oa Music Historians as Feminist Activists: Gender Mainstreaming in Contemporary Concert Repertoires

In this article, we present a range of ideas and methods for feminist and activist music historians willing to promote gender-equal and more diverse concert programming. Our observations stem from a six-year research project during which we mapped out the lives and careers of 126 women composers from nineteenth- and twentieth-century Finland, as well as conducted grass-root-level activist work as concert hosts, journalists, critics, and editors in various collaborative projects. In line with previous feminist and intersectional research, we argue that it is not enough simply to add historical women, gender-nonconforming, BIPOC, and other marginalised composers into our curricula and concert culture, but rather to fundamentally change the way we think about music history and concert programming. This change of attitude is especially crucial in fields such as orchestral music and opera, and it needs to be granted more resources and attention in the future.

Keywords: action-oriented research ; activist music history ; concert programming ; counter stories ; feminist music history ; gender studies