It has never been so easy for singers to hunt for new songs to sing. Reprint editions make available works long out of print, and digital collections make songs easy to purchase and download. By far the largest source costs nothing to use. The Internet Music Score Library Project, aka the Petrucci Music Library, is most often identified simply by its acronym, IMSLP. Launched in 2006, it now stores 800,000 scans of scores, primarily scores out of copyright.
Long known as a source for old editions of Bach, Beethoven, and a full range of lesser-known male composers, it also provides an impressive number of scores by women. Typing “women composer” into the search box brings up the category “Female people,” currently with 4404 names. Many of these are poets (all oddly categorized as librettists), some are performers, some editors or translators, but the largest group is composers, including women who wrote in popular styles for Tin Pan Alley publishers, and quite a few amateurs who self-published just one or two songs.
What follows is a targeted list of significant women composers contained in IMSLP, focusing on women who were active in English-speaking countries and whose lives spanned the turn of the 20th century. After the composers’ names and their birth and death years, the number indicates how many scanned songs are currently available. There are of course also instrumental works for a full range of ensembles. Although this list is limited to English speaking countries, the resources of IMSLP span the globe.
Because this is also a playlist, there are 14 memorable performances of songs whose scores can be downloaded from IMSLP.
Composers of songs termed “classical” and “light classical”
Frances Allitsen (1848–1912) – 11
Emma Louise Ashford (1850–1930) – 7
Adele Aus der Ohe (1861–1937) – 8
Florence Aylward (1862–1950) – 3
Florence Newell Barbour (1866–1946) – 5
Marion Bauer (1882–1955) – 14
Amy Cheney Beach (1867–1944) – >100
Carrie Jacobs-Bond (1861–1946) – >100
May H. Brahe (1884–1956) – 13
Gena Branscombe (1881–1977) – 11
Dora Bright (1862–1951) – 7
Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) – 7
Teresa Del Riego (1876–1968) – 5
Amy Woodforde-Finden (1860–1919) – 34
Dorothy Forster (1884–1950) – 8
Marjory Kennedy-Fraser (1857–1930) – >100
Eleanor Everest Freer (1864–1942) – 14
Jessie Gaynor (1863–1921) – 7
Louisa Gray (ca. 1830–1911) – 7
Guy d’Hardelot (1858–1936) – 21
Mabel Wood Hill (1870–1954) – 12
Mildred J. Hill (1859–1916) – 8
Helen Hopekirk (1856–1945) – 73
Amy Elise Horrocks (1867–1919) – 4
Margaret Ruthven Lang (1867–1972) – 25
Liza Lehmann (1862–1918) – >100
Adela Maddison (1862–1929) – 19
Daisy McGeoch (1876–1963) – 4
Alicia Needham (1864–1945) – 15
Edna Rosalind Park (1872–1906) – 8
Jessie L. Pease (1865–1943) – 5
Poldowski (Irene Regine Wieniawska, Lady Dean Paul) (1879–1932) – 15
Anna Priscilla Risher (1875–1946) – 9
Clara Kathleen Rodgers (1844–1931) – 27
Gertrude Ross (1889–1957) – 8
Mary Turner Salter (1856–1934) – 13
Gertrude Sans Souci (1873–1913) – 11
Evelyn Sharpe (1869–1955) – 14
Lily Strickland (1887–1958) – 11
Hope Temple [Mrs. André Messager] (1859–1938) – 7
Kate Vannah (1855–1933) – 6
Harriet Ware (1877–1962) – 18
Maude Valerie White (1855–1937) – 46
Popular and Tin Pan Alley
Nora Bayes (1880–1928) – 17
Henriette Blanke Belcher, also H. B. Blanke (1882–1958) – 18
Charlotte Blake (1885–1979) – 8
Fleta Jan Brown (1882–1938) – 13
Anna Caldwell (1867–1936) – 20
Maria Grever (1885–1951) – 4
May O. Hill (1888–1978) – 5
Dorothy Jardon (1883–1966) – 8
Clare Kummer (1873–1958) – 16
Grace Le Boy (1890–1983) – 18
Blanche Merrill (1895–1966) – 7
Luella Lockwood Moore (1864–1927) – 5
Maude Nugent (1873–1958) – 9
Anita Owen (1874–1932) – 30
Caro Roma (1869–1937) – 9
Alma Sanders (1882–1956) – 15
Blanche M. Tice (1878–1933) – 8
Helen Trix (1886–1951) – 6
Edna Williams (1887–1971) – 8
Notes
The banner photo is made up of the sheet-music covers of songs present in IMSLP by Carrie Jacobs-Bond, Liza Lehmann, and Anita Owen.
Among the many prolific songwriters still absent from IMSLP are Annie E. Armstrong, Alice Borton, Vaughn De Leath, Amy Hare, Edith Harrhy, Cecile Hartog, Fanny Snow Knowlton, and Nita Gaetano Moncrieff.
