{"id":1052,"date":"2015-03-01T20:57:08","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T20:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/?p=1052"},"modified":"2015-03-01T20:57:08","modified_gmt":"2015-03-01T20:57:08","slug":"celebrating-women-composers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/2015\/03\/01\/celebrating-women-composers\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating women composers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"barbara\"<\/a>
Barbara Strozzi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Professor of Music Laurie Stras has been working on a programme for a special BBC3 event: <\/em>Next Sunday is International Women\u2019s Day, and BBC Radio 3 is marking the occasion with a weekend of programmes celebrating female composers, including live concerts and discussion panels, documentaries and debate. I’m taking part along with one of my Southampton colleagues.\u00a0 First, on Saturday March 7 (09:00-12:15), Professor David Owen Norris will join Andrew McGregor on CD Review<\/a> for the regular Building a Library feature, focussing on Clara Schumann\u2019s Piano Trio.<\/p>\n

Then on Sunday March 8 (14:00-15:00), I\u00a0 will be in conversation with Lucie Skeaping on the Early Music Show<\/a>, exploring the life and works of the Baroque singer and composer, Barbara Strozzi.\u00a0 Like many female singers in 17th-century Venice, she wrote music for herself and for others to sing, but unlike most of her comparators, Strozzi published her music: in fact, she published more cantatas than any other 17th-century composer, male or female.\u00a0 To put together the programme, I had to listen to as many CDs of Strozzi\u2019s music as the BBC could provide and choose around 45 minutes of music – not such a hardship, I assure you!<\/p>\n

I even got a chance to trip down memory lane, as I was able to use tracks from my very first music editing job, the Consort of Musicke\u2019s Concerto delle donne<\/em> recording from 1986, and my own ensemble\u2019s Strozzi recording from ten years later. But there are so many wonderful new recordings, too. Even though her music is very familiar to me, I was left with several enchanting earworms, particularly from the eclectic group Constantinople,<\/a> who mix Baroque instruments with sitar and percussion.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>Over email, Lucie and I worked out a series of questions that formed the basis of our conversation, and then I went up to Broadcasting House in London to record the show. Although I\u2019ve done reviews and interviews for radio many times before, this was the first time I\u2019ve been involved in constructing an entire programme, so the recording was both special and a little nerve-wracking!<\/p>\n

I am particularly pleased that the BBC are concentrating so much energy and effort into highlighting female composers \u2013 not just over this weekend. The BBC website is now hosting a dedicated section, \u201cCelebrating Women Composers<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 that will be in place long after the weekend is over, which will be a wonderful teaching resource for me and my colleagues.\u00a0 Although there is no shortage of female students that want to compose at undergraduate level, nationally and internationally more can be done to encourage women to continue composing (and conducting).\u00a0 We hope soon that we will be able to offer a bursary for a female student to pursue composition at a postgraduate level \u2013 stay tuned for more news on this front!<\/p>\n

\"Clara<\/a>
Clara Schumann<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A short preview<\/a> of our broadcast is already available, as well as the full weekend\u2019s programme<\/a> – and the hashtag is #womensday @bbcradio3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor of Music Laurie Stras has been working on a programme for a special BBC3 event: Next Sunday is International Women\u2019s Day, and BBC Radio 3 is marking the occasion with a weekend of programmes celebrating female composers, including live concerts and discussion panels, documentaries and debate. I’m taking part along with one of my Southampton colleagues.\u00a0 First, on Saturday …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73437,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6494,522519,66718],"tags":[643825,643826,611778,643768],"class_list":["post-1052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-musicology","category-staff","tag-barbara-strozzi","tag-clara-schumann","tag-david-owen-norris","tag-laurie-stras","column","threecol"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3YgXZ-gY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1058,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions\/1058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}