The Long, LONG Arc of History

by | Aug 24, 2012

With the debut of Margaret Ruthven Lang’s Dramatic Overture in 1893, the world changed: never before had an orchestral work composed by a woman been performed on the American stage.  The intervening 119 years have brought monumental social change, much of it due...

The 1.7 Percent: Distilling the 2008-2009 Repertoire Reports

by | Aug 24, 2012

Stories about “the 1%” abound in the media, but today I would like to shine a light on a far less reported, though far more relevant for this site’s purposes, statistic: the 1.7%. Our own Sarah Baer crunched the numbers (provided by the League of American...

Back to School With Hildegard Publishing

by | Aug 18, 2011

The Hildegard Publishing Company, which is named after my favorite medieval abbess and is one of my favorite resources for finding music composed by women, put together a great resource for music educators who may be looking for new resources for their classroom or...

Original Manuscripts For Sale

by | Jul 2, 2011

Robert Owen Lehman is selling his collection of music manuscripts. The collection, which is valued at $135 million, is currently housed at The Morgan Library & Museum in NYC. Lehman hasn’t officially announced what he intends to do with the profits from the sale,...

An Introduction to Young Composers

by | Apr 21, 2011

NPR Music and Q2 (part of NYC’s WQXR) recently collaborated to question readers and listeners on their favorite composers under 40 years old. The open appeal was an invitation to a broad conversation on how to define what a composer looks like in the 21st century,...

Judith Tick and Ruth Crawford Seeger

by | Apr 17, 2011

When discussing the recent history of American music, it would be remiss to not mention the name Ruth Crawford Seeger.  Her contributions as an educator to budding composers, as well as her contemporary compositions and research in folk traditions, are hugely...