Marian Wilson Kimber
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040719
- eISBN:
- 9780252099151
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040719.003.0010
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Nettie Arthur Brown’s The Red Fan (1896) was typical of the humorous spoken-word compositions in twentieth-century America. Due to female elocutionists’ performance traditions, women became the ...
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Nettie Arthur Brown’s The Red Fan (1896) was typical of the humorous spoken-word compositions in twentieth-century America. Due to female elocutionists’ performance traditions, women became the primary composers of melodramatic compositions, including a few modernist composers, such as Ruth Crawford Seeger and Marion Bauer. More typically, comic “musical readings” satirized gender expectations. Courtship, marriage, and domesticity were portayed as less than ideal. Performers sometimes adopted a rebellious boy persona, allowing for women’s further expression of gendered satire. Some compositions depicted grandmothers, and moral and religious works continued and modified nineteenth-century ideals. Piano accompaniments humorously quote well-known compositions and feature closing gestures that punctuate the narratives’ climactic “punch lines.” Ultimately, female composers feminized melodrama, creating genres to speak for and to women.Less
Nettie Arthur Brown’s The Red Fan (1896) was typical of the humorous spoken-word compositions in twentieth-century America. Due to female elocutionists’ performance traditions, women became the primary composers of melodramatic compositions, including a few modernist composers, such as Ruth Crawford Seeger and Marion Bauer. More typically, comic “musical readings” satirized gender expectations. Courtship, marriage, and domesticity were portayed as less than ideal. Performers sometimes adopted a rebellious boy persona, allowing for women’s further expression of gendered satire. Some compositions depicted grandmothers, and moral and religious works continued and modified nineteenth-century ideals. Piano accompaniments humorously quote well-known compositions and feature closing gestures that punctuate the narratives’ climactic “punch lines.” Ultimately, female composers feminized melodrama, creating genres to speak for and to women.
Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190236861
- eISBN:
- 9780190236892
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190236861.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Theory, Analysis, Composition
The collection’s introductory chapter situates the eight composers featured in this volume and their music in the twentieth-century environment of the female composer. The authors contrast the ...
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The collection’s introductory chapter situates the eight composers featured in this volume and their music in the twentieth-century environment of the female composer. The authors contrast the proliferation of compositional activity by contemporary women with the low representation of their music in creative and scholarly forums, arguing that a rich and varied repertoire remains to be discovered by scholars, performers, and listeners. Exploration of the links among the eight composers leads to consideration of the controversial question of whether there can be a distinctively female compositional voice. The chapter concludes with an invitation to scholars to contribute to a new phase of analytical discourse in which the compositions of women are regularly and proportionately included, and the label “woman composer” becomes obsolete.Less
The collection’s introductory chapter situates the eight composers featured in this volume and their music in the twentieth-century environment of the female composer. The authors contrast the proliferation of compositional activity by contemporary women with the low representation of their music in creative and scholarly forums, arguing that a rich and varied repertoire remains to be discovered by scholars, performers, and listeners. Exploration of the links among the eight composers leads to consideration of the controversial question of whether there can be a distinctively female compositional voice. The chapter concludes with an invitation to scholars to contribute to a new phase of analytical discourse in which the compositions of women are regularly and proportionately included, and the label “woman composer” becomes obsolete.
Marian Wilson Kimber
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040719
- eISBN:
- 9780252099151
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040719.003.0009
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Women’s clubs networks supported the careers of composer-performers Frieda Peycke (1884–1964) and Phyllis Fergus (1887–1964). Both women presented herself not as an elocutionist, but as a composer ...
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Women’s clubs networks supported the careers of composer-performers Frieda Peycke (1884–1964) and Phyllis Fergus (1887–1964). Both women presented herself not as an elocutionist, but as a composer of a musical art form and publicized the spoken word genres in which she performed with a unique label: Fergus’s “story poems,” and Peycke’s “musically-illustrated readings.” Fergus appeared before women’s music clubs in Chicago, groups that had readers as members into the 1940s, and gradual assumed leadership positions. Peycke’s performances in private homes suggests an ongoing women’s salon culture that supported spoken word performance. Never released, Peycke’s recordings, as well as her published articles, were unable to create a lasting audience for her compositions, though she performed successfully in Los Angeles for fifty years.Less
Women’s clubs networks supported the careers of composer-performers Frieda Peycke (1884–1964) and Phyllis Fergus (1887–1964). Both women presented herself not as an elocutionist, but as a composer of a musical art form and publicized the spoken word genres in which she performed with a unique label: Fergus’s “story poems,” and Peycke’s “musically-illustrated readings.” Fergus appeared before women’s music clubs in Chicago, groups that had readers as members into the 1940s, and gradual assumed leadership positions. Peycke’s performances in private homes suggests an ongoing women’s salon culture that supported spoken word performance. Never released, Peycke’s recordings, as well as her published articles, were unable to create a lasting audience for her compositions, though she performed successfully in Los Angeles for fifty years.
Sharon Mirchandani
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037313
- eISBN:
- 9780252094491
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037313.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter focuses on Marga Richter's compositions during the 1970s, including orchestral, chamber music, and piano pieces. Richter's music in the 1970s is her response to the beauty she found in ...
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This chapter focuses on Marga Richter's compositions during the 1970s, including orchestral, chamber music, and piano pieces. Richter's music in the 1970s is her response to the beauty she found in nature, as well as intimacy. She also became increasingly aware of the need to promote her own music. Her orchestral works drew the interest of prominent conductors such as Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Gregory Millar, Kenneth Schermerhorn, Harold Farberman, and Sheldon Morgenstern. The backdrop to these performances and more was the second-wave feminism that had swept the nation. This chapter first discusses Richter's relationship to the feminist movement of the period and how feminism contributed to the growth of support for women composers, and particularly to Richter's success. It then examines Richter's Landscapes series—Landscapes of the Mind I, Landscapes of the Mind II, and Landscapes of the Mind III—as well as her shorter works and piano works. It also analyzes Richter's thirteen-minute symphonic poem Blackberry Vines and Winter Fruit, which reflects a touch of American transcendentalism, and concludes with an assessment of her musical aesthetics.Less
This chapter focuses on Marga Richter's compositions during the 1970s, including orchestral, chamber music, and piano pieces. Richter's music in the 1970s is her response to the beauty she found in nature, as well as intimacy. She also became increasingly aware of the need to promote her own music. Her orchestral works drew the interest of prominent conductors such as Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Gregory Millar, Kenneth Schermerhorn, Harold Farberman, and Sheldon Morgenstern. The backdrop to these performances and more was the second-wave feminism that had swept the nation. This chapter first discusses Richter's relationship to the feminist movement of the period and how feminism contributed to the growth of support for women composers, and particularly to Richter's success. It then examines Richter's Landscapes series—Landscapes of the Mind I, Landscapes of the Mind II, and Landscapes of the Mind III—as well as her shorter works and piano works. It also analyzes Richter's thirteen-minute symphonic poem Blackberry Vines and Winter Fruit, which reflects a touch of American transcendentalism, and concludes with an assessment of her musical aesthetics.
Cecelia Hopkins Porter
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037016
- eISBN:
- 9780252094132
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037016.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter looks into the life of Baroness Maria Bach (1896–1978), her promising professional future, and her lifelong struggle to attract renown and respect as a “serious” woman composer. Born ...
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This chapter looks into the life of Baroness Maria Bach (1896–1978), her promising professional future, and her lifelong struggle to attract renown and respect as a “serious” woman composer. Born into Austria's late-nineteenth-century privileged “aristocracy”—the affluent upper middle class—the Viennese composer and pianist prided herself on her intellectual and artistic heritage. Her birth in 1896 set her solidly within the imperial capital's golden age—that brilliant constellation of the arts known as Viennese modernism. From the last decade of the nineteenth century to World War I, fin-de-siècle Vienna was a cultural mecca unequaled anywhere else in central Europe.Less
This chapter looks into the life of Baroness Maria Bach (1896–1978), her promising professional future, and her lifelong struggle to attract renown and respect as a “serious” woman composer. Born into Austria's late-nineteenth-century privileged “aristocracy”—the affluent upper middle class—the Viennese composer and pianist prided herself on her intellectual and artistic heritage. Her birth in 1896 set her solidly within the imperial capital's golden age—that brilliant constellation of the arts known as Viennese modernism. From the last decade of the nineteenth century to World War I, fin-de-siècle Vienna was a cultural mecca unequaled anywhere else in central Europe.
Marian Wilson Kimber
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040719
- eISBN:
- 9780252099151
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040719.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Poetry recitation and music intersected in performances by American women between ca. 1850 and 1950. Through oral interpretation of literature, women aspired to a place in high culture, yet in taking ...
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Poetry recitation and music intersected in performances by American women between ca. 1850 and 1950. Through oral interpretation of literature, women aspired to a place in high culture, yet in taking to the platform, female elocutionists transgressed the previous boundaries between private and public domains. Nonetheless, programs, press reports, and archival materials from women’s clubs, elocution schools, women’s colleges, and the Chautauqua circuit demonstrate that musical and literary entertainments by professional and amateur female performers were widespread. Repertoire was selected to be socially acceptable for women and to distinguish elocutionists from morally-suspect actresses. Many of the performance practices typical of spoken word and accompaniment are unknown today because they fall outside our conception of the musical work. Although women’s increasing dominance of the field of elocution resulted in its subsequent denigration as a “feminine” profession, their spoken-word performance tradition influenced the history of music, and they became the primary composers of melodramatic compositions in twentieth-century America. The Elocutionists is thus a study of the intersection of gender and genre, demonstrating female elocutionists’ role in the creation of musically-accompanied recitation and women composers’ transformations of late nineteenth-century practices in creating works that would appeal specifically to women.Less
Poetry recitation and music intersected in performances by American women between ca. 1850 and 1950. Through oral interpretation of literature, women aspired to a place in high culture, yet in taking to the platform, female elocutionists transgressed the previous boundaries between private and public domains. Nonetheless, programs, press reports, and archival materials from women’s clubs, elocution schools, women’s colleges, and the Chautauqua circuit demonstrate that musical and literary entertainments by professional and amateur female performers were widespread. Repertoire was selected to be socially acceptable for women and to distinguish elocutionists from morally-suspect actresses. Many of the performance practices typical of spoken word and accompaniment are unknown today because they fall outside our conception of the musical work. Although women’s increasing dominance of the field of elocution resulted in its subsequent denigration as a “feminine” profession, their spoken-word performance tradition influenced the history of music, and they became the primary composers of melodramatic compositions in twentieth-century America. The Elocutionists is thus a study of the intersection of gender and genre, demonstrating female elocutionists’ role in the creation of musically-accompanied recitation and women composers’ transformations of late nineteenth-century practices in creating works that would appeal specifically to women.
Nalini Ghuman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199314898
- eISBN:
- 9780199372959
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199314898.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter unpacks the socio-cultural world buried in Amy Woodforde-Finden’s ‘Kashmiri Song’ (1902), and its century-long cultural projections. The fervour it generated stemmed from delight in ...
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This chapter unpacks the socio-cultural world buried in Amy Woodforde-Finden’s ‘Kashmiri Song’ (1902), and its century-long cultural projections. The fervour it generated stemmed from delight in ‘Kashmiri romance’ dating back to Lalla Rookh, its erotic, interracial implications and their resonance with Richard Burton’s ‘Indo-Persian’ translations (Kama Sutra) and contemporary Anglo-Indian/women’s fiction, and, crucially, rumours surrounding its creation by a woman composer and a woman poet (the pseudonymous ‘Laurence Hope’), who each ‘knew’ India ‘intimately’. The singer’s ambiguous subject position (widely heard as autobiographical) is shown to allow for transgressive explorations of imperial fantasies (fuelled by its companion, ‘Less than the Dust’) at the Raj’s height and beyond. Ultimately, the changing resonance of ‘Kashmiri Song’, culminating in a postcolonial re-voicing by Agha Shahid Ali, opens up Indo-British history to its internal others (Muslims, exiles, women, lesbians), illuminating its significance for understanding the continuing reverberations of colonialism.Less
This chapter unpacks the socio-cultural world buried in Amy Woodforde-Finden’s ‘Kashmiri Song’ (1902), and its century-long cultural projections. The fervour it generated stemmed from delight in ‘Kashmiri romance’ dating back to Lalla Rookh, its erotic, interracial implications and their resonance with Richard Burton’s ‘Indo-Persian’ translations (Kama Sutra) and contemporary Anglo-Indian/women’s fiction, and, crucially, rumours surrounding its creation by a woman composer and a woman poet (the pseudonymous ‘Laurence Hope’), who each ‘knew’ India ‘intimately’. The singer’s ambiguous subject position (widely heard as autobiographical) is shown to allow for transgressive explorations of imperial fantasies (fuelled by its companion, ‘Less than the Dust’) at the Raj’s height and beyond. Ultimately, the changing resonance of ‘Kashmiri Song’, culminating in a postcolonial re-voicing by Agha Shahid Ali, opens up Indo-British history to its internal others (Muslims, exiles, women, lesbians), illuminating its significance for understanding the continuing reverberations of colonialism.
Marian Wilson Kimber
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040719
- eISBN:
- 9780252099151
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040719.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Women confirmed their own more highly cultured positions through recitation of African American dialect, particularly the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, or “child dialect,” sometimes with musical ...
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Women confirmed their own more highly cultured positions through recitation of African American dialect, particularly the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, or “child dialect,” sometimes with musical accompaniment. Many women incorporated Dunbar’s dialect poems into their repertoires, texts that also inspired settings for speaker and piano by women composers. However white women’s imitations of African American dialect perpetuated racial stereotypes such as that of the Mammy, even while their musical settings negated the text’s origins. Child dialect allowed child imitators to express comedic and rebellious sentiments without transgressing feminine social boundaries. The child-like persona cultivated by diseuse Kitty Cheatham facilitated her eclectic programming of children’s songs, nursery rhymes, and European art music alongside spirituals and African-American dialect texts.Less
Women confirmed their own more highly cultured positions through recitation of African American dialect, particularly the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, or “child dialect,” sometimes with musical accompaniment. Many women incorporated Dunbar’s dialect poems into their repertoires, texts that also inspired settings for speaker and piano by women composers. However white women’s imitations of African American dialect perpetuated racial stereotypes such as that of the Mammy, even while their musical settings negated the text’s origins. Child dialect allowed child imitators to express comedic and rebellious sentiments without transgressing feminine social boundaries. The child-like persona cultivated by diseuse Kitty Cheatham facilitated her eclectic programming of children’s songs, nursery rhymes, and European art music alongside spirituals and African-American dialect texts.
Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- October 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190237028
- eISBN:
- 9780190237059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190237028.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This volume, the second to be published in a four-volume series, examines compositions by eight composers from the twelfth to nineteenth centuries. The introductory chapter outlines the organization ...
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This volume, the second to be published in a four-volume series, examines compositions by eight composers from the twelfth to nineteenth centuries. The introductory chapter outlines the organization of the volume and the goals of the project—to celebrate outstanding music composed by women by according it the same scholarly attention devoted to music by men; to create a critical mass of scholarship that will stimulate new analytical research and bring it into the mainstream of music theoretical discourse; and to bring to readers’ attention “new” repertoire that is rewarding to performer, listener, and scholar. Distinctions are noted between the composers, particularly in terms of the sociohistorical contexts in which they created their music. Questions of genre and scale are also discussed.Less
This volume, the second to be published in a four-volume series, examines compositions by eight composers from the twelfth to nineteenth centuries. The introductory chapter outlines the organization of the volume and the goals of the project—to celebrate outstanding music composed by women by according it the same scholarly attention devoted to music by men; to create a critical mass of scholarship that will stimulate new analytical research and bring it into the mainstream of music theoretical discourse; and to bring to readers’ attention “new” repertoire that is rewarding to performer, listener, and scholar. Distinctions are noted between the composers, particularly in terms of the sociohistorical contexts in which they created their music. Questions of genre and scale are also discussed.
Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- October 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190237028
- eISBN:
- 9780190237059
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190237028.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This multi-author collection, the second to be published in an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical essays on music by women composers from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries, ...
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This multi-author collection, the second to be published in an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical essays on music by women composers from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries, presents detailed studies of compositions written up to 1900 by Hildegard of Bingen, Maddalena Casulana, Barbara Strozzi, Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre, Marianna Martines, Fanny Hensel, Josephine Lang, Clara Schumann, and Amy Beach. Each chapter opens with a brief biographical sketch of the composer, followed by an in-depth analysis of one representative composition or a small number of comparable compositions, linking analytical observations with broader considerations of music history, gender, culture, or hermeneutics. These essays, many by leading music theorists, are grouped thematically into three sections, the first focused on early music for voice, the second on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century keyboard music, and the third on lieder and piano music. The collection is designed to challenge and stimulate a wide range of readers. For academics, these thorough analytical studies can open new paths into unexplored research areas in music theory and musicology. Post-secondary instructors may be inspired by the insights offered here to include new works in graduate or upper-level undergraduate courses in early music, theory, history, or women and music. Finally, for performers, conductors, and music broadcasters, these thoughtful analyses can offer enriched understandings of this repertoire and suggest fresh, new programming possibilities to share with listeners—an endeavor of discovery for all those interested in music composed before 1900.Less
This multi-author collection, the second to be published in an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical essays on music by women composers from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries, presents detailed studies of compositions written up to 1900 by Hildegard of Bingen, Maddalena Casulana, Barbara Strozzi, Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre, Marianna Martines, Fanny Hensel, Josephine Lang, Clara Schumann, and Amy Beach. Each chapter opens with a brief biographical sketch of the composer, followed by an in-depth analysis of one representative composition or a small number of comparable compositions, linking analytical observations with broader considerations of music history, gender, culture, or hermeneutics. These essays, many by leading music theorists, are grouped thematically into three sections, the first focused on early music for voice, the second on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century keyboard music, and the third on lieder and piano music. The collection is designed to challenge and stimulate a wide range of readers. For academics, these thorough analytical studies can open new paths into unexplored research areas in music theory and musicology. Post-secondary instructors may be inspired by the insights offered here to include new works in graduate or upper-level undergraduate courses in early music, theory, history, or women and music. Finally, for performers, conductors, and music broadcasters, these thoughtful analyses can offer enriched understandings of this repertoire and suggest fresh, new programming possibilities to share with listeners—an endeavor of discovery for all those interested in music composed before 1900.
Matthew Head
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780520273849
- eISBN:
- 9780520954762
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520273849.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Between about 1770 and 1800 in central and northern German states, female musicians flourished as performers and composers, their achievements celebrated by some contemporary male critics as ...
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Between about 1770 and 1800 in central and northern German states, female musicians flourished as performers and composers, their achievements celebrated by some contemporary male critics as measuring the progress of musical culture and society from barbarism to civilization. Female excellence and related feminocentric values were celebrated by forward-looking critics such as Johann Friedrich Reichardt, who, though employed as Kapellmeister at the court of Fredrick the Great, argued for music as a fine art, a component of modern, polite, and commercial culture, rather than a symbol of institutional power. In Reichardt’s criticism, and that of his English rival, Charles Burney, femininity, a newly emerging and primarily bourgeois ideal, linked women and music under the valorized signs of refinement, sensibility, virtue, patriotism, luxury, and, above all, beauty. This moment in musical history was eclipsed in the first decades of the nineteenth century and ultimately erased from the record of musical history by now familiar developments: the formation of musical canons, a musical history based on technical progress, the idea of masterworks, authorial autonomy, the musical sublime, and aggressively essentializing ideas about the relationship between sex, gender, and art.Less
Between about 1770 and 1800 in central and northern German states, female musicians flourished as performers and composers, their achievements celebrated by some contemporary male critics as measuring the progress of musical culture and society from barbarism to civilization. Female excellence and related feminocentric values were celebrated by forward-looking critics such as Johann Friedrich Reichardt, who, though employed as Kapellmeister at the court of Fredrick the Great, argued for music as a fine art, a component of modern, polite, and commercial culture, rather than a symbol of institutional power. In Reichardt’s criticism, and that of his English rival, Charles Burney, femininity, a newly emerging and primarily bourgeois ideal, linked women and music under the valorized signs of refinement, sensibility, virtue, patriotism, luxury, and, above all, beauty. This moment in musical history was eclipsed in the first decades of the nineteenth century and ultimately erased from the record of musical history by now familiar developments: the formation of musical canons, a musical history based on technical progress, the idea of masterworks, authorial autonomy, the musical sublime, and aggressively essentializing ideas about the relationship between sex, gender, and art.
Jean E. Snyder
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039942
- eISBN:
- 9780252098109
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039942.003.0010
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter focuses on Harry T. Burleigh's mentoring of younger musicians, especially singers and composers. Among the singers Burleigh mentored are some of the most distinguished African American ...
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This chapter focuses on Harry T. Burleigh's mentoring of younger musicians, especially singers and composers. Among the singers Burleigh mentored are some of the most distinguished African American recital and musical theater performers of the early to mid-twentieth century. In 1934 a black newspaper commented that Burleigh “was always ready to show a helping hand by way of advice to some struggling artist” such as Abbie Mitchell. Burleigh's support and encouragement of younger musicians enabled their careers in very practical ways. He also collaborated with instrumentalists, and although his standards of excellence were high, he was generous in his support of musicians whose talent and professionalism he respected. Aside from Mitchell, Burleigh's early protégés include black singers Roland Hayes, Marian Anderson, and Paul Robeson as well as women composers such as Undine Smith Moore, Florence Price, and Margaret Bonds.Less
This chapter focuses on Harry T. Burleigh's mentoring of younger musicians, especially singers and composers. Among the singers Burleigh mentored are some of the most distinguished African American recital and musical theater performers of the early to mid-twentieth century. In 1934 a black newspaper commented that Burleigh “was always ready to show a helping hand by way of advice to some struggling artist” such as Abbie Mitchell. Burleigh's support and encouragement of younger musicians enabled their careers in very practical ways. He also collaborated with instrumentalists, and although his standards of excellence were high, he was generous in his support of musicians whose talent and professionalism he respected. Aside from Mitchell, Burleigh's early protégés include black singers Roland Hayes, Marian Anderson, and Paul Robeson as well as women composers such as Undine Smith Moore, Florence Price, and Margaret Bonds.
Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190236861
- eISBN:
- 9780190236892
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190236861.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This multiauthor collection, the first of an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical essays on music by women composers from Hildegard of Bingen to the twenty-first century, presents detailed ...
More
This multiauthor collection, the first of an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical essays on music by women composers from Hildegard of Bingen to the twenty-first century, presents detailed studies of compositions written since 1960 by Ursula Mamlok, Norma Beecroft, Joan Tower, Sofia Gubaidulina, Chen Yi, Kaija Saariaho, Libby Larsen, and Elisabeth Lutyens. Each chapter opens with a brief biographical sketch of the composer written by the editors, followed by an in-depth analysis of a single representative composition linking analytical observations with broader considerations of music history, gender, culture, or hermeneutics. These essays, many by leading music theorists, are grouped thematically into three sections, the first focused on pitch design, the second on musical gesture, and the third on music and text. The collection is designed to challenge and stimulate a wide range of readers. For academics, these thorough analytical studies can open new paths into unexplored research areas in music theory and musicology. Postsecondary instructors may be inspired by the insights offered here to include new works in graduate or upper-level undergraduate courses in post-tonal theory, history, or women and music. Finally, for performers, conductors, and music broadcasters, these thoughtful analyses can offer enriched understandings of this repertoire and suggest fresh new programming possibilities to share with listeners—an endeavor of discovery for all those interested in twentieth-century music.Less
This multiauthor collection, the first of an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical essays on music by women composers from Hildegard of Bingen to the twenty-first century, presents detailed studies of compositions written since 1960 by Ursula Mamlok, Norma Beecroft, Joan Tower, Sofia Gubaidulina, Chen Yi, Kaija Saariaho, Libby Larsen, and Elisabeth Lutyens. Each chapter opens with a brief biographical sketch of the composer written by the editors, followed by an in-depth analysis of a single representative composition linking analytical observations with broader considerations of music history, gender, culture, or hermeneutics. These essays, many by leading music theorists, are grouped thematically into three sections, the first focused on pitch design, the second on musical gesture, and the third on music and text. The collection is designed to challenge and stimulate a wide range of readers. For academics, these thorough analytical studies can open new paths into unexplored research areas in music theory and musicology. Postsecondary instructors may be inspired by the insights offered here to include new works in graduate or upper-level undergraduate courses in post-tonal theory, history, or women and music. Finally, for performers, conductors, and music broadcasters, these thoughtful analyses can offer enriched understandings of this repertoire and suggest fresh new programming possibilities to share with listeners—an endeavor of discovery for all those interested in twentieth-century music.
