Women in Music: An Anthology of Source Readings from the Middle Ages to the Present

by Carol Neuls-Bates (Other)

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.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

351 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Carol]

I read this book as a follow-up to Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950. The anthology did make a very good companion piece, adding depth and color to the material in the other book. The source readings were all very interesting and most of them were quite illuminating. It was also nice to see writings by and about very obscure and forgotten women (e.g., late 19th century concert pianists) as well as the more well-known people like Clara Schumann and Ruth Crawford-Seeger. Also, Neuls-Bates chose and framed many of her readings to place emphasis on women's struggles for professional employment, status, and achievement, a focus that I appreciated.
Notably, where Women Making Music had a lot of great stuff about early music, Women in Music was more heavily weighted towards the 19th and twentieth centuries. I wonder if this was a conscious choice on the editor's part or just a result of the kinds of primary sources available for different periods.

[Jenny (Reading Envy)]

I read this along with Women Making Music by Bowers and Tick, which has a great overview of the subject of the history of women in music. They really supplement each other.

This book contains primary source material that greatly enriches the subject of women in music. The most interesting (and disturbing) part to me were the letters to Fanny Mendelssohn from her father and brother, demonstrating how powerful societal expectations were in keeping women from contributing as much as they might have.