By Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph – IAWM Journal (2004)
I have always been ambivalent about using the term “woman composer.” It somehow suggests that different criteria should be applied to music composed by women. Sanctioning its use could also mean colluding with forces that are divisive and discriminatory. One rarely sees in print the terms “woman author” or “woman painter” as a designation. On the other hand, the term “woman composer” could well be a weapon to focus attention on redressing the inequalities that have existed for thousands of years in the traditionally male domain of “The Composer.”
The title of this article evokes shades of the title of Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice, inasmuch as it refers to the disadvantaged social context of creative women in previous centuries. The addition of the word “Power” to the title embraces the concept of the empowerment of women as a positive force in the 20th and 21st centuries and specifically in my life as a “woman” composer in South Africa.
I believe that being a female composer in South Africa is uniquely different from being a woman composer anywhere else in the world. The previously “privileged” white minority in a country practicing the racial discrimination of the “apartheid” system reflected a chauvinist attitude that overtly patronized other minority groups of various kinds, especially women and their artistic expressions. The result of this legacy was a dearth of local female composers; for many decades the only active woman composer of so-called serious “art” music was the present author. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to illustrate this composer’s response to male prejudice, the pride she took in being musically productive and successful despite the “system” and the power that it finally brought to her and a new generation of young female composers.1
I was most fortunate to be raised in a very musical and enlightened family. They made me feel that it was the most natural thing in the world for me to be composing. I cannot ever remember a time at home when it seemed unusual that I was a female writing music—I was constantly encouraged and supported. I also received valuable encouragement from my teachers, and the little piano pieces I composed at the age of six were published in the Arcadia Primary School magazine by my appreciative and cultured headmistress. (I could not even correctly spell the title: “Rushen Dances.”) During my primary and high school years my music education was entrusted to my aunt and piano teacher, Goldie Zaidel, and a charming, elderly English gentleman, Richard Cherry, who inspired me with his passion for harmony, counterpoint and elementary orchestration. My musical imagination was frequently stimulated by the new and exciting 20th-century piano repertoire given to me to play by Goldie Zaidel, a well-known and respected teacher.
Just as the Royal Schools and Trinity College in London offer graded examinations in various instruments, so too does the University of South Africa (UNISA) examine students of music from a very young age and grade. From the age of six to seventeen I entered every graded piano examination, while studying privately with my aunt, and I received “A” Honors and a monetary award for each exam. It was gratifying that with a little persuasion from my teacher, UNISA allowed me to play several of my own compositions for the piano exams instead of the requisite pieces from the syllabus: this was quite a liberated act for the 1960s! I recall the feeling of power when performing a newly-composed piece in front of a baffled examiner, silently challenging him to query my notes or interpretation.
I remember with frustration the occasion of being a finalist in the Overseas Piano Licentiate Scholarship. I received a very high grade for the actual exam, but in the interview that followed, I was told outright that I was unlikely to receive the scholarship since I had plans to get married. (This was my first marriage; I subsequently became anti-marriage after a difficult divorce until I met my present husband.) The rationale was that I would probably not make good use of the money. I was suitably outraged, but nevertheless the award was given to a male violinist.
It was at the University of Pretoria (fondly and colloquially referred to as “Tukkies”), my alma mater, where I earned my B.Mus., M.Mus. and D.Mus. degrees, that I was acknowledged and respected as a composer; this gave me a great sense of pride. In the late 1960s, Professor Johan Potgieter, my composition teacher, helped me to believe in myself as a young composer, and my first Piano Sonata of 1969 was born, as well as several worthwhile pieces of chamber music. These early works were recorded and performed.
During my M.Mus. studies in composition at “Tukkies,” I was nurtured and nourished by the delightful Professor Arthur Wegelin (or Oom Willem, as he was also referred to). He opened my eyes and ears to the wonders of avant-garde music with the scores and recordings he brought back from festivals in Darmstadt and Holland. He introduced me to the glorious world of György Ligeti’s music. It was while listening to works by Ligeti such as After returning to Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1975 to teach composition at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), I was the only active female composer struggling to get commissions and to be performed, although my male counterparts had an equally difficult time getting their works heard. The lack of interest in and/or resistance to contemporary music were symptomatic of the times, and audiences were painfully small.
As a postgraduate student on an Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Scholarship, I studied composition and piano in London at the Royal College of Music in 1972-73. While there, I had both fascinating experiences and rude awakenings. I did not fraternize with the undergraduates, and attended just for my lessons. Apparently, there was conjecture among the students as to my field. I heard later that they had decided, purely upon appearance, that I must be a “mediocre opera singer.” I was also finding it difficult to convince my male teachers and colleagues that I was completely serious about composition. Their responses to me ranged from patronizing flattery to dismissive disdain. Attitudes in England were far worse than I had ever encountered in South Africa. As a result of this stereotyping, I was determined to teach them a lesson: I composed a piece called Reaction for piano, cello and percussion for a composition competition at the Royal College. I auditioned only females to play and had a female trio perform the work, including myself at the piano. I was enormously thrilled to find at the end of the evening that I had won the coveted Cobbett Prize for composition for 1973. The Star newspaper in Johannesburg ran a story:
This was indeed a reactionary piece with harsh sounds, created by an erstwhile, staunch “Women’s Libber” as a reaction against prevailing chauvinistic attitudes. The piece’s aggressive and fragmented nature could hardly have been described as “feminine.” (I am sometimes paid the dubious compliment that my music sounds “just like a man’s.”) I felt at the time that the world was still not ready to accept women composers.
One of my “rude awakenings” came one evening when I was invited for a drink at the pub by my lecturer in Electronic Music. He blatantly offered me a BBC film score commission in return for other favors from me. I vehemently answered, “NO!” and digested a new reality. This would not be the last time that various men in powerful positions propositioned me in return for a composition commission. It signified for me the kind of power that can be wielded by both the giver and the receiver of favors.
While in London I received a letter from Aaron I. Cohen requesting my biography. He was doing research for his planned two-volume International Encyclopedia of Women Composers (New York, 1981, 2/1987). I recall being surprised that it was necessary to separate the sexes but soon began to understand why. Women composers had historically suffered from extreme exclusion and prejudice, and this was a way of addressing the discrimination and neglect.
Cohen (who lived in Johannesburg) and I began a deep friendship that lasted over 20 years until his death in 1996. His vast collection of recordings, manuscripts, books and invaluable archival material now reside at the University of California, Los Angeles, since the University of the Witwatersand in Johannesburg could not seem to find a place to house this collection. Cohen gave me many excellent recordings of music by women, and to date I have the largest collection of such music in South Africa.
During the 1970s in South Africa a composer was dependent on either the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) or the South African Music Rights Organization (SAMRO) for a commission. I seemed to be something of an enigma to the gentlemen in the hallowed “Broederbond” (white male right-wing brotherhood) portals of the SABC. Anton Hartman, then Head of Music at the SABC, used to refer to me as the “Joodse boeremeisie” (Jewish farm girl) as I was fluent in Afrikaans, the national language of the Nationalist Government in power from 1948 to 1994. The incongruence of my being a white woman writing distinctly African-oriented music caused some confusion in those upper echelons of arts management at the SABC.
On the other hand, I was always extremely well-received by the Roos Family, who were the directors of SAMRO in those years. Gideon Roos, Sr. could not have been more gracious and helpful, and I never experienced any institutional discrimination there. In fact, I have received regular commissions from SAMRO throughout all my composing years.
In 1974 I was commissioned to compose a competition piece for the SABC Music Prize in piano performance. I returned to Pretoria from London to compose Three Dimensions for piano. An article appeared about this commission in The Star on March 12, 1974 under the heading, “Young Composer Strikes a High Note.” The author wrote: “Vivien Allen of the Pretoria Bureau interviewed this talented young South African composer about her past and future in the traditionally male field of serious music composition.” “What of future plans?” she asked. “They definitely do not include marriage,” said Ms. Zaidel. “There’s no time and marriage is no good if you can’t be yourself and follow your career”3 (famous last words).
In May of the same year, an article entitled “Women Call the Tune,” written by Joe Sack for The Rand Daily Mail, contained an interview with Aaron Cohen regarding his forthcoming encyclopedia on women composers. Sack began the article with the question: “Why do male composers write so much delicate and poetic music while many women composers go in for the strong, strident stuff?” Cohen believed that women have a flair for powerful orchestrations and martial themes. He commented that he was “very much looking forward to acquiring the recording of a new orchestral work, Kaleidoscope, by the highly talented young South African, Jeanne Zaidel. If you think it’s scored for sweet, muted strings, you’re wrong. Eliminating strings altogether, it’s a vigorous work written for a whole range of percussion instruments and a team of brass players.”4
In June 1976 I was invited by the Cape Performing Arts Board (CAPAB) to be the guest composer in the series “The Composer Speaks” in Cape Town. This was to be my conducting debut, and I would conduct several works of my own. The performers were members of the CAPAB Opera Orchestra and the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra. I recall sensing a definite resistance initially from the performers—not only was the music composed by a woman but the conductor facing them was that same woman. With sheer hard work I gained their trust and respect, and the performance was excellent with a cohesive team spirit. In a pre-publicity article in The Sunday Times entitled “Portrait of a Composed Composer,” Len Ashton refers to “The Fair young Maiden with the Tender Touch” and goes on to say, “Jeanne Zaidel is a blend of talent and charm calculated to cast male chauvinist pigs into confused admiration. It is not every fair maiden who can combine modesty and formidable intellectual abilities.” This fairly condescending approach did not really offend—it was just highly amusing. The article ends with my remark: “Not being married made it possible.”5 The “fair maiden” said these words three months before her second marriage. (At the time, I did not plan to marry—it was a spontaneous decision that I made within just a few weeks after meeting my husband.)
Now to the piece de resistance of sensational and sexist reporting. In The Star of June 4, 1976, Jaap Boekkooi writes: “She’s Glam, isn’t she?!—Jeanne Zaidel, one in a handful of rare birds in South Africa. Even to her 75 Wits [The Wits School of Music] students Jeanne Zaidel does not look what she is—a composer!—it’s difficult to imagine her in the grave company of a bewigged Bach, a frilly Mozart or a bearded Brahms.”6
Sexist remarks continued to be made even after I was married. Reporters seemed to be fascinated that I was able to combine a career with marriage and a family. On May 10, 1979, I handed in my doctoral portfolio for a degree in composition to be conferred by the University of Pretoria later that year,7 and the next day I gave birth to my second child. The headline in the South African Jewish Chronicle reads: “How Baby Beat Ma’s Deadline.”8 Then, on September 18, 1979, graduation day, a headline in the arts page of Die Vaderland reads: “Eerste Suid Afrikaanse Vrou kry ’n D.Mus.” (First South African Woman Obtains a D.Mus.). The article includes a lovely cozy family photo of me with my two daughters, Natalie, age two, and baby Sara, four months old. The author writes: “How does a person look with a Doctor’s degree in music? Middle-aged? Bald? Long beard? Wrong!—not always. The person can also be an attractive young woman.”9
I do believe that being a mother impacted the way I composed, enriching my work with warm life experiences and bringing out my nurturing side. We have four daughters whom I sometimes refer to as opus 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively. Journalists who wrote about me somehow seemed to be preoccupied with my pregnancies and babies; for example, an article in the Fair Lady magazine of December 1981 begins as follows: “If prenatal influence counts for anything, the third daughter of the Rudolph household, born in September, should cry in a chromatic scale.”10 This comment refers to the very ambitious debut program of the New Music Network, in which I participated while heavily pregnant.
Mary Rorich in an article in the Lantern (1995) writes: “The fact that Zaidel-Rudolph is comfortable in her role as a woman does not mean however that her music is palpably ‘feminine’; in fact her compositional voice has a boldness and at times a confrontational element that confirms its innate virility.”11 I take that as a compliment. Although some of the above phrases can be construed as sexist and discriminatory, the older I get, the more charming I find them. I view them as being more protective and paternal than patronizing.
The early 1980s were characterized by a burgeoning of festivals devoted exclusively to women’s music. Although I was not in favor of gender segregation, I soon discovered the huge spin-offs of such festivals. The musicians hired to perform were of the highest calibre (some men were even allowed to play!). I was invited to give a paper at the First International Festival of Women in Music held in New York in March 1981. More than 750 delegates attended; it was indeed a unique occasion and the beginning of some wonderful friendships and valuable networking. In the same year in Johannesburg I launched the New Music Network, a society for the promotion of 20th-century music, and I became the first chairman (not chair person at that stage) of the society.
In March 1982 one of my compositions was chosen to be performed at the week-long “Donne in Musica” festival held in Rome in the magnificent Palazzo Braschi: 62 women composers from 28 countries spanning 14 centuries were represented. Top instrumentalists gave superb performances that were recorded for television and radio. Women composers from past centuries whose works had never been published were performed. My sponsorship for the festival came from a wonderful woman and patron of the arts, Eva Harvey, herself a composer. On my return from Italy, I was interviewed by Cathy Kentridge from The Sunday Express of October 1982, and I was quoted as angrily demanding, “When was the last time that a woman composer was featured in a concert program in Johannesburg?”12 I subsequently became very active in the arena of women’s music and began lecturing extensively on women composers. I became a member of the ILWC (International League of Women Composers) and am presently the South African liaison for the IAWM.
In 1986 I presented excerpts from my rock opera, Rage in a Cage, at a women’s festival in Israel. It was quite an eye-opener to be among so many women composers and especially female conductors. I have since had the privilege of having two women conductors direct orchestral pieces of mine at Women’s Day Celebrations at the Linder Auditorium in Johannesburg. Tania León interpreted my Tempus Fugit magnificently in 1995, and in 1998 Rita Paczian conducted At the end of the Rainbow, a work about Noah’s flood. I was thrilled by the critique that followed: “Zaidel-Rudolph’s work can take its place proudly next to its illustrious predecessors, Benjamin Britten and Stravinsky.”13
One of the highlights of my career as a composer in South Africa was my participation in the first Total Oil SA Composition Competition in 1986, and it was for this competition that I composed my orchestral work, Tempus Fugit. Since my music manuscript writing is not very legible, I asked someone to rewrite the score in beautiful music calligraphy. Thankfully, the competitors were to enter anonymously with only a pseudonym, for which I used my high school motto, “Spes Prosit Labori” (we work in hope), and attached it to my entry. There was a gathering of most of the active South African composers in the boardroom of Total Oil for the announcement of the results. When my pseudonym was read I realized with excitement that I had won first prize. This news, however, was met with a stunned silence on the part of the judges. One of the judges openly admitted to me that he and the others thought they had recognized the script and were convinced that the winner was someone else, a local male composer. Shock and disappointment registered on their faces, and it was a moment I will never forget.
We might recall a similar situation: Lili Boulanger entered the Prix de Rome competition anonymously with her orchestral composition, Helen and Faust. At the age of 19 she won this coveted prize, much to the horror of her male contemporary composers. The following year there was pressure from the other composers to remove the anonymity. She did not win that year and died a year later.
Typical newspaper articles on the Total competition featured headlines that proclaimed: “Mother of 3 Wins Top Competition.” Someday, I would like to see the headline: “Father of 2 Wins Composition Competition.”
In 1995 I was highly honored to be invited to participate in the Anthem Committee, which was given the task of shortening and rearranging the two South African national anthems. My restructuring proposal was accepted by the committee, and I was then commissioned to write the new piano version as well as an orchestral version, which I did (and for which I was paid). The English words that were included were also my own. I thought that being a woman in the New South Africa would count for something, but Mzlikazi Khumalo, who chaired the committee, went on record claiming that he had done the rewrite. Although this was later refuted in the press, it still remains a misconception for many.
In 1996 five male composers and I were each commissioned to write a section of the music for Oratorio for Human Rights, based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The work was to be premiered at the Olympic Games in Atlanta that year. I was predictably allocated the section on Rights of the Mother and Child, in addition to the Right to Education and Protection of Intellectual Property sections. I had no problem with these choices, but felt it might have made a more profound statement had one of the males written about the rights of mother and child.
In spite of the sometimes foolish and discriminatory attitudes I have encountered, I feel enormously privileged to have grown up as a composer in South Africa. I had caring and wonderful teachers as well as the support and confidence of friends and family. I was afforded great opportunities with many commissioned works and numerous recordings and broadcasts, and my critics have been enormously kind to me. I was recently commissioned to compose a work for the black Nqoko Women’s Choir from the Eastern Cape; their music and singing make them a national treasure, and their “overtone” singing style is uniquely beautiful. The work, Lifecycle for female choir, African bows and drums and Western ensemble of 11 was premiered in Pretoria on November 5, 2003 and had a gala performance in Cape Town on November 13. A project such as this, in which I can showcase the indigenous music of a relatively unknown choral group of women, is exceptionally fulfilling for me as a composer. I am doing what I love most—promoting women in music within an African context!14
1. The article was adapted from a paper Zaidel-Rudolph delivered at a conference on “Gender and Sexuality” at Pretoria University on August 26, 2003.
2. Staff reporter, “Music Triumph for Pretoria Woman,” The Star, June 15, 1973.
3. Vivien Allen, “Young Composer Strikes a High Note,” The Star (Pretoria Bureau), March, 12, 1974.
4. Joe Sack, “Women Call the Tune,” The Rand Daily Mail, May 29, 1974.
5. Len Ashton, “Portrait of a Composed Composer,” The Sunday Times, June 6, 1976.
6. Jaap Boekkooi, “She’s Glam, Isn’t She?” The Star, June 4, 1976.
7. I want to express my debt of gratitude to Stefans Grové, my teacher, mentor and supervisor for my D.Mus. degree. This was a man from whom I truly learned by example.
8. Marilyn Segal, “How Baby Beat Ma’s Deadline,” South African Chronicle, November 30, 1979.
9. Author unspecified, “Eerste Suid-Afrikaanse Vrou Kry ’n D.Mus.,” Die Vaderland, September 18, 1979. (Translated into English by Zaidel-Rudolph.)
10. Author unspecified, “Etceteras,” Fair Lady, December 2, 1981.
11. Mary Rörich, “Flashpoints for Creation,” Lantern, Winter 1995.
12. Cathy Kentridge, “The Sweet Sound of Success for South Africa’s Jeanne,” The Sunday Express, October 10, 1982.
13. Willem Scott, “Zaidel-Rudolph’s Work Can Take Its Place Proudly,” The Pretoria News, August 23, 1988.
14. For additional information on Zaidel-Rudolph’s musical style, particularly how she incorporates elements of African music into her compositions, see Riëtte Ferreira, “Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph: Leading the Way in South Africa,” IAWM Journal 4/3 (Fall 1998): 4-9.
It was a triumph for South African women when Miss Jeanne Zaidel from Pretoria won First Prize in the Cobbett Competition for young composers at the Royal College of Music in London. Miss Zaidel was the only woman competitor and her work, “Reaction,” was described by Sir Lennox Berkley, British composer and adjudicator, as a “work of the utmost ingenuity and of an extremely high standard.”2
NOTES