1
She sat outside the warm kitchen
Even though she kept its hearth:
That place was meant for him
Her master, her mentor.
She had been his pupil
She had ruled his lines
Cold fingers
Tracing their way across the staves.
She had, in the act of sacrifice
Given a clip about the head
To her own burning desires
Charming her way into secondary view
2
Women composers?
Preposterous
Never supposed to exist!
Fanny Mendelssohn was scolded
For a good girl’s sake
Her works conscripted by the family men
Her pride shuffled backwards.
Ladies did not create.
As subsidiary executants
They might subtly interpret
But only in moderation
Hidden from sight
Like the piano legs
Laced in doilies.
How unbearably neat!
So much ruffling of those lace curtains
Would need to be enacted
Across so many decades
For the passers by
To see the invisible hand
Of the invisible woman
Aching and toiling for music’s voice
Fired and inspired.
3
History had to learn
To peel away the layers of neglect
To restore the glowing colours
That throb beneath the dark smoky lacquer
Of that thousand year gaze:
Masculine serenity
Without competition.
How tipsily condescending one can be
Towards the invisible
Now unengaged, now tearful and fearful
now waspish and glottal:
Frightful, my dear!
Always, against the other:
Jew, Gypsy, Queer and Crank
Women kind embracing all.
4
She worked her pen across the score
In shivering cold
In snatches of time
Often in exquisite miniatures
The notes like sparks of warmth
Lighting the clefs with
Vengeful invention:
Sheer delight, this secret life
Waiting to be mined.
Outside that warm kitchen.
Alone
The human life force
In all its power
hovered above her head
Incandescent:
Cecilia’s pulse would not decline.
For here, in this act of creation
Expiring and reviving
All women composers mark out their time:
O sing their praise!
November 2018
Gar Jones
She sat outside the warm kitchen
Even though she kept its hearth:
That place was meant for him
Her master, her mentor.
She had been his pupil
She had ruled his lines
Cold fingers
Tracing their way across the staves.
She had, in the act of sacrifice
Given a clip about the head
To her own burning desires
Charming her way into secondary view
2
Women composers?
Preposterous
Never supposed to exist!
Fanny Mendelssohn was scolded
For a good girl’s sake
Her works conscripted by the family men
Her pride shuffled backwards.
Ladies did not create.
As subsidiary executants
They might subtly interpret
But only in moderation
Hidden from sight
Like the piano legs
Laced in doilies.
How unbearably neat!
So much ruffling of those lace curtains
Would need to be enacted
Across so many decades
For the passers by
To see the invisible hand
Of the invisible woman
Aching and toiling for music’s voice
Fired and inspired.
3
History had to learn
To peel away the layers of neglect
To restore the glowing colours
That throb beneath the dark smoky lacquer
Of that thousand year gaze:
Masculine serenity
Without competition.
How tipsily condescending one can be
Towards the invisible
Now unengaged, now tearful and fearful
now waspish and glottal:
Frightful, my dear!
Always, against the other:
Jew, Gypsy, Queer and Crank
Women kind embracing all.
4
She worked her pen across the score
In shivering cold
In snatches of time
Often in exquisite miniatures
The notes like sparks of warmth
Lighting the clefs with
Vengeful invention:
Sheer delight, this secret life
Waiting to be mined.
Outside that warm kitchen.
Alone
The human life force
In all its power
hovered above her head
Incandescent:
Cecilia’s pulse would not decline.
For here, in this act of creation
Expiring and reviving
All women composers mark out their time:
O sing their praise!
November 2018
Gar Jones
