When it comes to the commemoration of dead musicians, few women enjoy even a moment in the posthumous spotlight. They were rarely given the chance to compose, and until the 19th century — and even then — did so for the most part furtively, if at all. The influential Viennese music critic, Eduard Hanslick, writing in 1854 summed up the prevailing view, one still not fully laid to rest, when he claimed that “women are by nature preeminently dependent upon feeling [and therefore] have not amounted to much as composers.” According to this nonsense, composition required masculine control of musical material, rather than feminine outpourings. The composer broods, his woman sulks. Although Robert Schumann and Frederic Chopin are both somewhat androgynous figures, they nonetheless have been getting something of their celebratory due in this, the bicentennial of their births.
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