Neglect, injustice, sidelining, patriarchal domination... these are some of the issues raised by our colleague Guillaume Kosmicki in his new book Compositrices: l'histoire oubliée de la musique, published by Le mot et le reste, which rehabilitates the presence of women composers in music and throughout the ages. Attached to their cause for more than ten years, the author rewrites the story, differently.

After an introduction that is as synthetic as it is enlightening, addressing the important notions attached to the problematic, the author adopts a chronological path, from Antiquity to the present day, on the model of a textbook on the history of Western art music: always taking care to anchor his study in the socio-political context and the evolution of thought and aesthetics of the eight historical periods considered.

It is here the place of women, in society on the one hand, in music on the other, that is highlighted: "Polyphony and the exclusion of women," the author titles his history of the Middle Ages; "A very masculine humanism," he notes, with regard to the Renaissance; "Enlightenment that did not light up for them," at the dawn of the XVIIIᵉ century. A history of feminism emerges in the background, which the author makes begin in the XIXᵉ century and of which he points out the three successive waves, from suffragism, born at the end of the XIXᵉ and then spreading throughout the world, to the aspirations of the LGBTQIA+ community of the last thirty years.

Who are these women composers of history who defy patriarchal absolutism and the prohibitions of their time to appear in public and give voice to their music? They are instrumentalists or singers, daughters of good families who have access to studies, wives and mothers who sometimes have political responsibilities... In short, exceptional women, true heroines that history written by men for men has left behind!

Guillaume Kosmicki devotes portraits to them that mark each historical period: one for Antiquity(Sappho) and the Renaissance(Maddalena Casulana), three for the Middle Ages, from four to six for the following periods and up to twenty-two for the world of today, from the Etiopian Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou (1923-2023) to the Italian Clara Iannotta (born in 1983).

Without claiming to be exhaustive, the author's choice responds to two main criteria: first, the need for each composer to have at least one recording available to the reader: "This is a work of popularization, in the noble sense of the word", he ^specifies1, "and I have made sure that the two or three works that I describe in more detail in each portrait, can be listened to".

The CD covers (monographs or compilations) are, moreover, the only iconographic resources in the book. The second criterion is the requirement of an international panel of women composers, forcing even more drastic choices within the XXᵉ and XXIᵉ centuries where women are fortunately becoming more numerous in the universe of creation: "I wanted to show that they are illustrating themselves today in all genres and practices of music, from electroacoustic to digital, from the serial movement to spectral music, from the instrumental world to the opera stage."

As he did in the three volumes of Musique savanteGuillaume Kosmicki also welcomes jazz and improvised music in a list where Carla Bley, Joëlle Léandre or Nina Simone rub shoulders with Kaija Saariaho, Xu Yi, Edith Canat de Chizy or Unsuk Chin.

The work is both abundant and edifying, upsetting our certainties and encouraging us to listen to music differently. For Guillaume Kosmicki, who takes on the role of activist, the research has only just begun and the reflection is open, aware that many other female geniuses are still to be discovered.

Michèle Tosi

The book Les compositrices (Éditions Le mot et le reste)
Listen to Guillaume Kosmicki invited by Arnaud Merlin onFrance Musique, at 1h28'.

1. An important glossary at the end of the book gives access to the understanding of all musical terms.

Photo article © Editions Le mot et le reste