Earlier this week, there was a headline in the New York Times: “E. Margaret Burbidge, Astronomer Who Blazed Trails on Earth, Dies at 100.” The subheading of the obit was, “She was denied access to a telescope because of her sex, but Dr. Burbidge forged ahead anyway, going on to make pathbreaking discoveries about the cosmos.” Something in the obit made me think of my current “New York Chronicle” (believe it or not). I am speaking of my little music survey in the current issue of the magazine.

The New York Philharmonic is engaged in a project—or would be, if the music business, along with the rest of the world, were operating normally—called “Project 19.” That number refers to the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote. This year marks the centennial of the amendment. In recognition, the Philharmonic has commissioned nineteen female composers to write pieces for the orchestra.

An excerpt from my chronicle:

In recent years, people in the music business have grumbled that female composers have not been programmed enough. So Project 19 looks like redress. I could not help thinking how I would feel, however, if I were one of the composers approached. How would you feel? Would you be glad of the commission, no matter what? Would you feel entitled? Would you feel slightly insulted, knowing that sex (or “gender,” as we say today) played a role? Would your feelings be mixed?

I am not judging those who have accepted the commissions—for one thing, I haven’t walked in their moccasins. But I am wondering. . . . I thought of Edward MacDowell, the American composer of the late nineteenth century. American classical music was just getting off the ground. And MacDowell was invited to participate in a concert of American music. He declined, refusing to allow any of his music to be performed. The reason? If a piece of his deserved to be performed, the nationality of its composer had nothing to do with it.

That is very far from the spirit of our own age.

Okay, back to the astronomer, Dr. Burbidge, who passed away in her centennial year, so to speak: at the cool, even age of one hundred. The before-linked obit says,

Dr. Burbidge made headlines in the early 1970s when she refused a prize, the Annie Jump Cannon Award. Presented by the American Astronomical Society, it is earmarked for women.

“If my strong feeling is against any kind of discrimination,” she told Science magazine in 1991, “I have to stretch that to include discrimination for women too.”

An exceptional person, obviously, in a number of ways.

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