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

Abstract

We are two feminist music historians – Välimäki has a background in musicology, Koivisto-Kaasik in history – who have recently worked together on a joint research project entitled Daughters of Music: Finnish women Composers from the 19th Century to the 20th Century (2018–23). Having carried out extensive archive work with original sources, we have unearthed about one hundred fifty Finnish women composers born between the years 1784 and 1909 who were thus far almost completely neglected in the literature on Finnish music history. The main publication related to the project is a peer-reviewed music-historical encyclopaedia comprising the biographies and list of compositions of 126 composers. Moreover, the encyclopaedia includes extensive introductory and closing chapters discussing methodology and results (Välimäki and Koivisto-Kaasik 2023). --