49 RESEARCH REPORT A Re-evaluation of the Chilean Composer Carmela Mackenna Subercaseaux (1879–1962)* Constanza Arraño 2024 © Constanza Arraño, Context 49 (2023): 49–56. Although there are numerous studies that reconstruct, from different perspectives, the history of Chilean classical music, the presence of women in this history has been scarcely documented and researched. This absence has been constant throughout different periods of Chilean history, from colonial times (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), to the formation of the Republic in the nineteenth century, through to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 1 In principle, one might think that this exclusion is caused by the establishment of a musical canon linked to the National Conservatory of Music—the highest, and, at times, only institution of musical education in Chile since its foundation in 1850—which favoured the musical production of male composers. However, although this is indeed an important factor to consider, the invisibilisation of women is multifactorial, and rather than being linked to * This research project, originally named ‘Revalorización de la compositora chilena Carmela Mackenna Subercaseaux (1879–1962),’ was financed by Fondo de la Música, convocatoria 2022, del Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio de Chile (folio 616256). 1 Juan Pablo González Rodríguez, ‘Perspectivas de la musicología en Chile (1952–2015),’ in Perspectivas y desafíos de la investigación musical en Iberoamérica. Memorias del Coloquio Iberoamericano sobre Investigación Musical 2015, ed. Yael Bitrán Goren and Cynthia Rodríguez (Ciudad de México: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Secretaría de Cultura, 2016), 53–82; Josefina Pérez González, Las historias de la música en Hispanoamérica (1876–2000) (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2010); Víctor Rondón, ‘Historiografía musical chilena, una aproximación,’ Resonancias 20, no. 38 (2016): 117–38; Luis Merino Montero, ‘La música en Chile entre 1887 y 1928: compositores que pervivieron después de 1928, compositores en las penumbras, compositores olvidados,’ Neuma 7, no. 2 (2013): 23–79.