WSMC classical
Thank you for your email. While we cannot play female composers exclusively, we do broadcast every good piece we can find. Our goal is to bring the finest music to the community irrespective of gender. Music is a universal language.

Thanks again.

Scott D. Kornblum, General Manager
WSMC Classical 90.5
P.O. Box 870, Collegedale, TN 37315
Phone: 423.236.2426
Fax: 423.236.1905
——–

Ms. Herrmann,

Mr. Petrella’s email is, to be kind, lacking in intellectual rigor. I think if you survey our playlist on any given day, you’ll see that we feature a broad range of women as instrumentalists, singers, composers and conductors. It would take a lot of effort not to. We’ve recently been intimately involved with covering Grammy-winning composer Jennifer Higdon’s presence as composer-in-residence with our local Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. An interview with composer Margaret Brouwer can be downloaded from our Podcast page at wrr101.com. In the past, we even produced a 15-part series on great women of music.

Needless, to say, we appreciate your efforts very much. Thanks for sending this eye-opening message.

Kurt Rongey
Operations and Programming Manager
WRR Classical 101.1 FM
PO Box 159001, Dallas, TX 75315
Phone: (214)670-8738
Fax: (214)670-8394
krongey@wrr101.com

From:
“Peter Fretwell”
Add sender to Contacts
To:
“marille herrmann” -

Thank you for your note. As a listener to The Classical Network, you know that we share your concerns about recognizing the contributions of females in classical music.

An example from this week – Ross Amico has dedicated his entire program to female composers from Philadelphia, in a program entitled Sisters of Brotherly Love – Women composers of Philadelphia. You can hear the program this Sunday night at 10, and the webcast will be posted at http://wwfm.org/webcasts_lost_chord.shtml.

This program is just one example of the many ways each week that The Classical Network acknowledges female composers, conductors, and performers.

We appreciate your interest in our programming efforts at WWFM, and we collectively invite you to become a supporting member. You can make your pledge at http://www.wwfm.org. Again, thank you for your interest in our programming.

Peter

Peter Fretwell
General Manager
The Classical Network – http://www.wwfm.org
Jazz On 2 – http://www.jazzon2.org
609.570.3727 (direct)
609.570.3863 (fax)

He’s stopped by our blog in the past to “correct” us. Don’t lose any sleep over it. He’s a lune!

“I read your blog on female composers and wondered if you were aware that the overwhelming reason for the fact that there are very few female composers in history up to the present and no female composers in the first rank is due to their lack of abstract reasoning ability.

There have been no women of genius and very few of considerable talent in chess, mathematics and musical composition and any other pursuit for which a high level aptitude for abstract reasoning is a necessary condition( while there have been many women of genius in literature and the performing arts, areas which have the least requirement for abstract reasoning)!

If M. Curie seems an exception there is a strong case that her contrbutions were experimental(empirical) not theoretical. That does not diminish her contributions but is consistant with the premise of the discussion here. And if you wish to argue that she was a theoretician then she is the exception that proves the rule.

A greater male aptitude for abstract reasoning has been identified in a wide range of cognitive tests and has been observed so often through out recorded history that we have the stereotype that ‘men are more logical than women’ and that a certain type of rigorous abstract thinking represents ‘thinking like a man’. Just like tests and historical observation lead us to say that ‘women are more perceptive, intuitive and discerning of how people feel and what they might be thinking’

These measured observations and stereotypes measure and reflect male superiority in an aptitude that is a necessary condition for genius in mathematics and related areas and a great advantage for even the lesser ability that is necessary for the usual professional work in these areas, i.e., an applied mathematician vs a theoretical mathematician.

These measurements and observations are sufficient to explain why all those MOST gifted with this aptitude, i.e., abstract reasoning, are males. There is very strong logical and physiological evidence that male superiority in the aptitude for abstract reasoning is rooted in physiology (testosterone and its effect on the architecture of the brain)!

In test scores, the male advantage is most pronounced in the most abstract items. Historically, too, it is most pronounced in the most abstract domains of accomplishment.

In the humanities, the most abstract field is philosophy—and no woman has been a significant original thinker in any of the world’s great philosophical traditions. In the sciences, the most abstract field is mathematics, where the number of great women mathematicians is approximately two (Emmy Noether definitely, Sonya Kovalevskaya maybe). In the other hard sciences, the contributions of great women scientists have usually been empirical rather than theoretical, with leading cases in point being Henrietta Leavitt, Dorothy Hodgkin, Lise Meitner, Irene Joliot-Curie, and Marie Curie herself.

In the arts, literature is the least abstract and by far the most rooted in human interaction; visual art incorporates a greater admixture of the abstract; musical composition is the most abstract of all the arts, using neither words nor images. The role of women has varied accordingly. Women have been represented among great writers virtually from the beginning of literature, in East Asia and South Asia as well as in the West. Women have produced a smaller number of important visual artists, and none that is clearly in the first rank. No female composer is even close to the first rank. Social restrictions undoubtedly damped down women’s contributions in all of the arts, but the pattern of accomplishment that did break through is strikingly consistent with what we know about the respective strengths of male and female cognitive repertoires. Women have their own cognitive advantages over men, many of them involving verbal fluency and interpersonal skills.

Arthur J Petrella

si hoc legere scis nimium eruditiones habes

equo ne credite, Teucri!
Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”