Chapter 10 ?Mabel Daniels?s Place in American Composition? Mabel Daniels and her work mirror many of the important themes of her time, reflecting shifts in American society and culture from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. Profound and rapid changes in technology and lifestyle provoked a range of responses from embracing the avant-garde to resisting it. In Chapter 1 I argued Daniels?s importance to the history of American music. While many of her works are powerful and merit performance, they are missing from today?s concert repertory. Most are out of print. A strategic question dominated Daniels?s life and compositional practice: how could she as a woman of her era join the ranks of serious composers in America? How could she compose works that
…show more content…
She did not participate in stylistic modernism in a cutting-edge way that was monolithically male and of startlingly novel outlook as described in textbooks, or in the misogynist diatribes written by male modernists during the early years of the twentieth century.[footnoteRef:10] Yet both her life and works reflect adaptation to the modern age. Women?s omission from the historiographic process explains why we do not know about them and their works. Men were all along associated with the modern, the public arena, and by extension with the present, while women were connected with the domestic sphere, and by extension with the past, which led to a view that women were never a part of music history. Lastly, Daniels?s situation as a wealthy woman was a double-edged sword. While it aided her career as a composer by allowing her the leisure with which to perfect her craft?and contacts through which to establish and secure her career and reputation?it ironically put her ultimately in the league of woman patron. [10: ??A Distinguishing Virility,?
She did not participate in stylistic modernism in a cutting-edge way that was monolithically male and of startlingly novel outlook as described in textbooks, or in the misogynist diatribes written by male modernists during the early years of the twentieth century.[footnoteRef:10] Yet both her life and works reflect adaptation to the modern age. Women?s omission from the historiographic process explains why we do not know about them and their works. Men were all along associated with the modern, the public arena, and by extension with the present, while women were connected with the domestic sphere, and by extension with the past, which led to a view that women were never a part of music history. Lastly, Daniels?s situation as a wealthy woman was a double-edged sword. While it aided her career as a composer by allowing her the leisure with which to perfect her craft?and contacts through which to establish and secure her career and reputation?it ironically put her ultimately in the league of woman patron. [10: ??A Distinguishing Virility,?