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.
By far the largest online source of music for performers is IMSLP.org, with nearly 800,000 scanned scores. 14 stellar performances demonstrate the range of their holdings.
In the years before and after 1900, many women composers obscured their gender by replacing their names with their initials. Here is a look at six of them.
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A recent recording of two unpublished songs by Amanda Ira Aldridge spur this essay on two songs Aldridge wrote with Marian Anderson’s voice in mind.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.
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
A Tori Amos song shows how vocal timbre conveys symptoms of trauma in a way that lyrics cannot. Content Warning: Discussion of sexual assault, rape, and child abuse.
Ivana Lang’s Nokturno (Nocturne), one of the most beautiful of her many songs, spurs a look at her life and work.
“My friend, Maja Strozzi, perhaps the most beautiful voice of both hemispheres.” Thomas Mann (Doctor Faustus, chapter 37)
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
In her 2011 album Night of Hunters, Tori Amos reflects on a long tradition of classical music penned by men from the perspective of a woman.
By 1914 the NACWC had 50,000 members. Their motto, “Lifting as We Climb,” was worked into songs performed regularly at meetings. It reverberates to this day.
As expressions of motherly love and the pain of mothers who lose their children crossing ethnic, national and religious boundaries, these songs remain universal.
