In the early twentieth century, many women were entering the workforce and agitating for the right to vote, while many men were trying to figure out what masculinity meant in a world where the importance of physical strength was declining. As historian Gavin James Campbell writes, these questions played themselves out, among other places, in classical music.
Throughout the nineteenth century, Campbell writes, many middle- and upper-class women learned music as a domestic art, but women who made a career of performance were a rarity. Over time, though, exceptions like singer Jenny Lind, pianist Teresa Carreño, and violinist Maud Powell inspired imitation. By the turn into the twentieth century, many young American women were looking at music as a possible profession. Some became part of the opera, which was growing in popularity and required talented female voices. Others reacted to existing orchestras’ refusal to include female musicians by forming all-women musical organizations.
While performance generally became more acceptable for women, as long as it didn’t interfere with their femininity or domestic work, composing was a different matter. Many critics believed that, as one wrote for the Nation in 1902, “on the creative side, music is distinctly a manly art.” Some argued that though women were emotional creatures, it took a man’s mind to turn those feelings into the logical, mathematical form of a musical score.
Yet, Cambell writes, in everyday life, music was becoming more and more associated with women. Within their accepted role as moral agents of the community, privileged women formed clubs to promote music as a civic good. By the 1920s, they were organizing free concerts in parks, musical events in settlement houses, and music programs in factories and prisons.
As more women embraced music as a profession or a calling, some men became worried that the world of the orchestra was becoming feminized. Composer Daniel Gregory Mason suggested that women’s “natural conventionality” had led to “ a regrettable tolerance of unprogressiveness and mediocrity.” Some fretted about boys and men being repelled from the whole world of music thanks to its “girly” associations.