Lonely lament of the female trumpeter
THERE is only one female trumpet player in the world’s top 20 orchestras, according to a survey which found that playing musical instruments professionally is split along gender lines.
The trumpet, trombone and tuba are almost exclusively male preserves, while the harp is the only instrument skewed in the opposite direction. Anne McAneney, of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, was the only woman out of 103 trumpeters in the study, which looked at the make-up of the top 20 symphony orchestras as ranked by Gramophone magazine.
“Historically, only the violin, flute and piano were considered to be feminine,” McAneney said. “Back when I started in the mid-Eighties, I was definitely a rarity. But things are changing. I have been teaching at the Guildhall School of Music for 23 years there has been a huge increase, not just in trumpet players but across the board.”
The survey, by the website Quartz at Work, studied 2,438 full-time musicians and found that 69 per cent were men. Some 96 per cent of timpani players were male, followed by the double bass (95 per cent) and the bassoon (86 per cent). The study found that 94 per cent of harpists were female.
Amy Phelps, a cello instructor who wrote her PhD dissertation on gender discrimination in orchestras, told the site: “The instruments identified as male are the louder, bigger instruments. Our society does not want women to be loud.”
Some musicians said that the Gramophone list was subjective, and that other orchestras did have women on those instruments. English National Opera and the Halle Orchestra both have women as principal trombone. The BBC Symphony Orchestra also has a female principal trombone, Helen Vollum.
“I believe the current trombone sections of both the National Youth Orchestra and the National Youth Brass Band contain more female than male trombonists,” said Vollum.