TONSPUR_display #11 • Sabine Groschup • „Moment!” {Klang ohne Ton}

“The musical score is the silent sister of the performance.”
(Sabine Groschup)

One part of my installation shows a series of pages of classical sheet music. Paper boats bearing photographs of female composers float on this sea of scores. My sea of music is a silent one, while it shows chants, etudes, orchestrations etc., which resound loudly in their heads when read by composers and musicians. This is a sea based on the handwriting of men.

Invisible in the history of music, female composers have been fighting for visibility for centuries. The sails have been set and a fleet of 87 women composers is sailing into a future that will, hopefully, make their compositions heard.

The 87 female composers are representative of all female composers who have existed and continue to exist over the generations. Together they form an armada, a fleet that spans nations and spans the centuries. Included are woman composers such as the French Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), the British Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), the American Florence Price (1887-1953), the German Luise Adolpha Le Beau (1850-1927), the Austrian Olga Neuwirth (1968) and many more.

The second part of the installation engages with the question of which areas of classical music women have succeeded in achieving prominence.
Women have always excelled at singing. Two projections, each onto a paper ship, show South Korean soprano Esther Lee and the Italian soprano and performer Eleonora Claps in action. While they are not performing classical vocal pieces, they are interpreting a key work of experimental vocal art, the 1958 composition Aria by John Cage.

I went to an all-girls grammar school in Innsbruck from 1975 to 1978 where music was mandatory in the sixth form. Music belonged to men. I learnt the biographies of all the ‘important’ composers by heart. Not a single female name was mentioned in those years. There were no women musicians in the curriculum, let alone female composers, not even any singers. That’s where I say: “Hang on a moment!”

TONSPUR_display #11
Sabine Groschup
: „Moment!“ {Klang ohne Ton}
TONSPUR für einen öffentlichen raum 2024

16 Dec 2024—12 Mar 2025
Preview • Sunday • 15 Dec 2024 • 17:00
Opening words • Sabine Kienzer

TONSPUR_display | Showroom
TONSPUR Kunstverein Wien
MuseumsQuartier Wien
Museumsplatz 1 • 1070 Vienna
daily 10:00 to 20:00