Beautiful Objects / Beautiful Subjects: Stories of female music making in the portrait collection at the Royal College of Music.

This painting of an upper-class, seventeenth century domestic scene shows a young woman receiving music instruction from her male tutor.

The work highlights the pupil/master dynamic: the tutor is clearly communicating a musical concept using hand gestures, while the young woman -a passive recipient- looks directly at the beholder.

Musical ability was a symbol of wealth and good social standing. A young woman from a well-to-do background was expected to play an instrument and to sing so as to display her family’s values and showcase her own suitability for marriage.

This musical training, however, was usually a purely decorative aspect of a woman’s personality: professional female musicians were rare. With the notable exception of opera singers, it remained taboo for a woman to perform in public spaces well into the nineteenth century.

The RCM Museum owns an assortment of these drawing room instruments, which will be on display when it reopens in 2019.

The four modified harps and guitars here were made in the early nineteenth century, and each is highly decorated with gilding and elaborate carvings which evoke a neoclassical aesthetic popular at the time.

The two instruments on the left are from the maker Edward Light. The first of these, a Dital Harp, is identical to the one depicted in the previous engraving. The instrument next to it is a modified guitar, also by Light. The maker used the patronage of the Princess Charlotte of Wales to make connections with English nobility and market his instruments to young, upper class women.

Modified harps and guitars fell out of fashion when innovations to piano manufacturing and design during the mid-nineteenth century meant that families from a wider range of socioeconomic backgrounds could acquire a piano.

"Why in the hell did she have to choose cello? There was something almost indecent in the idea of that bulbous, ungainly instrument between her splayed thighs. Of course Suggia had managed to look elegant, and so did that girl Amaryllis somebody. But they should invent a way for women to play the damned thing side-saddle."

This seemingly antiquated outlook towards female cellists is from Ian Fleming's 1966 James Bond novel, 'Octopussy and the Living Daylights'. Fleming anecdotally refers to his half sister, Amaryllis, who was indeed a cellist.

Her brother's fame and her strikingly good looks meant that Fleming achieved celebrity-level fame as a solo performer early in her career. However, later in her life, she began to focus more on chamber music, and became reluctant to discuss her private life, which contributed to a decline in her solo performing career.

Fleming never married, but in this photograph, Fleming seemingly inhabits the feminine role of the homemaker as she practices her cello in the garden whilst the laundry dries.

May Harrison, a violinist active in the early twentieth century, is shown here as a child prodigy.

Harrison was one of the first female performers to have a successful career as both an orchestral player and soloist. Harrison's talent was recognised at an early age: she enrolled as a pupil at the Royal College of Music when she was only 14 years old.

Harrison also broke the gender boundaries that women faced in the early twentieth century when she became a professor at the Royal College of Music in 1935. She maintained an active career as a soloist until her death

Artworks and literature at the turn of the twentieth century reflect the societal unease created by the emergence of the 'New Woman'. These women, who can easily be considered the first feminists, challenged the deeply entrenched idea that women needed to marry to have a fulfilling life.

This photograph shows the Finnish soprano Aino Ackte in Thomas Beecham's Covent Garden production of Richard Strauss' 'Salome', an opera which can be read as a direct response to the idea of the 'New Woman'.
At its premiere, the work, which features a striptease and a necrotic kiss, was considered scandalous. It was heavily edited for the first London production but the translation was so poor that Akte refused to sing until the integrity of the original was restored. It is perhaps due to her steadfastness that Strauss considered Ackte his 'true Salome'.

When one looks at this photograph -which shows the defiant Ackte/Salome meeting the gaze of the camera- it isn't difficult to see why Strauss felt that way.

The Scottish soprano Mary Garden became famous for her interpretations of the fin de siècle 'new woman'. In addition to the notorious role of Salome, Garden sang other strong female characters such as the title roles in 'Carmen', 'Tosca', and 'Thais'. She became a household name for her bold performance choices, which included salaciously kissing the severed head of John the Baptist in the final scene of 'Salome'.

Garden was appointed an impresario at the Chicago Opera Association with effectively complete creative direction over productions.

Garden is depicted here, as the mysterious Romantic heroine in Debussy's 'Pellas et Mellisande'.

According to those who worked with her, Smyth herself possessed 'formidable' presence.

It is perhaps because of her tenacity she was able to have her works produced by several of the most prominent opera houses in the world. In order to have 'Der Wald' (1903) programmed at the Metropolitan Opera, Smyth took a business-like approach and presented the management team with box office statements to show that the work would be a financial success. Her unexpectedly practical approach stunned her male counterparts.

However, the work was subjected to highly gendered criticisim. For example, a review from 'The World' complained that the work was 'utterly unfeminine... [lacking] sweetness and grace of phrase', whilst the Telegraph - referring to Smyth rather patronizingly as a 'little woman' - reports:

'[she] writes music with a masculine hand and has a sound and logical brain, such as is supposed to be the special gift of the rougher sex.'

It would appear that the negative response to the opera had a lasting impact: until 2016, 'Der Wald' remained the only opera by a female composer to be included in a season at the Metropolitan Opera.

Even modern day criticism of Smyth's works uses these carefully constructed definitions of masculinity and femininity. Her compositions are still described using stereotypes associated with both sides of the gender dichotomy: her bold and rhythmically strong compositions were not 'feminine' enough, but were also not considered 'masculine' enough to be lauded on the level of her male contemporaries.

Nonetheless, her contributions within the field of composition and her efforts to promote women's work in music are widely recognised. In addition to receiving honorary doctorates from Durham and Oxford University, she became the first female composer to be awarded a Dame Commander of the British Empire.

This 1938 painting shows Smyth in her doctoral gown from Durham University.

The Royal College of Music appointed its first female director, Dame Janet Ritterman, in 1993. Ritterman served in this post for twelve years.

Today, the College trains over 500 women from undergraduate through doctoral level. These women make up over 50% of the student body.