New French website dedicated to female composers

[Wheesht]

A new French website dedicated to female composers has gone live. Despite the partly English title, it is so far only available in French. It is apparently run by the same people who started the new label that brought out the Charlotte Sohy 3-disc box set last month.

[Alan Howe]

I'll be frank: I'm distinctly underwhelmed.

[Alan Howe]

There's nothing new there, is there? What in particular is supposed to attract my attention?

[Gareth Vaughan]

I see what you mean, Alan. Let us hope the site will grow quickly. At the moment it is clearly in its infancy - and IMHO it would have been better to wait until more pages had been "populated" before launching it.

[Alan Howe]

I hope I'm proved wrong, but just who are these composers we're supposed to be looking forward to hearing about? Are they really going to be superior to the many, many composers (too numerous to list here) whom we already know about but haven't yet heard? I simply don't believe it.

[Alan Howe]

Of course it has a right to exist. I'm just not convinced - yet - that it's going to have a lot to offer.

And I stand by my contention that there are far too many other composers who have hardly been given a chance as regards either concert or recorded performances. To take a current example: we have only just encountered a real-world performance of Grimm's Symphony (making special mention here of Reverie's outstanding computer realisation of the work, of course)!

[Mark Thomas]

I'm afraid that the zeitgeist is against you, Alan. Obscure white male European composers who've been dead for 120+ years just aren't where the money or the media are at present.

[Alan Howe]

Oh, I've been behind the zeitgeist all my life. And it's getting away from me ever more quickly these days. The problem with the zeitgeist, of course, is that it's ever changing. Some change is good, but eternal verities tend to get squashed (squished?!) in the process.

[eschiss1]

Too true. It is, I grant you, unfortunate that there are so many fewer recordings of Raff, including his operas, Cipriani Potter, Rheinberger, etc. than there were 20 years ago, and that of the 17 next Composer of the Week episodes on BBC3, 5 are by Vaughan Williams (who died less than 120 years ago), 5 are by Handel (who's not obscure), and 5 are devoted to Holmès and Duparc (obscure, but one female and one male but only Holmès coming close to 120 years.)

[Mark Thomas]

The Holmès and Duparc episodes are repeats of some from a couple of years ago, I assume. I lobbied as hard as I could to get Raff's bicentenary recognised by the BBC in the Composer of the Week series - just got the "usual bug letter" emails in reply. And so, to return to the French web site (if there's anything more to say)....