Michael Torke's 'Being' is a transfixing 43-minute composition that shimmers with infectious energy, despite its lacklustre album cover.

From its early foundations, American music had a European character stamped on it by the American academic musical establishment, which itself was a product of the late 19th century. Before the 1870s, there was virtually no such thing as a music course at the universities; higher educational institutions were reserved for classes in science, history, and languages.

The history of western classical music has traditionally been the province of male composers making music for the aristocracy. Rather than due to nonexistence, the absence of women in the standard music histories has been the result of the common practices of musicologists of the past.