Meet our professor of music and gender
Newsmessage received:
The Hannover University of Music, Theater and Media has appointed Dr. Maria Behrendt as the new head of the research center for Music and Gender (fmg). Effective October 2024 she has also taken the position of junior professor of music science with a focus on gender studies.
Maria has made an intensive stidy of ‘Disney’s (Re)interpretation of the Male Romantic Lead’. She also works as an editor for the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel.
She seems pretty inoffensive. But every university music department now needs a gender specialist. And probably every music publisher.
Disgraceful. Thank God Trump won, so the world will start healing soon.
Don’t you think it’s judicious to under-promise and over-deliver, rather than the reverse? You can bet this DEI appointee in Hannover, and those in similar positions, will have cause to feel threatened by this:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/11/09/germans-have-had-enough-of-their-useless-leaders/
The garbage of woke always did have a limited shelf life.
Say bye bye to arts funding. He’s got immigrants to deport and gifts for his rich buddies. Healing? What a joke.
A comvicted rapist, felon, insurrectionist, con man and stinking fascist heals the world,sure….
Convicted by Democrats on charges invented by Democrats.
Really? You *know* that or is it just something you say?
And you believe the Democrats because…?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_and_business_legal_affairs_of_Donald_Trump
LOL!!!!! for 4 decades…? MAGA lore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_and_business_legal_affairs_of_Donald_Trump
Cadet Bone Spurs can count himself lucky to live in 2024, not 1954. Back then, he would have been grilled on the electric chair for treason,like the Rosenbergs.Rightly so.
My dad came to the US in 1939 as a jewish refugee from Germany. He died, age 98, a few months ago.
Concerning the orange pest, he said to me the day before he died..”riff raff always supports always riff raff, 1933 in Germany, 2024 in the US.Nothing new under the sun….”
He was 1000 percent right.
Safe for Putin, who laughs his ass off about his orange little useful idiot.
A joke, I assume. Trump supporters do not have the capacity to enjoy classical music.
Their musical appreciation abilities stop at Kid Rock, their intelluctual ones at Hulk Hogan….
Didn’t you say just yesterday that you withdraw from visiting here?
That was merely a short hopeful blip.
The problem wit such ‘lenses’ is that music is brought-down to the level of social constructs and bereft of its transcendence and universality. Also music is then being politicised, and weapanized for emancipatory struggles in society. It is comparable with communism, where people are put in boxes (often literally so) and merely represent theoretical categories of groups.
So, Hildegard von Bingen is important for her contribution to feminism, JS Bach criticised for his submission to and practicing of patriarchy, Mozart’s sister hailed as victim of gender suppression like Mahler’s wife, Tchaikovsky explained through his love for men, Debussy criticised as exploiter of innocent women, Ravel as closetted gay, etc. etc. as if musical works are expressions of society’s mistakes.
“Also music is then being politicised, and weapanized for emancipatory struggles in society…”
Ahh, time to put on my favourite recording of the ninth symphony.
Modernism seeks to elevate current viewpoints thru reductive analysis of all previous history. Just ridiculous.
Surprisingly I agree with John…
Spot on.
It’s called ‘low resolution thinking’.
It is Neo-Marxism. After the failures and horrors of Marxists became known the French post-Modern philosophers rebranded their Marxist ideology to avoid the Marxist label but it is the same attack on Western culture.
Neo-Marxism? Why stop there, that’s way too recent. Let’s go for post-Cartesianism, supra-Augustinianism, or post-neo-Aristotelianism.
If we’re going to make up ideological currents, let’s at least be ambitious about it.
Post-brain reasonings!
🙂
Neo-Marxism is an actual thing. It’s everywhere throughout academia, regrettably. But you knew that. The Left likes to do stuff, give it a name, and then say there’s no such thing.
Ah yes, I remember when we discussed that at our Neo-Marxists anonymous meeting last month. Still no word on whether that’s Karl or Groucho, though.
Can you point out one thesis of Marx’s in what lies behind this woman’s appointment?
It comes in with the NEO, the application of Marxism as class struggle using gender grievance as a class designator to look at music through the lens gender inequality. But you knew that.
Ah yes, the famous Marxian concept of “gender classes”. It’s just Marx’s “Capital”, without the capital bit. Easy.
“Also music is then being politicised, and weapanized for emancipatory struggles in society.”
Quite aside from the spelling errors, no one seems to have told this wanker about the Eroica symphony, huh? Wait until old Ludwig hears he’s not allowed to be political.
The music is interesting because of its transcendence AND its context. Are you so fragile that you can’t handle thinking about history from more than one narrow perspective?
Talking about narrowness and fragility of thinking….. This ‘commentator’ should go back to school and especially, learn some manners before revealing the level of his upbringing in such embarrasing way.
The point of Beethoven’s so-called ‘politically-inspired’ music is, that from the realities of his time and society he filtered-out its essence and thus made it universal and accessible. The Eroica is NOT about Napoleon’s conquests, overthrowing the nobility elites (who, by the way, paid for Beethoven’s work), but about what Napoleon initially symbolized: the liberation from suppression in a general sense, and that is a universal human longing. Beethoven did not scratch Napoleon’s name from the score without a reason. The same with the 5th symphony which uses fragments of hymns from the French revolution, but lifted from any concrete political definition, so that only the spirit was filtered-out. The same with the 9th: the subject is so undefined (‘joy’) that only the spirit of the music ‘tells its story’ and that is about humanism, but without any reference to any context whatsoever. Even Wagner’s operas are universalist works, like the Ring which has a critique of capitalist society but in such a way that it is made universal. Brahms clothed his sombre view on modern society in building a mental bulwark of timeless value that would survive the times (as it did), Mahler musically wept over a dying culture but shed all literal references. Should I go on? I think all of this should be enough and could even be educational.
This is what people do when they haven’t any idea how to do music or opera. Everyone was so surprised at the election but here is the rub. If you silence everyone but the 1.2 people who agree with you then you really don’t have your finger on the pulse of the people. People who love classical music and who love opera don’t think its in any way politically incorrect. Most of the stories are very universal.
No John, having one gender specialist at a university does not “bring down” music all together. I thought conservatives used to make fun of liberals for being “snowflakes” and nowadays, it’s the opposite. Taking multiple different perspectives towards one subject is a productive process, not a reductive one. You guys also cried when one single professor denigrated Beethoven. Human civilization developed and thrived due to clashing and amalgamation of different perspectives and ideas. Stop being a triggered snowflake and look at the bigger picture for once?
Dear David, if you had read my comment carefully, you had understood that it was meant to explain that such an appointment at a university is a SIGN of a trend, and this trend is indeed contributing to the undermining of the art form, as also other trends are, like the businessfication of music life, the power of the ignorati running it, the exploitation of performers etc. etc. Noticing this has nothing to do with being progressive or conservative, since reality is neither progressive nor conservative. Looking at classical music through a political lens, as you just did, is exactly the mistake so many people make nowadays. Also suffering from the delusion that all opinions ar equal, stem from such narrow perspective: the world view of ‘cultural relativity’. And that is very different from an open discussion of different point of view: they should at least have some content, otherwise there is nothing to discuss.
Yes John, I understood, and I’m saying that such talks of the “trend” that undermines the artform is grossly overstated. What kind of data are you referring to when you make such a claim? You do know that your personal feelings don’t constitute facts, right? Actually, according to you, music has been in decline since modernity. Just be honest and say that you don’t like certain things about certain facets of the classical music world. That’s fine, that’s your personal opinion. But if you are going to make a universal claim that the artform is somehow in decline, then you need more than your personal opinions, ok? Funny how you critique relativism when you yourself are victim of such relativism. Unfortunately, you have the audacity to believe that you are beyond that, and that you alone, know the real objective essence of music and everyone else who disagrees is speaking “relatively”.
It’s simply a matter of professionalism, and bveing informed, and having direct experience of music life and musicology over a life time.
Maybe doing some reading will offer some enlightenment. There’s enough around…..
Mr Borstlap is the only informed musical professional who comments on this site; all others should simply accept it, read his book, and shut up.
Funny how you write as if your opinion is the consensus amongst academics, when in fact, you are the minority. If you can’t even appreciate atonal music, then perhaps you’re the one who needs to do a lot more studying. Boulez made history and will be remembered and celebrated for as long as humans live. He has halls and streets named after him. Who are you? Now that’s the consensus.
I fully agree! PB is great! I always play it when I come home from a hard days work.
Sally
I think you should try to think for yourself, and not entirely rely upon what others think.
Maybe this helps:
https://subterraneanreview.blogspot.com/2016/01/notes-on-boulez.html
Citing yourself is very much looked down upon in academic settings, John. I am not arguing that you shouldn’t hold these opinions. This world is better because of diversity. All I’m saying is that you can’t pass off your opinion as the consensus that anyone with “professionalism, and bveing informed, and having direct experience of music life and musicology over a life time” would agree to. In fact, most of those people do NOT agree with you. The fact that you can only cite yourself speaks volumes. So in conclusion, no, music is not degenerating. It’s funny you critique Barenboim for his “totalitarian” claim that PB changed music, when you make the same “totalitarian” claim (your words) about how music is being undermined. You said it yourself in the article, music can’t be changed by the will of the people (according to you). So leave the people alone, including professors of gender studies. You will be a bit more consistent with yourself that way.
I think you should read more about totalitarianism…. Objecting to totalitarianism is not totalitarianism. I think you can look at the present state of US political situation as an apt demonstration.
In the same way, intolerance towards intolerance is not intolerance.
We want to change Germ**y to Gerpeoply for reason so obvious. It is a new movement but it maybe can possibly succeed.
We know Debussy dress crosses, and Arvo Pärt so clear. Study gender and music beneficial for everyone.
Time to look back and support the talent of past
Not unlike experts in Marxism – Leninism -Stalinism, in the USSR.
And the special professors who were in charge of the obligatory classes in Marxist-Leninist Dialectics, etc. etc. at institutions like the Moscow conservatory were to be treated with great caution by students. One gets this sense in reading the biographies many Russian musicians like Ashkenazy. You could quietly despise them, as almost everyone seemed to, but cross them at your peril.
If we continue to critically reflect on gender norms, what next? Women might want their own property! Or to be able to choose their own husbands! What will the world come to?
How ironic that a man would be bothered by the threat to the accepted world order. The more reason why this field of study is essential.
I fully agree. We have been suppressed much too long. it is about time we get the balance right, and that we are treated equally. Therefore we should look at everything thinking about man/woman relationships so that we can correct the grave imbalance that has lasted for ages! That means we should take-over and treat men as they have treated us for so long, it is so painful for me personally to realize how I have been treated for hundreds of years. There should be justice for all, but not for men! And especially employers should get their just dessert and sould be forsed to stop correcting PA”s who only do their best for a meagre salary!
Sally
And these virtue signallers are always white women. If only they realised how their ideology ultimately despises them.
Well, that means they need to expand tutorial services. Gonna need to hire someone, to dumb it down for the viola players.
Why not have a new title- Professor of Wok!!
I’m quite sure that’s in culinary school.
Forgive me – I’m just a simpleton, what is “Gender Studies,” and why is it apposite to modern life? Perhaps the educated amongst this audience can educate simple me – with only 3 university degrees.
Happy to help – here’s a 10 minute article. With 3 university degrees I’m sure you’ll be happy to read a short text: https://daily.jstor.org/reading-list-gender-studies/
There is nothing against gender studies as a cultural phenomenon. The problems begin where it leads to labelling humanity in groups to mobilize them for political action, and in this way universities turn into political clubs which is against the nature of education, and is anti-humanistic: people being reduced as merely representing groups. And here is the link with communism – we know how ‘education’ in the Soviet Union was framed as a marxist endeavor.
So if you have nothing against gender studies, and the only information about this professor we have is that she is a professor of music and gender, what exactly are you objecting to? Is your objection related to the fact that she notes in her research that Disney has male lead characters?
Agreed, if all gender scholars are doing this (some may be). But isn’t research into questions of gender in society – including in music – worthwhile?
You write as though the group labels ‘man’ and ‘woman’, with political and societal implications, didn’t exist before gender studies.!
Bad uses can be made of knowledge; it doesn’t mean that knowledge is bad. You jump too quickly to conclusions about communism.
There has been an influx of postmodern structuralist courses in universities in the West, especially in the USA, fed by ‘philosophers’ like Bourdieu, Foucault, Derrida. Youngsters picking-up that stuff enter society with a distorted idea of the world, not fed by critical thinking and the search for truth, but by the seduction of rebellion against an unfair world – nothing is more appealing at that age. And in the process, all kinds of misconceived ideas drip through the layers of elites, creating havoc. Central to this postmodern ‘thinking’ is that everything is subjective, and there is nothing outside any text – be the texts historic, scientific, political, cultural, etc. It stems from marxism, and since the implosion of its greatest experiment: the Soviet Union, all the academics in the West who had cultivated marxist theory, had to find another theme to harp upon, and got the idea of turning education – especially at the universities, being the breeding ground of future elites – into political action. So, it is no longer about something like ‘truth’, but about ‘interpretation’, and the latter as a weapon in the collective struggle for liberation from anything in Western society that stands in the way of a postmodern world view.
The classical music world, as a product of the bourgeoisie, then becomes a target of critique, which tries to show that the field is a mere representation of all the ills of the world: white supremacy, Eurocentrism, patriarchy, racism, exclusion, hierarchical thinking etc. etc. When enough people believe it, funding is cut. The result is that musical institutions struggle for their excistence. It has already happened that a classical music festival in a big city in Europe was cancelled, in spite of its success and full halls, because the city council stopped its subsidies since a great part of the population, consisting of immigrants, had no interest in it: ‘It is not for us, why should we pay, through the city taxes, for the expensive hobby of white people, which is excluding all other cultures that make-up society?’ Such ideas would never emerge if they were not first outlined as an attempt to label groups in the context of political struggles and bring-down an art form as merely representing group interests. Gender is just one of such contexts…
I’m not sure of the argument here. An objection to substantial government subsidies for something that only interests a small minority seems reasonable to me.
Compare it with science; the results of science are contributing to the common good, also if there are many people who don’t understand them and/or make no use of them. There are people who don’t have a car and still contribute, through the taxes, to the maintenance of motorways. Art, and classical music as one of ‘les beaux arts’, belongs to the common good and concerts are accessible to most of the population. If we have to measure the value of the common good against the number of people being interested in it, we get a serious decline in civilisational values – like the poitical implosion jusy now happening in the USA.
All right, here’s a question that recurs for me on this site. If, as so many people here like to insist, music is beyond politics and is universal; and if classical music is uniquely transcendent, then why, whenever a practitioner who is not white or male has a success, are they denigrated as embodying the opposite of that? So many readers here seem unable to get past ethnicity, race, and gender, and genuinely unable to extend the idea of universality to *everyone*.
Spot on.
“whenever a practitioner who is not white or male has a success, are they denigrated as embodying the opposite of that?”
“Sometimes” rather than “whenever”?
It is the political agenda of people trying to address these problems who get stuck into the same labelling, only into the opposite direction. Everything is then seen through group think lenses which are racist, mysoginist, etc.
oh FFS. Whatever next? Chair of counterpoint and double glazing?
Breitkopf & Härtel has just published a “version” of Die Schöne Müllerin expanded by some activist scoremaker who wrote in the accompanying blurb that in Schubert’s original, the Müllerin “remains merely a projection screen for male desire.” Now he improved on that from “a radically feminist perspective.”
https://issuu.com/breitkopf/docs/bh_nova_2024-2_issuu pages 12-13
I was wondering how Breitkopf & Härtel could have fallen to this level of cringe. Thanks for more background!
Well, isn’t that quite true? The poems are entirely about the man’s feelings. All we are told about the Müllerin is that she has blue eyes and prefers green, i.e. the huntsman.
The composer Johannes Maria Staud has arranged Schubert’s song cycle for a 19-instrument ensemble (nothing wrong with that, surely?) and has interspersed his own settings of poems by Emily Dickinson, to represent a woman’s feelings. Seems fair to me!
Very much of European culture is the product of men. We know by now, thanks to the unrelenting efforts of feminists, that somehow, and surprisingly, that was the result of society being mainly run by men, and women taking 2nd place. But all these artists – painters, composers, writers, poets – were never responsible for the conditions of the society they happened to be born into. (And quite some painters and writers were women, as musicians were.)
I was addressing the particular point of the original comment: the beloved girl of that song-cycle is indeed “a projection screen for male desire”. Isn’t that worth thinking about, even if not from a “radically feminist perspective”?
Could you say the same for Frauenliebe und -leben from a radically masculinist perspective (the poets of both song-cycles were male)?
Gender studies dig a little deeper than “men used to run society”.
What is wrong with ‘male projection’? The author happened to be a male.
The problem is that women in the past got so much less opportunity to exercise a ‘female projection’ in terms of literature & poetry. So we know less of it but we can be confident to assume they HAD something like ‘female projections’.
This is all history. We know it, and we try to do it better. What more is there to think about?
Who said they were “responsible”? You’re twisting yourself in knots here. No one pretends Beethoven sat on some kind of Council of Patriarchs that decreed “henceforth music shall be made by men!”. You’re tilting at windmills.
Art is a product of society, made by artists who are *in* society, and is a creative reflection of society. If that society – by your own admission – is “the product of men”, isn’t that worth studying? And yes, that applies to music too.
There are no knots here, as anybody can see. The point is, that with hindsight, cultural products are interpreted as symbols of past societies, and are assessed as such and used as justification to bring them down, to remove their status. In this way, their transcendent universalism is denied: they are not upheld as symbols of excellence and of civilised values, that can inspire contemporary people, but as symbols of injustices and exclusion and thus, no longer worth a pedestal and no longer justifying funding. It is like young generations destroying their precious, costly inheritance becasue they don’t like the dead people who had possessed them in ancient times.
I’m amazed that such obvious trends are not seen through, really.
Just one example: Haydn worked and lived in the service of Prince Esterhazy, had to be dressed in uniform, enjoyed quarters in a hughe and beautiful baroque palace, had his own orchestra with which he could experiment as much as he liked. In this way he created ‘the symphony’, ‘the string quartet’, and laid the foundation for orchestral scoring which would support classical music for some 2 centuries. Are his works now tainted by association with a feudal, suppressive social system? And should therefore no longer be viewed as exemplary works of art? And Haydn as a collaborator with an evil regime? Only ignorant people would love to argue like this, to sport their flaws as an asset in a new context. And this is what happened with ‘philosophers’ like Bourdieu who argued that the entire classical music world was a mere political instrument used by the bourgeois class to suppress everybody else, weaponising musical works with fake myths of ‘greatness’ and ‘transendence’ and ‘beauty’, only to bolster their dominion over production means.
Of course, the project itself, as you described in the most innocuous terms, would have been just fine (orchestration, etc.) What’s cringeworthy is the language he attached–or agreed to attach–to the project for marketing purposes.
A nice little gravy train and sinecure is this DEI ideology. Who knew??!!!
What are her/their pronouns?
Now that Boeing had dismantled their DEI department, maybe 737 MAX will fly?
How many other women of my ‘boomer’ generation remember being told as children that women couldn’t compose music, they didn’t have the right sort of brain for creativity?
When I was young, I was told I could do everything I wanted and would be very successful in it. But look where it got me eventually.
Sally
Sorry for the blurb of my PA… she had a difficult day.
The question of women’s talents for writing music is in itself interesting. In literature, there are many writers who happen to be a woman, and the visual arts are also populated by women. In music, female performers are richly represented. Meanwhile it is clear that men and women are different versions of the human being, with a different distribution of talents and capacities, which is also represented in their physiques (just to mention it in case someone had not noticed). Mentally, there are also quite some differences between the sexes, which can easily be explained by their ‘natural functions’. But nature loves variety so that the human character is extremely diverse. The ability of writing music thus should be evenly distributed among men and women, but where women are in a minority among the composing crowd, it is very difficult to define whether this is the result of the surrounding culture, or inborn characteristics – and whether these characteristics are individualistic or related to the sex. All of this is a continuum, so that the only conclusion seems to be to try to give as many opportunities as possible and hope that the better talents will float to the surface, be them men or women.
I think it is often quite easy to “define whether this is the result of the surrounding culture, or inborn characteristics”. For instance, take the case of Fanny Mendelssohn, strongly discouraged by her family from publishing her music (at least under her own name), because of societal expectations. Yet she was considered the equal of Felix, both as a pianist and as a composer, by knowledgeable contemporaries.
Yes of course… but that was in the past. We cannot change the past, as far as I know. We can only learn from the past.
And then: how do we really KNOW that Fanny was as good as composer as her brother? The question is moot, she did NOT develop as a composer. So we can never know her composition talents. Such fantasies are entirely useless. And ignorati often use such arguments to make the same mistake but into the opposite direction: suppress any male talent to make sure the women get their chances.
We cannot change the past, but we can try to understand it better, and we can be aware of how we are affected by attitudes we inherit from the past: we can question them, we can (over)-react against them, we can hanker after what some perceive as a simpler, more ordered society.
Fanny was a good enough composer for her works to be taken for her brother’s. She continued to compose throughout her rather short life, but (because of family attitudes, including those of Felix) published very little. You would have to work through her oeuvre to make a judgement and decide whether or not she developed (53 pages in IMSLP).
OK, I will make a study of Fanny’s works, when I have time.
As a tip of the iceberg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX1-wNcrzsk
Very nice ladies’ music, like much of her brother’s. However, it has flaws that her brother would not have committed, like often giving what has been expected all along – predictable – and square phrasing, and rather lame thematic ideas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Mendelssohn
Sadly, this site has become a haven for MAGA riff raff…I can´t understand that you, Mr.Lebrecht, being on good terms with artists like MTT, Simon Rattle, Barenboim, Leonard Slatkin, Fabio Luisi,, and many more, post those comments, which are in complete contradiction with the values of humanity those artists represent. Therefore i´ll withdraw from visiting this site…I don´t want to be bothered by this MAGA garbage on a music website.
If you can’t bear to read opinions which differ from yours, well, good riddance.
Yeah, they are eating our cats and dogs!!!
Opinions?????My family were Republicans.my dad served in Korea, my uncle lost his right leg in NAM, while Cadet Bone Spurs, the stinking little cowardly draft dodging sissy, played golf….He is not Republican, nor are his supporters…I don´t discuss with unpatriotic, lying ,fascists. They don´r even exist for me.
I wonder if one source of unease about gender studies is a doubt as to whether, if you work in an academic department devoted to them, you will be allowed to reach a conclusion conttrary to a certain ideology. How cheerfully would someone be granted a PhD for arguing that, say, western classical music was not an embodiment of specifically male attitudes and values?
Could such a happy conclusion be reached through university gender studies? I wish it could, but up till now I have not seen any sign of such thing. And my strong suspicion is that the subject is politically-motivated, instead of a search for the truth of the matter.
Gawd, what a racket, gender studies.