Women and the Western Art Canon: Where Are We Now?

Otherwise, women's accomplishments remain window dressing or token contributions, the result of special pleading. Since Gender and the Musical Canon, the how and why have become very important, and have blossomed into new categories and methods. [...]popular and lower-class activities-also important for women-are off the radar screen in such a system. [...]the author-function tends to exclude a significant chunk of women's activities in history; it assigns the highest value to composers and their reputations handed down in written form. [...]A. B. Marx and Hugo Riemann weighed in on sonata form in the nineteenth century: each labeled feminine the lyrical melody of the second theme, in contrast to the masculine first theme with its energetic rhythms.9 Such historical gendered labels, which disclosed all sorts of cultural attitudes, proved valuable in exploring the situation facing women as they attempted to enter the musical world. [...]wave feminism helped promote a rethinking of historical and cultural paradigms that involved women.