IRENE SUCHY
Musicologist. Dramatist. Presenter.
Women° have been neglected and forgotten in music history for too long. To counteract this, the radio editor, radio presenter and curator Irene Suchy initiated the multimedia project "MusicaFemina - women made music" in 2018. MusicaFemina works to form a gender-balanced music scene and is dedicated exclusively to the music creation of women°. Suchy has also published numerous academic publications on recent music history. For her work at the cultural broadcaster Ö1, she has been awarded the Dr. Karl Renner Prize, the Golden Badge of Honour of the Republic of Austria, the Bank Austria Prize and the Radio Prize for Adult Education, among others.
Irene Suchy / © Foto Lounge Vienna
The association maezenatentum.at is the lead partner of the EU project "Musica Femina - Women Make Music". Its work concerns the scientific artistic recording of the work of women composers. Women composers in exhibitions, concerts, composition commissions, digital technology, such as the creation of apps, in film production, audio production and for radio and podcasts.
This work is supported by national, regional and European funding agencies, and it runs in cooperation with platforms and archives all over Europe. It is a small step towards a gender-balanced music world, which is far from being achieved in the music sector.
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The work of maezenatentum.at in cooperation with authors, lecturers and archivists in Austria aims to integrate this content into university courses. Ultimately, the work on women composers, their biographies and their works, is a discovery of the cultural history of a hitherto ignored side of Austria and aims to expand the entrenched canon of Austrian musical life. The aim is to integrate knowledge about women composers into school textbooks, in the curricula of music schools, in the repertoire of the music universities, in the programs of the leading orchestras, ensembles and music theatre stages.
Poetry of Women Composers
An important achievement of the maezenatentum.at association is the double album "Poesie der Komponistinnen / Poetry of women composers", which includes poems by Austrian contemporaries of Sophie Reyer on two CDs: these poems, in turn, were written in response to the portrait gallery at Schönbrunn 2018 and are poetic miniatures of the great women composers of all times and countries. The double CD is published by Cappriccio.
“I am offended by the scholarly laziness of not looking at the work of women. It is an offence to the history of music and to history in general.”
