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Concertinas A "women's Instrument"?


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One wonders what criterion was used to decide which instruments were OK for women and which were not?

 

 

Perhaps certian wind instruments were considered off limits? I took a vocal pedagogy seminar back before there was a single grey hair on my head that delt fleetingly with breath support issues for women during the Victorian era. The author of a period article presented on the subject (whose name is long forgotten) cautioned female singers against deep abdominal breath support claiming possible damage to their reproductive organs. Seems to me the real issue would have been those horrendous corsets Victorian ladies were trapped in :blink: .

Edited by Mark Evans
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Guest Peter Laban

In Ireland flutes would have been too physical, fiddles may have been an option for women but they were often too expensive, the (German) concertina was easy enough to play and was cheap.

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I wonder and may be wrong but nowadays it seems that more men play it than women.

 

 

At the various concertina events I have attended, there is a mixture of male/female attendance, which varies from place to place and time to time. I have not tried to compile statistics, but a quick check of ICA membership shows 70% Male, 26% female, and 4% joint membership. It should be noted that there are a number of cases where both members of a partnership play, but only a single membership is registered.

 

John Wild

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I wonder and may be wrong but nowadays it seems that more men play it than women.

 

 

At the various concertina events I have attended, there is a mixture of male/female attendance, which varies from place to place and time to time. I have not tried to compile statistics, but a quick check of ICA membership shows 70% Male, 26% female, and 4% joint membership. It should be noted that there are a number of cases where both members of a partnership play, but only a single membership is registered.

 

John Wild

Myabe it is time that the ladies became members of the ICA since there seem to be so many. Can we do something about that? Some PR for the ICA and the ICA can give some special attention to the female players?? Without forgetting about the male players ofcourse. In the workshops in the Netherlands I ususally see more men than women and if there are many more female players than men it does not show in the concertina weekends I visit in the UK. I seem to see just slightly more men in general. Not really having counted them I know there are always more than enough men in the Ceilidh in Swaledale to keep the present women dancing all night. And then there are still men sitting around the dancefloor during the dance. Would there be a difference in number for Anglo , English and Duet players?

Edited by Pauline de Snoo
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Maybe it is time that the ladies became members of the ICA since there seem to be so many. Can we do something about that?

I can assure you that in Ireland the ICA has a 100% female membership.

 

But then again, here the letters stand for the Irish Countrywomen's Association :www.ica.ie, the Irish equivalent of the Women's Institute. :)

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I can assure you that in Ireland the ICA has a 100% female membership.

But then again, here the letters stand for the Irish Countrywomen's Association :www.ica.ie, the Irish equivalent of the Women's Institute.  :)

 

 

there are quite a lot of organisations using these initials, even just locally for me in the U.K. My favourite alternative is the ice cream association.

 

- John

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To show that some ladies also play English system, and all play better than I do! Here are some pix taken at Hawkwood 2005, one of whom is my little lass. B)

 

Dave

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One wonders what criterion was used to decide which instruments were OK for women and which were not?

 

Surely there are some instruments which just seem more feminine, and I wouldn't be the first to mention the classical guitar, the harp and so on - these instruments have a sort of feminine aura about them somehow. I wouldn't be so crass as to say a woman is like a guitar without saying what a man is like (bass, drums, trumpet?).

 

I guess it would be more productive to think in terms of what instrument suits personality types. What type of person "suits the concertina"?

 

My guess would be someone who

 

values precision

likes to be expressive

is slightly quirky, not following the crowd

is an individualist rather than a team player

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Apparently the mandolin was seen as acceptable for women to play in Victorian times, too; I've seen a few references in some of the novels from the time.

One wonders what criterion was used to decide which instruments were OK for women and which were not?

 

I think the main criterion for what instruments were suitable for women was regarding what instruments were not unsuitable for any of a number of instruments. Certainly because of corsets, most women would not have been able to play the flute or other wind instruments very well (as others have already pointed out). In addition instruments that would someone be at all suggestive were probably not considered acceptable; one can't imagine women of the time playing cellos for example ;).

 

--

Bill

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Would there be a difference in number for Anglo , English and Duet players?

 

 

More statistics from the database. Duet players are in a minority overall. Actual numbers of duet players are 43 male and 16 female. Of these 15 and 6 respectively play the duet in addition to either an anglo or english.

 

- John Wild

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In addition instruments that would someone be at all suggestive were probably not considered acceptable; one can't imagine women of the time playing cellos for example ;).

Certainly not! Nor the viola da gamba. That is why a certain keyboard instrument seen as an alternative for women who wished to play an accompanying instrument was known as the Virginal.

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... one can't imagine women of the time playing cellos for example ;).

Nor the viola da gamba.

David,

 

You had better not say that to the likes of Hille Perl, or Joëlle Morton !

 

Actually, there is plenty of evidence to show that women did play the viola da gamba, and there are many images of them doing so in the Musical Iconography section of Joëlle Morton's website http://www.greatbassviol.com/iconography.html. Some samples follow :

 

anon16th.jpg

Anon. Italian, 16th c. (Women playing an Italian virginals, recorder & viola da gamba, man playing lute.)

 

metsu.jpg

Gabriel Metsu (1629 - 1667) - Reverie.

 

musscher.jpg

Michiel Musscher (1645 - 1705) - Woman With Gamba.

 

netscher.jpg

Caspar Netscher (ca.1635-1684).

 

 

But by the early 19th century, only the piano, harp and guitar were considered "seemly" for ladies to play. The concertina was promoted as an expressive instrument suitable for women, upon which music written for wind instruments or the violin could be performed, though the majority of Wheatstone's customers were male.

 

In the late 19th/early 20th century these old taboos started to break down, so much so that Beatrice Harrison (1892-1965) became a leading cellist. In 1910, at the age of 17, she became the youngest player and first cellist ever to win the Mendelssohn Prize. This was open to anyone who had ever studied at a German college (she had studied in Berlin), and she played the Schumann Concerto. The British Ambassador gave the news to the Kaiser who replied "an English girl, never! For golf perhaps, but music no".

Edited by Stephen Chambers
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So I still can't remember where I originally came across the concertinas = women's instrument thing... but this morning I was reading a bit of Gearoid O'Hallmhurain's "A Pocket History of Irish Traditional Music" and came across this line about 1880s Ireland: "The concertina replaced the pipes as a household instrument, especially among female players" (80). Anyway, maybe that's no big deal or anything, but it sort of funny to come across just as this topic is up here.

 

It seems from what's been posted above as if there was maybe some sort of disparity between actual numbers of the players of each sex and the general notion of what those numbers should have been... or maybe not? It's not that easy to tell is it?

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