Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Secular & Sacred Music to 1900
Edited by Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft
Reviews and Awards
Winner, 2021 Outstanding Multi-Author Publication Award, Society for Music Theory
Recipient of Highly Commended designation from the IAWM Pauline Alderman Awards Committee
"The many compelling analyses offered by this volume have the potential to inform and enrich analytical thinking beyond as well as within the community of scholars, students and musicians with special interests in women composers, and thereby not only to join but also to transform the mainstream" -- Susan Wollenberg, Revue de musicologie
"This book has much to offer, showcasing, as it does, relatively unknown repertoire and employing a variety of analytical approaches... This diversity is also a strength, with music spanning almost 700 years carefully analyzed through a wide range of methods. I highly recommend it." -- Roxane Prevost, University of Ottawa, CAML Review
"In this beautifully produced volume...The essays, well-documented in the endnotes, are illustrated with a wealth of musical examples, tables, and figures...Significantly, this volume offers college and university instructors an engaging body of music analysis, scholarly writing, and writings in music theory to share with their students. Deborah Hayes, College of Music at the University of Colorado Boulder." -- Deborah Hayes, College of Music at the University of Colorado Boulder, Journal of the International Alliance for Women in Music
"Studies of the extraordinary music by extraordinary women down the ages have been, happily, multiplying of late, but this volume is particularly welcome in its analytical focus. The slate of scholars is stellar, and so is the music we come to know better with such excellent guides, whose approaches are as various as the music they consider. And brava to the editors and writers alike for recognizing both that profundity can come in small packages and that women can create the most imposing large works as well. It is good to discover that the "testosterone brigade" had formidable female challengers all along." -- Susan Youens, University of Notre Dame
"Important reading for performers and scholars, this rich and revelatory collection of essays expertly demonstrates the inventive depths and compelling skills of historical composers who were women." -- Dr. Sophie Fuller, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (London)
"This new volume of analytical essays edited by Parsons and Ravenscroft is valuable, timely, and impressive. Nine leading scholars provide incisive chapters on music from the 12th to the 19th centuries, revealing deep sensitivity to music and text, masterful counterpoint, compelling narrative, virtuosic metric shifts, Schenkerian poetics, and imaginative genius. I recommend it for undergraduate and graduate courses in music analysis, and as a model and inspiration for further research." -- Yonatan Malin, Associate Professor of Music, University of Colorado Boulder