Page 165 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2025. Glasbena interpretacija: med umetniškim in znanstvenim┊Music Interpretation: Between the Artistic and the Scientific. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 8

the conductor gertrud herliczka
Becker writes that changes in art require changes in worlds, in my lan-
guage, changes in bundles. What he means is that changes in art take
hold only if appropriate changes befall the world involved. His thesis
can also be read as stating that changes in art are changes, not just in
works of art (including performances), but also in the worlds, or bun-
dles, of which such works are elements. 12

Changes in art can take hold only if the appropriate changes befall the
world involved. And by making changes in art, we change the world. Con-
ventions are the easiest way of proceeding, and that is not our goal in mu-
sical interpretation, yet they are the glue that holds an art world together.
Bundles of practices after Schatzki are one way of describing what a con-
ductor does. But they do not convey the problematic of the conductor’s gen-
der, because no conducting practices are limited to one gender. Apparent-
ly, the visual component of conducting is very important, and through that
gender is more evident. Noticing that the conductor is a woman suggests
a whole scale of prejudices and suppositions that have been applied to this
gender, and the authors of reviews presented above nearly a hundred years
13
ago are reacting to these prejudices subconsciously. Nevertheless, this dis-
cussion remains pertinent in the present time. We still hear the term ‘wom-
an conductor’ being used as if it had a clear meaning, as if a ‘woman’ was
limited to a certain set of behaviours and abilities, and as if ‘women con-
ductors’ were a separate group, distinct from conductors of other genders.
But women are just as individual among themselves as any gender is. Hope-
fully in the 21 century we might see and judge conductors individually in
st
terms of their actions and cease to apply prejudice to gender.

Bibliography
Archival Sources
Private estate of the Hrdliczka family in Vienna, clippings of the following
articles:
Keyfel, Ferdinand. [Title unknown]. Tegernseer Zeitung, November 25, 1938, p. u.
R. K. “Eine neue Dirigentin.” Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, February 16, 1927, p. u.
12 Schatzki, “Art Bundles,” 30.
13 See in particular the classical text by Karin Hausen, “Die Polarisierung der ‘Ge-
schlechtercharaktere’. Eine Spiegelung der Dissoziation von Erwerbs- und Famili-
enleben,” in Sozialgeschichte der Familie in der Neuzeit Europas. Neue Forschungen,
ed. Werner Conze (Klett: Stuttgart, 1976), 363–93.

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