I’m sitting alone in the front pew of the University of Virginia Chapel on a cold December night. In front of me there is a tall metal stand with a set of bongos perched precariously atop. Behind me sits the entire crowd of the sold out Virginia Women’s Chorus Candlelight Concert. When I arrived in Charlottesville months earlier, I could have never expected to be here. I have just finished performing a piece with the chorus minutes earlier, when a member of the chorus steps forward and addresses the audience to explain and introduce the next piece. The piece was “Song of the Universal” by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo. The piece is for chorus and accompanying piano and string quartet. The member introducing the piece notes that every person on stage, including the accompanying players and the conductor, are female to the audiences humored laughter. In fact, I was the only person to step on stage for the entire performance who was of the male gender. What does this mean, why is it special or uncanny for an entire ensemble to be made up of exclusively women? What does music do to change implications and assumptions on this matter? What are we expecting? This entire situation I found myself in seemed to be nothing more than a happy accident. KaeRenae Mitchell emailed me mid-semester to ask if I would be interested in helping the Virginia Women’s Chorus by playing bongos for Jubilate Deo, a piece that they would be showcasing throughout the semester. (She knew that I was a percussionist because I had previously expressed interest in joining the Charlottesville Symphony, but decided against it due to time constraints.) I immediately expressed great interest in playing for her and we worked out the details of future practices. I had already played bongos and congas, ironically enough, with my high school chorus, and it was a relatively simple job, so I expected the same from this one. Before meeting with KaeRenae to receive the sheet music and some practice bongos, I assumed that I would just be playing simple bongo riffs alongside a traditional African tune or some simple folk chanty of sorts. I couldn’t have been any more wrong. After receiving the sheet music, I was baffled. There were hardly two measures in a row in the same meter. I could see the other parts on my score, and none of them were as I had expected either. There were two violin parts interweaving countermelodies and only occasionally lining up with the chorus. The piece was also entirely in Latin, and seemed to be spiritually-based. None of my assumptions were met, and that scared me at first. Why had I assumed that this would be a simple request that I could just breeze through with little strife? Partly, I would give merit to the fact that I had previously had encounters with accompanying choruses with relative ease, but also, gender expectations and stereotypes could play into this. Would I have responded with different assumptions if an all-male group had requested my accompaniment? I cannot answer this specific question, but I can look at studies done on gender expectations in music and draw some ideas from that. Studies have shown that there does seem to be a gender bias by audiences, even those who are musically trained to make judgements of musical performances by women.
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A study by Charles A. Elliot shows that gender indeed plays a role in the judgement of musical performances, relating instruments to perceived masculine/feminine associations (Elliot 53). While the study is somewhat different because it shows performances of instrumentalists, the same way of thinking can be applied. When an audience member sees an all-female chorus, they judge it differently than an all-male or integrated chorus. This is due to initial expectations that they believe will be fulfilled in the performance. One consideration while thinking about this expectation is that of the repertoire of the typical chorus. The expectation of most choral music seems to be Western art music from the classical tradition. (This is not to be confused with a cappella music which is almost entirely pop music). When speaking to my hall mates of my work with the Virginia Women’s Chorus before an upcoming concert, one said to me: “I bet my grandma would like it.” This was for
A study by Charles A. Elliot shows that gender indeed plays a role in the judgement of musical performances, relating instruments to perceived masculine/feminine associations (Elliot 53). While the study is somewhat different because it shows performances of instrumentalists, the same way of thinking can be applied. When an audience member sees an all-female chorus, they judge it differently than an all-male or integrated chorus. This is due to initial expectations that they believe will be fulfilled in the performance. One consideration while thinking about this expectation is that of the repertoire of the typical chorus. The expectation of most choral music seems to be Western art music from the classical tradition. (This is not to be confused with a cappella music which is almost entirely pop music). When speaking to my hall mates of my work with the Virginia Women’s Chorus before an upcoming concert, one said to me: “I bet my grandma would like it.” This was for