UNSUNG: A HISTORY OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN MUSIC Century Edition Christine Ammer Amadeus Press, 2001 ISBN: 1-57467-061-1 (paperback); 1-57647-058-1 (hardback) Paperback: £14.99; Hardback: £25.00

If asked to name the most famous women in music, excluding singers, one would arrive at a collection of brilliant musicians who need no comparison with men. Performers who instantly spring to mind are Martha Argerich, Evelyn Glennie and Dame Gillian Weir to name but three, and although we might, in today's politically-correct society, take female equality for granted by thinking of such people as great artists, Unsung clearly demonstrates that this has not always been the case. Many will find it maddening to read some of the condescending remarks made by men over the years: imagine if today a critic were to describe a female string quartet as "...four bright damsels in a row, all a-bowing with tuneful precision...an interesting and even a pretty sight." Times have changed definitely for the better!

It is a refreshing book which gives what can only be described as a rightful view of the world of music from the other side.

In nineteenth-century musical life women did not compete directly with men, since to do so was considered most unladylike. A description in an 1822 journal of a Miss Hewitt's piano playing is a prime example: "Her playing is plain and sensible and that of a Gentlewoman; she neither takes by storm, nor by surprise, but she gradually wins upon the understanding, while the ear, though it never fills the senses with ecstasy, drinks in full satisfaction."

It must have been unimaginably frustrating for women to be judged continually by chauvinistic men, who condemned them for playing "like a man" or patronisingly praised them for their "feminine playing". To paraphrase Ammer, women were "damned if they did and damned if they didn't." Until fairly recently, women learned music in the same way they might embroidery or French, as a necessary social grace. They also learned only instruments which "could be played in a demure seated position, that is the keyboard instruments and the harp." Thus, efforts to learn the violin, flute, or even the organ - which had pedals requiring an ungainly posture - were frowned upon as unsuitable. Violinist George Lehmann's reminiscences, written only a century ago, indicate that as recently as 1875 "the mere thought of a refined young gentlewoman playing the violin, either in private or in public, was indeed intolerable", the complete antithesis of the way we view instruments today: unusually, the piano is now seen as a more masculine instrument, whilst flute and harp seem to have acquired feminine attributes.

Ammer provides an encyclopaedic amount of information concerning women and music: it becomes clear that from the 1800s to the present day women have had an influential involvement in all styles of music including Classical, Ragtime and Jazz. Singers are omitted since they compete only with other females; instead Ammer concentrates on instrumentalists, composers, orchestras, educationalists and, in particular, the all-important successes which women have achieved since the publication of the first edition in 1980.

Readers of Unsung will be struck by the commitment of the writer to the subject; it is not, as many people might expect, a book in defence of women musicians, but a celebration of their achievements. Subjects are dealt with chronologically, covering the whole history of American music, spotlighting many thousands of influential women in fascinating biographical accounts. It is a refreshing book which gives what can only be described as a rightful view of the world of music from the other side.

Jonathan Scott