Women-Composers in Poland

The feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s contributed to a rapid development of studies on women’s life, social position and achievements. Musicologists also began to demonstrate an interest in the music composing and performing activity of that half of humankind that had previously been ignored as a serious subject of study. Today, research into the broadly conceived women’s musical output constitutes a large proportion of musicological studies, and the literature of the subject comprises hundreds of books and papers. Those studies represent a wide and varied spectrum of what is collectively referred to as gender studies, which seems to focus on the interrelation between gender and musical activity, on the social context of women’s musical output, and on the criteria for the assessment of their artistic achievements.

The present volume of Musicology Today contributes, on the one hand, to the global trend of ‘feminist musicology’, while on the other it provides us with a unique opportunity to present some outstanding but not always sufficiently well-known Polish women-composers. The seven papers published here include the profiles of women-composers spanning the period of nearly three centuries, from Maria Antonia Walpurgis (1724–1780) to Justyna Kowalska-Lasoń (b. 1985), a talented Polish composer of the youngest generation.