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.
Behind the gentle rhythms and pastoral lyrics British women composed to celebrate Mother’s Days a century and more ago lie several calculated strategies. This is Part 1 of 2.
Songs about life after the death of a mother in childbirth were once extremely popular. Now long forgotten, the tales they tell are worth hearing.
Can the editorial creation of a song-cycle from individual songs help raise the visibility of women composers? The songs of Pauline Viardot-Garcia offer a wonderful opportunity.
Last summer I assembled a cycle of eight songs by the 19th-century German composer Pauline Decker, understanding this curatorial action as an important form of advocacy.
The Hal Leonard company has long sold an anthology entitled Daffodils, Violets & Snowflakes, 24 gender-stereotyped songs from 1900-22. Here’s a look at what they convey.
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
As European art music began to be challenged by jazz, musically influential women devised ways to cultivate “a taste for ‘good’ music in children.”
In the short space of seven songs, Hall transforms the private nature of Anne Frank’s diary into a searing disclosure.
Doris Akers was one of Black gospel’s most prolific composers. This is a cross-racial account of her most famous song, “Sweet, Sweet Spirit.”
Eva Maria Doroszkowska marks the most recent anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with this reflection about the remarkable, but largely unknown, composer Stefania Turkewich.
Lisa Colton recounts the thrill of discovering the autograph manuscript of Edith Smyth’s ‘Mass in D.’
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.
One of our aims is to recover and honor voices that have been overlooked or forgotten.
Sara Teasdale
Women’s singing, in extremis, has frequently been associated with the non-verbal. Linda Perhacs’s “Parallelograms” (1970) is an example that is grounded in words.
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.
In this post Verica Grmusa, Nicole Panizza, and Stephen Rodgers bring to life an unpublished Hensel song from 1826, and reflect on the meaning of domestic spaces then and now.
