A female composer's fight to be heard

Milica Djordjević hasn't has a vacation in 12 years. Between master classes, commissioned projects and performances, there simply wasn't any time, she says, in an interview with DW. But all that effort seems to have paid off. Djordjević's collaborations with renowned ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet and the Munich Chamber Orchestra, as well as her numerous awards, testify to her success.

Djordjević was born in 1984 in the Serbian capital Belgrade, and from an early age she yearned to learn how to play the piano. Her parents - her mother a nurse, her father a cameraman - earned between 300 and 350 euros (between $353 and $412) a month, and didn't have enough to buy her a piano. Fortunately, however, the family lived across the road from a music school, and, at the age of eight, Djordjević was able to start taking piano lessons.

"I practiced a lot, was very serious and dreamed of a career as a concert pianist," she says. "But then, after five years, I discovered the art of painting, and that became my new passion."

Piano practice and bomb raids

A career in music, therefore, was not set in stone for the young Serb. In the early 1990s, war broke out in the Balkans, and in 1999, bombs began to rain down on Serbia. The schools were closed, and Djordjević's parents were needed to take up posts in the hospital and broadcasting services. The children had to hide indoors.

"Without electricity there wasn't a lot we could do, so I played piano for days on end," Djordjević explains. "And piano was once again the focus."

As a teenager she attended both high school and a music school, where she first began writing music. She went on to study composition, sound direction and electronic music in Belgrade, before moving on to the Strasbourg Conservatory, in eastern France.

She later continued her studies at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) in Paris, founded by the renowned composer and conductor Pierre Boulez. And finally, she moved to the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin, where she became a student of Swiss composer Hanspeter Kyburz, best known for applying electronic music techniques to his compositions. Thus, the German capital became her new home.

Fight for funding

These days, Djordjević invests a lot of her time finding funding to support her art.

"I send in a lot of applications, but there are fewer and fewer grants nowadays. Supporting the arts is really essential," she says. "The cultural administration of the Berlin Senate for artists, for example, is very, very important. You could survive without culture, but it wouldn't be good."

Some of the grant programs she has successfully applied for have been set up exclusively for women. For Djordjević, however, it's not about quotas for women, or feminism.

"There is funding only for Americans or Asians, so why can't there be funding just for women?" she asks.

Historically, serious music has always been a tough world for women to thrive in. It wasn't until the 20th century - mainly due to socio-cultural reasons - that female musicians began to emerge from the shadows of their male colleagues. Progress has been slow ever since.

Male-dominated domains within classical music still remain. Sarah Wills, for example, is the only woman horn player in the Berlin Philharmonic. Karen Kamensek is one of the few female conductors in Germany. Meanwhile, some instruments, such as the double bass, are considered "unfeminine."

'Music is a universal language'

Fanny Hensel, née Mendelssohn (1805-1847) experienced much more extreme conditions. Like her famous brother Felix, she received an excellent music education. But unlike her brother, the talented Fanny was never allowed to pursue music as a profession. In a letter to his 15-year-old daughter in 1820, Fanny's father wrote: "Music will perhaps become [Felix's] profession, while for you it will always be an ornament and can and should never become the foundation of your existence and activities."

The extremely talented Maria Anna (nicknamed Nannerl) Mozart also never managed to escape the shadow of her genius younger brother, Wolfgang Amadeus.

Even today, female composers make up a small minority in the music scene. But gender is not one of Milica Djordjević's favorite subjects. "I believe that music is a universal language. There is no female or male, only good or bad music," she says.

Djordjević's music is sophisticated. Her polyphonic pieces are dramatic and powerful, often oscillating between dream-like simple passages and expressionism. What does she think about when she's composing?

"To start with, I don't think about the audience. You could say my music is l'art pour l'art. It doesn't make a political, social or some other kind of statement," Djordjević explains. "But I think it's very important that my music have an impact. It should provoke an emotion, a feeling - something."

On February 19, 2015, Djordjević's compositions will premiere at the Court Church of All Saints in Munich as part of Radio Bavaria's Musica Viva concert series. On July 26 this year, Djordjević will be awarded the Belmont Prize and its 20,000-euro endowment from the Forberg-Schneider Foundation. Awarded for innovation and courage in artistic creation, the prize will be presented during the 70th Summer Music Days in Hitzacker.