Opera on the Move in the Nordic Countries during the Long 19th ...

278 Camilla Hambro
comique. Oddly enough, it seems that only French and Swedish women
have chosen to compose in the aforementioned genre. Both Pauline and
Louise Viardot have composed operas, while we only recall one German
woman opera composer, and fate would have it that she is of Swedish
birth: Ingeborg v. Bronsart’s parents are actually Swedish (Aftonbladet,
31 May 1889). 5
Typically, Lindgren’s lengthy article compares Munktell to her female colleagues.
Still, he gives a fairly comprehensive list of women composers
and thereby valuable insights into who was who in contemporary Nordic
musical life. His contemporary critics published a broad spectrum of everything
from apparently fair and balanced descriptions of women composers
and musicians who mastered very demanding and difficult tasks in brilliant
ways to reviews openly stating generally negative attitudes to the ability of
women to compose music and arrange concerts. As late as 1916, the Norwegian
composer Signe Lund (1868–1950) stated in Aftenposten (5 March)
that a music publisher soon would stop a woman composer venturing outside
genres on which the company could earn money. Usually, bigger works
were rejected if the composer was not well known. Despite such difficulties
women kept on writing, compelled to compose, and tried their luck as
conductors, not in hopes of earning money, but in the hope of having their
works performed. Often rejected in that arena too, they bore the expenses
of arranging performances of their own works. Deeply rooted negative attitudes
towards women composers were also voiced in the press, and the
ideological climate seemed openly misogynous. Showing everything from
apparently fair and balanced descriptions to reviews that openly express
negative attitudes towards women, the critics – mainly male composers,
conductors and musicians – tried to make it appear as if women posed no
real threat or challenge to the male establishment. This puts in perspective
the overall positive judgements of women quoted above from Aftonbladet.
No matter how ingenious a woman composer might be, projected womanliness
and femininity usually blurred the critics’ judgement of her music. As
Hilda Torjusen stated in Nylænde 6 (15 February 1894): “If gifted women
chose to develop in directions other than men, they would not become renowned,
and if they followed in men’s footsteps, they were accused of not
5 This and the following quotes from Swedish and Danish sources are translated by the
author.
6 Nylænde (“New Terrain”) with the subtitle “Journal for the women’s cause” was
the most political and controversial of several Norwegian women’s magazines. Gina
Krog owned and edited this first Norwegian feminist journal, which was published in
Kristiania/Oslo from 1887 to 1927.