Women composers yesterday-today

The International Festival Women Composers Yesterday-Today in Heidelberg was held for the first time in 1985. Initially a private initiative of the singer Roswitha Sperber , the cultural institute for women composers yesterday-today was founded in Heidelberg, which had set itself the task of promoting women in music and drawing attention to female composers by performing compositions by women from all centuries . This was the purpose of the festival, which was joined by its own festival ensemble. The events were supported by the city of Heidelberg and, five years after the premiere, also by the state of Baden-Württemberg.

history

In the early years, alongside historical personalities ( Fanny Hensel -Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann , Lili Boulanger and others), contemporary female composers, mainly from the "Eastern Bloc" at the time, were at the center of the festival. Sofia Gubaidulina , Galina Ustwolskaja , Elena Firsowa or Firəngiz Əlizadə from the Soviet Union , Myriam Marbe , Violeta Dinescu or Adriana Hölszky from Romania , Ivana Loudová from Czechoslovakia and Ruth Zechlin and Annette Schlünz from the GDR performed in Heidelberg and were not only performed here , but also received composition commissions. In addition, Ruth Schonthal and Gloria Coates from the USA and Younghi Pagh-Paan from Korea were both guests here several times.

In the 1990s, the festival was renamed Gegenwelten - International Festival for New Music . As early as the late 1980s, the focus had shifted to contemporary music, especially (not exclusively) by women, and from 1987 onwards it awarded the Heidelberg Female Composers Prize annually . In conjunction with the Musicological Institute of Heidelberg University, the cultural institute was able to develop and publish numerous research articles on the subject of women and music. The festival founder Roswitha Sperber received the Federal Cross of Merit for her activities in 2000 .

The Gegenwelten Festival has been taking place since 2002 in cooperation with the State University for Music and Performing Arts Mannheim, distributed between Dilsberg (Neckar), Heidelberg and Mannheim and has also expanded thematically to include jazz . The Female Artist Prize has been awarded as the Heidelberg Female Artist Prize by the Lord Mayor of Heidelberg since 2007 .

List of award winners

With the female artist prize of the cultural institute (since 2007 Heidelberg female artist prize ) a. excellent

1987 Myriam Marbe 1990 Adriana Hölszky 1991 Sofia Gubaidulina 1992 Galina Ustvolskaya 1993 Ivana Loudová 1994 Ruth Schonthal 1995 Younghi Pagh-Paan 1996 Ruth Zechlin 1997 Babette Koblenz 1998 Annette Schlünz

1999 Christina Kubisch 2000 Elżbieta Sikora 2002 Olga Magidenko 2003 Carolyn Breuer 2005 Roswitha Sperber 2007 Unsuk Chin 2008 Olga Neuwirth 2009 Kaija Saariaho 2010 Misato Mochizuki 2011 Isabel Mundry

2012 Jamilia Jazylbekova 2013 Maria Panayotova 2014 Lucia Ronchetti 2015 Iris ter Schiphorst 2016 Chaya Czernowin 2017 Ying Wang 2018 Zeynep Gedizlioğlu 2019 Elena Mendoza

Publications

• Cultural Institute Female Composers Yesterday-Today (ed.) Female Composers International Festival 5 Years - Documentation. Heidelberg 1989.
• Kulturinstitut Women Composers Yesterday - Today (ed.) Gegenwelten - 10 years Heidelberg Culture Institute Women composers yesterday - today. Heidelberg, 1997

Web links

• Heidelberg Artist Prize 2018

See also

• Olga Smirnitskaja (Russian: Ольга Смирнитская), 1837–1920

References

1. ↑ Heidelberg - CITY LEAF Online 43/00. Retrieved November 12, 2018 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Heidelberger Künstlerinnenpreis at www.heidelberger-philharmoniker.de; accessed on October 28, 2018.
3. ↑ Artist Prize 2018 u. a. with a detailed biography of the Turkish composer Gedizlioğlu, accessed on October 28, 2018.

See also

• Women in music