Musings on sexism in the music scene of Vienna

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Dave and I playing in Berlin this month

Recently, I was on tour with the OSM (L’orchestre symphonique de Montréal) and we had a few days in Vienna. Vienna is a beautiful city with scads of musical and other cultural activities available any day of the week. I didn’t plan anything in advance, and I was not all that drawn to the idea of going to hear the Vienna Philharmonic, though it is one of the most iconic orchestras in the world. However, it did occur to me (and I suggested it to my husband, Dave, who liked the idea) that if we could take in some chamber music, it would be great.

By great good luck and coincidence, a colleague sent out word that he was selling two tickets to hear the Vienna Philharmonic winds play a morning concert at the opera house in one of the smaller halls, in fact, the “Mahler Saal”. We snatched up the tickets and went down there the morning after we arrived. We arrived a few minutes early, but the hall was almost full and we ended up at the back. It didn’t matter, because the acoustics turned out to be lovely and we could hear everything. I craned my neck to watch the musicians troop on stage and, without consciously realizing that I was expecting anything else, I noticed that one after the other, they were all men. Thirteen people on stage and not one woman. Now, I recently participated in the CWBC in Toronto , and we did an all-woman concert, but that was the point. We had to do it on purpose to make it happen. In the case of the Vienna winds, the same holds true. Whether the decision was made a hundred years ago or last week, somewhere along the line it was decided that only men would hold those seats. The Vienna Phil has argued that they don’t have a policy of hiring only men, anymore, but they also don’t use screens in the final round of the audition process, so their objectivity is questionable. They were one of the final holdouts among European orchestras to finally accept women, a harpist in 1997. I checked the personnel page of the Vienna Philharmonic and found 14 women out of 130 musicians, but it took until 2007 before they hired a non-harpist woman. By contrast the OSM has 33 women out of 85 total; not quite half but a lot closer. *

I found myself distracted as I listened to the beautiful sounds of Dvorak and Mozart, because of the distinct contrast between what I’m used to in my orchestra and what I was watching. There were not only older men, there were also younger men, who were obviously the new generation of the same old men’s club of musicians. Also, as I looked around the room, the audience was divided roughly in half by gender, so where’s the justification for the misogynistic policy so long in place?

The next day, another serendipitous pair of tickets landed in our laps via a friend of a friend who had come by the hall where we were rehearsing and offered us tickets to the Vienna Chamber Orchestra that very afternoon. Perfect! We were free and very grateful.

This was a completely different experience. Our new friend explained to us before the concert that the Vienna Chamber Orchestra was formed in 1946 to give women an opportunity to play, because they were refused in other ensembles in Vienna. Eventually they opened the ranks up to include men, but the group we heard (all strings for this program) was still composed of 13 women and 8 men.

In further contrast to the concert from the day before, we were in the front row, so, as our new friend jokingly said, we had a great view of everyone’s shoes. We also had a great view of the rest of their outfits, which were basically similar to those of most classical musicians I’ve ever seen, in that they were black, but the dress code was obviously looser in this string group than in the wind ensemble the day before. Women were wearing short or long sleeves, or sleeveless; black shoes of many descriptions with, in one case, stars decorating them; plus they were all wearing pants. The male musicians, who tend to dress more conservatively everywhere than women (if you’ll allow me that generalization), were sporting more colourful ties than their counterparts of the day before, but were otherwise dressed similarly, in dark suits.

It’s difficult to be sure, since my view of the winds was restricted, but it seemed to me that the string group was having more fun, the musicians were more relaxed, less sober than the winds. Was that due to the music? They both played Mozart ( the winds played the Grand Partita, the strings played his piano concerto K 414) plus other pieces of more or less standard rep (Dvorak’s serenade for winds and Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht for strings) so I don’t think it can be blamed on the music. Each had extremely challenging parts to play that would require great concentration. I believe it more likely that the culture that has long been established in each group has created a completely different attitude towards performing. Having women as integral parts of the group changes things in subtle ways.

The Vienna Philharmonic long ago decided that the professional music sphere belonged to men (and mostly white men, to boot, but that’s everywhere in western classical music, sadly), and that lack of openness has created a staid and sober culture, where joy may have little part. Is there a big difference in the quality of the musicianship you’re wondering? No, both groups were outstanding, (although I have difficulty enjoying the sound and intonation of the basset horn, but that’s just me), so this is not a commentary on which group played better. Once I decided to focus on the music and not the gender of the players, I really enjoyed the wind ensemble and felt only envy that brass players don’t have that kind of repertoire to choose from.

Going back to the gender disparity between the groups. The solution is not as simple as just putting up a screen from beginning to end of the audition process; it goes back further, to how societies everywhere put pressure on each gender to embrace certain instruments and not others; and further, to embrace certain careers and not others. I wholeheartedly believe that all genders of people are capable of making a career of whatever they want to. I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked, “Isn’t it unusual for a woman to play trombone?” and I have to say, well, yes, but where I started playing, we were given the freedom to choose and some of us girls did choose the trombone, or trumpet or horn, etc, although in the larger scheme of things, yes, it was unusual. Does that mean that women aren’t as capable of playing those instruments? No, it absolutely doesn’t, and I’m very sorry that in 2019 I’m having to state something that obvious.

It’s well past the time when freedom should be given at a young age to girls who want to play whatever instrument they want. Will they still choose flute over trombone more than half the time? That remains to be seen, but let’s give them the choice and encourage that choice!

*My original post said that the Vienna Phil had first hired women in the 80’s but I was corrected by a reliable source: Abbie Conant, renowned trombonist and teacher in Germany.

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