“Not every day a pretty woman who knows how to write appears in the world”: Consonances and dissonances in the brazilian music press (1896-1960)

Abstract

Writing about music at the turn of the century in Brazil was a masculine profession. Clarifying when women -almost all of them linked to the conservatory- were encouraged to be music critics is our task. For this research, 40 music magazines printed in Brazil between 1896 and 1960 were examined. Nevertheless, we reduced the corpus analysis by half. This, based on the criterion that supports our study: women who wrote about music. To characterize the sample, we classified the specialized publications into two categories: musical culture and musical training institutions. We are interested in identifying key aspects such as the length and place of publication (Rio de Janeiro versus São Paulo), the periodicity (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, bi-monthly and quarterly publications), the management and writing team (ranks, permanent and occasional collaborators, correspondents from other Brazilian regions or from abroad) and, of course, the contribution of women as reporters, columnists or music critics (who signed regularly).