A performance can also resemble its title, as was the case last night with "Music by Women Composers”—though this may not be the historic moment to say it with tact. The music, presided over by a blue-haired dowager, turned out to be placid sonatinas and settings of haiku. If the Whitney's current show of Women painters asks to be judged on merit regardless of sex, the same could not be done for this concert: a blind man would hear this as Ladies' Music, an epithet understandably disgusting to serious composers who happen to be female.