This month we are especially pleased to present you a contribution by Susanne Wosnitzka which was originally published on the blog Archives of Women and Music, which is well worth reading. The text deals with the history of the women’s brass band. Exciting digital images on the subject - again from the Archives of Women & Music - can now also be found in the German Digital Library (Deutschen Digitalen Bibliothek).
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Women's brass bands - presenting a treasure of the Archives Women and Music
24.05.2022
“Humans, animals, sensations” – the slogan of a film title of the same name from 1938, which is still known today. Traveling circuses and 'freak shows' have been around through the ages; especially in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the nineteenth century, for example, there is evidence of female trick riders who appeared as living descendants of the legendary Amazons, or animal trainers such as Cäcilie Nicolai in the company of the trainer Gottlieb Christian Kreutzberg (1810/14-1874). [1] Around 1830 until well into the second half of the 19th century, musical traveling ensembles were also in demand in the cities: For example, the still well-known Grassl family with several children from Berchtesgaden playing music and singing can be traced as a sought-after troupe in the inns and sometimes as intermediate acts on theatre stages; groups from Bohemia or Munich, yodeling with zither and guitar music, performed the latest waltzes and polkas, which previously Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss Sr. made known with orchestras on tours in the cities. There is sporadic evidence of female clarinetists among them, and even a 6-year-old solo trombonist who apparently gave professional concerts around 1844. [2]
These women are the immediate predecessors of the women's brass bands of the imperial era, of which the Archives of Women and Music has the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of postcards.
During this time, women did not yet find employment in regular orchestras. The popular women's brass bands were used for entertainment, not 'high art‘. Gesa Finke also tells us about this: "Early formations of women's bands actually already existed at the end of the 18th century, and they emerged from so-called traveling bands. These appeared primarily in the early days of industrialisation, as many women in the artisanal trades then lost their jobs and looked for new ways to earn a living, forming themselves into women's bands." [3]
Three musicians' towns played an important role in the spread of ladies' bands in the early 19th century: Salzgitter in Hanover, Preßnitz in Bohemia and Hundeshagen in Thuringia today. All three were located in regions particularly affected by structural change. Sometimes more women than men opted for the music profession here. In Preßnitz, where a special school for traveling musicians was founded, at times a third of the students were schoolgirls. The rise of women's bands occurred with the breakthrough of modern mass entertainment culture in the mid-19th century. Marketplace show booths became permanent vaudeville stages, pubs established entertainment programs, and artist booking agencies emerged. [4]
Many women's brass bands were led and directed by men, as women at this time usually needed a male guardian for business decisions and contracts. "Working hours, the obligation to entertain, and the collection of donations put female musicians on a par with prostitutes according to the bourgeois moral standards of the prudish imperial era. Voices have already been raised demanding that they be placed under police supervision - just like the prostitutes. According to Dorothea Kaufmann, whose research has dealt intensively with the phenomenon of women's brass bands,[5] the female musicians sought to establish an interest group in 1898 that would make it its mission to "protect the ladies' bands against the lowest possible fees, poor accommodations, as well as humiliating impositions such as entertaining and fundraising.
The demise of the women's brass bands occurred with the invention and establishment of the phonograph record, as it was cheaper in the long run to play music over apparatus rather than feed an entire music-making troupe through an evening. The Second World War also put a temporary end to the women's brass band trend. In the Weimar Republic, other, sometimes larger, ensembles were created, such as the dance orchestra of Edith Lorand; in the so-called Third Reich, the ensemble character was then lost to an emphasis on individual stars.
It was not until the student movement of the 1960s that women's bands such as the Flying Lesbians or Carambolage came up again. The women's brass band has also recently found attention in the film business: in the film Colette (2018) with Keira Knightley in the leading role, you will find a fictional band in Paris's Moulin Rouge – in a scene in which Colette performs there.
Part of the postcards of the collection on women's brass bands from the Archive of Women and Music can be found online, made possible by the digitisation project #PARFUMO of the Digital German Women's Archive (Digitalen Deutschen Frauenarchivs) (DDF). In the search field of the DDF website, you will find the exhibits displayed online under the keyword Damenblaskapelle (Women's Brass Band) . We hope you enjoy browsing!
A heartfelt thank you to Susanne Wosnitzka and the Archive of Women and Music for providing the text.
Further Reading
Anna-Selina Sander: Jenseits zwielichtiger Damenkapellen, (Beyond Dodgy Women's Bands) in: Schott Music International (ed.): Musikforum (Music Forum), Issue 4, 2010.
Gerlinde Obermaier: "When the ladies whistle, the graces go down the drain". An exhibition around the women's band culture in the imperial era, in: KulturMagazin (CultureMagazine) (k) No. 37, 1998.
Ulrike B. Keil: From traveling musicians to women's orchestra: professional women's bands and women's orchestras around the turn of the century, in: B. Schott's Söhne (ed.): Das Orchester No. 11, 1998.
Stephanie Höhle: The Portrayal of Women in the spectacular revue of the twenties, in: Archiv Frau und Musik (ed.): VivaVoce Nr. 90, 2011.
Dorothea Kaufmann: “…experienced drummer wanted…” Musician in a women's band. To the image of a forgotten female profession from the imperial era. Publications on Popular Music Research 3, as a reading sample.
Dorothea Kaufmann: “When the ladies whistle, the graces go down the drain”. The female musician in German dance and popular music of the 19th century, as digitalisat.
Individual references
[1] Cf. Susanne Wosnitzka: Menageries - Traveling Sensation and Cruelty. Findings in historical Augsburg newspapers. Augsburg 2019. Online Blog: https://susanne-wosnitzka.de/menagerien-sensation-und-grausamkeit-funde-in-historischen-augsburger-zeitungen (Status: 01.09.2020).
[2] Cf. so far still private research by Susanne Wosnitzka in the context of her dissertation on the music history of the Golden Grape in Augsburg on the basis of historical Daily newspapers.
[3] Cf. Christian Berndt/Ralf Bei der Kellen: Women have always made music. The history of the women's bands. Deutschlandfunk Kultur(German Radio Culture), 14.03.2018. Online contribution: https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/die-geschichte-der-damenkapellen-frauen-haben-schon-immer.976.de.html?dram:article_id=413018 (Status: 01.09.2020), including Mary Ellen Kitchens (Board IAK/AFM) as interviewee.
[4] Cf. ibid.
[5] Cf. Dorothea Kaufmann: “When the ladies whistle, the graces go down the drain”. The female musician in 19th-century German dance and popular music, as digitalised at: http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2008/5188/pdf/Popularmusik-02_S52-65.pdf (as of 04.09.2020), p. 60.