Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
combART, Porto, Portekiz, 18 - 20 Haziran 2026, ss.1-2, (Özet Bildiri)
Rewriting Polyphonic Music History: Gender, Canon Formation and Algorithmic Bias
Esra KARAOL*
Despite profound social transformations, the history of polyphonic music continues to be shaped by patriarchal structures that systematically marginalize women’s contributions. Conservatories, music institutions, and canonical historiography, while presenting themselves as neutral and merit-based, have historically reproduced gendered exclusions through tradition, selective memory, and male-centered reference systems. This paper offers a theoretical reflection on music historiography as a culturally embedded knowledge system, arguing that the underrepresentation of women in polyphonic music is not the result of isolated acts of discrimination but the outcome of historically accumulated structural bias embedded in institutions, archives, and narratives.
Drawing on feminist musicology and sociological discourse analysis, the study revisits the history of polyphonic music through the lens of representation, focusing on pioneering women composers, performers, conductors, educators, and critics from Europe, United States and Türkiye. Through historical case studies and archival readings, the paper foregrounds moments of rupture, women who entered institutions, genres or professional roles previously defined as male domains. By doing so, it challenges the presumed neutrality of the musical canon and reveals how historiographical authority is constructed through exclusionary practices rather than purely aesthetic evaluation.
In dialogue with contemporary debates on artificial intelligence and gender bias, the paper develops an interdisciplinary analogy between algorithmic decision-making and music historiography. Just as AI systems trained on biased historical data reproduce discriminatory outcomes, illustrated by Amazon’s discontinued AI-based recruitment algorithm that favored male candidates without explicit sexist intent, music history similarly “learns” from patriarchal datasets. Canon formation, repertoire selection, and academic curricula function as cultural algorithms: unless critically reprogrammed, they reproduce past inequalities under the guise of objectivity. This analogy allows music historiography to be conceptualized as a feedback loop in which historical exclusions continue to shape present-day knowledge production.
The findings demonstrate that women who pioneered polyphonic music frequently occupied multiple professional roles such as composer-performer, conductor-educator or critic-scholar, often exceeding the so-called “glass ceiling” observed in many other professional fields. Despite these achievements, their visibility remains fragmented and largely confined to specialized academic research or restricted archival access. (The study also identifies a significant gap in Turkish-language scholarship, where no comprehensive, cross-disciplinary mapping of women pioneers in polyphonic music has yet been established.)
By proposing a feminist reconfiguration of music history, this paper contributes to broader discussions on epistemic justice, canon critique and critical methodologies in the arts and humanities. It argues that rewriting music history is not an additive gesture of inclusion but a structural intervention that questions how knowledge is produced, legitimized and transmitted. Ultimately, the paper asks whether a more equitable music history is possible and contends that such a history requires not only new subjects but also critically reflexive frameworks capable of confronting both historical and contemporary forms of systemic bias.
Keywords: polyphonic music, feminist musicology, canon formation, gender representation, algorithmic bias, AI.
* Assoc. Prof. Dr., Istanbul University State Conservatory Musicology Department, esra.karaol@istanbul.edu.tr