We were lucky enough to have Joelle Wallach come in last class to give a brief overview of female composers throughout history, including clips of their music. Joelle's personality demanded attention and a responsive audience, two things we were willing to give her but I'm afraid she was taken aback by our lack of general knowledge on the subject matter.
I have grown up going to Catholic masses, so when Joelle played the earliest music that had been composed by women, it rung familiar. The earliest female composers were nuns, and their music reflected their use in the church.
I enjoyed Joelle's presentation but I felt that her approach to getting the music playing and the power point going was rather distracting. In this case I feel that she should have left Professor Griffith to his own devices in keeping the visual and audio going while she maintained a steady lecture. That aside, I found the information very interesting and I found myself appreciating early female composers more that I had before (which was rather indifferently) because Joelle kept stressing that many of these women composed without being able to hear their music played. That's tough!
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Maggie, you're right to point out your experience attending Mass and your ability to appreciate the music Joelle played for us. Katie Jo mentioned on her blog post that she perceived a "generation gap" between Joelle and the class, which I think is fair to say. But I think it's a cultural gap, too. As our culture has become more and more secular, there are arguably fewer opportunities to hear sacred music, and, as a result, diminishing interest in it.
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