Women composers

Discover repertoire lists of music composed by women for specific instruments and ensembles.

• Diverse Composers of Wind Band Music
  • Over 1,200 works
  • Google spreadsheet organized in 3 separate tabs (women composers; composers of colour; LGBTQIA+)
• Female Band Music Composers
  • Band literature at grade levels 1-4
• The Wind Repository Project
  • Comprehensive and crowd-sourced wiki of wind band repertoire
  • Find detailed information on literature for winds, including program notes, instrumentation, errata sheets

• Women Composer Database
  • Includes works for solo trombone as well as chamber music
• Trumpet Music by Women
  • Catalogue includes links to scores
• Works with Horn by Female Composers Catalog
  • Catalogue includes solo and chamber music with horn (up to 12 instruments) by female composers from around the world
  • Includes free downloadable works

• New standards: 101 lead sheets by women composers
  • Features compositions by a wide range of women composers, from emerging artists to established figures in jazz

• A Seat at the Piano: Promoting Inclusion in Piano Repertoire
  • Promotes and advocates for the inclusion, study, and performance of a more equitably representative body of piano works
  • Database is best viewed using a desktop browser

• Daniels' Orchestral Music Online
  • Orchestral music finder tool: provides information about thousands of works and their publishers/agents
  • Advanced search options filter by composer’s nationality, ethnicity, gender, and instrumental combinations
  • Provides links to online perusals scores, program notes, and recordings 
• ForumMusikDiversität
  • Orchestral works by women composers

• Female Composition List
  • Scroll down to bottom of the page to access the list of women composers of percussion music
  • List is divided by instrumentation

• Violin Music by Women
  • Graded anthology of violin music by women
  • Also offers Viola Music by Women

• A Modern Reveal
  • Online resource dedicated to promoting the vocal works and stories of historical female composers
  • Includes detailed information about women composers of Italian Songs & Arias; Early Latin Music; Jewish/Eastern European Composers; French Composers
• Hensel Songs Online
  • This resource chronicles Fanny Hensel's (née Mendelssohn) song repertoire, linking its users to downloadable PDF scores, including 100 songs that have not previously been available
  • Each entry also includes links to the autograph manuscripts, alongside other information including the date of composition and the author of the set text
• Kassia Database - A Database of Art Song by Women Composers
  • Assists singers, vocal instructors, pianists, and researchers to discover art songs by women composers
  • Database includes songs from the Baroque through to the 21st century
  • Songs are categorized by level, voice type, language, composer, and composer dates; includes information on range, tessitura, accompaniment, and vocal line
  • Provides links to available scores
• Orange County Women’s Chorus Choral Music by Women Composers database
  • Sample repertoire for all voicings and eras

• Bassoon Music by Womxn, Transgender & Gender Diverse Individuals, and/or Black, Indigenous, or Persons of Color
  • Google spreadsheet organized in separate tabs for chamber music, solo works, and études
• Clarinet Repertoire
  • An ongoing project meant to promote gender diversity in clarinet recital programming
  • Explore their databases
• Clarinet Music by Women Composers
  • List is divided by instrumentation and genre
• Published Oboe Works by Women Composers
  • List has been updated periodically since 1987

• McGill users only
• Open access resource
• Free resource
• In-library use
• Catalogue record