Guides: Women composers: Find background information

Find background information: Description

This section contains a selected list of general resources about women composers available through the Library, including bibliographies, histories, discographies, encyclopedias and dictionaries, and source readings.

Encyclopedias and Dictionaries

Women and Music in America Since 1900 by Kristine H. Burns (Editor)
This two volume, A-to-Z encyclopedia represents the first major effort to describe the role of women in all forms of music in the U.S. since 1900.
International Encyclopedia of Women Composers by Aaron I. Cohen
Contains the biographies of more than 5,000 women composers from nearly 70 countries.
New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers by Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel (Editors)
Presenting information on 875 women composers who have made a significant contribution to Western classical music, this book spans from the monodies of Hildegard von Bingen to the multimedia creations of the late 20th century.

Grove Music Online
- Foremost English-language scholarly encyclopedia of music and musicians
- Extensive articles and bibliographies written by subject experts
- Includes detailed works lists for certain composers: useful for confirming the identity of pieces and for finding individual pieces within composers' complete works sets held by the Library
- Includes access to New Grove Dictionary of Opera and New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2nd edition)
- Offers a useful list of women composers, ordered alphabetically or by time period:
  - Women composers A-Z
  - Women composers by time period
MGG Online (Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart)
- Comprehensive German-language encyclopedia
- Provides in-depth articles on many aspects of music and related areas
- Features all content from the 2nd edition plus current updates and additions
- Integrated translation available
- View a tutorial on using MGG Online (4:00)

Histories and Handbooks

The Cambridge Companion to Women in Music Since 1900 by Laura Hamer (Editor)
This Companion explores women's work in music since 1900 across a broad range of musical genres and professions, including the classical tradition, popular music, and music technology. The crucial contribution of women to music education and the music industries features alongside their activity as composers and performers.
Expanding the music theory canon : inclusive examples for analysis from the common practice period by Paula Maust
The first music theory anthology to provide 255 topically arranged examples by 67 historical women and people of color.
Les silences de la musique : écrire l'histoire des compositrices by Delphine Vincent (Editor) and Pauline Milani (Editor)
Alors que l'historiographie reconnaît le rôle des interprètes, principalement des chanteuses et des hôtesses de salons musicaux, les compositrices peinent encore à faire leur entrée dans l'histoire de la musique, à quelques exceptions près. Comment, dès lors, écrire une histoire de la composition musicale qui soit inclusive? Pour y répondre, ce livre réunit des contributions de spécialistes de différents domaines et époques qui interrogent les mécanismes d'exclusion des femmes du canon musical.
The Routledge Handbook of Women's Work in Music by Rhiannon Mathias (Editor)
Presents a unique collection of core research by academics and music practitioners from around the world, engaging with an extraordinarily wide range of topics on women's contributions to Western and Eastern art music, popular music, world music, music education, ethnomusicology as well as in the music industries.
So You Want to Sing Music by Women: A Guide for Performers by Matthew Hoch and Linda Lister
In a profession that is dominated by male composers, this book serves as a compendium for singers and teaches of singing who wish to explore the vast repertoire of women written by women, cutting across a wide array of styles and genres. Hoch and Lister highlight the key composers and provide tips and tools for programming their music.
Women and Music: A History by Karin Anna Pendle (Editor)
This updated, expanded, and reorganized edition features even more women composers, performers, and patrons, even more musical contexts, and an expanded view of women in music outside Europe and North America.
Women Composers in New Perspectives, 1800-1950 by Mariateresa Storino (Editor); Susan Wollenberg (Editor)
This volume offers new scholarship on women composers of the past two centuries, covering a wide range of repertoire, institutions and locations, with chapters focusing on such varied topics as women writing opera in early nineteenth-century Paris; the intertextual relationship between works by Fanny Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn; women composers writing for instruments not usually associated with them in their time - specifically horn, and organ; and the subversive musical activity of female prisoners in Spain under the Franco regime.
Women in Audio by Leslie Gaston-Bird
Features almost 100 profiles and stories of audio engineers who are women and have achieved success throughout the history of the trade. Beginning with a historical view, the book covers the achievements of women in various audio professions and then focuses on organizations that support and train women and girls in the industry. What follows are eight chapters divided by discipline, highlighting accomplished women in various audio fields.
Women Making Music by Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (Editors)
The first work of its kind, Women Making Music presents biographies of outstanding performers and composers, as well as analyses of women musicians as a class, and provides examples of music from all periods including medieval chant, Renaissance song, Baroque opera, German lieder, and twentieth-century composition.
Women Opera Composers by Mary F. McVicker
This book focuses on the women, from the 16th century to today, who had successful careers in opera, many of them well known in their time.

Bibliographies

Women in Music by Karin Pendle and Melinda Boyd
An annotated bibliography emerging from more than twenty-five years of feminist scholarship on music.
Women and Music by Margaret Ericson
Contains a wide range of reference and research literature published on women, gender, and music between 1987 and 1992.

Hadlock, Heather. Women in Music. Oxford Bibliographies. Oxford University Press, 2017.
- An annotated bibliography of literature about women in music
- Contains an extensive section on women as composers of Western Art music

Source Readings

Women in Music by Carol Neuls-Bates (Editor)
The voices of women such as Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, Clara Schumann, and Marian Anderson resonate as they emerge from the wide range of materials in this volume, which includes letters, diaries, poems, novels, and reviews that reveal women's achievements not only as patrons and educators but also as composers and performers.

Discographies

Moanin' Low by Ross Laird
The first comprehensive guide to pre-1934 female popular vocal recordings sung in English, this discographical study includes solos, duets, trios, and quartets composed by the great songwriters of the early 1900s (from Irving Berlin to Victor Young).
International Encyclopedia of Women Composers by Aaron I. Cohen
Contains an extensive discography of works by women composers.
Women Composers by Jane Frasier
A comprehensive discography of music by women composers from a wide range of genres, from chamber music to electronic music and mixed media. Published in 1983.