The Feminine Face of Musical Modernism: Women as Collaborators in Arnold Schoenberg's Musical Networks

FAIN: FB-56224-12

Elizabeth Lorraine Keathley
University of North Carolina, Greensboro (Greensboro, NC 27412-5068)

When we shift the focus of inquiry from fêted modernist composers to the networks that enabled the composition and performance of their music, we find women in key roles—not as passive helpers, but as active subjects advancing their own artistic, social, and personal interests in the collaborative processes that created and sustained musical modernism. Drawing on interpretive models from sociology, philanthropy scholarship, and women’s history, my study uses archival materials to illuminate women’s work in collaborative networks pervading the modern music subcultures in which Schoenberg worked. Using a single composer as a structuring principle rather than a protagonist, the study focuses on networks and interactions, not solely on individual accomplishments. Through their networks and in their roles as performers, librettists, patrons, and writers, women proposed and contested the terrain of musical modernism, affording them agency in the formation of their own modern identities.