CD ‘She composes like a man’: Tine Thing Helseth ironises male gaze

Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth (Oslo, 1987) regularly plays as a soloist with orchestras such as the Vienna Symphoniker, Liverpool Philharmonic and Oslo Camerata. In 2007, she formed the all-female brass band ten Thing. With this ensemble, she released the CD She Composes Like a Man, is entirely dedicated to female composers, no fewer than 14 of them. From the calibrated Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann to the slightly lesser-known Joy Webb and Grażyna Bacewicz.    

The tantalising title refers to the dubious, often sexist praise that was heaped on composing women in the past. In 1903, for instance, one critic worded his positive opinion of the opera Der Wald by Ethel Smyth in a negative way: the work contained ‘not a weak or effeminate note, nor faltering sentiment’. Adding insult to injury, he concluded that the opera was composed ‘with a masculine hand, with a sound and logical brain’.      

That women are very well capable of writing powerful music went beyond the imagination of many a reviewer, but also that of the public. In 1831, for instance, Louise Bertin, at the premiere of her opera Esmeralda at the Opéra de Paris, Louise Bertin was treated to incredulous shouts from the audience: ‘It’s not by Mlle Bertin, it’s by Berlioz!’   

Brass is for men

In her CD booklet Helseth describes how she played the trumpet as a child as a matter of course, just as girls around her took up the trombone or tuba. When she turned her hobby her profession, however, she found that the professional music world was not really open to women playing brass instruments. – Even in the year 2024, brass still has a masculine image, as one glance at the line-up of any orchestra immediately reveals.   

Helseth decided to show the world a thing or two, and formed her ten-piece female band ten Thing, boasting three trumpets, four (bass) trombones, flugelhorn, horn and tuba. Their repertoire ranges from Lully to Bernstein and from Mozart to Bartók, mostly in arrangements by guitarist and arranger Jarle Storløkken. Why it took her so long to dedicate a CD to music by women Helseth doesn’t not say, but she states that she had been toying with the idea for years.  

From Maria Theresia von Paradis to Grażyna Bacewicz

The album opens with a truly dazzling performance of Oberek No.1 by Grażyna Bacewicz, originally composed for violin and piano. In just under two minutes, Helseth and her musicians take us through a dizzying swirl of breakneck runs, laced with bright, spot-on accents. It immediately puts you on the edge of your seat.     

The music constantly shifts between different moods. It veers from melancholic reflections with flowing lines of the solo trumpet in Nocturne by Lili Boulanger, Adoration by Florence Price and Share my Yoke by Joy Webb, to a plaintive horn solo in Sicilienne by Maria Theresia von Paradis (arrangement Roger Harvey), or subdued chorales in In the Stillness by Sally Beamish and the partly fugal Abendfeier in Venedig by Clara Schumann.    

Beautiful, too, are the frisky Rissolty Rossolty by Ruth Crawford Seeger, the pointed Rondeau by Cécile Chaminade and Miocheries op. 126 no. 13 by Mel Bonis, in which sparkling melodies by Helseth in the high register find a playful counterpart in a music box-like accompaniment.

Most impressive is an excerpt from Ethel Smyth’s oratorio The Prison, in which hopeful, soaring cantilenes of the trumpet are sucked into the depths by swelling trombones, creating an ominous atmosphere.

Clever arrangements

The arrangements (all but two by Storløkken) are cleverly crafted, with a good ear for the individual colours of the instruments. Nevertheless, the overall sound eventually becomes a bit uniform. Also the pieces are invariably short, which gives the album a somewhat shortwinded feel. But the ten musicians are excellent and their joy of playing is palpable.

A big plus is that the compositions take on a completely different character from their regular guise. My advice is therefore not to listen to them all in one go, but to savour each one separately.

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