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Trevor Rabin: Women Aren't As Good Composers as Men


indy4

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Yeah it's not like you can refute his stance. The question was why there aren't that many female composers, and he just goes because they aren't as good.

Portman and Shirley Walker are the only really successful ones that come to mind. There's Jane Cornish who's not bad. But other than that not much. It could be argued that the film industry is a tough business, and like a lot of businesses, women are generally placed under a glass ceiling.

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Yeah it's not like you can refute his stance. The question was why there aren't that many female composers, and he just goes because they aren't as good.

Portman and Shirley Walker are the only really successful ones that come to mind. There's Jane Cornish who's not bad. But other than that not much. It could be argued that the film industry is a tough business, and like a lot of businesses, women are generally placed under a glass ceiling.

Koray, you just refuted it. It's not that women aren't as good, it's that they are "placed under a glass ceiling" (aka sexism). That is the complete opposite of what Rabin said.

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http://www.scpr.org/events/2012/04/25/635/airtalk-event-history-and-future-hollywood-film-mu/

Around 32:00. Either an unfunny joke in really poor taste or a blatant display of sexism. Either way, stupid move

I watched the clip, and, in context, I think it was an attempt at a joke (which some apparently found funny, if only for the shock value).

David Newman was really the only one who offered something of a response (implicit discrimination). I think, too, for whatever reason, female musicians are socialized to become performers and teachers instead of composers and conductors; and http://www.therestisnoise.com/2013/10/female-conductors-cont.html'>those who write about music have not been proactive about highlighting what women have contributed in these fields in which they are an extreme minority.

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Also, blacks aren't as good composers as whites. Not pouring oil on the fire or anything.

It's a good thing discussions at JWfan always start on a solid, argumentative ground.

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Yeah it's not like you can refute his stance. The question was why there aren't that many female composers, and he just goes because they aren't as good.

Portman and Shirley Walker are the only really successful ones that come to mind. There's Jane Cornish who's not bad. But other than that not much. It could be argued that the film industry is a tough business, and like a lot of businesses, women are generally placed under a glass ceiling.

Koray, you just refuted it. It's not that women aren't as good, it's that they are "placed under a glass ceiling" (aka sexism). That is the complete opposite of what Rabin said.

I'm not exactly sure how the film industry works in that regard, but it's a similar case with directors as well. Anyway, like Alan said, it was a poor attempt at humor. I remember not being amused by his response when I watched that discussion as it aired. I also found it somewhat ironic in that Rabin's far from the best composer out there.

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Yeah it's not like you can refute his stance. The question was why there aren't that many female composers, and he just goes because they aren't as good.

Portman and Shirley Walker are the only really successful ones that come to mind. There's Jane Cornish who's not bad. But other than that not much. It could be argued that the film industry is a tough business, and like a lot of businesses, women are generally placed under a glass ceiling.

Debbie Wiseman is also a pretty successful composer in the UK. In terms of quantity of TV and film scores, she's done far more of them than Shirley Walker did in the U.S.. Kinda encouraging and depressing at the same time.

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I know lots of female composers. My current composition teacher is female. There have been masterful (I hesitate to say "famous") female composers for hundreds of years. How about Clara Schumann or Barbara Strozzi? The fact that people even believe female composers are a rarity speaks to the implicit discrimination women face. Yes, I'm sure there are more male composers, but it's not one in a million by a long shot.

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I know lots of female composers. My current composition teacher is female. There have been masterful (I hesitate to say "famous") female composers for hundreds of years. How about Clara Schumann or Barbara Strozzi? The fact that people even believe female composers are a rarity speaks to the implicit discrimination women face. Yes, I'm sure there are more male composers, but it's not one in a million by a long shot.

Your personal experience is certainly legitimate, but I'm not sure it's relevant to the situation in Hollywood, in which female composers are indeed a pronounced minority. If your standard for "rare" is "one in a million," then you must be very pleased indeed with the progress we've made as a society toward equality.

As to the historical record, I've no doubt there's room for us to do Howard Zinn proud, as I implied in my earlier post. But if the Michael Giacchinos and the Randy Newmans and the David Newmans and the lesser composers of Hollywood aren't prepared to do that (as they clearly were not in the video), then institutional inertia will continue to hold sway, with female talent remaining in the shadows and on the periphery.

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It would be interesting to know the statistics on how many women are working in the film music business these days and in what capacity.

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A poor attempt at humour KM?

Alan pretty much hit the nail on the head. Up until very recently it's was not considered possible for a woman to actually compose music.

This is one reason why women's history has almost entirely disappeared. The lack of signature.

Go to any museum of classical art. How many paintings and sculptures made by women do you see there? Sure they could be the subject of a painting, but to paint themselves? To express themselves artistically? No way?

Even female authors were fairly unheard of till around the Victorian era I believe?

Sure there might have been women who painted, sculpted etc. But almost none of their work was found good enough to be preserved.But was that because it really wasn't good enough? Or because museums did not believe art created by women had any artistic merit?

It's the same for music. Up until very recently women were allowed to perform music written by men, but were not considered qualified to actually compose. certainly not music that would be good enough to be performed in front of an audience, performed by an orchestra.

So the reason why there are so few female composers in the movie industry is history and tradition. Women are actresses, make up artists, hair stylists, costume designers, they perform on the score, but they don't get hired to compose....

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I'll add Wendy Carlos to the mentions of the thread.

And Angela Morley. And Ann Dudley. And Lisa Gerard. And Jocelyn Pook...

As far as modern classical composers go, one of my favourites is Unsuk Chin.

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Well, Wendy Carlos and Angela Morley don't count in the debate, since they were born as men.

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Seems to be a pretty obvious joke, especially because he "corrects himself" afterwards when someone else says they're smarter. But to disprove the ol' prejudice, all I have to say is this:

http://celluloidtunes.no/celluloid-tunes-05-women-in-film-music-1st-international-edition/

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Well, Wendy Carlos and Angela Morley don't count in the debate, since they were born as men.

They were born as women in men's bodies.

It's more fun to be a man in a woman's body. Then not. Then again. Then roll over and sleep while she takes a shower.

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The lack of female composers up through the Romantic Period is pretty obvious. Women, socially, had a specific role to fill in a relatively male-controled world. Mozart's sister Nannerl and Mendelssohn's sister Fanny both composed but were ushered into motherhood, forcing them out of their dreams and dismantaling their potential. Clara Wieck Schumann was an oddity at the time since she was a very well respected pianists who could make a living out of it, but she wasn't taken as seriously as a composer, and still took the backseat to her husband when they had children.

Lili Boulanger was a great young talent who wrote quite a lot of choral work and died in her 20s.

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Here are a few female composers whose music you should already have in your collection as JW Fans:
Germaine Tailleferre (one of the members of Les Six) - Her Harp Concertino is available on the CD 20th Centurty Concerti which also includes the JW Tuba Concerto performed by Marc Easener
Jennifer Higdon (Pulitzer Prize winner for music in 2010) - Her composition "Blue Cathedral" is available on the CD New Music from Bowling Green, Volume 3 which also includes the JW Tuba Concerto performed by Velvet Brown
I think their music is quite lovely, and certainly worth a listen.
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Germaine Tailleferre (one of the members of Les Six) - Her Harp Concertino is available on the CD 20th Centurty Concerti which also includes the JW Tuba Concerto performed by Marc Easener

Yes, beautiful piece.

I think this whole issue is silly. First that clowny conductor who thinks women are too distracting on the podium, now this? Psh.

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Why not? as far as I know it's not an insult.

As far as you know. It's more or less like nigger and it has a load of connotations. I know some have tried to re-appropriate it but in general it's not ok.

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What's with all the transsexual film composers?

Two people of how many?

Well, it's a very specialist profession isn't it. I wonder how many transexual plumbers and builders there are in the world. Maybe score composition is the career of choice for transsexuals.

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You have to take safe spaces into account. A trans person isn't going to want to be in situations where he or she is overly discriminated or attacked. Maybe writing music for movies or something of the sort is a musical/filmic space where the presence of trans people is tolerated somehow.

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You have to take safe spaces into account. A trans person isn't going to want to be in situations where he or she is overly discriminated or attacked. Maybe writing music for movies or something of the sort is a musical/filmic space where the presence of trans people is tolerated somehow.

I think you can apply that to women who have flourishing careers as film editors (like Thelma Schoonmaker, Dede Allen, Tatiana S. Riegel, Anne V. Coates, Verna Fields, Carol Littleton, et al). Hollywood didn't want women directing films back in the 1930s, but they were okay with them working behind-the-scenes. Some of them started working as apprentice editors, and broke into feature film editing. And that paved the way for the more famous ones like Schoonmaker to get noticed and inspire other women to follow a similar career.

The entertainment industry is such a weird, sexist and inconsistent place.

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