Women and Music (XVII-XIX c.) 3106-KiM-OG

In the 17th-19th centuries, music was composed primarily by men. This happened for many reasons (e.g., due to easy access to music education and institutions creating musical life). And yet, in the past centuries, many women - composers, singers, instrumentalists - lived and created. Their names are becoming better known, but still not enough. The music of female composers is still performed too rarely. Thus, the purpose of the class will be to present selected figures of female composers (including F. Caccini, B. Strozzi, E. Jacquet de la Guerre, A. Bembo, I. Leonarda, M. A. Walpurgis, M. L. Lombardini Sirmen, M. Martinez, H. de Montgeroult, M. Szymanowska, F. Hensel, C. Schumann, L. Farrence, L. Blahetka), female instrumentalists (most often they were also composers), female singers (such as A. Renzi, G. Pasta, M. Malibran, P. Viardot, among others). Selected musical salons run by women will also be presented, as well as individual examples, for each century of selected female portraits in such genres as opera and oratorio.

Type of course

general courses

Course coordinators

Aneta Markuszewska

Learning outcomes

- Knowledge of selected profiles of female musicians (17th-19th centuries)
- Knowledge of selected works of their authorship
- Awareness of the situation of women engaged in art, in creating music in past centuries

Assessment criteria

Class attendance
Written test at the end of the semester

Bibliography

Denis Arnold, Orphans and Ladies: the Venetian Conservatoires (1680-1790), w: “Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association” 1962-1963.
Bełza Igor, Maria Szymanowska, Kraków 1987.
Jane Bowers, The Emergence of Women Composers in Italy, 1566-1700, w: Women Making Music. The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950, Urbana and Chicago, 1987.
Susan Cusick, Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court. Music and the Circulation of Power, Chicago 2009.
Rebecca Cybess, Women and Musical Salons in the Enlightenment, Chicago 2022.
Claire Fontijn, Desperate Measures. The Life and Music of Antoni Bembo, Oxford 2006.
Gwizdalanka Danuta, Muzyka i płeć, Kraków 2001.
Kelley Harness, Echoes of Women's Voices: Music, Art, and Female Patronage in Early Modern Florence, Chicago and London 2006.
Wendy Heller, Tacitus Incognito: Opera as History in < l’Incoronazione di Poppea>, w: “Journal of American Musicological Society” 1999, s. 39-96.
Markuszewska Aneta, Kompozytorki i patronki muzyki w XVII i XVIII wieku. Wybrane portrety, Warszawa 2017.
Craig A. Monson, Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in an Early Modern Italian Convent, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1995.
Muzyka fortepianowa w twórczości kompozytorskiej kobiet / pod redakcją Piotra Różańskiego.
Cecelia Hopkins Porter, Five Lives in Music. Women Performers, Composers, and Impresarios from the Baroque to the Present, Urbana 2012.
Rygiert Beate, Pianistka. Clara Schumann i muzyka miłości, Warszawa 2022.
Julie Anne Sadie, Musiciennes of the Ancien Régime, w: Women Making Music. The Western Art. Tradition, 1150-1950, red. J. Bowers, J. Tick, Urbana and Chicago 1987.

Additional information

Information on level of this course, year of study and semester when the course unit is delivered, types and amount of class hours - can be found in course structure diagrams of apropriate study programmes. This course is related to the following study programmes:

Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system:

Description of 3106-KiM-OG in USOSweb