Women and music: a different contribution, a history of their own

Is it different to write about the history of women and, specifically, about their musical activities? Is writing about musical activities in a monastery the same as writing about the music of nuns in a convent? Is writing about Kaija Saariaho the same as writing about Peter Eötvös? As the musicologist Eva Rieger remarked several decades ago, women's contribution to the history of music has been different. Therefore, when we speak about the subject, a pressing need arises to tackle the classic problem concerning the historiography of the dialectic link between the particular and the general, the margins and the centre, the individual and society.