Come anticipate Johann Merrich's "Le Pioniere Della Musica Elettronica," about female electronic composers

Would be very interested in theories/explanations regarding electronic music's seemingly uncommonly balanced division of gender amongst its seminal founders and practitioners.

this is far closer to the point, but basically: it always took a certain personality type to be a composer; essentially you're telling everyone else what to do, from telling the musicians the dynamic indications of every note they're to play, to telling everyone in the audience what to feel. to get your pieces performed took a certain set of skills that typically skewed in a gendered way. from the beginning, when recordings replaced sheet music as the site of the composition, and electronic instruments allowed for one person to create a new orchestra, composers could finally complete and hear a finished work on their own terms without having to climb to the top of an institution and tell huge groups of people what to do, and suddenly, bang, a huge expansion in the number of female composers (few people mention this, but the very first piece of electronic music composed in the United States: 'Heavenly Menagerie' by Louis and Bebe Barron, 1949-1951ish)

of course, the female composers were less pushy: Else Marie Pade is one of my favorite examples of someone who was just as well known by her peers like Cage Berio Stockhausen Maderna etc but simply wasn't as good as self-promotion (or, to put it frankly, as much of a blowhard), and so it is taking her music longer to get out. but these unassuming qualities are also present in the music; while all the guys were busy writing densely edited pieces pushing the twitch-per-second ratio higher, many of these pieces were exploring deep-listening drones, some 20-30 years before 'ambient' became a term -- not to gender-essentialize too much in the other direction. while any composer would be allergic to be lumped in with each other merely because of sharing a gender, the reason to listen to early electronic by women is because it is different

& I will also say this: die schactel has been ruling it on the archival front in this area the last year

http://www.mimaroglumusicsales.com/artists/franca+sacchi.html
http://www.mimaroglumusicsales.com/artists/catherine+christer+hennix.html
http://www.mimaroglumusicsales.com/artists/gruppo+nps.html
http://www.mimaroglumusicsales.com/artists/teresa+rampazzi.html

Huge thanks for this, Mr. Parker. (And thx for a truly fabulous gig last week!)

sorry: die schachtel

xp ty

laurie spiegel tweeted a link to this thread! she says she hears there will be an english version of the book.

http://www.flavorwire.com/335503/10-female-electronic-music-pioneers-you-should-know?all=1

i saw that earlier! i'm glad the book is coming out because there's so much more to be said about these women than can be conveyed in breezy listicle form. also, as commenters pointed out, no doris norton, eliane radigue, etc.

seeing how much I usually hate top 10 listicles, I was kind of happy about this one

sort of can't believe there aren't more books on the subject. I have these two -- haven't read the first one yet, the second is packed with great interviews

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner - Women Composers And Music Technology in the United States: Crossing the Line (2006)
http://www.amazon.com/Women-Composers-Technology-United-States/dp/0754604616

Tara Rodgers - Pink Noises - Women on Electronic Music and Sound (2010)
http://www.amazon.com/Pink-Noises-Women-Electronic-Music/dp/0822346737/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349734823

http://www.factmag.com/2012/09/27/my-teenage-dream-ended/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/arts/music/rediscovering-the-electronic-music-godmothers.html?smid=tw-share

So close! I chipped in a hundred, I really hope this gets made

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1270350100/electronic-sound-artist-laetitia-sonami-a-document

Any Italian ILXOrs who've read this? Assuming its not out in English..

of course, the female composers were less pushy: Else Marie Pade is one of my favorite examples of someone who was just as well known by her peers like Cage Berio Stockhausen Maderna etc but simply wasn't as good as self-promotion (or, to put it frankly, as much of a blowhard), and so it is taking her music longer to get out. but these unassuming qualities are also present in the music;

That doesn't scan to me...most electronic music was a 'failure' in the classical hall unless you wrote it alongside music for acoustic instruments. Then there were other opportunities offered by radio stations, TV, cinema, dance so why bother w/the daily grind of making contacts, not least because so much time had to be spent in the bunkers making this stuff.

They may be 'unassuming' but of course you achieve just as much if not more control with an electronic piece than you would with a serial piece to be played by a human being. If anything this stuff explodes a lot of myths about male and female musis being different. You'd be hard pressed to come up w/concrete sensibilities that are expressed through gender.

hey milton, do you have any suggestions for Laetitia Sonami beyond "What Happened"? she is amazing.

she is probably my favorite bay area musician who has never put out her own album! serious perfectionist and always arguing the live performance aspect is inextricable, though I think her sounds & composition are amazing in and of themselves -- they don't require the gestures to click. Robert Ashley tried producing a solo record of hers for Lovely about 15-20 years ago but she couldn't make herself happy. there's also her 70's electronic works, made when Eliane Radigue loaned her her Arp; once those come out, I recommend those. or just somehow seeing her live. or hopefully someday another cool label will just set her up.

the documentary I linked did end up getting made: http://earsoundfilm.com/

'What Happened' is kind of her greatest hit, but a collaboration -- I definitely recommend the album it's from: https://www.discogs.com/Melody-Sumner-Carnahan-The-Time-is-Now/release/9398695

thanks for typing that up! yeah, i knew her recording history was surprisingly thin. her perfectionism is kind of interesting, given that the functionality of the Lady's Glove seems to involve giving up so much control (or at least it appears that way in the performances i've seen online). but sometimes perfectionism can be narrowly focused on only certain aspects of one's life and work. i'll definitely be watching out for anything of hers that does end up seeing release!