Musical Autobiography, Volume II: Gender

In today’s culture of Western Art music, the overall gender balance seems to be relatively even. It certainly is not as extreme as that of various State Geography Bees in which I or my brother have been. My second year in it, there was only one other girl besides me in the tiebreaker round to be in the Final Round, even though there were twenty-two students in the tiebreaker. In my experience of the music world, the gender balance seems to tip towards girls early on, but becomes more even as the skill level becomes higher.

My piano teacher’s studio contained more girls than boys. Among her high school students, there was only one boy, although he was quite good. In summer piano camps, however, the balance between boys and girls was fairly even.

The studio of my brother’s old violin teacher also contained more girls than boys. The violin gender balance was also skewed towards girls when my brother played in the by-audition Junior High String Ensemble of the South Jersey Band and Orchestra Directors Association, in which there were forty-eight violinists total but only sixteen male ones and the highest-ranking male violinist (my brother) placed only sixth. In contrast, the studio of my brother’s current teacher, a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra, seems fairly balanced. The violin sections of my brother’s orchestra, the Philadelphia Sinfonia, are only slightly skewed toward girls; there are about a dozen boys out of thirty-one violinists, and the concertmistress is female but my brother is the principal of the Second Violins. The gender balance of the complete Sinfonia orchestra is slightly skewed towards boys. So my brother’s violin experience, and mine, is that the gender balance evens out as the musicians get better.

My brother and I were both in a children’s treble choir, ChildrenSong of New Jersey, for several years. ChildrenSong was mostly female with a handful of boys, perhaps because junior high boys see chorus as a “girl thing.” This imbalance was deemphasized by our concert attire, in which the girls wore palazzo pants instead of skirts and both genders wore the same shirts and vests.

Church choirs also often have more women than men, because men are harder to recruit. This is true of my home church, but the choir of my church here in Spartanburg has plenty of men. My home church also has a summer chorus, Grace Notes, comprised exclusively of girls and young women. This is because my home church has only two young men who like singing and can sing decently, and two of the more musical families of my church have no sons but several daughters. The secret ingredient of Grace Notes is its sense of sisterhood.

In the Petrie School of Music, of course, the undergraduate students are exclusively female. This allows the learning and the social atmosphere to approach an intimate, supportive sisterhood like that I experienced in Grace Notes. Dr. Weeks is my first male piano teacher, but he has small hands like mine such that his fingerings work for my hands; I know not whether Converse chose him for his small hands, but I am sure that I am not the only female piano student here to appreciate it. I do wonder, though, what it is like for our professors to teach almost-all-women.