Gender Music Technology

Master's Thesis, Music

York University, Toronto, Ontario

Creating Worlds For My Music to Exist: How Women Composers of Electroacoustic Music Make Place For Their Voices

For this study, I have interviewed fourteen women composers of electroacoustic music in or near the three Canadian urban centres of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. Montreal: Claire Piche, Lucie Jasmin, Pascale Trudel, Monique Jean, Helen Hall and Kathy Kennedy; Toronto: Gayle Young, Sarah Peebles, Wende Bartley, Elma Miller, Ann Southam, and Carol Ann Weaver; Vancouver: Hildegard Westerkamp and Susan Frykberg. These interviews were all conducted between January and November of 1993.

References to the development of electroacoustic music in Canada are sparse in the existing literature, both in general histories of electroacoustic music, and in histories of Canadian music. And even though there seem to be some areas of change (for instance, recent publications in Québec), women composers are under-represented in writings and recorded collections of electroacoustic music in Canada. Chapter Two situates the work of women composers in the Canadian scene, discussing particularly the work of Norma Beecroft, Marcelle Deschènes, Diana McIntosh, and Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux.

Chapter Three describes the metaphors, images and myths invoked in malestream discourses associated with electroacoustic music, in popular magazines, course texts and software. I investigate how my consultants' language reflects and/or contests malestream imagery, or how it might be framed by entirely different assumptions and experiences.

Chapter Four is concerned with the institutional structures of electroacoustic music. I discuss how gendering exhibits itself in the division of labour in electroacoustic studio courses at universities, as well as in concert halls, conferences, and professional organizations. Excerpts from the interviews discuss my consultants experiences in these institutions, as students, teachers, and composers.

In Chapter Five, I point out the variety of strategies that each composer uses to construct her identity within the world of electroacoustics. Each entry takes the form of a three or four page sketch, with quotes from the interview regarding the social environment, equipment choices, compositional styles, and particular pieces that my consultant discusses.

Chapter Six discusses three pieces in detail: one by Susan Frykberg, Woman and House; one by Wende Bartley, A Silence Full of Sound; and one by Hildegard Westerkamp, Breathing Room. I focus on how each of the composers chooses to work with technology, and how her culturally-constructed position as a woman affects her work. I describe how my consultants imagine other stories to tell, and other possible lived social relations.

The conclusions in Chapter Seven, in addition to suggesting areas for future research, discuss three themes that run throughout the study: the idea of gender as performance, the doubleness of my consultants' responses to technology, and the importance of the linguistic and musical metaphors they use.

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