Fighting the Good Fight

Fighting the Good Fight

By Rob Deemer
The more we all can do to fight these stereotypes and show our world for what it is, the better.

Written By

Rob Deemer

There is so much work left to do…

That is what I think when I hear about or read about or see an example of ignorance in one form or another about the state of contemporary concert music today. It is the reason why I started a radio show back when I lived in Oklahoma, and it’s the reason why I decided to interview 50 composers and edit their words into something that both laymen and professionals can find both entertaining and informative. It is what I have been reminded of by a confused and confusing newspaper article and what compels me to respond.

Recently the Guardian‘s Fiona Maddocks gave to the world “Women composers: Notes from the musical margins,” an article that both decries the lack of female composers in today’s musical world and provides vivid examples of the exact attitude that has made it so difficult for composers of both genders to gain a foothold in that world. For most of the article Maddock seems as if she’s going to speak truth to power with regard to the lack of mainstream composers who are women (albeit with a severely European view). And then she closes with this:

So now that the alibis and inequalities have gone, all doors are open. Still we cannot escape the unanswered, unfashionable and, certainly, uncomfortable question: for all the many good, even excellent women composers, why has there not yet been a great one? Where is the possessed, wild-eyed, crackpot female answer to Beethoven, who battled on throught [sic] deafness, loneliness, financial worry and disease to create timeless masterpieces?

 

The answer, and I run for cover even raising the matter, may lie in biology or even psychopathology.

With these few, misguided words, Maddocks eviscerates any chance that anyone could or should take her seriously on the subject of contemporary composers—not only women, but of any contemporary composer. She reflects the lazy fetishism of “glorious Ludwig Van” that seems to still run through the veins of so many in the music community by equating what was one man’s life history (no doubt through the filter of spin-doctor-biographers, as is often the case) with what all composers should have to experience.

Most people don’t know what composers’ lives are like today—deafness and disease might not be rampant, but I don’t know many composers who don’t have to fight off financial worry or loneliness at some level—and that lack of knowledge obviously isn’t helping the situation. Perhaps Ms. Maddocks would want to read this fine (and prescient) response-a-month-before-it-happened by Laura Schwendinger for starters on the gender issue…and a few of my interviews (once they’re published) might help to de-mysticize that whole “wild-eyed masterpiece” hang-up. The more we all can do to fight these stereotypes and show our world for what it is, the better.

There is so much work left to do…