Women and Music in Ireland

Explores the world of women's professional and amateur musical activity as it developed on and beyond the island of Ireland.

Explores the world of women's professional and amateur musical activity as it developed on and beyond the island of Ireland.

In a story which spans several centuries, the book highlights representative composers and performers in classical music, Irish traditional music, and contemporary art music whose contributions have been marginalised in music narratives. As well as investigating the careers of public figures, this edited collection brings attention to women who engaged with and taught music in a variety of domestic settings. It also shines a spotlight on women who worked behind the scenes to build infrastructures such as festivals and educational institutions which remain at the heart of the country's musical life today. The book addresses and reconsiders ideas about the intersections of music, gender, and Irish society, including how the national emblem of the harp became recast as a symbol of Irish womanhood in the twentieth century.


The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 surveys women musicians in Irish society of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Part 2 discusses women and practice in Irish traditional music. Part 3 studies gaps and gender politics in the history of twentieth-century women composers and performers. Part 4 situates discourses of women, gender, and music in the twenty-first century. The book's contributors encompass musicologists, cultural historians, composers, and performers.

Preface
Lorraine Byrne Bodley and Harry White

Introduction
Laura Watson, Jennifer O'Connor-Madsen, and Ita Beausang


Part I: Establishing a Place for Women Musicians in Irish Society of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
1. Daughters of Hibernia: Seen and Not Heard?
Ita Beausang

2. 'No Accomplishment So Great for a Lady': Women and Music in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Elite Irish Household
Karol Mullaney-Dignam

3. The Development of the Female Musician in Nineteenth Century Dublin
Jennifer O'Connor-Madsen

4. Family, Filial Ties, and Forging Careers as Female Musicians in the Nineteenth Century: The Story of the Glover Sisters
Mary Louise O'Donnell

Part II: Women and Practice in Irish Traditional Music

5. The Daghda, the Minstrel Boy, and Convent Schools: Reflections on Gender and the Harp in Ireland
Helen Lawlor

6. 'No Longer Second Fiddle': Due Recognition for Josephine Keegan
Daithí Kearney

7. Ireland's Female Harping Triumvirate: The Legacy of Sheila Larchet Cuthbert, Mercedes Garvey, and Gráinne Yeats
Teresa O'Donnell


Part III: Gaps and Gender Politics in the History of Twentieth-Century Women Composers and Performers

8. 'A Daughter of Music': Alicia Adélaïde Needham's Anglo-Irish Life and Music
Axel Klein

9. Mary Dickenson-Auner: A Life with the Violin
Margarethe Engelhardt-Krajanek

10. 'Opera Over a Cooking Stove': Gender Dynamics in the Music Career of Joan Trimble
Ruth Stanley

11. Rhoda Coghill and the Gender Politics of Piano Performance
Laura Watson


Part IV: Situating Discourses of Women, Gender, and Music in the Twenty-First Century

12. Women and Composition: Fifty Years of Progress?
Nicola LeFanu

13. Transcending Conventional Habits: Music and the Collaborative Process in Joint Works
Rhona Clarke

14. Surveying the Scene: Current Thoughts on Women and Electroacoustic Music in Ireland Barbara Jillian Dignam


15. We Buried the Heteropatriarchy and Danced on its Grave: Towards a Liberation Movement for Irish Traditional Music
Tes Slominski

Bibliography

Index