Coming up: Berlin’s one-off women’s orchestra
OrchestrasBavarian Radio has a feature on an orchestra of amateurs and professionals that plays together just once a year.
The music they perform is exclusively by women composers.
The conductor is Mary Ellen Kitchens, of the Archiv Frau und Musik organisation.
More here.
There has been only one native born German woman brass professor in the history of Germany. All the few others have all been foreigners. One of those became a naturalized German citizen. 21 of Germany’s 24 state conservatories do not have any women brass profs. One of thos is a jazz prof. So 22 of 24 without women brass profs if you count only classical brass instruments.
Has anybody deciphered the signatures on this photo, and found out more about these 1920s(?) American (?) composers? I made out Amy Beach (Mrs H.H.A. Beach, seated, second from left).
It would be great to have a link to the photo, so one could better clarify the image. (Ditto for many others of the photos.)
If you have access to a good music library, this book may well show it:
WILSON KIMBER M. Women Composers at the White House: The National League of American Pen Women and Phyllis Fergus’s Advocacy for Women in American Music. Journal of the Society for American Music. 2018;12(4):477-507. doi:10.1017/S1752196318000378
Phyllis Fergus is in the photo, 4th from the left at the back. There were White House concerts in 1935 and 1936 featuring women composers.
(photograph) American composers whose works were presented during the National Convention (April 22-27 [1932]) of the League of American Pen Women at Washington
from left, front: Francisca Vallejo, Mrs H.H.A. [Amy] Beach, Grace Seton Thompson, Dorothy DeMuth Watson, Mary Carr Moore, Mary Howe, Dorothy Radde Emery; back: Reah Jackson Irion, Margaret McClure Stitt [Cincinnati], Pearl Adams, Phyllis Fergus, Bonita Crowe, Marianne Genet, Annabel Morris Buchanan, Helen Matthews DeLashmutt, Josephine Forsyth, Gena Branscombe, Louise Crawford
Can be found in:
Kimber MW “Amy Beach and the Women’s Club Movement.” In The Cambridge Companion to Amy Beach, 22-37. Ed. D Bomberger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
Peter and GuestX (and others interested) — the photo has been repeatedly reproduced but never with a row by row identification. These are the composers of the National League of American Pen Women — Washington DC April 1932. Amy Beach was the head of the composer’s unit .
https://oboeclassics.com/~oboe3583/ambache/wTHES.htm
The League still exists and has this photo on their website
https://www.nlapw.org/history/
A Google search of the photo leads here as well:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-society-for-american-music/article/abs/women-composers-at-the-white-house-the-national-league-of-american-pen-women-and-phyllis-ferguss-advocacy-for-women-in-american-music/4057C70550F2F64782BB9D820F252179
But the best and clearest reproduction of the photo is here, and it is possible to make out more of the names because the photo is less cropped (click on it)
https://kathleensonewomanjourney.blogspot.com/2013/03/leaders-of-women.html
Second from right in the second row is Gena Branscombe, b. 1881. She studied piano with Rudolph Ganz (as did my aunt), composition with Felix Borowski and Englebert Humperdinck, conducting with Frank Damrosch. She has a large entry in Contemporary American Composers: A Biographical Dictionary (1976). She and Amy Beach really seem to have put this group together.
Many thanks to David and Just saying.
Amy Beach was head of the Society of American Women composers, a short-lived spinoff of the National League of American Pen Women, but she was not head of the NLAPW’s music division. It was run by various women, including Dorothy DeMuth Watson, Phyllis Fergus, Dorothy Radde Emery, and Harriet Ware.
What i dont understood is in reality how youre now not really a lot more smartlyfavored than you might be now Youre very intelligent You understand therefore significantly in terms of this topic produced me personally believe it from a lot of numerous angles Its like women and men are not interested except it is one thing to accomplish with Woman gaga Your own stuffs outstanding Always care for it up