Review by Bonnie Jo Dopp, Long Branch Community Lib., Silver Spring:

This important anthology of scores of "serious" music by women will enlighten students of music history and serve as a source of programming ideas for performers. It provides 51 musical pieces (some complete, some excerpted) with critical/analytical comments and biographies of the 37 composers represented. Many authors of the biographies here have written extensively elsewhere about their subjects or edited their works (e.g., Nancy B. Reich on Clara Schumann and Beatrice Pescerelli on Maddalena Casualana), while contemporary composers Vivian Fine and Ellen Taaffe Zwillich speak for themselves. Further reading and information on recordings is included. Essential to all music history and scores collections.

Synopsis:

A reference book providing an A-Z of over 100 women composers, British and American, from 1629 to the present. Each entry gives a flavour of the composer's milieu as well as her music. The author provides a critical overview of music, and a bibliography and discography for each entry.

Review by Bonnie Jo Dopp, Long Branch Community Lib., Silver Spring:

Introduced by thoughtful essays on feminist aesthetics and attitudes toward musicology, this welcome book covers 25 composers from the 12th through the 20th centuries (nine of whom are not found in the Historical Anthology of Music by Women , LJ 2/15/87). Each chapter gives an outline of important dates in the composer's life, a short commentary on her works in general, specific notes on a piece or two that can be heard on a separately available cassette tape (from Leonarda Productions), and a works list, discography, and short bibliography. Useful appendixes list sources for recordings, additional 20th-century women composers, and music appreciation textbooks that do and do not include women. A chart of Western music history that mentions more women composers than are included in the book gives a fuller picture of their number. A good, accessible guide for a teacher or self-directed student.

Review by Susan C. Cook, University of Wisconsin School of Music:

Women in Music has been a core resource for scholarship and teaching since it first appeared in 1982. Out of print for too long, Women in Music can now take its rightful place again in the center of a growing field of gender and music research, allowing women to speak for themselves.

Review by Ilene Rosoff:

This is one of the few existing books presenting a multicultural history of women in music. Aside from popular music, very little scholarship has been done on women's music history, no doubt because much of women's experience with music (pre-pop culture) has not taken place in the public domain. Beginning with the poetry of Sappho in ancient Greece, Women & Music goes through the centuries, highlighting the first European women composers; women's music in the context of religion; women's choruses; African-American women's music in this country; and women's music outside Western culture. With somewhat of a textbook flavor, I felt distanced at times, and I wanted more on women outside the European traditions. However, this book gives a good overview of the places that women and their music have existed and flourished, and spotlights the aspects of women's relationship to music that are uniquely feminine.

Review by Bonnie Jo Dopp, Long Branch Community Lib., Silver Spring:

This first of 12 volumes in a projected monument to music by women presents true cause for celebration. Reading these works of careful scholarship and music editing by 18 contributors is like attending a series of seminars. Each of 20 composers, from the 9th-century's Kassia to Claudia Sessia (fl. 1613), is treated through a biography, a setting in time and place, analysis of her work, comments on performance practice, and an extensive bibliography, all of which precede a modern edition of her music, represented by one to eight pieces. Editorial procedures are explained for each composition, and translations are given for all vocal works, allowing the works to be not only studied but also performed. Because the editors were careful not to duplicate easily obtained scores, most of it is presented here in modern notation for the first time. This first volume in a valuable series, and presumably the entire run, belongs in all larger music collections.

Book Description:

This book contains a sampling of the work of eleven women composers of the past, plus an original piano solo from the author. Beginning with a transcription of a piece by Hildegard von Bingen, the pieces in the book span almost 1000 years of music history touching on the work of distinguished yet frequently overlooked women composers from a variety of periods. The book includes piano solos by Amy Marcy Beach, Clara Wieck Schumann, Cecile Chaminade, Fanny Cecile Mendelsohn Hensel, Teresa Carreno and other great composers. Although it was not easy for women to have a profession in composing, the music of the eleven women represented in this book has remained classic. In addition to presenting the works of each of the composers, the book includes biographical information on each composer. The recording features the author's performances of one or more representative pieces from each composer. This is a great volume for anyone wishing to discover some of the lesser-known treasures of the piano repertoire!