Hello !
I am the founder of Musique Femmes Festival. As a musician myself, I thought female composers didn't exist. Then I discovered little by little that they were, and that they were even many ! Why are they not known? Mystery. They have passed through the centuries in the shadows.
Musique Femmes Festival aims to contribute to bringing them some light.
Why a festival dedicated to female composers ?
If you ask someone to name a famous composer, they will probably say Mozart or Beethoven. If you ask them to name a well-known female composer, you're unlikely to get an answer. In fact, the general public very rarely hears about them. We don't know if there were any, who they are, let alone what they composed. Yet women have been writing music since Antiquity. If they are not played, not taught, not known, it is not because they are not geniuses, it is because they have been, more or less unconsciously, left out of the history of music.
Habits, tradition, sometimes ignorance, mean that women composers are still today, often involuntarily, excluded from the transmission of knowledge in classical culture.
There has certainly been progress, awareness and initiatives, particularly in recent years. But classical music is still a bastion to be taken up for the cause of gender equality. Women composers of the past have still not entered the collective memory, and there are still far more men than women in composition classes.
So why create a festival entirely dedicated to women composers? It's in no way to dismiss the works of composers whose talent has long been recognised and celebrated. Rather, it is an attempt to restore a balance that does not currently exist in this field, to recognise and celebrate women composers who deserve a place among the great figures of classical music.
Musique Femmes Festival aims to be a modern festival, offering a stage to women composers of the past as well as those of the present; to classical composers as well as songwriters.
Now in its second year, this first-of-its-kind festival in Brussels presents 6 exceptional concerts featuring passionate and talented musicians. Check out the full programme here.
See you in October!
Julie Rozé