Women's contribution to Lied

When we have to ask ourselves “what contributions did women composers have on the development of such an important and prolific genre as German Lied” there is already an issue that comes to mind; the fact that women’s work and contribution in the past were not recognized on equal terms as those of men and were assumed to be different or in many cases nonexistent. However it is not something new for women’s contribution to culture to be ignored or relegated to domestic or second class contributions, unworthy of public appearance or even mention in history and musicology books.

The Nineteenth Century for women composers and musicians was a crucial time in history for women, not because there had not been women musicians in the past, but because of the socio-economic and technological changes in Germany and other parts of Europe that allowed more women to study, perform and compose music. The Industrial Revolution, together with the development of the pianoforte were key in allowing middle and upper-class women access to music performances, pianofortes, more participation in private performances, and in a few cases advanced music education and public performances.

Up untill the second half of the Eighteenth Century women had been overtly described and seen as inferior by important figures such as Jean-Jacque Rousseau, who in his treatise Émile described women as lacking creativity and genius. Of course these claims came from men who were unaware or disregarded the immense difference between the opportunities men and women had to develop creativity and genius. Women’s lack of participation and recognition in music was seen as a “proof of their biological inferiority” by men like Havelock Ellis who studied sexuality from a physician's point of view. There was also the issue of censorship of women’s works by men, a fact that sometimes forced women to pass as men in order to be published or be heard.

    Drastically smaller in number because of the obstacles above mentioned, many works by women in the Romantic period are comparable in quality, virtuosism and expressiveness to those of men. What made the Nineteenth Century a turning point in music history and, in particular, in the history of women participation was in part the expanding middle class and the invention of the pianofortes.  “Women began to cultivate their talents and tastes as amateur musicians. They had leisure to practice the piano and sing, and they began to provide an important market for music publishing companies, composers and piano makers..." (Gorrell)
    Women’s amateur music making in a domestic setting had long been accepted in Germany and it certainly increased with the widespread presence of pianofortes in middle-class homes. Women were in charge of entertaining guests and family by either performing themselves or organizing soirées, like the famous Sunday sessions the Mendelssohn family would host where both Fanny and Felix would play for a small audience. The difference between Fanny and Felix, was that for Felix this was only entertainment and not the limit of his musical life, while Fanny was kept for the most part from performing in public outside these soirées and publishing her works under her name.

Independently of the role of women, the importance of this soirées in the context of the Nineteenth Century lied is that  “it was in the intimate setting of the middle-class home that the lied was performed..." (Gorrell) In the beginning of the Nineteenth Century women were now “becoming an important segment of the public that was replacing the nobility as prime patron of the arts." (Gorrell)

Women were also now exposed to music more often than before through concert subscriptions in cities like Liepzig, home soirées, and by having more access to pianofortes and musical scores. Women were able to learn the music and some of them experimented with melodies and taught themselves how to compose, some others like Fanny Hensel or Clara Wieck had the advantage of coming from musical families and receiving music education from members of their family from an early age.

    Relegated to the roles of housewives these two women, who are two of the few well known Romantic female composers, were kept from developing to their full potential like men in their families did. Clara Wieck, for instance, began her musical studies with her own father who taught her piano and composition, encouraging her to compose and perform her own music. She was a child prodigy and an amazing mature pianist, however when she married Robert Schumann, with whom she had eight children, she had limited time to practice and compose herself as she had to take care of the family.  Additionally, Schumann did not allow her to play while he was composing. He “was reluctant to share her with the rest of the world and also did not wish to live in her artistic shadow.” (Gorrell)
    Most concert pianist in the beginning of the Nineteenth Century would include at least one composition of their own on a program and Wieck was not the exception having been encouraged by her father to do so from an early age. Despite this support and encouragement, she received from her father, she lacked confidence in her skills and musical abilities,  which is understandable given the general attitude towards women in the arts, and the strict expectations of women to fulfill their duties and responsibilities at home with their family. She said:

I once thought that I possessed creative talent, but have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose - not one has been able to do it, and why should I expect to? It would be arrogance, though indeed, my Father led me into it in earlier days. (Gorrell)

However, Wieck was a fortunate woman for the time to have the education and support from her father and to a certain extent of her husband as well. Schumann despite being controlling of Wieck said that “children and a husband... do not go well with composition. [Clara] cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many tender ideas are lost because she cannot work them out.” (Gorrell) Having listened to many of Wieck’s compositions Schumann decides to publish a volume of lieder together.

Wieck’s song style is “sophisticated and challenging, illustrating not only her talent but the quality of her musical education. She possessed a rich and varied harmonic vocabulary, and her piano figurations are pianistically well conceived." (Gorrell) Her lied works could undoubtedly be compared to that of any other composer at the time as she followed the style of the time. Just like her husband Schumann, her lied compositions were known for the independence of the vocal lines and piano, with both playing different expressive functions within the same story. She would use the piano to expand on what the voice was stating, or to explore the depth the story by drawing a picture of the places and moods the poem would go through that were not necessarily expressed in the text. She would do this by means of harmonic structure or word painting.

Wieck’s experience is definitely a privileged one compared to so many other women we do not even hear about nowadays and whose works never were recorded or kept by their families or patrons. Fanny Hensel in the other hand had a similar musical education, but as she matured as a woman and a musician obstacles began to appear in her life. She did not receive the same support from her family for publishing her works as her brother Felix Mendelssohn did, despite the fact that her music had been complemented by personalities of the time such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and their teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter.

Mendelssohn, however, admired her sister’s work and decided to publish some of her compositions on two of his publications, however with no attribution to Hensel. “Both collections received favorable reviews after their publication, and critics usually cited Fanny’s songs as being particularly lovely.” Publishing under somebody else’s name like Hensel, sharing a publication with a renowned composer like Wieck, or being endorsed by a renowned male composer were the main ways in which women managed to get their works published and develop their careers as composers.

Josephine Lang for instance is known today because she was endorsed by Mendelssohn. "Although his endorsement may be the primary reason that she has not been forgotten, and examination of her music should secure her a respectable place in the history of the art song." (Gorrell)

Despite the common discouraging attitude towards women development in the high art of composition the women above mentioned along with other such as Luise Reichardt and Corona Schröter had a great number of compositions to contribute to the Lied repertoire with their own individual voice in the same genres and styles as their male contemporaries.

Despite the changes in attitude towards women’s participation in the high arts nowadays, history has been written by those in power, and music recorded and published by them as well. Our goal as female music students, performers and academics should be to dig deep, be proactive in our search for repertoire and sources to learn about the history of music that even today is neglected in history courses and books. Even today “the canon of excellence in western art music includes no female Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart... [which] perpetuates the bastion of innate male superiority.”

Sources:

Bowers, Jane M, and Judith Tick. Women making music : the Western art tradition, 1150-1950. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

Gorrell, Lorraine. The nineteenth-century German lied. Pompton Plains, NJ; Milwaukee, Wisc.: Amadeus Press ; For North American sales, Hal Leonard Corporation, 2005.

Reich, Nancy B. Clara Schumann : the artist and the woman. Ithaca [N.Y.]: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Tillard, Françoise. Fanny Mendelssohn. Portland, Or.: Amadeus Press, 1996.