Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Frederic Chopin are household names, but few will recognize Francesca Caccini, Elisabeth Lutyens or Amy M. Beach, who are among the top ten female composers of all time. the time. Why are female composers overshadowed by their male counterparts? Using novel data on more than 17,000 composers living from the sixth to the twentieth century, we conduct the first quantitative assessment of the gender gap among classical composers. We use composer biographies on Grove Music Online to measure composer prominence, and shed light on aspects of the gender gap by focusing on the development of composer populations through families, teachers, and institution-based music education. The evidence shows that parents’ musical background is important for the emergence of composers, that the effects of teachers differ by the gender of the composer but the effects of parents do not, and although mothers who are musicians and female teachers are important, they do not reduce the gender gap. in the appearance of the composer. We also find that the establishment of music education in conservatories increases the prominence of female composers.
That’s according to a new research paper by Karol Jan Borowiecki, Martin Hørlyk Kristensen, and Marc T. Law, in K.
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