왜 여성 음악사인가

Abstract

Research on feminist musicology or women in music was influenced and triggered by feminist movement and women’s studies of around 1970s, and contributed to the rapid proliferation of feminist knowledge that took place after 1990. Female musicologists who had access to professional education in the United States were not only able to accumulate and analyze various historical documents on women’s musical activities, but also led to the emergence of ‘feminist criticism’, which aims to critique and interpret works regarded as canon of music history (i.e. male composers’ works) from a feminist perspective. In particular, scholars like Susan McClary, Suzanne Cusick, and Ruth Solie continue to study and identify various relationships between women and music, within the context of history, society, race, ideology, and gender. On the other hand, although women played a pivotal role informing Korea’s music culture after the introduction of western music in Korea, the importance of women’s subjective study on music was not recognized and failed to attract attention from the academia for sometime. It was only around 2000 when few women scholars like Min EunKee, Lee YoungMin, Lee KyungHee, and others started to study the topic, and garnered attention of other scholars for a while. However, active discourse on the topic has just begun. Therefore, this study attempts to make women more visible in general music history which is disguised as universal music history, and identify women’s musical experience which naturally was different from that of men. Women have long been defined by “others” more than any other group, and were deprived of knowledge of their own history. Female historian Gerda Lerner emphasized the importance of history research, saying “Future can be predicted by reflecting upon the past. History guides us toward the path to self-recognition, and is the life blood giving meaning to our lives”. In order to position women at the center of musical incidents as an active motive, the other half of music history which disappeared need to be reconstructed. Setting a new context for women should be the starting point in achieving this objective. In order to accept women’s music more subjectively rather than to fill in the void for women musicians by attempting to compensate for their lost history, this study aims to discuss why we need to describe women’s music history and how it should be depicted, by comparing and analyzing various studies on women’s history.