Academic literature on the topic 'Woman music teachers'

Longing for food has always had different implications for men and women: associated with power and strength for men, it tends to have a worrying proximity to sexual pleasure for women. Showing an interesting parallelism throughout the Cinquecento, Italian humanists and teachers insisted on forbidding women music and gluttony. Food and music were both considered dangerous stimulants for the female senses, and every woman was encouraged to consider herself as a kind of food to be offered to the only human beings authorized to feel and satisfy desires: men and babies. Women could properly express themselves only inside monastic circles: the most prolific female composer of the seventeenth century was a nun, as was the first woman who wrote down recipes. Elaborate music and food became the means to maintain a lively relationship with the external world. Moreover, nuns also escaped male control by using the opposite system of affirming themselves through fasting and mortifying the flesh.

The education and upbringing of youth was one of the main issues considered by the aristocracy of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the age of the Enlightenment. A significant part of this current was music education (learning to play the instruments, singing and dancing) acknowledged as compulsory for women with reading, writing, learning foreign languages and history altogether. Every well-educated woman aristocrat could elegantly play the instrument and sing. They were gaining that knowledge primarily at home from foreign and domestic teachers. Despite the popularity of such education and constant presence of music during many noble balls, ceremonies and social arrangements, it was unfavorable in the eyes of current educational theoreticians and according to them useless. Yet memoirs offer multiple examples of delight about female musical abilities. Furthermore, music as a fundamental part of education was mentioned by women themselves; the shortcomings were punished. It seems that despite educationalists’ complaints music education of women helped thementertain noble guests with their musical talents. Woman with such skills, seeking good and affluent husbands, could successfully conquer male hearts.

At the end of the nineteenth century, music was an accomplishment that many women were encouraged to pursue. For some, this was merely an additional “ornament” to enhance marriage prospects, but a growing number took the opportunity to turn musical ability into a career option. A small group of musically educated women in New Zealand at the start of the twentieth century is studied. At this time, two British examining bodies, Trinity College, London, and the Associated Board, introduced professional diplomas as the culmination of their graded music exams. In their first five years, forty-five women were successful in these “higher examinations” and gained either an Associate from Trinity College (ATCL), or a Licentiate from the Associated Board (LAB). Armed with a prestigious qualification that granted the right to add “letters” after their name, some then followed a career as a teacher of music. Biographical details of each woman are explored and compared to see if any reasons can be found to explain why some continued with music while others didn’t. Similarities as to family and social background are revealed, while the main reason for not continuing with a musical career appears to be the intervention of marriage and family commitments.

The purpose of this study was to examine pre- and in-service female band teachers’ perspectives regarding their experiences in realizing their professional goals. Domains guiding this inquiry included (a) gaining entry into the profession of band teaching, (b) navigating the profession, and (c) gender issues. Findings from this multiple case study indicated that numerous outside factors affected the career paths of the participants, resulting in all of the women pursuing elementary, middle, or multi–grade level jobs. These factors included (a) the positions available at the time of the initial job search, (b) family responsibilities, (c) the perceived time commitment thought to accompany high school band teaching positions, and (d) the desire to witness musical and social growth in students. Some of the participants believed the band profession was increasingly welcoming to women; however, several of the participants reported challenges of being a woman in band teaching. These challenges included the struggle to network with those perceived to be in power, fitting in at professional development events, and gaining respect from students and colleagues. Although some of the women found their gender could be an asset, they also found themselves restricted by social constructs and stereotypes of gender.

The article is devoted to the “new woman” image in the vocal music of the Chinese composer Nie Er, the founder of Chinese proletarian music. The heyday of his work was in the 1930s, when a large-scale anti-Japanese anti-imperialist struggle took place in China. Nie Er, an active supporter of national salvation, translated national liberation ideas and the spirit of struggle into mass patriotic and lyrical songs. This also applies to songs dedicated to the fate of Chinese women. From simple peasants to educated teachers, the women in Er’s songs, even suffering from injustice and oppression, nevertheless fi nd strength to fi ght for freedom and a better future. The article includes a detailed analysis of the “Song of Mei Niang” from Tian Han’s play “Song of Youth”.

During the 19th-century, the teaching of singing became a career opportunity for the women who had worked in the lyrical stage. The core objective of this article is to reclaim the role of women in music education by studying two prime donnewho, after building a career as successful professional singers, became singing teachers and were pioneers in publishing their methods for female voice education. This research is based on the review and analysis of documentation, mostly historical. By looking at the biographies of the Italian singer, Virginia Boccabadati (1830-1922) and the Spanish singer, Matilde Esteban (1841-1915), we can discover the context in which their treatises were published and the image they offer of woman as a singer and as a student. By choosing women who were each other's contemporary, but from different countries, helps us to observe the obvious points related to gender determinants that their treatises had in common.

Social historians have demonstrated that although men comprised the majority of teachers in North Carolina schools and academies during the early national period, women predominated by the end of the nineteenth century. This study concludes that among the music teachers who taught in academies and venture schools, women gained a majority decades earlier. In an effort to understand some of the underlying social processes that contributed to this shift, the following discussion analyzes the changing proportion of men and women in a sample of 65 music teachers, tracks the tuition they charged in a free market, and compares this to the tuition charged by teachers of Latin and Greek. The shift to women among music teachers in North Carolina presents an intriguing case, because it does not fit well with some earlier theoretical models of feminization among nineteenth-century teachers. The data suggest that women came to predominate among music teachers because a changing market for music instruction in venture schools and academies triggered a process of occupational abandonment and succession.

Despite the long-established move towards the inclusion of composition as an element of music in schools, many teachers continue to be wary of it. Lack of confidence amongst women music teachers in their own abilities as composers may be a key to this situation. It is suggested that this arises as a result of rarely seeing music by women composers played and studied with the same attention afforded to music written by men. The popular mythology that only men have the ability to compose is challenged, and an argument is made for the inclusion of music by women composers (past and present) in the curriculum of schools and colleges. Practical suggestions are made as to how this can be achieved despite the current lack of resources.

The purpose of this study was to determine how women music teachers became the United States’ first female military band directors. Interviews with seventy-nine World War II military bandswomen revealed that seven of the ten chosen female directors were music teachers prior to their enlistment in the Army, Coast Guard, or Marines—band and orchestra teachers, music supervisors, and a college professor. Six of those seven directors are included in this study. Research questions pertained to their childhood music education, formal schooling, music-teacher employment, why they quit teaching to enlist, military education, military leadership and performance experiences, how they continued music making after the war, and the meaning of this experience for their lives. Corroboration of interview responses with primary and secondary sources—census data, school records, city directories, social security index, newspaper articles, photographs, diaries, military documents, military and WWII books—revealed that these music educators had accurate memories, outstanding music education and performance backgrounds, substantial leadership experiences, and diverse musical backgrounds that made them good choices for leading military bands and ensembles. All were part of significant firsts for women in the military. Near the end of their lives, they believed that their service as a military band director and musician had substantial impact on their lives and in some cases valued as “the most important” experience of their lives.

This study examined the narratives of three women music teachers’ professional practice, drawing on the research question: Through examining processes of subjectification: (a) How do mid-career women music teachers construct narratives of their professional and musical practice? (b) What are the implications for women music teachers’ professional and musical sustenance? Participants Hayley, Becky and Lynne, all with 12 years teaching experience, told stories of diverse musical participation within and beyond their schools and within a range of social groups and institutional settings. Taking a post-structural feminist theoretical perspective, these narratives were viewed as 'technologies of the female self' (Foucault, 1988; Tamboukou, 2008, 2010). The research question was shaped and answered through the concept of subjectifcation and considered how these women constructed a portrait of ‘self-in-practice.’ This questioned how they fashioned their personal pedagogical approach, how they created and projected a music departmental identity within the school, and how they conceptualised their musical and teaching selves. Data collection took place over a seven-month engagement with three participants and involved: a narrative/biographical interview; the compilation of a ‘memory box’ in which participants gathered artefacts related to the theme, ‘My music, my teaching’; and a follow-up conversational interview. In the final interview participants presented their artefacts and told stories related to their gendered experiences in music and teaching. Narratives showed the ‘woman music teacher’ is a site of struggle, where material roles within different discursive fields such as the home, the community as well as the school, pulled at other subjectivities. Through an analysis of processes of gendered subjectification, these women music teachers presented a complex narrative of their professional lives, within discursive fields of competing and complementary institutional discourses. While individually teachers conceptualised their musical and teaching subjectivities in personal, biographically-shaped ways, collectively they used similar discursive strategies to create a music subject department identity. They all told stories of their practice sustained by moments of ‘musical space’ and enabling others. Extra-curricular music provided valued moments of musical and aesthetic gratification and professional autonomy, functioning as a way to project the standing of the music subject department in the school and the local community, but this also added to an already burdensome workload. The education system in Northern Ireland is undergoing a prolonged yet stilted process of reform, and with the increase in the collaborative sharing of curriculum with other schools, it is likely that in the future secondary music teachers will be teaching in very different circumstances. This may be particularly challenging for established music teachers who have worked to create musical worlds in their subject departments drawing on personal and affective biographical resources. It is suggested that identity work with teachers’ narrative understandings of their self-in-practice, as a form of professional development, may allow space for teachers to imagine and negotiate alternative personal/professional identities, values and beliefs within new managerial and collaborative structures.

Syftet med denna studie är att få insikt kvinnliga slagverkslärares syn på villkor för kvinnliga slagverkselevers musicerande. Studien genomförs utifrån genusteorier och med utgångspunkt i ett socialkonstruktivistiskt perspektiv. Datamaterialet samlades in genom sex semistrukturerade kvalitativa intervjuer, varav en fungerade som pilotintervju. Intervjuerna transkriberades och därefter gjordes en tematisk analys av materialet. Resultatet visar att de intervjuade lärarna förespråkar vikten av kvinnliga förebilder och deras representation i media. Utöver kvinnor lyfts även familjemedlemmar fram som förebilder, vilka potentiellt kan ha inverkan på elevernas instrumentval och fortsatta musicerande. Enligt lärarna i föreliggande studie ställs slagverkare inför olika typer av svårigheter, vilka yttrar sig på olika vis, beroende på om de är tjejer eller killar. Prestationskrav och sociala jargonger är exempel på detta
The main purpose of this study is to examine female percussion teachers view on the challenges of being a female percussion student. The theoretical basis of the study is gender theories and social constructionism. Data was collected from six semi-structured interviews whereof one was used as a pilot interview. The interviews were transcribed and thereafter thematic analysis was used to examine the data. The results show that the female teachers all advocate the importance of female role models and the way they are depicted in the media. Family members are also highlighted as important and influential role models concerning the pupils’ choice of instrument or continued musicing. The teachers in this study are of the opinon that percussionists, depending on their gender, face different challenges. As an example, they mention performance anxiety and social tendencies.

Estudo histórico que tem por objetivo localizar e analisar a produção escrita por mulheres sobre música, relacionada a diversos contextos educacionais no Brasil, durante as primeiras cinco décadas do século XX. Como fontes, foram consultadas as publicações inventariadas na pesquisa, documentos manuscritos de arquivos históricos, documentos oficiais, periódicos, iconografia e arquivos pessoais de professoras. O 1º capítulo é dedicado a uma visão de conjunto sobre a produção escrita por mulheres sobre música. O capítulo 2 analisa as primeiras décadas e estabelece uma discussão sobre as representações de música brasileira e europeia na educação musical. O capítulo 3 trata da música na escola formal e da participação de mulheres no canto orfeônico, considerando o processo de institucionalização e escolarização da música e o papel da publicação de hinários, cancioneiros e livros didáticos nesse processo. O capítulo 4 aborda a formação de professores e a pedagogia da escola nova, destacando os conflitos na historiografia e na prática do canto orfeônico. O capítulo 5 concentra-se na formação artística, tendo por foco o ensino especializado de música, a presença de mulheres na atividade artística e as representações sobre o feminino. São analisados três exemplos da produção escrita, como dispositivos de inscrição no campo musical. Nas considerações finais, discute-se a função da memória (individual e coletiva) e sua relação com as práticas e as representações encontradas sobre a professora de música (em suas múltiplas atuações). Entre as principais noções e conceitos utilizados estão: campo (principalmente campo artístico), habitus, doxa e capital cultural, de Pierre Bourdieu; práticas, representações e apropriação, de Roger Chartier, bem como sua discussão metodológica (sobre a história do livro e da leitura) e teórica (sobre cultura escrita); estratégias e táticas, de Michel de Certeau, assim como sua análise da operação historiográfica. O conceito de gênero, presente em diversos autores, permitiu tratar a produção escrita por mulheres como conjunto, de forma relacional. Para a história das mulheres, tivemos como principal referência Michelle Perrot. A produção acadêmica em história da educação, sobretudo a brasileira, auxiliou a definição e exploração do tema, assim como as pesquisas musicológicas recentes. Um dos resultados da pesquisa foi um inventário de livros publicados (46 autoras e 100 obras), com a identificação de editoras, instituições, temáticas e modalidades de ensino musical praticadas na primeira metade do século XX no Brasil. Como parte das conclusões, a produção escrita sobre música é vista como intrínseca à profissão docente, utilizada como estratégia de valorização profissional e pessoal. As práticas de leitura e escrita (textual e musical) foram adquiridas no ambiente escolar, no espaço social da família e nas instituições de formação artística. Constata-se uma diversidade de processos de publicação, entre eles: iniciativas particulares das autoras; projetos editoriais, inclusive os patrocinados por governos estaduais ou pelo federal; programas institucionais para provimento de material didático adaptado às exigências legais; requisito formal para o ingresso no magistério superior.
Historical study that aims to situate and analyze the written production of women about music, related to several educational contexts in Brazil, during the first five decades of the 20th century. The sources include the publications collected during this research, manuscript documents from historical archives, official documents, periodicals, iconography, and educators personal archives. The first chapter is devoted to an overview of the production about music written by women. Chapter 2 analyzes the first decades and establishes a discussion about the representations of Brazilian and European music in music education. Chapter 3 is about music in formal school and the participation of women in canto orfeônico (school choir singing), analyzing the process of institutionalization and schooling of music and the role of hymnal, songbook and didactic book publishing in the process. Chapter 4 focuses on teachers training and the escola nova (new school) pedagogy, emphasizing the conflicts in the historiography and in the practice of canto orfeônico (school choir singing). Chapter 5 concentrates on artistic training, with focus on specialized teaching, the presence of women in artistic activity and the representations about the feminine. Three examples of written production are analyzed, as devices of inscription in the musical field. In the final considerations, the function of memory (both individual and collective) is discussed, inasmuch as its relation to practices and representations of female music educators (in their multiple roles). The main notions and concepts used are: field (specially artistic field), habitus, doxa, and cultural capital by Pierre Bourdieu; practices, representations and appropriation by Roger Chartier, as well as his methodological discussion (on the history of the book and the history or reading) and theoretical (on written culture); strategies and tactics by Michel de Certeau, as well as his analysis of the historiographical operation. The concept of gender, employed by numerous authors, allowed for a discussion of womens written production as a whole, in a relational manner. For the history of women, our main reference was Michelle Perrot. Academic production on the history of education, mainly the Brazilian one, facilitated the definition and exploration of the subject, as well as recent musicological research. One of the results of this investigation was an inventory of published books (46 authors and 100 works), with the identification of publishers, educational institutions and of the themes and modalities of music teaching that were current at the first half of the 20th century in Brazil. As part of the conclusions, the written production about music is seen as intrinsic to the teaching profession, used as strategy of both professional and personal valorization. The practices of reading and writing (of text and music) were acquired in the school environment, in the social space of the family and in the artistic training institutions. Diverse processes of publishing are detectable, such as: individual initiative of the authors; editorial projects, including those sponsored by state or federal governments; institutional programs for the provision of didactic material adapted to legal obligations; formal requirements to start a university teaching career.

This study examined the personal and professional experiences of Canadian professional female popular musicians. The researcher gathered data in two phases. In phase one, 85 female musicians completed a 105-question on-line survey. In phase two, the researcher interviewed four musicians to expand and elucidate survey data. In keeping with a critical feminist approach, the researcher’s voice is prominent in the report. The study reveals a complex combination of personal and professional circumstances that both compel and impel women to become musicians, and then to cleave to or to abandon careers in the music industry. Families, peers, role models, and teachers all have some effect on personal and professional choices that musicians make. Gender stereotyping and sexual harassment prevail in both music education and the music industry, making these contested sites for women musicians. However, respondents’ identity as “musician” is a powerful force, in both personal and professional realms, making both education and industry also sites of triumph. Important findings include: respondents’ reflections on what makes for a successful pop musician; data revealed no essential biographical precursors for success in pop music; respondents’ opinions about the importance of music lessons are divided; and, along with credible technical music skills, musicians need to develop strong personal, social, and business skills.
Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2008-04-10 10:30:48.856

Most modern research into the musical experiences of women of color has been confined to oral traditions: Black women in the South sang spirituals, work songs, and other genres not associated with reading music. That situation does not mean, however, that women of color did not learn to read music even if the evidence countering this narrative remains largely hidden....

Abstract This chapter explores a new possible paradigm of multiculturalism in the music classroom. Chang et al. (2012) presented the Chinese word QIAN (humbleness) as an acronym representing the attributes of Questioning, Immersion, Active-Listening, and Negotiation. Exploring the practice of a music teacher education in Israel, this chapter reflects on the relevance of this model to the teacher’s positionality as a Jewish Orthodox woman teaching students from diverse Jewish and Arab socioreligious sectors. Examples from practice are presented and analyzed to show how such processes of collective unknowing emanate a paradigm of authentic care. Validation of individual particularities allow us to engage in difficult conversations even while maintaining emotional safety. Care is made possible through a commitment to differences.

This essay examines several women musicians in Mobile, Alabama, and contextualizes their work in both antebellum and Reconstruction practices. In particular, it focuses on Maria Dillon Kowalewski-Poetz, an Irish woman who moved to the United States to follow her husband who seems to have abandoned her soon after their marriage in 1835. She set herself up as a singing teacher in Pensacola, Florida, during the 1840s but moved to Mobile in 1845, where she remained until her death in 1897. In Mobile, she created her own musical opportunities, transitioning from local music teacher to cathedral organist (1846) to head of the Mobile Musical Association in the 1870s. Kowalewski reinvigorated cultural life in the city after the Civil War.

This chapter marks the existence and influence of professional women on women musicians by first defining and contextualizing scientific music, examining how schools approached teaching music as science, and exploring public commentary on music, science, and gentility in combination. Part 3 closely examines specific people who taught in southern schools, from exotic foreign teachers to local familiars. The final section interrogates the circumstances surrounding the women who stretched the ideals of gentility, those who took on more masculine roles (as businesswomen, organists in cathedrals, and directors of civic music), and how they maintained respectability while in the public gaze in places such as New Orleans, Mobile, and Charleston.

Abstract PART Three reviews the activity of musicians in the ospedali, the external musicians, that is, male teachers and composers from outside the institutions, those greater and lesser figures in music history who guaranteed acclaim for the cori (this chapter) and exemplars from among some ten generations of internal female musicians (Chapter 8). This chronological scheme covers the three major periods of the history and marks the stages in the ascent of the cori from being noteworthy church choirs to becoming, urban¬ wide, then internationally acclaimed, musical entities. Documents for the employment of external musicians at the ospedali and statistics derived from them draw attention to the further break-down of the three major periods into the nine phases into which the story of the cori is shown to divide itself. These nine phases correspond to the partition of the history of music into periods delineated by Suzanne Clercx in Le Baroque et la musique. Supporting the narrative are excerpts from contemporary commentaries.

Abstract Chapter 1 traces the development of missionary schools for girls in East China in the context of the changes that were taking place in private and government education for girls. Missionary schools retained some unique selling points throughout the Republican era. They remained the main providers of higher level middle schoolgirls’ education, outside the teacher training system, well into the 1920s. This meant that for the tiny minority of elite women who aspired to go to university in the first few decades of the twentieth century, missionary middle schools often offered the best academic training that could prepare them for higher education. They maintained their Sino-foreign campus cultures and strengths in English, Music, Dance, and Drama. Rather than civics classes, missionary schools utilized different religious aspects of school life, from daily prayer and chapel services to songs, hymns, and literature, as the main means by which they attempted to mold moral citizens.

Following World War II, thousands of returning servicemen and women enrolled in American colleges and universities with the financial assistance of the GI Bill. Colleges acted in response to the needs of these older students by offering career-oriented courses and by hiring new faculty to teach them. Music departments began hiring full-time percussion teachers and graduating classes of educated and skilled percussionists. Contemporary composers found these new graduates willing to play their works and responded by dramatically increasing the number of works written for percussion, both solo and ensemble. In the United States, Michael Colgrass, Alan Hovhaness, Henry Brant, and William Kraft created a variety of works ranging from chamber music to solos and even a symphony for percussion. As Europe and Asia recovered from the war, the arts there began a process of rebirth. In the late 1950s and 1960s, French composers André Jolivet, Marius Constant, and Maurice Ohana added a number of percussion works for the concert hall as well as for the dance. The years following World War II and the decades that immediately followed saw a resurgence of musical creativity and the schooled percussionist became sought after as both performer and teacher.

Chapter five analyzes the repertoire associated with female musicians on the basis of the remarkably well-preserved music library of two teenage countesses in Darmstadt: Luise Charlotte and Friederike Sophie zu Epstein. Pedagogical treatises and parodies of Bach’s Germany suggest that female keyboardists were expected to perform “easy,” “comfortable,” music which was often marketed explicitly “for women.” Most of the repertoire prepared for the Countesses zu Epstein by their teacher, Johannes Merle, follows these stylistic parameters; it consists primarily of quick, dance-based movements with melody-and-accompaniment textures and no strict counterpoint. Close examination of their collection, however, also reveals that they copied music for themselves and one of them, Friederike Sophie, also taught herself to compose.

Key questions for interpreting music in the United States during the nineteenth-century deal with the teachers rather than the pupils: where did they come from, what were their perceived social circles, and what qualified them to teach such a vast social array of the South’s young women? The people involved in teaching the majority of musically literate Americans remain curiously anonymous, as does their preparation and instruction. However, recognition of highly influential pedagogues exposes trends in circulation, changing musical tastes, and demands of proficiency—and thereby yields a more accurate view of music practices. Those who taught in private lessons in a pupil’s home theoretically transgressed a social wall because they were not on equal terms but occupied, if temporarily, a space reserved for those with approved standards of gentility....

The (elective) school subject sal og scene (stage and scene) was introduced as a multi-aesthetic arts education subject at Norwegian secondary schools in 2012. The main objective of the subject is to create and perform various audiovisual or scenic expressions and productions. The purpose of this article is to provide a picture of what characterizes the subject sal og scene in the Norwegian school in 2019. The data for the article is generated through a nationwide questionnaire survey among subject teachers. The study is designed as a quantitative study in an exploratory design, and the analysis is conducted as descriptive statistical analysis. Results show that 70,3 % of schools in Norway offer the subject as an elective subject, 73,8 % of the pupils participating in the subject are girls, and 61,4 % of the teachers are women. Further results show that the most common forms of scene production in the subject are theatre and musical theatre productions, 77,29 % of the teachers have some form of arts education, and music is the most commonly represented artform in the teachers’ areas of competence. Results also show that the subject has a position of high status in the school’s management, and that 46% of the teachers teach the subject alone, without collaborating with other teachers.