Music and Gender

    Society teeters on the axis of gender. Masculinity and femininity are powerful forces that decide how cultures and societies are shaped. Lean too far in either direction and society is crippled. A human cannot function properly with a leg tied behind their back, and society cannot function when a gender is oppressed. 

Voice. 

Expression.

Soul.

    Music is identity, a voice to the voiceless, a companion in the vast and empty dark. It can tell stories and confess the darkest truths. Men have composed symphonies of struggle and concertos of courage. Manuscripts of music are filled  with love, death, and fate, the ink stained pages dripping with lofty questions and courageous deeds.

And at the top they are all inscribed with the flourish of a man's name.

Where are the voices of the women?

Where is my voice?

    Classical music is a testament to man's identity and women are told that it is the same as human identity. They hold up Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner saying "can't you see yourself in them?"

    The answer is that of course I can. They are human, and nothing human is foreign. But it is a bit like two people hiking on separate trails. One of them walks through the forest, the soft crunch of leaves and the gentle swaying of branches in the wind providing an accompaniment to the journey. The other hiker takes a rocky trail that winds up the side of a mountain. The sky is bright above them and there is no shade to hide under. The only sound is the crunch of their feet against the gravel. Did these hikers see the same things? Did they hear the same things? Were their environments identical?

    Of course not! Only the activity was shared, but not the journey. Being human is a shared identity, but it is not the same journey for everyone. It can be beneficial to look through someone else's eyes, but it only works when it goes both ways. Women have been told that a man's opinion is the only one that matters, have been forced to look through a man's eyes while their voices remain unheard.

            Throughout the history of music, gender has influenced composers and musicians. Inside of countless compositions can be heard the juxtaposition of masculine and feminine energy. This was especially present during the Classical period of music in Europe and an easy example is Mozart’s Symphony No. 41. Arguably one of Mozart’s best and most famous symphonies, it is built on the contrast and interplay of genders. The confident and dramatic opening symbolizes the masculine energy and the sweet lyrical melody that follows is the feminine. They go back and forth for a bit before they finally merge together in an iconographic theme taken from Mozart’s opera aria “Un bacio di mano”.

            The use of gender within musical composition and art in general tends to focus more on the attributes associated with each, rather than a true representation of women. Femininity became associated with beauty, truth, justice, love, or salvation. As the poet Johann Goethe wrote,

“All that must disappear

Is but a parable;

What lay beyond us, here

All is made visible;

Here deeds have understood

Words they were darkened by;

The Eternal Feminine

Draws us on high.”

Goethe is associating femininity with more than just women, rather he is using femininity as a concept, alluding to the so-called “feminine traits” which were embodied by goddesses of old. Masculine traits in music are much more varied. At first, they were clearly about the traits associated with gods and demigods such as heroism, power, and boldness, but later as music became a tool for self-expression, masculine energy became much more diverse while feminine stayed relatively the same. This was undoubtedly because nearly all composers have been men and their ability to express themselves in music has given them a much broader scope of what can be considered masculine. An example of how masculine music has a broader and more expansive definition can be seen by listening to artists such as Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Debussy. They are still considered masculine, but their music incorporates a full spectrum of masculine emotion, both the strength while also the sensitivity. Consider the example below, Chopin's Ballade No. 1. It is a perfect example of the full spectrum of masculine emotion filled with power, despair, and humanity that anyone can relate to.

There has always been an imbalance in the world of classical music and a continued shallow concept of women, but there are a few women composers who have finally come to recognition. One such composer is Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. Something unexplainable happens when I listen to her music, something that shifts into alignment inside of me, as if I am finally hearing the voice of my own soul. Her music contains longing, anger, joy—an expression of all the secret desires of women’s hearts.

The world is finally beginning to listen to women’s voices, but we still have a long way to go. We as a society must continue to pursue different strategies to support the voices that go unheard regardless of gender. This must be true equally for men who have been told not to pursue music because they will never be able to support a family or women who are told that a man will never want to follow them around as they pursue music, for men who are told that playing the flute is for girls, or women who are told that playing the tuba is for men.

Soul.

Expression.

Voice.

            Music is universal, the birthright of every human being. Restrictions based on gender have no place in something that sits beyond establishments and governments. Let us be a healthy society, one that understands that it needs to hear the voices of all of its members, just as a body needs both of its legs, to properly function.