They Clapped Until She Bowed Once More
Contemporary Connections first commissioning project was a concert of historical women’s music programmed alongside three new contemporary commissions by women composers - to mark the centenary of the formation of the Society of Women Musicians (SWM) in 1911. The concert will was held at St James’s Piccadilly in November 2011.The project not only celebrated the 60 year history of the SWM and the composers’ unique contribution to British music but continued their legacy by commissioning new works from contemporary women composers. By bringing the historical and contemporary works together in this way Contemporary Connections hoped to enrich the experience of the audience hearing both rarely played and entirely new artistic works.
Before the First World War, Frances Hefford Cocking an excited young woman composer travelled from Huddersfield to London to present her works to the SWM. She wrote to her mother “after I had left the piano and gone back to my place they clapped until I bowed once more”. Although at the time it was not considered seemly for women to give encores however rapturous the reception, the SWM provided an important platform for developing new musical voices.
The SWM’s purpose was to promote women in music at all levels and its work included a tenacious campaign to get the BBC orchestras to audition candidates behind screens to counter their perceived gender discrimination (a strategy undermined however by the BBC introducing interview questions as part of their auditions). Many of the original SWM members were connected to the suffrage movement, the most prominent being Ethel Smyth who composed the suffragette anthem March of the Women and once infamously conducted fellow Holloway Prison inmates using her toothbrush after being jailed for throwing a rock through Lewis Harcourt’s window, the then Secretary of State for the Colonies. One of the Society’s key activities, however, was providing a platform for works by women and their tireless efforts in this area deserve further recognition.
Further reading on the SWM includes:
Cobbett, Walter Willson. ‘Society of Women Musicians.’ Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music. 2 vols, ed. by Walter Willson Cobbett. London: Oxford University Press, 1930, II, 435.
Gillett, Paula. Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: Encroaching on all Man’s Privileges. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000.
Seddon, Laura. 'The Instrumental Music of British Women Composers in the Early Twentieth Century' (Unpublished PhD Thesis, City University, 2011).
Before the First World War, Frances Hefford Cocking an excited young woman composer travelled from Huddersfield to London to present her works to the SWM. She wrote to her mother “after I had left the piano and gone back to my place they clapped until I bowed once more”. Although at the time it was not considered seemly for women to give encores however rapturous the reception, the SWM provided an important platform for developing new musical voices.
The SWM’s purpose was to promote women in music at all levels and its work included a tenacious campaign to get the BBC orchestras to audition candidates behind screens to counter their perceived gender discrimination (a strategy undermined however by the BBC introducing interview questions as part of their auditions). Many of the original SWM members were connected to the suffrage movement, the most prominent being Ethel Smyth who composed the suffragette anthem March of the Women and once infamously conducted fellow Holloway Prison inmates using her toothbrush after being jailed for throwing a rock through Lewis Harcourt’s window, the then Secretary of State for the Colonies. One of the Society’s key activities, however, was providing a platform for works by women and their tireless efforts in this area deserve further recognition.
Further reading on the SWM includes:
Cobbett, Walter Willson. ‘Society of Women Musicians.’ Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music. 2 vols, ed. by Walter Willson Cobbett. London: Oxford University Press, 1930, II, 435.
Gillett, Paula. Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: Encroaching on all Man’s Privileges. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000.
Seddon, Laura. 'The Instrumental Music of British Women Composers in the Early Twentieth Century' (Unpublished PhD Thesis, City University, 2011).