5 - Women Composers and Feminism

Summary

In April 1960, the conductor Kathleen Merritt (1901–85) led an all-woman programme at London’s Wigmore Hall. Despite the fact that concerts entirely of music by women composers had been performed in Britain since at least the 1920s, by 1960 it was still unusual to find a woman’s name on a UK concert programme. Merritt’s concert, therefore, attracted press coverage focusing on her gender, and that of the composers whose music she was performing. In a promotional interview, the Sunday Times gave an account of the conductor that today reads very much like a description of a feminist, declaring: ‘[She] fights not only for women, but for new music by living composers.’¹ Merritt herself, however, was adamant that she was ‘not a feminist’.² The Sunday Times was quick to reassure readers that ‘Merritt has none of the alarming if admirable trappings of women who fight for women’s causes.’³