Julia Wolfe has long gravitated to epic vocal-instrumental works on historical themes, whether the folktale of steel driver John Henry (“Steel Hammer,” 2009), turn-of-the-century Pennsylvanian coal miners (“Anthracite Fields,” for which she won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music) or, most recently, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (“Fire in my mouth,” 2019).
But when Beth Willer of the Lorelei Ensemble approached her to write something commemorating the centennial of the 19th Amendment, the composer and Bang on a Can co-founder initially had some reservations.
“Suffrage was just one part of a really long struggle, and one that’s still going on. I didn’t want to limit it to that,” Wolfe said, speaking to the Tribune at Orchestra Hall in October.
And she didn’t. Wolfe’s “Her Story,” a Chicago Symphony co-commission to be performed at Orchestra Hall this coming weekend, leans on pre-suffrage texts by Abigail Adams and Sojourner Truth, plus snippets from contemporary press coverage of the movement. Here, just as at the work’s premiere a few months ago in Tennessee, 10 singers in the Lorelei Ensemble will perform in a semi-staged arrangement, with onstage actions written into the score. It’s all sewn together by Wolfe’s recognizable compositional style: hypnotic repetition, propulsive rhythms and spookily intoned vocal lines.
During her research, Wolfe says she was struck by the parallels between the suffrage era and our current moment, all the way down to a deadly pandemic.
“The anti-suffrage movement was huge. People really thought it was the end of the family or the end of morality. There’s a whole section of the piece that’s just all the adjectives used to describe (the suffragists),” Wolfe says. “You read these adjectives like ‘hysterical,’ ’emotional,’ or ‘Bolshevik,’ which basically meant ‘socialist.’ These kinds of trigger words are still thrown at women and ideas that are a little too far left.”
Obviously, it would be bad form to pair a paean to American feminism with music by dudes. For this week’s performances, the CSO calls upon composers-in-residence former and current for companion works: Anna Clyne’s “This Midnight Hour” (2015) and Jessie Montgomery’s “Rounds,” a recently composed mini-concerto for pianist Awadagin Pratt. Marin Alsop, chief conductor and curator at the Ravinia Festival through 2025, conducts.
That level of representation on a CSO subscription concert — all works by women, conducted by this country’s most visible female conductor — is practically unheard of at the institution. That said, more than half of the orchestra’s resident composers have been women since the position was created 35 years ago. Clyne was the CSO’s composer-in-residence from 2010 to 2015, in a shared appointment with Mason Bates. She was also Wolfe’s very first composition student, at the Manhattan School of Music. Wolfe would go on to teach at New York University, where she would meet Montgomery, then in the film scoring program.
“I ran a forum that brought both concert composers and screen scorers together. I didn’t work with her one-on-one, but we were always dialoguing,” Wolfe says. “So, I’m actually connected to both Anna and Jessie.”
That’s just one example of the smallness of the upper echelon of contemporary classical composition — a world that’s even smaller for women, not to mention more perilous. In December, VAN Magazine investigated decades of sexual harassment and misogyny in Juilliard’s composition program, a story later picked up by the Washington Post, NPR and the New York Times.
Eight interviewees alleged John Corigliano, the CSO’s first composer-in-residence and a faculty member at Juilliard since 1991, of barring female students from his studio for years. Over the last several weeks, dozens of composers have come forward on social media about their experiences in the field as a whole — including Missy Mazzoli, Montgomery’s predecessor as CSO composer-in-residence, who told the Times that she got into Juilliard’s composition program 20 years ago but “turned down the opportunity to study at the best school in the country” because of the department’s history of gender bias.
In a statement provided to the Tribune regarding the Juilliard allegations, Wolfe added that “it’s crucial that all institutions acknowledge power imbalance and address and investigate fairly and thoroughly to combat power abuse.”
Following its spotlight on women conductors last year, Ravinia’s 2023 season, as well as its second Breaking Barriers Festival — which Alsop spearheads — will focus on women composers. Among the featured composers are Reena Esmail, Shulamit Ran, Augusta Read Thomas, Tania León, Clarice Assad, Gabriela Ortiz, Gabriela Montero and Roxanna Panufnik, with others still to be announced. No doubt the theme will carry extra poignancy this year, as these names and early-career composers alike converge at the festival July 21-23 for symposia, panels and workshops.
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“I could have ended (‘Her Story’), like, ‘Things suck!’ Because we’ve got some problems here,” Wolfe says.
Instead, the arpeggiated wash of the orchestra clears to expose three words, paraphrased from Sojourner Truth’s address to the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention: “I am strong.”
“Alsop Conducts Wolfe: Her Story” is Jan. 6-7 at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; 312-294-3000 and cso.org
Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.
The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism helps fund our classical music coverage. The baiduhai maintains editorial control over assignments and content.