Hello and Welcome!

Drama Musica has enabled me to make a very personal musical dream come true: to create a collection dedicated to female composers!

But somehow just curating the DONNE collection seemed somehow limited in terms of reaching a wider number of people. I really wanted to find a way of broadcasting the outstanding achievements of these women to its maximum potential. And I wanted the new generation of composers to have a platform as well. So... I decided to be brave enough to adventure myself into the incredibly scary YouTube World (!!!) I also thought it would be good to have this Blog to keep all the information organised and to welcome people properly. And so the adventure starts... I really hope you will join me and help me to spread the word...
Gabriella Di Laccio

Why are there so few female composers?
But are they really so few?

Although today there's a lot of (deserved) debate about the roles and opportunities for women in classical music, we can't deny that western music is historically dominated by men. So, no wonder that women, more than men, lose motivation to continue studying music and musical composition.

Well, according to the International Encyclopedia of Women Composers by Aaron I. Cohen, there are more than 6,000 female composers who >didn't give up - and his list ended in 1984 (!!!). Still, through to the present day, women have made a significant contribution which has often been overlooked, despite the fact that many of them had (and still have) to face more hardships and resistance to be on the same playing field as men, and were (and still are) usually less rewarded for it.

"I want to show to the world (to the degree that it is granted to me in this profession of music) the foolish error of men, who so greatly believe themselves to be masters of high intellectual gifts which cannot, it seems to them, be equally common among women".

Maddalena Casulana (Italy, c.1544 – c.1590)

Welcome to Donne: Women in Music! A new space dedicated to female composers! We would like to invite you join us in this fascinating journey, which we hope will help to get historical and current female composers on the map.