A women-only radio station
Last Thursday, Scala Radio launched Women Composers, a premium station among its 20-strong “family” of niche stations which back up its principal free-to-air offering. A bold initiative – a radio station devoted entirely to women classical (in the broadest sense of the term) composers – but one which had a surprisingly low-key launch.
The station came on air at 10am, not sadly with a great fanfare (what a wonderful commission for a woman composer that would have been) but with a bit of technical jiggery-pokery that meant knocking out one of Scala’s existing niche stations – farewell Hit the Dancefloor, a peculiar mixture of waltzes, ballets and galops (even a clog dance in its final hour) – and replacing it with the new Women Composers icon.
The changeover took a few minutes and the first ever piece played on the station – the opening movement of Fanny Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in E Flat Major – was sadly not available to this listener, whose computer kept displaying an error message. But within minutes all was well and the second piece – Hildegard von Bingen’s Spiritus Sanctus Vivificans – was extremely uplifting. The third was even better: the first movement of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor played by Isata Kanneh-Mason and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
This trio of opening composers – Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, the divine Hildegard – was predictable, but it also made a profound point: there are some very considerable women composers. It also made you note two of the names: Mendelssohn and Schumann, respectively sister and wife of more famous male composers. Could women, especially in the patriarchal 19th century, only function as composers if they were part of a musical family?
After this promising beginning, the new station opted for a lot of musical mush: the sort of ghostly, ghastly mood music that would not go amiss on Scala’s mindfulness station – another of its 20 premium outlets. Anne Nikitin’s Found God did not make me find God; Julianna Barwick’s Healing is a Miracle was far from miraculous; Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres’s Coma did exactly what it said on the tin.
On the plus side, there was some captivating piano music: Oscar-winning film composer Rachel Portman’s A Gift made me want to hear more of her work; Marie Bigot’s Etude in A minor was hugely polished; Maria Szymanowska’s Six Menuets wonderfully elegant. Like Clara Schumann, Bigot and Szymanowska were virtuoso pianists in the first half of the 19th century who also composed. Playing was seen as respectable for women; composition less so. When contemporaries heard a piece by F Mendelssohn, they invariably assumed Felix rather than Fanny. A letter from her father has become infamous: “Perhaps for him [her brother Felix] music will become a profession, while for you it will always remain but an ornament.”
Scala’s premium stations – they are targeted at “music super fans” who pay £3.99 a month to get access to the whole 20-strong package – are a classic example of narrowcasting: there are stations for devotees of baroque music, romantic music and piano music; one that plays nothing but Mozart 24 hours a day; one that dishes up “dinner party” music; and a station that promises “classical bangers” which seems to play the Blue Danube a lot.
This is presenter-less radio, with lots of short pieces (three or four minutes a piece on average) broken up by brief prerecorded statements: “Non-stop music from women composers”; “A celebration of the greatest female composers”; “The only station that plays the best works by female composers 24 hours a day.” It is essentially a playlist, shuffled by computer with occasional human intervention.
There is a lot of similar-sounding film music and plenty of unthreatening piano, harp and guitar music. Think Enya crossed with Philip Glass: relaxation, mindfulness, the rhythm of a well-ordered life. Not much vocal music – too intrusive? The station’s computer prefers narcoleptic sopranos humming wordlessly. There is also a good deal of repetition of pieces – 200 key database tracks endlessly recycled.
Scala sets out to make classical music (what a knotty and unhelpful term that is) accessible, and you will not find many challenging pieces on the new station. Don’t expect Judith Weir, Sofia Gubaidulina or Tansy Davies. The pieces are short, approachable and align with what programme manager Jenny Nelson calls Scala’s “familiar sound world”.
Nelson sees Judith Weir as a Radio 3 composer, and Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Anne Dudley and Rachel Portman as representative Scala composers. “Radio 3 is a brilliant station,” she says, “and people assume there’s a lot of crossover [with Scala] because of the term classical, but the overlap isn’t that great. One of the ideas we had when we started Scala was the notion of ‘What if Radio 2 did classical?’, and it’s more that mindset that determines our music and editorial policy. There’s some crossover, but there’ll be other pieces we play that Radio 3 wouldn’t touch with a bargepole and vice versa.”
Composer Julie Cooper, whose ethereal Secret Paths crops up a lot on the new station, insists its self-consciously mainstream programming will not undermine its contribution. “It really doesn’t matter from what genre they are playing works,” she says. “The most important thing is heightening awareness and giving visibility to women composers.” Farewell Felix; hello Fanny. Music wasn’t just an ornament for you after all.
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