“Women in music” – we must be talking about singing, or perhaps playing an instrument! Strange it is, that when looking at women musicians writing music is almost the last thing that comes to mind (conducting is the last). One thousand years ago, before the idea that you could spend your life writing music had become reality, the gender of the composer was irrelevant. The names we remember best from those times are Kassia and Hildegard von Bingen, both of whom happened to be female, and both of whom dedicated their life to religious orders. Doubtless writing music (and poetry) was an important thing for them, but both for women and for men it was one of many occupations of an intense monastic life.
Composition as a profession evolved in the fourteenth century, and for the next three hundred years the act of writing music became entirely male, with names that we remember today – Machaut, Josquin des Prez, Palestrina, and many more. At first it was the mathematics of composition that predominated; mensuration canons and isorhythm, and scores written in heart shapes and circles… Eventually rules evolved as to how best to put notes together, and by the fifteenth century this became counterpoint: note-against-note, or point-against-point – in Latin punctus-contra-punctum.

But – why no women composers? One possible explanation is that musical development moved away from the church. Machaut for example was a well-known composer and poet who traveled extensively with the king, and whose secular music builds on the troubadour style. Women would not have that option. It could also be that women were just not drawn to the theoretical considerations of the ars nova period.

By the end of the sixteenth century the foundations that music has been built on for the past four hundred years were laid, and women appear again in the catalogue of music writers. But there is now a significant difference: writing music has become a trade known as ‘composer,’ and for the past two hundred years it has been a man’s trade. From this point on, women will find it very difficult to break into this world, and for the next three hundred and fifty years they will be considered intruders – even by women themselves!

The first part of this series of presentations covers just four women: starting in the ninth century with Kassia, it then goes on to discuss Hildegard von Bingen, then jumps the centuries of discovery and experimentation to continue with Francesca Caccini at the beginning of the sixteen hundreds, finishing with Barbara Strozzi in the mid-seventeenth century.