Gender Screening_mdw: Vocal Studies and Master Class with Thérèse Lindquist

200 years ago, the mdw was founded as a singing school with twelve boys and twelve girls, which represented a remarkably gender-balanced state of affairs for a prestigious 19th-century place of arts education. In contrast to how things were in the visual arts, girls and/or young women were not barred from attending this singing school, since musical training—here, especially in singing was already an important component of bourgeois girls’ advanced education. Reason enough, in this jubilee year with its various gender-related projects, to include an emphasis on the topic of singing.

Gender Screening_mdw: Singing
To this day, voice-related studies are pursued by significantly more female students than male students at places of tertiary-level musical training. In the panel discussion Gender Screening_mdw: Singing, the current gender situation in the mdw’s voice programmes will be discussed starting from the experiences of an alumna (Daniela Fally has been requested) and an alumnus (Adrian Eröd). Among the panel’s further participants will be voice instructors Margit Klaushofer and Patricia Simpson, and Andreas Holzer will moderate (Nov. 14).

Pauline Viardot Garcia
Pauline Viardot Garcia ©Wikimedia commons

exklusive|gesellschaft
It is but rarely that classical recital repertoires contain lieder by women composers—even though women quite often chose to compose in this genre since society tolerated their doing so. The Gender|Queer Call project exklusive|gesellschaft [exclusive|society], initiated by Rannveig Braga-Postl, serves to bring together teaching, artistry, and research on the interdepartmental level. Voice and piano vocal accompaniment majors get to know and appreciate songs by outstanding woman composers, and as part of the course Die Pianistin spricht. Gedichtvertonung als dialogische Kompositionsform [The Woman Pianist Speaks. Poetry Settings as a Dialogue-Based Form of Composition] by Annegret Huber (Department of Musicology and Interpretation Research, mdw), they are afforded gender-sensitive music-analytical, and historical insights into selected works, which they can rehearse in a master class and then perform publicly on 25 November. This project’s title and subtitle refer to how lied composition was embedded in the social practice of certain social groups or social classes (the nobility, the clergy, and the more affluent bourgeois circles). The pianist and lied accompanist invited to give this master class, Thérèse Lindquist (Mozarteum University Salzburg, Department of Voice), has spent many years dealing with vocal repertoire by women composers both as an artist and as a teacher, and she stresses the importance of admitting these to the instructional repertoire of universities of music so that singers both male and female will later on be able to compile gender-balanced repertoires for their own recitals “as a matter of course”. By way of introducing this event series, musicologist Annegret Huber will give a talk entitled Vom Vertonen eines Gedichts als soziale Praxis [On the Musical Setting of Poetry as a Social Practice] in which she will delve into aspects of exclusion and inclusion. The concluding concert of this master class will provide a musical context in which to present a biography of the singer and composer Pauline Viardot Garcia authored by the renowned music and gender researcher Beatrix Borchard, who is based at the University of Music and Theatre Hamburg and will be present for the occasion..

 

exklusive|gesellschaft
Master Class / Lecture / Concert / Book Presentation on Poetry Settings by Women Composers
Thurs., 23 to Sat., 25 November 2017
www.mdw.ac.at/exklusivegesellschaft

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