Kindred Spirits: A Conversation with Susan Narucki
Stephen Rodgers
20 March 2023
A conversation with soprano Susan Narucki about her new album of art songs by early 20th-century women composers.
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.
A conversation with soprano Susan Narucki about her new album of art songs by early 20th-century women composers.
Ivana Lang’s Nokturno (Nocturne), one of the most beautiful of her many songs, spurs a look at her life and work.
As European art music began to be challenged by jazz, musically influential women devised ways to cultivate “a taste for ‘good’ music in children.”
In the Japanese-Chinese film Eternity (1943), Yoshiko Yamaguchi sang two songs that made her a star in China. But the film backfired.
Four exceptional women composers underwent mid-career conversions. Having favored male poets for the first decades of their careers, they began in their 40s to favor women poets.
In the decades before and after 1900, did it matter to women composers whether the poems they set were written by a man or a woman?
By 1914 the NACWC had 50,000 members. Their motto, “Lifting as We Climb,” was worked into songs performed regularly at meetings. It reverberates to this day.
Did nuns in Medieval Europe sing anything other than chants and sacred songs? Mary Caldwell discusses one example, a song performed during the Christmas season.
Alexander Stefaniak explores how Clara Schumann’s Lieder – both in her performances and in her publications – supported her work as a celebrated concert pianist.
With this essay on Black Swan Records, we at WSF celebrate our 2nd anniversary. On 30 Oct. 2020 our first post was Mark Burford’s essay on Marian Anderson.