Perhaps the most extraordinary musical event I went to in 2003 (and certainly the longest I have ever attended) was Jonathan Powell's heroic performance of Sorabji's massive solo piano work Opus Clavicembalisticum at the Purcell Room in September. It began not long after 6pm and ended around five hours later, this span having been broken by only a single 20-minute interval. One remarkable feature of the event was apparent even before the first of the thousands of notes had been played: the audience was at least 75% male. An excellent programme book was available, full of information about Sorabji's work and its context and essential reading for the beginner who wanted to engage at all seriously with the music. Throughout the 20-odd pages of notes I spotted only one female name (that of one of Jonathan Powell's teachers, mentioned in the biographical information given about him); all of the scholars, performers, and other composers (dead and living) referred to in the discussion of Sorabji's work were male. I felt that I had entered into a single-gender zone of the universe (not unlike elementary particle physics, with which I was engaged earlier in life).
Years ago I read somewhere that the audience for classical music concerts in general (not just for 20th century or contemporary music) had a slight majority of males. This majority probably increases in certain areas of the repertoire: when I heard the complete cycle of Bartók string quartets played by the Emerson Quartet at the QEH in the autumn of 2001 the audience had a clear male majority. However, I assumed that the gender bias of the Sorabji audience was exceptional and I did not expect to see its like again.
I was proved wrong just two days later, when Anthony Green gave his piano recital including works by New Music Brighton and Colchester New Music composers at the Hounsom Memorial URC in Hove. Here again the audience was around 75% male (partly because it was made up mainly of NMB composers and reflected the balance of NMB's membership); at least the programme did include a work by a female (CNM) composer!
Another one of the 'useless facts' that I once picked up from reading was that 86% of piano teachers in Britain were female; I understand that more girls than boys learn the piano. The association of women with keyboard instruments is centuries old and one might expect women to be especially interested in piano music - but evidently much modern piano music does not appeal to them.
Observations such as these have relevance to the issue of audience-building: if whole areas of modern music do not attract the interest of one half of the population there is clearly going to be a problem in getting bigger audiences for new music.
Beyond this lies the constantly nagging question of whether modern music itself and perhaps even the whole compositional enterprise are not essentially 'male', in some way that is difficult to define but also impossible to ignore. I have been seriously thinking of giving up my attempts to compose and the gender issue is one of the many factors that influence my thinking. Much of the public debate in this area seems shallow and too heavily weighted towards social and institutional considerations (about discrimination against women), ignoring what may be important deep inner psychological factors. Obviously there is a lot more that could be said about these matters - perhaps in the NMB Newsfile next year?
Back to views and comments