twiss@stolaf.UUCP (01/28/84)
I think the present discussions about rape and the purpose of net.women are very important, but I would like to introduce a new topic of discussion that should prove very interesting. The other night I attended a recital in which a particular woman was playing who is not a great musician. When she was finished, a friend of mine (who is an excellent musician) turned to me and said, "Why are women such lousy musicians?" Needless to say, I got really mad. His argument was that women (most of them) don't play agressively and are too feminine. I got really mad and we've been discussing this for several days now. The way the discussion went is that my friend said that agressiveness is an important factor and that it is a male characteristic. Therefore, for a woman to be good, she must exhibit this trait. This really bothered me that women (according to him) could not be agressive and retain their femininity. I asked him if he had any feminine traits and he said he did and that he was proud opf them. For example, he said he could never play a Brahms intermezzo (very quiet, soft, and controlled) without a certain tenderness that he labeled "feminine". My question to the readers of the net is: are certain traits restricted to one sex or the other and are any of them "better" than any other (obviously I don't want to restrict this to the topic of music)? I feel that a woman can be just as good a musician as a man and that they can exhibit the necesary "agressiveness" required of any musician without losing any femininity. The thing that really bothered me was how my friend compared everything in terms of male traits. This implied a certain pecking order in which men came out on top which I thought was ridiculous. Now of course there are differences between men and women that cannot and should not be ignored. By recognizing and appreciating these differences I think we can all be more aware of ourselves. But just how far do these differences go? Do men almost always make better musicians, presidents, astronauts, atheletes, etc.? I hope not!! I told my friend that several years ago no one would have even thought about a woman president or astronaut. But now changes are being made. If he continues his views, that will simply impede the same kind of changes in the field of music and other areas. Well, netters? What do you think? Are certain traits best left to specific sexes and does or should these traits restrict people to certain roles (aside from the obvious example of parents where the differences of the sexes is almost essential and does dictate certain roles)? Let's see what people think (and hope that women don't get delegated to only some roles). For clarity's sake, let's refer to this topic as Male/Female Roles in further discussion. Tom Twiss ...!ihnp4!stolaf!twiss
lincoln@eosp1.UUCP (Dick Lincoln) (01/30/84)
Re: Female Musicians. You will not find a better solo (unaccompanied) jazz pianist alive today than Marian McPartland. Ask any generally accepted "good" jazz pianist. She is marvelously adept at every jazz style from ragtime to avant garde "free" modal, polytonal or atonal; and her "Piano Jazz" NPR series is *the* standard on understanding jazz piano and jazz pianists (with apologies to Dr. Billy Taylor whose similar series is also excellent).
rmc@cca.UUCP (Mark Chilenskas) (02/02/84)
I think that this topic has been discussed a bit before, with the
conclusion being that there probably were some statistical differences
between women and men but that the variance between people was too large
to be able to make use of the statistical differences.
Now on to music and chess as specific cases.
Saying that women are not / can not be competent musicians is just
fantasy, pure and simple. There is an old saying that Piatagorsky
played the cello as well as was humanly possible, then came
Rostropovich, who plays better than humanly possible. It is unusual to
find any area, especially of a creative field, so thoroughly dominated
by one particular individual as cellists are by the technique of
Rostropovich. But when he listens to other cellists, who does he like?
Jacqueline Du Pre! (this info from an old interview i heard, probably
on NPR, just after he moved to Washington DC).
There are of course many other women who are world class musicians.
Rosalyn Turek is gone, but where would modern harpsichord technique be
without her? And then there is Martha Argereich (sigh, that looks
mis-spelled), who set pianists on their ear with her interpretations of
romantic music, especially Schuman. ET Swillich is a good enough
composer to have won a Pulizer. Granted, you can not find as many noted
women as noted men, but there are easier reasons to explain that than
using some comments about femininity and agressiveness being mutually
exclusive.
In chess there are no women who have acheived the exhalted status of
International Grandmaster. In fact, the disparity in play is so great
between men and women that there are separate championships and
grandmaster categories for men and women.
Or is it the other way around? In the Soviet Union, where chess is
a rather important political activity and their "equal treatment of
women" is an important political edge, women and men do not train for
international competition together. After a certain age (i think around
12), their training is segregated. But in chess, it is impossible to
progress unless you play people as good or better than yourself. Thus,
unless women are competing in major international events they will not
become as strong as the men who compete together. However, as usual,
there is hope. Pia Cramling (i think of Sweden) has been playing in the
full olympics and one of the recent US candidates for Women's World
Champion (sigh, don't have my chess library here and her name slips my
mind. Rachel someone, but Rachel Carson is a scientist.) is now a men's
International Master and working on breaking into major tournaments.
Now chess is an activity where aggression helps if ever there was
such an activity. And yet even though the championship cycle is
segregated, even though an unrated woman international player must start
with a rating 200 points lower than an unrated man, there are still some
fine games being played by women and some are breaking into the men's
tourneys. This is despite the curves organized chess has thrown them.
Give your friend some cases, and let him explain them away. As
long as you stay in completely abstract discussions, each side can prove
anything they want. It is only when you test your hypotheses in real
world cases that you can get anywhere.
R Mark Chilenskas
Chilenskas @ CCA-VMS
decvax!cca!rmc