As women all over the world are being remembered and celebrated in honour of International Women’s Day, it seems to be the perfect occasion to look back on women’s prominent role in music throughout time. Coming from a line of astounding feminists herself, who better to consult on the question than Julie Cumming.
A prominent voice in the fields of feminist musicology and Renaissance music, Professor Cumming has been a revered faculty member and teacher at the Schulich School of Music (SSoM) for the past three decades. In this Q&A, she discusses influential female composers, uncovering women’s contribution to music history, and the joys of teaching at the Schulich School of Music.
This is In Conversation with Julie Cumming.
Over the past 30 years, there has been a movement of women researchers studying musicology and music history. To what do we owe that trend?
The increase in women music scholars is part of a larger increase in women professors in all fields. I grew up in Boston, and my mother, Patricia Arens Cumming, was an active feminist starting in the 1960s; she was a member of a women’s consciousness-raising group, and was one of the founders of Alice James Books, a press that publishes poetry, mostly by women (it is still publishing!). She also taught writing at MIT, at UMass Boston, and later at Wheaton College. Thanks to the women’s movement, more and more women went to graduate school, applied for jobs, and got tenure. There were also affirmative action programs that focused on hiring women. This is not to say that sexism has ended – women still have to fight to be taken seriously as scholars and leaders.
Musicology has historically focused on male musicians and composers. How are we doing in terms of improving scholarship on influential women in music history?
The research on women composers and musicians is growing exponentially. Scholars are constantly discovering more women composers, publishing editions of their music, and writing about them in books and articles. When I returned from my last sabbatical leave in 2018, I was asked to teach the introductory music history course, MUHL 186, Western Musical Traditions. I had not taught it for many years and decided to include a majority of compositions by women (11 out of 18 pieces – from Hildegard von Bingen to Ana Sokolović). I wanted our students to know that you can tell the story of western music history using music by women; and I wanted everyone in the class to realize that women can be composers. (I did a TLS blog on the course that you can read here)
Given the hardships of accessing historical documentation on women's involvement in music, what methodologies or approaches do you employ to uncover and analyse their contributions?
My research focus is on Renaissance music (c. 1400-1620). This past fall, I held a graduate seminar on Women and Music in the Renaissance for the first time. Working over the summer with two of my graduate students, Daniela Graca and Annika Williams, we put together a Zotero bibliography on the topic. Graca has a lot of experience on women and music; Williams is an expert in tagging entries in Zotero so that you can search the bibliography by themes and topics that don’t show up in the titles. We put together a bibliography of over 300 articles, books, and scores (it’s now up to 400). The number of women composers in the Renaissance for which we have surviving scores and know their names is fairly small. However, the course was not just about women composers: it was on all the different roles women played in relation to music.
We looked at poetry by women set to music, and women performers of all kinds: amateurs, professionals, singers, instrumentalists, nuns, courtesans. We also looked at women patrons of music. We identified key scholars (such as Laurie Stras and Suzanne Cusick), but we also searched the notes in all the articles we found, which led us to more articles... It took some work, but there is in fact a LOT of information out there, and it is growing every day. Our bibliography reveals that many (maybe most) women in the Renaissance were involved in music one way or another. There were no recordings in the Renaissance – and people loved music then just as much as we do. The only way to have music in your life was through live performance – and women were doing a lot of the performing. Many anonymous works are probably by women. Women sang and played from memory; they improvised monophonic and polyphonic music; and some of them composed music, published it, and put their names on their publications.
What challenges do you perceive in ensuring that women's contributions to music history are accurately represented and valued within academic scholarship?
Music History and Music Theory have traditionally been focused on the work of Great White Male Composers. Most people in classical music have spent their lives studying, performing, and loving these works. It’s hard to stop teaching and studying these beloved pieces to make space in the curriculum for other musics. It involves retraining, exploring, and learning new works, that may not follow the same rules as the works in the traditional canon. But there is also more and more support for expanding the repertoires that we study, and many teachers at McGill are incorporating music by women.
Since joining the Schulich School of Music in 1992, you have occupied different positions, and you remained consistent in helping students at Schulich grow in their musicianship. What is it about our School that keeps you devoted?
So many things! I love the mix of researchers and performers in all my classes, and all the great musicians who sing from old music notation with me in my Paleo Practicum course. I love going to Early Music concerts at the SSoM and in Montreal. I love the fact that we can engage with music in so many ways in the SSoM. I have worked closely with Peter Schubert (Music Theory) and Ichiro Fujinaga (Music Technology) and learned many different approaches to research on Renaissance Music – improvisation and composition, digital Humanities … and so forth.
I have held many administrative positions (Music History Area coordinator, Director of Graduate Studies, Associate Dean of Research and Administration, Interim Dean, and currently Chair of the EDI committee). I do it because I care about the SSoM and the students, and I want to help everyone to have the best possible experience and education.
Who are some notable women from music history that more people should learn about and explore their work?
- Hildegard von Bingen (12th century) is the most famous of the thousands of nun musicians. While we are confident that many nuns wrote music, we have two beautiful surviving manuscripts of Hildegard’s works. She wrote the texts and the music and brings out the ecstatic element of religious belief. In MUHL 186 I compare her to Aretha Franklin.
- Maddalena Casulana (16th century) was a woman singer, lutenist, and composer of madrigals. Her music combines expressive melodies with artful counterpoint.
- Raffaela Aleotti (c. 1600) was a composer in a convent in Ferrara that was famed for the spectacular performances of the nuns, described in detail by a writer on music of the time. People from all over Europe would come to the convent and hear the nuns playing and singing Aleotti’s music.
What musical works do you consider “essential listening” for music lovers, regardless of genre?
It’s so hard to choose! Binchois’s chanson, Dueil angoisseus, with a text by Christine de Pisan, about the death of her husband. Du Fay’s motet, Ecclesie militantis, about conflict in the church. Maddalena Casulana’s madrigal, Morir non può. Monteverdi’s madrigal, Vattene pur crudel, written for an ensemble of three women singers and two men, setting a text by Tasso, where the sorceress Armida curses and laments Rinaldo, who has abandoned her. Cavalli’s Venetian opera, Giasone, where the sorceress Medea has the best music. Kaija Saariaho’s opera, L’amour de loin.
