Countermelodies

Jealous of her brilliant older sister, Ernestine longs for her father’s approval as a little girl but is never good enough. When she discovers a talent for the flute, she meets a charismatic teacher who gives her the encouragement she craves and becomes her surrogate father. After winning several competitions, she dreams of being a professional musician, but her stern father ridicules the idea and forces her to attend Emory University as a math major like her sister.

Ernestine doesn’t give up on her musical dreams, however, and halfway through college she wins the second flute chair in the Atlanta Symphony. There, she sits beside her former teacher, the principal flute. At first, she loves working with him, but after one successful season he turns on her and does everything in his power to get her fired. Devastated by her idol’s merciless harassment, she’s driven into a spiral of suicidal depression. As she tries to recover, her vulnerability is exploited, again and again, by the very men she turns to for help.

A harrowing account of one woman’s battle with twentieth-century misogyny, Countermelodies follows Ernestine as, through the darkness, she clings to her love for the flute and her unshakable dream of making it in the cutthroat world of classical music.

Author: Ernestine Whitman
Publication date: September 24, 2024

Categories: Fall 2024, Memoir

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About the Author

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2024 NYC Big Book Awards Winner in Memoir

“What was it like to forge a path as a woman in a male-dominated field generations before the #MeToo movement? Ernestine Whitman shows us in this courageous, engrossing, and exquisitely written portrait of the artist as a young woman. Part coming of age, part coming to terms, Countermelodies is the story of a gifted flutist making her way in classical music at a time when men got away with unimaginable abuses of power. Like the most sophisticated sonatas, it’s stirring, unsettling, and, in the end, triumphant.”
—Eleanor Henderson, professor at Ithaca College and author of Ten Thousand Saints and Everything I Have Is Yours: A Marriage

“When Ernestine Whitman became a professional flutist, classical music was a man’s world. Opposed by her judgmental father, she learned to fight for her art, navigating encounters with dangerously insecure men and holding fast to her flute until it became the means of her transcendence. At turns funny and frightening, Countermelodies is a glorious masterclass in music history, feminist resilience, and memory.”
—David McGlynn, author of The End of the Straight and Narrow and One Day You’ll Thank Me: Lessons from an Unexpected Fatherhood

About the Author

Ernestine Whitman began her career as a professional flutist at age twenty, making her the youngest member of the Atlanta Symphony. Her passion for teaching brought her to Lawrence University, where she was professor of flute for thirty-three years. A passionate advocate for restorative justice, she volunteers frequently in programs at several Wisconsin prisons. Ernestine and her husband, Howard Niblock, divide their time between their condo in midtown Atlanta and their longtime residence in Appleton.