According to an independent study released in June last year, Australia’s largest orchestras played more pieces with the word ‘violin’ in their titles in 2019 than works by female composers. And despite the fact that at least a quarter of composition students in Australia in 2016 were women, the classical music canon remains overwhelmingly male-dominated.
As respected composer Anne Boyd AM told ArtsHub in 2017, female composers have historically been overlooked for major orchestral commissions. ‘With a very few exceptions, orchestral commissions more typically go to men,’ she said.
