There is no historical or geographical limit on what can be covered. There is no restriction on the style or genre of song or singing.
Before and after 1900 many women songwriters published their songs with male pseudonyms. Three of the most successful share an unexpected biographical trait.
Two-and-a-half years ago I launched a website devoted to marginalized song composers. In this post, I reflect on where it all began.
A century ago, Christina Georgina Rossetti was the woman poet that women composers set most frequently. Her popularity endures, spanning the globe, as this international playlist demonstrates.
Soprano and poet Janani Sridhar discusses the song cycle ‘SingBites’ that she and composer Nicholas Ho wrote as a set of four love songs to Singapore.
While the phenomenon of women publishing as men is well known, a century ago there were also men who published as women. Here are four of them.
Wichita’s newspaper, The Negro Star, helps document the remarkable life of Mollie Fines, and shows that she regularly used new musical experiences to create new opportunities.
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.
The momentous recovery of the long-missing alto partbook of Maddalena Casulana’s five-voice madrigals in the Russian State Library makes possible their first recording.
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.
“Boat Song” was Harriet Ware’s best-selling song. In particular it became a standard for two unexpectedly allied groups of singers: professional men and amateur women.
