WOMEN MUSICIANS

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 5288, 28 May 1904, Page 15

WOMEN MUSICIANS

ABE THEY OUSTING THE MEN ? AN APPEAL FROM THE CONSERVATOIRE. Women appear to be ousting men from certain brandies of _ the musical profession. At the Paris Conservatoire the governing body has been obliged to appeal to tho Minister for Public Instruction to protect tho male pupils from the encroachments of the ladies. The latter threatened to monopolise the classes of stringed instruments. The maximum number of pupils of both sexes in each class is ten, and the proportion of women or girls to men or boys has now grown to six or seven in the classes for violin, harp, violoncello, and oven double buss, leaving, therefore, a MISERABLE MASCULINE MINOR-

ITY of onlv three of four per instrument. But tho Minister has now used las authority for tho protection of the overwhelmed men, and has just issued a decree limiting tho number of feminine pupils to four in each class of stringed instruments at tho Conservatoire, which is, of course, a Govennent school, entirely under tho control of tho Minister ior Public Instruction. While the men are delighted at the new rule tho women denounce it as MONSTROUSLY UNFAIR, and, if the truth he told, the ladies rather have logic on their side this time. Admittance to the Conservatoire is by competitive examination only. It would, therefore, appear that if nmlo pupils have been of late in a minority, themselves must bo mostly to blame. One of the officials of the Conservatoire, incidentally acknowledged as much. After explaining that _ the inroads of feminism in the musical professions must bo arrested, or “wo shall soon have all our

ORCHESTRAS IN PBTTIOQ) ATS.’ ' and prophesying that women may he expected shortly to tear oven the brass instruments out of the mouths of the men, he concludes that it was absolutely imperative to adopt measures to safeguard the so-called stronger sox, inasmuch at it is, in this case, the weaker which is really the stronger, The official’s final argument in favour of the new rule is that the men must Sae protected, “especially as the women frequently are more hard-working, more serious, more assiduous, and, in fact, are OFTEN SUPERIOR to the men.” “There’s logic for you,’’ the lady instrumentalists exclaim with rather reasonable irony. ..But the men have something to say themselves, all the same. They urge that many girls take up music to begin with as a profession, then got married and give it up, or only practise in as pastime. So much the better, then, for the men, the ladies can retort, again logically. Blit the view of the Conservatoire is that it is not Wurth while preparing pupils who will nofc afterwards stick to the profession. It is, however, difficult to see how the ladies can reasonably he found fault with for “overrunning” classes to which admittance is gained only by competitive examinetion.