…Canon is a human creation. It is dangerous to buy into the belief that all of the “great masters” rose into the pantheon of their own accord, simply on their own merit, like some sort of cream rising to the top. The narrative that as the classical music world leans into being more “woke”, we are being relegated to some sort of morass of mediocre music is a destructive fallacy…

“The woman of the future with her broader outlook for greater opportunities will go far, I believe, in creative work of every description...”

— CÉCILE CHAMINADE

When Cécile Chaminade speculated in the Washington Post about the increased scope of possibility for women artists of the future, her optimism would not prove unfounded…

The path of progress is rarely a straight line, and as women’s access to music education increased through the years of the Enlightenment, there remained a resistance to the idea of women’s use of that education in the public sphere. There was a stigma of impropriety associated with women who entered the public sphere as professional musicians…

Another composer featured this Thursday evening as we begin our nearly 5-century exploration of music by composed by women for San Francisco Performances’ Salon series is Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. The daughter of a harpsichord-maker and organist, Elisabeth Jacquet was trained by her father in music and displayed exceptional talent at the harpsichord from a young age. She was taken into the French court…