Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Establishing a Place for Women Musicians in Irish Society of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
- Part II Women and Practice in Irish Traditional Music
- Part III Gaps and Gender Politics in the History of Twentieth-Century Women Composers and Performers
- Part IV Situating Discourses of Women, Gender and Music in the Twenty-First Century
- Bibliography
- Index
- Irish Musical Studies Previous volumes
1 - Daughters of Hibernia: Seen and Not Heard?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Establishing a Place for Women Musicians in Irish Society of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
- Part II Women and Practice in Irish Traditional Music
- Part III Gaps and Gender Politics in the History of Twentieth-Century Women Composers and Performers
- Part IV Situating Discourses of Women, Gender and Music in the Twenty-First Century
- Bibliography
- Index
- Irish Musical Studies Previous volumes
Summary
In the past fifty years the area of women’s studies in Ireland has yielded an impressive harvest of academic endeavour. Irish women’s social, political and literary history has been thoroughly investigated, and many scholarly works have been published. In 1987 the third International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women was held in Dublin, at which an imposing array of topics was presented. However, women and music in Ireland were neither mentioned at this event nor included in any subsequent bibliography of women’s studies. Despite the romantic concept of Hibernia with her harp it seemed that, unlike Irish women writers, poets and activists, Hibernia’s musical daughters were neither visible nor audible.
Before evaluating the status of women in the Irish musical landscape today it is essential to consider their role in the past, although sources of information are rare. Edmund Spenser, who lived in Kilcolman Castle, Co. Cork, for ten years from 1587, wrote an account of the ‘wandering women called Mona-Shull’ (trans. Mná Siubhail, travelling women), who were also ballad singers.
The Musical Academy, 1757
Almost two centuries after Spenser’s account of the ‘wandering women’, in 1757 a Musical Academy ‘composed of ladies, patronesses, and of ladies and gentlemen’ was founded in Dublin by playwright Kane O’Hara and Lord Mornington. In 1764 Mornington was elected first Professor of Music at the University of Dublin (more commonly known as Trinity College Dublin or TCD). The Musical Academy was the first musical institution in the British Isles to admit women members. Patronesses included the Countess of Tyrone, Countess of Charleville and Countess of Mornington. Lady Freke, Miss Cavendish and Miss Nichols were listed as harpsichord players, and there were five aristocratic female vocal performers. The Musical Academy was an exclusive organisation. It was governed by nineteen statutes, enacted in 1758, some of which applied to women. According to statute no. 2:
The male academics only shall have a right of suffrage in the Academy.
Statute no. 4:
No public mercenary performer, professor, or teacher of music shall ever be admitted into any rank of the Academy on any account whatsoever.
Statute no. 16:
Married male academics shall have the privilege of introducing their wives at every musical performance.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Women and Music in Ireland , pp. 13 - 28Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022