A Short Prehistory of Western Music, Chapter 3

22 P Tagg: A Short Prehistory of Western Music Chapter 3
Judging from the pictures themselves, it seems that women played an important
part in the music cultures discussed in this chapter. However, I have so far been
unable to find any literature dealing with the role or status of female musicians
portrayed in the iconography. The texts I have had access to which describe the actual
musical cultures are mostly written by men and do not mention the role of
women in music. Moreover, very few texts which explicitly address the topic of female
musicianship deal with periods before the eighteenth century, and even then
mainly with European women composers. Therefore, until I find sources providing
clues to the questions just posed, I can only speculate and ask more questions.
One striking trait common to the four pictures of female musicians in this chapter
is that the women are all young and attractive: none of them appear to be middleaged,
old, obese, undernourished, silver-haired or disabled. Another common trait
is that they are all clothed quite sumptuously. Attractively dressed and presented,
the young women must also have been considered talented enough as singers,
dancers or instrumentalists to appear at court. Can these women be compared to
today’s girl bands whose members possess some musical talent while conforming to
current notions of beauty and attractive presentation? Or did the young women of
those ancient civilisations have to assume the role of courtesan in addition to that
of musician? If so, were their conditions as ignominious as those under which the
ballet girls of the Paris Opera, with its top floor designed like a brothel, were expected
to work in the nineteenth century? Perhaps neither prostitution nor polygamy
were involved? Could the young women have been respected artists, on a par
with male musicians, artists, writers and thinkers?
Where were the young women recruited from? Were they slaves, as seems to have
sometimes been the case in ancient Egypt, or were they the daughters of artisans,
traders or lower officials who hoped to marry them off to someone in the emperor’s
family? Perhaps girls were press-ganged from the streets or countryside, or did impoverished
parents have to sell their talented daughters in order to help provide for
the rest of the family? How were the young women educated in music? Were they
expected to be accomplished musicians before they appeared at court, or were they
provided with in-house training, as seems to have been the case with the Egyptian
sistrum sisters shown in figure 3:2 (p.6)? And what happened when the women had
children and grew older? Were they dumped on the social rubbish heap or provided
for? Or were older women nevertheless employed as musicians despite their apparent
absence from extant pictures of music in the ‘high’ cultures of ancient times?
Why are these issues not addressed in the histories of the music cultures I have had
access to? Why could I not find anything on the internet? Is it just because I have
not had enough time to investigate more sources nor to ferret out answers buried
elsewhere? Or is it because history is still very much men’s history, mainly written
by men, even though over half of humanity is female, even though so many women
appear in pictures of the subject discussed in this chapter? Although the whole issue
of the role of women in the musical worlds of ancient times, and of its historiography,
may be great importance, I regret that I am unable to answer any of the
questions just raised. We will therefore revert to the main thread of this chapter’s
narrative.