Introduction

Orchestral conducting is one of the most male-dominated musical areas. A number of high-profile gaffes from prominent male conductors in recent years – in 2013 Vasily Petrenko claimed that orchestras ‘react better when they have a man in front of them’ and that ‘a cute girl on a podium means that musicians think about other things’,¹ while in 2017 Mariss Jansons quipped that women conductors were not his ‘cup of tea’² – suggest that cultural perceptions that conducting just isn’t natural for women remain. Against this, however, women have also made significant inroads onto the conductor’s podium. Just a few days after Petrenko’s comments, Marin Alsop became the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the BBC’s Proms (7 September 2013). Today, a whole raft of women, including Alsop, JoAnn Falletta, Simone Young, Alice Farnham, Xian Zhang, Jessica Cottis, and Ariane Matiakh, to name but a few, number amongst the most celebrated in the profession. Alongside this, a significant number of historical female conductors, such as Nadia Boulanger, Ethel Leginska, Veronika Dudarowa, Antonia Brico, and Frédérique Petrides, featured prominently on the podium earlier in the twentieth century. This chapter discusses the situation of women conductors and women’s orchestras in the first half of the twentieth century, paying particular attention to the career of Leginska as an instructive case study. It also discusses the re-emergence of women at the heads of orchestras in more recent decades, focusing upon the career of Alsop. The chapter concludes with a look at the current situation of women conductors, and the various mentoring and training schemes that have developed to support them.

A Golden Age of Women’s Orchestras and Conductors

Many of the most successful women conductors of the first half of the twentieth century forged their careers working with women’s orchestras. The music conservatoires which were founded throughout the nineteenth century admitted large number of female instrumentalists and trained them to a professional level. Most contemporary orchestras, however, refused to admit women. The first women’s orchestras were formed in direct reaction to this. The earliest women’s orchestra, the Wiener Damenorchester, was founded by Josephine Amann-Weinlich in Vienna in 1868; the Los Angeles Woman’s Orchestra, the first American women’s orchestra, was established in 1893. Many similar ensembles were created across Europe and North America throughout the final decades of the nineteenth century and early ones of the twentieth. Before the mid-twentieth century, women were strongly discouraged from learning wind or brass instruments, as the physical effort required to play these was considered unsightly. Similarly, the double bass and percussion were also considered unfeminine. Thus, women’s orchestras often struggled to find women to fill all the parts. Some women’s orchestras, such as the British Women’s Symphony Orchestra (founded in London in 1922), overcame this by hiring male players.

As Carol Neuls-Bates has discussed, women’s orchestras were a particularly marked feature of American concert life during the interwar period.³ The cultural expansion which accompanied the post-First-World-War economic boom led to a marked development in orchestral life: more concert halls were built, the concert season was lengthened, and new symphony orchestras were established throughout the country. At the time, however, most American symphony orchestras were largely staffed by European-born men. Both women and men born and trained in America faced discrimination. Female instrumentalists faced a double layer of discrimination, however, as, except for harpists, the major American orchestras refused to hire them. Thus, around thirty American women’s orchestras – many with a full complement of at least eighty players – were founded.⁴ The first of these were established in the largest cities, including Philadelphia (the Philadelphia Women’s Symphony Orchestra, 1921), Chicago (the Chicago Women’s Symphony Orchestra and Women’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago, both 1924), and New York (the American Women’s Symphony Orchestra, 1924). As American women were more inclined to learn a wider variety of orchestral instruments than Europeans, their women’s orchestras were less reliant upon male players. The Women’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago, which was strongly committed to raising the profile of women as orchestral musicians, managed to eliminate the reliance upon male players altogether within just a few years. They offered scholarships to female pianists and violinists in return for them re-training on the oboe, French horn or trombone (the only instruments which they had initially hired men to play) and to female high school students studying winds and brass. They also particularly promoted the music of American female composers.⁵

Pioneer on the Podium: Ethel Leginska

Ethel Leginska (born Liggins, 1886–1970) was one of the most successful and pioneering women conductors of the first half of the twentieth century. British by birth, Leginska made the USA her home from 1913, and it was there, despite numerous appearances as a guest conductor with major European orchestras, that her conducting career unfolded. Leginska had already established herself as an internationally acclaimed concert pianist, and achieved some success as a composer, before she turned her attention to conducting in the early 1920s, seeking instruction from Robert Heger and Gennaro Papi between 1920 and 1922.

Her reputation as a leading concert pianist enabled her to secure opportunities to appear as a guest conductor with a number of major European and American orchestras, usually through agreeing to perform a piano concerto as part of the programme. By appearing as a conductor-pianist, Leginska revived the tradition of directing from the keyboard, which had dropped out of fashion in the nineteenth century. Thus, she was a pioneer not only as a woman conductor, but also as a conductor-pianist.

In November 1924, Leginska appeared as a guest conductor with the London Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, and Munich Konzertverein. In January 1925 she became the first woman to conduct at Carnegie Hall, when she made her American conducting debut leading the New York Symphony Orchestra. This was followed in April 1925 by an appearance with the People’s Symphony Orchestra of Boston. In August 1925, she conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl. Despite facing hostility from some male orchestral players and critics, these concerts were generally well received and Leginska sought a permanent position. Women conductors tended to be viewed as novelties in the early twentieth century, however. So, although her status as a leading concert pianist enabled her to secure guest appearances, it is highly unlikely that she would have been appointed as a principal conductor with a leading orchestra at the time.

Undeterred, Leginska formed her own orchestra, the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, in 1926. Except for herself, the harpist, and the pianist, all the members were men. With the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, Leginska intended to open up classical music to all. Thus, standing admission to their concerts cost just 25 cents, with seats costing from 50 cents. Although the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra was an artistic success, it proved to be financially inviable, and disbanded after only one season of six concerts.⁶

Between 1927 and 1930, Leginska worked with women’s orchestras. In so doing, we can see her fitting within the wider trend of women conductors founding and directing their own women’s orchestras during the earlier twentieth century. Prominent examples of other contemporary women conductors who formed their own women’s orchestras include Jane Evrard, who formed her Orchestre féminin de Paris in 1930;⁷ Frédérique Petrides, who formed her Orchestrette Classique in New York in 1933; and Antonia Brico, who formed her Women’s Orchestra of New York in 1934. Leginska founded her Boston Women’s Symphony Orchestra in 1927. Forming her own women’s orchestra also enabled Leginska – who selected and trained each of the members herself – to champion women as orchestral players. The Boston Women’s Symphony Orchestra proved to be very successful. Over a three-year period, they gave over two hundred concerts, and undertook two tours. The orchestra was, despite some comments of a gendered and patronising nature, generally well received. A review which appeared in The Boston Herald in 1929 commented on the good job that Leginska had done in training the instrumentalists:

The difficult economic conditions caused by the Wall Street Crash (1929) forced the orchestra to disband in 1930.

The Boston Women’s Symphony Orchestra was not the only women’s orchestra that Leginska was associated with. Following a guest appearance, she was also appointed as conductor and director of the Women’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago in 1927, a post which she held, on a part-time basis, until 1930. She formed one final women’s orchestra, the National Women’s Symphony Orchestra, based in New York, in 1932. The continuing tough economic conditions of the Depression also prevented this from being financially feasible in the long term. It disbanded after just a few months. Leginska did not form any further orchestras. From 1933 she made only guest appearances as a conductor.

J. Michele Edwards has described Leginska as a ‘New Woman’, arguing that she ‘shared traits with others identified as “new women” during the 1910s and 1920s: bobbed hair, concert attire modelled on men’s formal wear, outspokenness about feminist issues, and a serious focus on work and career’.⁹ Leginska adopted her signature look of a dark suit (jacket and skirt) with white blouse, collar, and cuffs, and ‘bobbed’ hair for her appearances as a concert pianist as early as 1915. At a time when concert halls were often very cold, this ensemble kept her warm while also allowing her plenty of arm and shoulder movement. Leginska described this practical attire as ‘always the same and always comfortable, so that I can forget my appearance and concentrate on my art’.¹⁰ She retained this distinctive look for her work as a conductor in the interwar period (see Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1 Ethel Leginska, English pianist, conductor and composer, 1935.

Photo credit: Tully Potter/Bridgeman Images

Appearing on the podium in a suit consciously modelled on men’s formal wear allowed Leginska to underline the fact that, not only had she taken what was traditionally a man’s place upon the conductor’s podium, but that she had also taken his clothes in which to do it. Leginska was a trailblazing pioneer, not only as one of the most prominent women conductors of the later 1920s, but also through reviving the practice of the conductor-pianist, and via her work championing women orchestral players. With the arrival of the Second World War, opportunities for her to conduct dried up. Throughout the final decades of her life she maintained a large private studio of piano pupils in Los Angeles.

An Exceptional Career: Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979) became arguably the most successful woman conductor to emerge during the 1930s. Between 1933, when the Parisian arts patroness the Princesse Edmond de Polignac launched Boulanger’s conducting career through a gala concert in her salon, and the end of the decade, she had become the first woman to conduct the Royal Philharmonic Society, the National Symphony, and the orchestras of Boston and Philadelphia. In addition, she had also directed dozens of orchestras in France, Belgium, the UK, and the USA. Boulanger’s career must be regarded as exceptional amongst those of women conductors of the first half of the twentieth century, however, because, unlike most others, she did not make her career through founding and working with her own women’s orchestra. In fact, as Jeanice Brooks has discussed, Boulanger went to get lengths to downplay her femininity upon the podium.¹¹ Boulanger claimed that her conducting was an extension of her teaching – a much more socially accepted musical role for women – rather than a result of ambition (although her earliest forays onto the podium actually date from 1912 to 1913). In rehearsals and in interviews she consistently constructed herself as serving the music’s higher purpose, rather than emphasising her own agency as the conductor. Always dressed plainly, she even chose to conduct without a baton, the outward symbol of a conductor’s authority, and, as Brooks has identified, a potential phallic symbol.¹² Thus, Boulanger was very careful not to present herself as a threat. While Boulanger’s performative strategy enabled her to succeed as a conductor, it did not, as Edwards has observed ‘open a door for subsequent generations of women conductors’.¹³

Mid-Century Retrenchments and the Exception of Veronika Dudarowa

The golden age of women’s orchestras that had flourished during the first half of the twentieth century was brought to an abrupt end by the arrival of the Second World War. Although male military conscription opened up desks for women in the previously all-male orchestras, most women’s orchestras were so depleted that they were forced to disband. Very few survived the war, and even fewer reformed afterwards. Although it may initially appear curious – disloyal even – that so many women left the women’s orchestras to take up posts in male-dominated ensembles, there are a number of possible reasons for this. Firstly, most women’s orchestras had always suffered financial insecurities. Even during wartime, the top professional orchestras retained relative financial security. On a related point, members of the women’s orchestras tended to be paid significantly less than members of male or mixed ensembles. Secondly, the previously all-male orchestras were considerably more prestigious, so it is perhaps not surprising that women seized opportunities to join them.

Linda Dempf has commented that: ‘It was not that women were suddenly accepted into male-dominated orchestras, but that the women’s orchestras had served a purpose of giving women an opportunity to play and learn the orchestral repertoire … Thus the all-women orchestra provided a training ground and was an important step for women orchestra players.’¹⁴ New opportunities for female instrumentalists ironically also created decreased opportunities for female conductors, the majority of whom had worked with women’s ensembles. With these gone, opportunities for women conductors decreased rapidly in the period following the Second World War, and this situation did not begin to improve (for most women) until the final decades of the twentieth century.

Although the decades immediately following the Second World War afforded only very few professional conducting opportunities for women, the career of Veronika Dudarowa (1916–2009) in the USSR is an important exception. Dudarowa, who studied conducting at the Moscow Conservatory, became a junior conductor of the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra in 1947. She was promoted to principal conductor in 1960, becoming the first Russian woman to hold such a position. She retained this post until 1989. In 1991, following the fall of communism, she founded the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia. She led this orchestra until 2003 and remained as its artistic manager until her death. Although not well known outside Russia, Dudarowa was one of the most important Soviet and Russian conductors of the twentieth century. As Tim McDonald has commented: ‘in her own country, she was a giant’.¹⁵

Re-emergence

In the West, women conductors did not begin to re-emerge on the podium until the 1980s. In 1984, Sian Edwards won the first Leeds Conductors’ Competition, making her London debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1985; also in 1984, Odaline de la Martinez became the first woman to conduct a BBC Proms Concert; and in the USA, JoAnn Falletta was appointed Musical Director of the Long Beach Symphony in 1989. Although male conductors still outnumber female, particularly at the top of the profession, there are now a significant number of high-profile women conductors active. Alongside Edwards, Martinez, and Falletta, Claire Gibault, Jane Glover, Simone Young, Xian Zhang, and Ariane Matiakh, to name but a few, have all carved out leading, international careers.

A striking feature of women’s participation in professional conducting is the number – such as Margaret Hillis, Sarah Caldwell, Judith Somogi, Glover, Edwards, Young, and Laurence Equilbey – who have excelled as opera and choral conductors. Although this is obviously positive, two gendered reasons for the relative success of women conductors in the world of opera and choral music suggest themselves. Firstly, in opera the conductor is hidden in the pit; so it is not immediately obvious to the audience that the music is being directed by a woman. J. Michele Edwards has gone so far as to speculate that because ‘the conductor works in the pit rather than in the spotlight … this may have been more acceptable to audiences, orchestras, and even conductors’.¹⁶ She quotes Glover revealing that ‘maybe that’s why I like it because I’m out of sight’.¹⁷ Secondly, many opera and choral conductors begin their careers as piano répétiteurs. The supportive nature of this could be seen as reinforcing nurturing roles for women. Fiona Maddocks has suggested that women conductors have made particular progress in choral music because it ‘requires the kind of collegiate powers at which women excel’.¹⁸

Pioneer, Leader, and Many Firsts: Marin Alsop

Marin Alsop (b.1956) has become one of the most successful and well-known conductors active anywhere in the world today. In a highly competitive field, she has carved out a remarkable international career, which has been distinguished by many firsts. She is the first woman to have become the principal conductor of a British orchestra (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, 2002), music director of a major American orchestra (Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, 2007), music director of a Brazilian orchestra (São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, 2012), and chief conductor of a Viennese Orchestra (Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, 2019). She became the first woman to conduct at the Teatro alla Scala in Italy (2011) and to conduct the Last Night of the BBC Proms (2013). Additionally, amongst many prestigious awards, she became the first conductor ever to receive a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005.

Alsop is the only daughter of professional musicians. Her father, LaMar Alsop, was concertmaster of the New York City Ballet Orchestra; the orchestra in which her mother, Ruth Alsop, was a cellist. At the age of nine, her father took her to hear one of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, and the experience motivated her to become a conductor herself. Displaying a precocious musical talent from a very young age, Alsop entered the Juilliard Pre-College at the age of seven. She enrolled at Yale University in 1972, but later transferred to the Juilliard School, where she graduated with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in violin performance (1977 and 1978). During her early career, she worked as a freelance violinist in New York City. She began conducting studies with Carl Bamberger in 1979, later studying with Harold Farberman in 1985. Not unlike the pioneering women conductors of the early twentieth century, Alsop gained her first conducting experiences by founding her own ensembles. She founded the all-woman swing band String Fever in 1981 and established the Concordia Orchestra in 1984.

In 1989 Alsop became the first woman to win the Koussevitsky Conducting Prize at the Tanglewood Music Center, where she became a conducting student of Bernstein, who would become her mentor, Gustav Meier, and Seiji Ozawa. From the late 1980s and throughout the ’90s, she moved through a succession of prestigious formative appointments. She was appointed associate conductor of the Richmond Symphony (Virginia) and music director of the Eugene Symphony Orchestra in 1989; Music Director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in 1992; music director of the Colorado Symphony (Denver) in 1993; creative conductor chair with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in 1994; and principal guest conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in 1999.

Alsop achieved a major appointment in 2002, when she became principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. In 2007, she became music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Under her leadership, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra became particularly known for its outreach activities with the local community. In 2008, she founded OrchKids, which provides music education, instruments, performance opportunities, academic instruction, healthy meals, and mentorship at no cost for underprivileged children and teenagers in Baltimore City. The project has been described as ‘an acknowledged leader in the El Sistema and social-change through music movement’.¹⁹ Alsop became principal conductor of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra in 2012. With her, the orchestra became the first Brazilian orchestra to appear at the BBC Proms in August 2012. In 2015, she succeeded her teacher Meier as director of graduate conducting at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University.²⁰ Alsop also has an extensive discography. Although she is particularly well known for her recordings of twentieth-century American music, especially Barber and Bernstein, she has recorded a very wide range of music, which also includes works by Brahms, Dvořák, Mahler, and Bartók. In 2010, her recording of Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Colin Currie won a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.

Alsop is aware of the gender issues surrounding her position on the podium. She has opined that: ‘People aren’t comfortable with seeing women in these roles, because there aren’t any women in the roles … When you’re the only one, you’re always a target … Women have so few opportunities, comparatively speaking, that the pressure is enormous.’²¹ This translates into an acute awareness of how body language and gesture are interpreted through a gendered lens. As she has explained:

This awareness of body language and gesture also extends to how she comports herself during rehearsals: ‘Everything sends a message … If I sit down, the message is that either I’m tired, or that it’s casual, or it’s too much effort.’²³ Visually Alsop cuts a professional and authoritative figure on the podium. Not unlike Leginska, she also favours smart suits which allow plenty of shoulder room. Her signature look has become a black tailored suit, often accompanied with a red blouse (see Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2 Marin Alsop.

Photo credit: Grant Leighton

Although proud to have been the first woman to achieve many things in the world of conducting, Alsop has frequently expressed her astonishment that this can still be the case in the early twenty-first century. In conversation with Michael Cooper, the classical music critic for The New York Times, she has commented that ‘I’ve been the first woman to do a lot of things, and I’m really proud, but I also think it’s absolutely pathetic.’²⁴ In a similar vein, Alsop used her speech at her Last Night of the BBC Proms concert to observe that:

Mentors, Role Models, and All-Women Training Schemes

Alsop has used her position as a leading female conductor to enable these ‘seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths, hundredths’. As Maddocks has observed, ‘if she [Alsop] once resisted tiresome gender questions, now she accepts her duty as spokesperson’.²⁶ Alsop established her Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship specifically for women in 2002. Currently worth $7,500 for Fellows and $5,000 for Associate Fellows, the awards offer talented young women conductors two years of intensive coaching and mentoring from Alsop.²⁷ On her official website, she has described her motivation for establishing the fellowship thus:

Alsop’s pioneering mentoring and training scheme has since inspired similar projects elsewhere. In 2014, Alice Farnham also launched a training programme for aspiring women conductors aimed at addressing the lack of women on the podium, with Andrea Brown, at Morley College. Since 2016, Farnham’s Women Conductors programme has found a home at the Royal Philharmonic Society.²⁹ The programme provides dedicated workshops for emerging and student women conductors throughout the UK, and many leading senior female conductors have contributed to it. Reflecting on its importance, Farnham has commented in The Guardian that: ‘If we are to encourage more women to become conductors they need both hands-on experience and inspirational role models.’³⁰ Beyond enabling young women conductors to meet and be trained by senior, female role models, these training workshops are essential for creating safe places within which student women conductors can practise and refine their skills. As Farnham has further commented:

A number of similar training programmes have emerged in recent years. Prominent examples include the Sorrell Women’s Conducting Programme at the Royal Academy of Music (UK); the Female Conductor Programme at the National Concert Hall, Dublin (Republic of Ireland); Dirigent Musik i Väst (Sweden); and the Hart Institute for Women Conductors at the Dallas Opera (USA).

Conclusion

Although it is undeniable that women continue to be underrepresented on the conductor’s podium, particularly at the highest level of the profession, there are now leading women conductors active throughout the world. The women-only conducting training programmes which have sprung up in recent years offer particular grounds for hope, as they have already proved tremendously beneficial in terms of diversifying the world of conducting and increasing the number of women professionally active. Karina Canellakis, the 2013 Taki Concordia Fellow, became chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in 2019 and the first woman to conduct the First Night of the BBC Proms on 19 July 2019; Valentina Peleggi, the 2015 Taki Concordia Fellow, is principal conductor of the São Paulo Symphony Chorus; Lina Gonzalez-Granados, the 2017 Taki Concordia Fellow, is founder and artistic director of the Unitas Ensemble.³² In the UK, meanwhile, Tianyi Lu became Welsh National Opera’s first Female Conductor in Residence in August 2019. The scheme ‘aims to equip aspiring female conductors with the necessary training and experience to pursue conducting careers’.³³ As part of her award, Lu will be mentored for eighteen months by Farnham. It is very much to be hoped that these schemes will contribute to what Alsop referred to in her Last Night speech at the 2013 BBC Proms as ‘a natural progression towards more inclusion in classical music’.³⁴

A wave of appointments of women to positions as music directors or principal conductors of major European and American orchestras also appears to point in this direction. The year 2016 marked three women conductors taking up principal conductor posts with major American and European orchestras: Chinese-American conductor Xian Zhang became musical director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra; Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla was appointed music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; and Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki became chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra became music director of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in 2017, meanwhile. It is to be hoped that these appointments signal a profound change. Alsop concluded her 2013 Last Night of the Proms speech by appealing to young women to ‘believe in yourselves, follow your passion, and never give up, because you will create a future filled with possibility’.³⁵ It is greatly to be hoped that the growth in training and mentoring opportunities for aspiring women conductors, and the recent spate of appointments of women to high-profile conducting positions, hint that such a future is within grasp.