ISSUED: 20 April 2021
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — Significant women in the history of guitar are the focus of a series of essays by Shepherd University adjunct music professor Dr. Candice Mowbray in the current and upcoming issue of the Guitar Foundation of America’s “Soundboard” magazine.
The articles came about because in 2020 she was scheduled to give a guest lecture titled “Women in Classical Guitar History: Player-Composers” at the Guitar Foundation of America Convention in Indianapolis. Due to COVID-19, the convention was moved online, so Mowbray had to recreate the lecture as a prerecorded event.
“That went well and at the end of the year I was approached by the editor of “Soundboard” who asked if I wanted to contribute an article,” Mowbray said.
As she started working on the article, Mowbray found it difficult to focus on just one person.
“Instead of contributing a 3,500-word article, I wrote about 14,000 words and decided to send it to the editor and see what he thought,” Mowbray said. “I thought maybe he would choose three of the essays, but he was receptive and said he thought we should print all seven in two parts.”
There are essays on three women in first article and four in second. They are Francesca Caccini (1587-ca. 1645); Emilia Giuliani-Guglielmi (1813-1850); Madame Sidney Pratten (1821-1895); Vahdah Olcott-Bickford (1885-1980); Maria Luisa Anido (1907-1996); Luise Walker (1910-1998); and Ida Presti (1924-1967).
Mowbray grew up in Hagerstown, Maryland, and started as an electric guitar player at age 13, initially teaching herself using library books. She attended Hagerstown Community College before transferring to Shepherd’s music program, where she learned classical and jazz guitar. Throughout much of her musical journey, Mowbray didn’t have female guitar role models to look up to.
“In the late ’80s and early ’90s when I first started, the only women on the cover of magazines were in bikinis and didn’t even play guitar,” Mowbray said. “The guitar heroes were men and if a woman was on the TV with an electric guitar, she wasn’t really playing, it was a prop.”
Mowbray believes it’s important for musicians like herself to have female role models, and she remembers vividly the first four women she saw on television playing lead electric guitar, including Jennifer Batten and Lita Ford. Mowbray said aside from a few, such as Hildegard von Bingen, Clara Schumann, and Fanny Mendelssohn, the contributions of women have largely been left out of music history books.
“As a student I’m a woman, I’m sitting in class with other women, there’s a female professor, we’re here, and we’re doing this, but we’re not in the books,” Mowbray said. “I started just seeking out and learning about other women who have done these things. When you get in a situation where you can teach, you can contribute, and you can research, it just becomes a very natural priority to want to then share some folks who weren’t represented but who were just fantastic.”
Mowbray’s research into the history of women in guitar as performers, composers, and philanthropists began prior to 2006 when she presented a lecture at the Bethlehem Guitar Festival on the topic. Her December 2012 doctoral thesis for her Ph.D. at Shenandoah University was titled “Ida Presti as a Solo Performer and Composer of Works for Solo Guitar.”
Mowbray continues researching the topic and adding information to the blog on her website, https://www.candicemowbray.com/.
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