Mariann Steegmann

Foundation

Promoting women in music

Female composers, music writers, patrons, music teachers, conductors, etc. have been rediscovered and performed by scholars and interpreters since the 1970s. In the early years, the focus of “women's studies” was on collecting, archiving and philological and biographical research into forgotten works and lives. The need for greater consideration of overarching socio-cultural issues led to the introduction of the term “gender research”.

Gender as the culturally acquired and shaped gender [... is] “now a central historical-social category that has initiated a scientific discourse on historiography, on processes of tradition and canon formation as well as inscriptions in cultural memory. [...]

It was during this phase of gender research that the Mariann Steegmann Foundation, which was established in October 2000, was prepared: a foundation profile for gender research in the field of art and music studies was developed together with the founder. This made it possible to establish the Research Center Music and Gender at the Hanover University of Music and Drama (2006) (link to fmg) and the Mariann Steegmann Institute Art & Gender (2010) at the University of Bremen (also link here). Both institutions aim to promote women in music and women in the arts and are dedicated to the promotion of gender research in music and the arts, the initiation of research projects, the establishment of a study library, the promotion of academic exchange and the promotion of young academics.