Jul 20, 2021 06:07AM - edited Jul 20, 2021 06:10AM by divinemrsm
2019whatayear, if you don't mind my mentioning that when I first saw you posting on this thread, your screen name immediately made me think of the affectionate light-hearted joke as in “...then 2020 said 'hold my beer.'" Thanks for the Rewire News Group link, I will check it out.
Miriandra, wow, I knew nothing of Maria Anna Mozart. Her story makes me think of so many things. How often women's genius was/is overshadowed, suppressed, erased. How often the masses of people today embrace the great men composers of yesteryear yet never comprehend the reasons why women are not in those ranks.
Even in today's more modern world: the most popular song of John Lennon's solo career, “Imagine" which has received countless worldwide accolades, was co-written by Yoko Ono but she wasn't giving the songwriting credit until 2017. From Wikipedia: “Lennon later said the composition "should be credited as a Lennon/Ono song. A lot of it – the lyric and the concept – came from Yoko, but in those days I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho, and I sort of omitted her contribution,“ These words came before his death in 1980 yet no credit to Yoko until 2017!
The other thing I am reminded of is the following story, explained in an article fromThe Guardian:
“Over the past several decades, orchestras have started changing the way they hire musicians. One of these changes was designed to eliminate bias against women.
It would be hard to deny that there was such a bias in the composition of orchestras. As late as 1970, the top five orchestras in the U.S. had fewer than 5% women. It wasn't until 1980 that any of these top orchestras had 10% female musicians. But by 1997 they were up to 25% and today some of them are well into the 30s. What is the source of this change?
.....In the 1970s and 1980s, orchestras began using blind auditions. Candidates are situated on a stage behind a screen to play for a jury that cannot see them.
.....Even when the screen is only used for the preliminary round, it has a powerful impact; researchers have determined that this step alone makes it 50% more likely that a woman will advance to the finals. And the screen has also been demonstrated to be the source of a surge in the number of women being offered positions.
By the way, even a screen doesn't always yield a gender blind event. Screens keep juries from seeing the candidates move into position, but the telltale sounds of a woman's shoes allegedly influenced some jury members such that aspiring musicians were instructed to remove their footwear before coming onto the stage."
I can't find the additional details (will look for it), but I believe one reason blind auditions came about was after some famous composer claimed men were better at the violin than women; he was challenged on his views and after proven differently, he later conceded he was wrong.
