From the Archives: Can women’s studies change the world of music? New perspectives on Finnish music and music research

The first job for women’s studies in the field of music was to dig out the women previously glossed over by historiography and historical research: women composers and musicians. Finland was no exception. The Other Sex of Music. Women Composers from the Middle Ages to the Present Day (1994) by Riitta Valkeila and myself describes a dozen or so Finnish women composers in addition to sister colleagues from Europe, Scandinavia and the Anglo-American world. It begins with Ida Moberg (1859–1947), hailed as the first Finnish woman composer, and her contemporaries and ends with one of the best-known Finnish composers in the international arena today, Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952), and a crossover contemporary of hers, Carita Holmström (b. 1954). Since then a new generation of women composers has been born, but in their case they insist that gender must not be made an issue in speaking of their work.

In collecting the material for the book, I found myself having to debate what being a composer has meant in Finland, both in the past and in the present day. Being a composer does, no doubt because of the great symbolic status of Sibelius in times of national crisis, still carry enormous prestige in Finland. Who, then, deserves the title of composer in Finland? Is a composer a person who creates music, or can ‘composer’ be applied only to someone who has a formal musical training or who has crossed the publicity threshold by, for example, giving a concert of his/her works? 

My impression is that the use of the title ‘composer’ is subject to strict social control – if not entirely dependent on training, then at least on membership (by application only) of the Society of Finnish Composers. Paradoxically, there was once a time in Finland when it was easier to earn the title of ‘composer’ by undergoing formal training in the art but not actually composing anything than by being an active composer without any formal educational background. The present postmodern era is naturally dispelling the myths attached to the figure of the composer. The idea of ‘composer’ is no longer bound up exclusively with classical music, and there is a wealth of composing going on outside the hegemonic institutions.

Women as composers

How, then, may we describe the Finnish woman composer? In our study of women composers we decided it would be fitting to begin by examining the broad concept of the composer, even though many of our early women composers had studied composition abroad and given concerts of their works. But until Kaija Saariaho came along, not one of them had succeeded in getting accepted as part of the musical canon. Having completed their training and, if they were lucky, held a few concerts of their works, they inevitably ended up as music teachers, which has always been a predominantly female occupation. Rather than composing works of epic proportions, our women seem to have devoted themselves to writing little pieces for a specific purpose. 

An interesting character in this respect was Heidi Sundblad-Halme (1903–73), most of whose works were written for the Helsinki Women’s Orchestra she founded in 1938. This orchestra was designed to satisfy a need: at that time there were no women in the ranks of the professional orchestras, and the trained women musicians were naturally eager to play in an orchestra. Although women did gradually gain acceptance as professional musicians, the Helsinki Women’s Orchestra functioned for a whole 50 years, right up to 1987. A significant contribution to the field of children’s music in particular has been made by Marjatta Meritähti (b. 1943), composer of not only numerous extremely popular children’s songs but also of a symphony for children. Unfortunately, her reputation as a composer for children has cast a shadow over her settings for adults of lyrics by Finnish poets.

For decades – from the first concert of her works in 1948 right up to the late 1970s – Helvi Leiviskä (1902–82) enjoyed the reputation of being Finland’s only “real” woman composer. Eila Tarasti is right now working on a biography of her. Leiviskä was a lover of large-scale forms, producing three symphonies and the one-movement Sinfonia brevis which she looked upon as her fourth. She also gave three concerts of her works. The music of Leiviskä was said to be surprisingly powerful and dynamic “for a woman”. She also wrote music for films such as Juha, directed by Nyrki Tapiovaara and based on the novel by Juhani Aho, one of the first sound movies to be produced in Finland. Helvi Leiviskä earned her living as librarian at the Sibelius Academy.

Composers as women

The striking thing about all the reception of Finnish women composers and musicians in the media right up to the present day has been the way their performances and works have been assessed primarily as products of the female mind, and not as products like any other. The critics seem to expect women to compose and play according to a feminine stereotype, mirroring them against their own preconceived ideas. Naturally women composers and musicians have been exasperated by this, and it is no wonder that women composers today do not want to be branded as women composers. The press coverage of Kaija Saariaho ever since the 1970s well demonstrates the way she has constantly had to seek the right strategy in dealing with the press and her publicity simply because she is a woman. As part of my recent research I have been examining the way Saariaho has “negotiated” her gender in dealings with the media. 

Kaija Saariaho has resolutely struggled to shake off the stereotyped image of the woman composer that tended to be forced upon her and her music in the early days of her career. It was, however, no easy task. The critics were only too eager to spot feminine traits in her music and/or to listen to it via their impressions of how she looked. Once she began to gain international recognition, however, her public image became more neutral, possibly because a national hero reaping international fame is hardly likely to be a woman! 

Kaija Saariaho’s own public attitude to her sex has also changed: at the outset of her career she forbade the press to stress that she was a woman; she objected to being pressed into the mould of the female stereotype. Nor did she have any desire to provide the feminist movement emerging in the mid-1980s with an artistic idol, a woman who composed music that had actually received international acclaim. The latest round in the Saariaho gender negotiations is, as I see it, that she has been “excused” for being a woman. Nowadays she also gives interviews expressing her views on the status of women and the significance of woman- and motherhood in her work as a composer.

Women’s studies in Finnish music 

Historical and musical-analytical research into Finnish women composers and musicians is still only in its infancy. A few exploratory and other scholarly studies have been or are being made: a survey of women composers in Finland in the 1970s and 1980s has been completed at the University of Jyväskylä, and a survey is being carried out at the University of Turku of all the known archive material on the earliest women composers. Research such as this is laborious to say the least, because there is no such category as “woman composer” in the archives, and because most of these women were active outside the musical establishment. 

A monograph on Ida Moberg and her works has been produced at the University of Helsinki, and a few biographical studies of women musicians have been made at the Sibelius Academy. Let us hope that once these surveys have been completed, we will be given a chance to hear some of the music that has been buried for decades in the archives and can then judge for ourselves whether the music composed by women has deservedly remained outside the standard concert repertoire. A few years ago a society called Nainen ja musiikki (Women and Music, jokingly abbreviated as NaMu meaning “Candy”) was founded in Turku for the promotion of women’s music. This has so far arranged a couple of successful women’s music events both in Helsinki and elsewhere.

The study of women’s music naturally is not restricted to art music only. One of the earliest gender studies in Finland was that by Jaana Lähteenmaa on girls and rock, and a similar theme has been taken up by Jarna Knuuttila at the University of Joensuu. What are they like – these girls who choose to go in for rock music encompassing all sorts of male stereotypes – and what is their attitude to the masculinity of rock music? The rock girls seem to operate according to the same principles as their sisters in the field of art music: they are in to rock for the sake of the music itself and care little for flaunting their gender. True, the earliest rock girls did admit that it was easier for a girls’ band to make a name for itself simply because it stood out in a crowd. A certain amount of feminist research has also been done in traditional music, where it has mostly dealt with the work of woman musicians from the beginning of the century to the present day.  

While folk singing and playing the kantele were considered quite natural among women in the early decades, it became quite common during the Second World War for women to accompany the secret barn dances on a mandolin, and nowadays we can even speak of a women’s accordion boom in Finland. The social climate and the role expected of them have prevented women from making music in many ways. Many women folk musicians have given up playing, either for a time or altogether, on getting married and while their children are small, but many have correspondingly found new outlets for their musical aspirations. 

In her recent doctoral dissertation at the University of Tampere Helmi Järviluoma made a microlevel analysis of the constitution of gender in the discourse of a local folk music group in Finland and the way in which the few women playing in the group enact their highly traditional female roles: they make the coffee and do not take part in the general conversation, even though they are welcome members of the group. The marginalisation of women is not, therefore, just men’s “fault”, since our whole culture – women included – is contributing to it.

The research into women players, singers and composers has proved that gender is one of the factors regulating the conditions for music-making. But the study of women musicians and composers is only one line of women’s studies in music. Even more interesting is perhaps the feminist critique that is questioning the value hierarchies of music research and seeking to radically revise the methods employed. One of the leading international names in this field is Marcia Citron, whose book Gender and the Musical Canon has provided a strong impulse for questioning the musical canon, i.e. the standard art music repertoire. Citron has demonstrated that the canon is not in fact a list of “real” musical works, but that it is compiled on social and, what is more, gender grounds. Riitta Valkeila and I wrote our book on women composers in the spirit of Citron, aiming to pick out composers who have not been admitted to the musical canon and to write the history of Finnish music from the gender perspective.

The idea raised by the analyst Susan McClary in Feminine Endings that works may be interpreted as manifestations of the gender conventions was, on the book’s publication in 1991, revolutionary in American music research. Since then studies of Finnish music have been made along similar lines. Anne Sivuoja-Gunaratnam at the University of Helsinki has analysed the works of Einojuhani Rautavaara, and especially his operas, from the gender point of view. According to her narrative interpretation, the musical subject or masculine main theme of his Canto I possibly represents the composer himself. As the work proceeds, the masculine musical subject encounters the feminine Other. Whereas the character of the masculine subject derives from the primary musical parameters, clear pitches and rhythms, the feminine Other is a tremolo based on timbre and articulation. According to Sivuoja-Gunaratnam, the second encounter of these two subjects leads to the musical castration of the masculine subject. Towards the end of the work the masculine subject tries to rediscover its identity, but in vain. The feminine tremolo has silenced the masculine voice. The interpretation is so engaging that one is immediately tempted to listen to Canto I again.

“New” musicologists at the University of Turku are also working on a number of Finnish music projects founded on feminist theory. Aila Paavola has been studying the emphasis on male heroism in the reception of Aulis Sallinen’s opera Kullervo, and Taru Leppänen has, possibly more than anyone else, been questioning the conventions of music research in a study that seeks to break down the barriers between performance and composition. This study, drawing for its material on interviews with the composer and performer of Suvisoitto (Summer Sounds) by Usko Meriläinen, reveals the way in which the work and its making are constructed in the interaction of the composer, the performer and the music. The “work” is not simply a set of sounds, nor is the composer its only creator, since it passes through various states and is recreated each time it is performed.

Women’s studies as music policy

Finnish women’s studies in music well reflect the on-going international debate in the field, but Finland being a small country it tends, unlike other countries, to have only one scholar addressing some particular issue at a time. We are, however, many steps ahead of the other Nordic countries in the breadth, topicality and diversity of our women’s studies. As the few examples quoted here (and there are many more besides) have shown, women’s music studies in Finland range far and wide, from women musicians and composers to feminist critique of music research, covering all genres of music with, so far, the exception of jazz.

But returning to the question posed in the title of this article asking whether feminist research can change the world of music (and that is partly what it is hoping to do), we should perhaps also report on the comments and reactions which women’s studies in Finland have evoked. The book by Riitta Valkeila and myself on the work and works of women composers made many professional and amateur music people aware that part of the art music tradition, some of the excellent music composed, has never been heard or heard of. 

But has this had any effect on the concert repertoire or the recordings? The answer is very little. Admittedly a few semi-professional and amateur ensembles have taken the trouble to seek out works by women composers, but the bringing to light of women composers has also caused some bad feeling among other composers who look upon themselves as “forgotten” or passed over. Exclusion from the musical canon is not, of course, an exclusively female problem, since the same fate tends to await new music and in general composers who do not subscribe to the current social mores and musical fashions. Research approached from the feminist perspective has also been regarded as somewhat one-tracked, as if this track were narrower than all others!

The feminist approach to music is arousing opposition, but the debate it is arousing may well succeed in giving the world of music a stir. The enrichment of music by lifting the restrictions on women’s music-making should, surely, be close to the hearts of all music-lovers.

Pirkko Moisala is a Finnish musicologist and ethnomusicologist. At the time of writing, she was a Visiting Professor at York University in Toronto, Canada. 

Featured photo: Finnish composer Ida Moberg (1859–1947). Source: Wikimedia Commons