Abstract
Women have participated in making music for centuries, but it has only been since the latter part of the twentieth century that women have been widely accepted into the arena of public performance. With few exceptions, nineteenth-century women were to perform only in the home with small gatherings of friends and family. Conductors and male musicians felt that female musicians were unsuited both physically and technically for the orchestra. The most commonly accepted instruments a woman could play were the piano, harp and string instruments. Wind instruments were deemed too difficult and unsightly for women to play, particularly the larger instruments that were awkward to hold or took large amounts of air to play. Society of the period perceived the bassoon as one of these instruments. In the present day, through their successes in their respective positions, Nancy Goeres, Judith LeClair, Isabelle Plaster, and Jane Taylor have become prominent in the bassoon-playing world. They describe, in their words, the journey they took to get where they are. By reading their stories it is possible to see how the roles of women in music have changed since the nineteenth century.
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