Music, Voice, Message
People who identify as women
WSF is an online forum devoted to women’s voices in song, to the many songs by women, and to the many female musicians working in and with song, who have yet to be given the attention they deserve. The Women’s Song Forum provides an opportunity to expand and enhance knowledge and understanding of this rich and significant area of musical practice and scholarship, and – as the name “forum” suggests – aims to encourage discussion and debate across different interest groups. The forum aims to highlight compositions and performances of music that deserve more recognition.
At the heart of the forum is our commitment to diverse approaches and subjects and access by a wide-ranging audience. We normally publish 2-3 posts each month by members of our team and guest bloggers.
Creating music for Christmas creates particular challenges for composers – male or female. Here are twelve works by eleven women from five different countries.
A recent recording of two unpublished songs by Amanda Ira Aldridge spur this essay on two songs Aldridge wrote with Marian Anderson’s voice in mind.
Kitty Cheatham – singer, actress, daughter of slave-owners – was committed to preserving Negro spirituals, even as her performances swore allegiance to the Lost Cause of the antebellum South.
Before and after 1900 many women songwriters published their songs with male pseudonyms. Three of the most successful share an unexpected biographical trait.
Two-and-a-half years ago I launched a website devoted to marginalized song composers. In this post, I reflect on where it all began.
From accounts of individual women or performances to historical essays, from interviews with songwriters and performers to discussions of gender, race and culture in and through song.
Tracy Chapman
Although banned for much of her career from major opera houses, Marian Anderson had an intriguing and lifelong devotion to Donizetti’s aria “O mio Fernando.”
A newly updated database of songs composed between 1890 and 1930 by women in English speaking countries has reached almost 24,800 entries by 5148 women.
Marie Hinrichs’s single published opus – composed when she was eighteen – proves that sometimes the most affecting music is also the most unassuming.
Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita finds that Lomax’s 1952-53 recordings help us to understand the political situation under Franco, life in impoverished Spain, and the moral constrictions faced by women.
John Michael Cooper interprets Florence Price’s songs, “To My Little Son” and “Brown Arms (To Mother),” as responses to the painful losses of her son and her mother.
In her second post, Heather Platt tracks Villa Whitney White’s lecture-recitals of German lieder from 1895–98. Unusually, White sang complete song-cycles and songs written for men.
Heather Platt discusses an unusual lecture-recital held in Denver in 1898 that brought together songs of Native Americans, Blacks, Creoles and whites. Women’s clubs and Villa Whitney White made it happen.
One of our aims is to recover and honor voices that have been overlooked or forgotten.
Sara Teasdale
My efforts as a volunteer working with music for a group of mild Alzheimer’s patients led me, unexpectedly, to recover musical memories of my own.
On a lark, I asked my students to listen to a beautiful song by Caroline Shaw and, rather than write about it, draw a picture of it. The results astounded me.
Even as churches ban “I Love You Truly,” brides and grooms embrace it, as do films, radio broadcasts, and recording companies.
