of my violin students. I have created complementary materials outlining the lives of female composers from the 17th-19th centuries. To gather information on the impact of the introduction of this repertoire, I will interview several of my female violin students between the ages of 7 and 15. This research and musical additions to the pedagogical literature are necessary in teaching our students, especially young girls, the significant role women play in music history. I hope that presenting their music as equal to that of male composers will be an important part of creating a gender-equal movement in music education.