Who is recognized as a composer - and why does the category so often appear gender-neutral until women enter it?

This paper interrogates the cultural construction of “composer” through a comparative analysis of Germany and South Korea, examining how musical authority is historically produced, institutionally maintained, and discursively marked. Drawing on archival research, institutional histories, and contemporary discourse analysis, the study shifts attention from the recovery of marginalized figures to the normative assumptions embedded in the category itself.

In German art music traditions, canon formation and aesthetic ideologies of autonomous authorship have consolidated a masculinized model of compositional authority that remains structurally unmarked. In Korean contexts, the position of historical figures such as gisaeng complicates Western-derived distinctions between composition, performance, and authorship, revealing alternative configurations of musical agency that have not consistently been integrated into modern art music historiography.

The persistent labeling of “female composer” exposes the asymmetry of recognition and raises broader questions about how musical value and legitimacy are assigned. By situating naming practices within broader regimes of cultural validation, this paper argues that “composer” is not a neutral descriptor but a historically contingent category shaped by power, pedagogy, and canon formation. Rethinking who gets to be called a composer invites a reconsideration of musical authority and the epistemological foundations of ethnomusicological scholarship.